Rescue me!

 7:26 am - Sunday - November 13th - GNHS, CA - 49° F, 49% humidity, wind 7 mph out of the west by northwest......crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 71° F.  On this date in 2010 (which also happened to be a Sunday) TLE and I had just finished a bicycle ride from Anaheim to San Diego over two days with good friend Terri Dickerson (met in college)....waiting to board the Surfliner train back to Anaheim........↴

Rescue Me by Fontella Bass

Saturdays are usually our busiest day for UTV rentals, and this Saturday did not disappoint.  By 11 am we had rented two 4 seaters, and one 2 seater.  I spent some time blowing out air filters......

......and I had barely just finished putting two newer rear tires on one of the Polaris RZR's when we rented that one......

....about 45 minutes after the party of four left for their 6 hour ride we got a call from them that the check engine light had come on, and that the RZR was in 'limp' mode, meaning it would not go over 6 mph....doh!  So, here I am just a week, or so into my new job, and I am going on my first rescue....doh!  

The people were about 20 miles into their ride, so it was not like they were just around the corner.  After consulting with Casey via phone we decided I would take the last 4 seater we had out to them, and exchange RZR's, then I would get the check engine light RZR home as best I could....20 miles at 6 mph is a long ride.  At any rate, I found them after a 40 minute ride, made the exchange, then began to figure out what was wrong with it.  I checked the oil, which was a tad low, but certainly not the reason for the check engine light.  I next went into the RZR computer system to find out what code, if any resulted from the check engine light, and got this number......

.....now, let's be frank....I have not idea what this number means, but it is meaningful to someone, somewhere, so I called Kyle and gave him the code.  He said he would call Kawasaki and find out what it meant.  In the mean time I decided to start the Kawasaki and begin the long trek home at 6 mph.  Within about 2 minutes the code cleared, and disappeared from the display so I pressed the gas pedal to see if it would go faster than 6 mph, and what do you know?  It ran normally, and soon I was cruising at 45 mph.  After about 5 miles the check engine light came on again, and I was back in 'limp' mode, but in about a minute the code cleared again, and I was off to the races once again.  The RZR ran just fine the last 15 miles home, and I was back a little after 1 pm.  During my drive home Kyle had called Kawasaki and found out the code meant there was a misfire, so we've either got a bad spark plug,  or wire. Kyle will dig into that on Tuesday.

I know there will be other rescues to be made over the next 4 months, and some will be more complicated than this one, but at least I've got one under my belt, and I was able to find the customer pretty quickly...fortunately, they were right on the trail they should have been on, and I didn't have to spend any time searching for them.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning all three 4 seaters, and two of 2 seaters.  By the time I fueled up the last 4 seater, and put it away it was almost 5 pm....that was a long day, but a very rewarding day.  All of our customers left happy, and that is the most important thing.  TLE and I are gaining confidence day by day in our abilities to run this operation, and are enjoying being, essentially, our own bosses.

After dinner (Tomato Cream soup and cheese toast) TLE and I retired to the 'lido deck' to play 6 games of Yahtzee, then spent another hour sitting by the fire.....

.....a great ending to a great day.  I wonder what excitement Sunday will bring?

Thanks for stopping by!