Who said "May you live in interesting times?"

Today could best be described as "character building". The good news, received early in the day was that our payment for the bike got to Long Beach BMW Motorcycles, so we could begin our journey in earnest.

Perhaps I need to go back a bit before I continue...

Yesterday afternoon the bike dealers kindly let us have our panniers and top box before the payment was received so we could start packing. We quickly learned that the storage is not Tardis-like, and in fact doesn't hold nearly as much as it would appear to. This meant some tough decisions about what we really needed to take and what could be left behind. Eventually we managed to close the boxes. The rest of our stuff went into our suitcases to be stored by our friend Alex until we get back to LA (Thanks Alex!) As part of our space-saving strategy, we decided to post some of our travel books ahead to known stops where we can collect them as needed. First thing this morning was to get to a post office and dispatch them. So far, so good.

Now for this trip we purchased Cardo Scala Rider Bluetooth (wireless) communicators for our helmets so we can talk to each other while we are riding. A feature of these is that you can pair them up to a Bluetooth GPS so as to be able to hear instructions through the communicator head sets. The other day when we purchased the bike, we declined to buy the BMW GPS in favour of a Garmin which boasted Bluetooth connectivity and was one third the price. We tested out the Garmin in our hire car and it was really good, so we gave away our old el-cheapo GPS to the motel owner (why would we want two GPSs?) This morning we found out that Bluetooth isn't as simple as it promises, because we couldn't hear the GPS through our headsets. We took it back to the store where we bought it and asked for their help. It turns out the GPS we bought can only connect to telephones via Bluetooth, not GPSs. They also said that none of the other GPSs they sold would connect to our headsets, so we got a refund and went back to BMW to buy the $1,000 (!) BMW GPS and have it fitted to the bike. Ironically, the BMW GPS is actually made by Garmin (but with special BMW features).

So much for leaving LA today.

While the new GPS was being fitted to our bike, we decided to take our suitcases to Alex's place - but now we didn't have a GPS to guide us. Sheepishly we had to ask to borrow our old GPS back so we could get there...

About two thirds of the way to our destination, the GPS managed to find a route that looped back on itself, so it took us from one freeway to another, off that freeway, back a few blocks and back onto our original route, and wasn't going to let us off that track. Maybe it got the sh**s with us for discarding it so lightly earlier in the day? Fortunately we didn't have to go round too many times before deja vu set in and we realised something was wrong. We sought help from some people nearby and once we got over Groundhog Day the GPS took us to our destination. Sort of...

Alex's workplace is a unit in a business park, and the GPS could only get us close by. We still ended up searching on foot for 10 minutes before we found it. Eventually we dropped off the suitcases and headed back to Long Beach, about 15 miles away. Now, I am sure that if you are familiar with the LA freeways you can get anywhere reasonably quickly and confidently. For us newbies, though, the freeways are daunting. There are so many exits often very close together and it is not always clear just where to turn out, even with a GPS to guide you - and you have to make decisions at 60 mph. When we were nearly back to Long Beach we took a wrong exit. When the GPS finally got us back onto the freeway 10 minutes later, we only travelled 400 yards along it before we got to the correct exit.

We eventually got to pick up the bike late in the afternoon. This is us with our new bike and Robyn (left of picture) who did so much to facilitate our purchase:

Anyone thinking of travelling to the US and buying a bike in the US should talk to Robyn at Long Beach BMW Motorcycles. We can't imagine how we could have purchased, registered and insured a bike here without her assistance. She really went the extra mile for us and made it seem easy.

After a tiring and sometimes challenging day, we decided we would splurge out on a Chinese meal tonight. By pure luck found ourselves in the Le Yen restaurant at 140 Atlantic Avenue. We mention their name and address, because their food is really terrific and excellent value, especially the pepper steak. The people there were really friendly too. (Tell Susie that Chris and Wanda sent you if you get to eat there.) At the end of our meal we were each given a fortune cookie. Our fortunes read: "A fascinating project is in your future" and "There is a prospect of a thrilling time ahead for you". How did they know???