On the German front. The blinker switch on the vintage BMW, (Bavarian for Bring My Wallet) is on the right handlebar. It rotates up for left and down for right. Upon installing and charging the new specialty battery required, at a cost roughly equivalent to an evening with a fairly talented hooker, I tried each of the various electrical devices. All seem to be in working order except the switch for the foot brake, cleverly installed in such a manner as to make it inaccessible without hazarding the loss of a man's Christian vocabulary, and the left turn function of the bar switch. Floyd Clymer failed to describe the internals of the switch mechanisms of this machine so to diagnose and repair the miscreant machine will have a difficulty rating somewhere between preparing a state dinner for the white house and brain surgery. I am certain it will be a learning experience. I have not yet cleaned the inside of the gas tank. At the current price of gasoline I am reluctant to throw out the old gas and will probably dilute it with new fuel and burn it in my truck. Once the tank is clean inside new gas added it will be time to see if the famed quality of the Kaiser's workers has survived the decades long slumber and able to wake to face a new day. In my normally quiet life this experiment is approximately equal to a shuttle launch. May the Gods of engineering smile on me that day. My wife Norska has but one week left at her current employment. Following that we have some basic house projects to complete prior to our next adventure. We are planning a trip to Ecuador. I am looking for some place where we can retire and actually live on our income. Prices in America are going up far faster than we can hope to match. I have made it an evening project to research places around the globe where we could live on our fixed income and that have weather consistently superior to the Siberian exile of life in rural Wisconsin. For most of my life I have used the cold seasons, early winter, deep winter and cold sludge, to work in my shop and produce income or new toys for the other three seasons, rainy, mosquito and tornado season. To be fair there are some several days during the warmer seasons when it is quite beautiful here. They inevitably fall mid week an average of three times to one. On that one weekend Wisconsin is indeed God's summer home. The divine bill for those days of hedonistic delight generally does not exceed the hail loss of a few roofs and one or two counties corn crop. I have a nagging suspicion that our arrival in Ecuador will herald a seismic event of note. The spirits of the north are a jealous lot and given to tantrums when one of their born subjects attempts escape. I am fully prepared to sacrifice a goat or pig if that will guarantee a safe trip. LN