Tweet
Texas BBQ and Camp XS 98
July 31 - August 8 1998
Well, the long awaited trip has come and gone. It was kind of unusual in that I didn't have any of the typical problems at the start of this one. Maybe I'm finally getting it right. (?) [On my way to the 97 Honda Hoot I lost a footpeg I forgot to tighten and on my way to the 98 Hoot my leather jacket fell out of my locked trunk!?!] So anyway, nothing fell off (that I know of) as I headed south toward Texas.
My first waypoint was within the first hour as I stopped to pick up Mike Pecora from the LD Riders List. Some of you may remember that the reason I was headed to Texas was to have BBQ with Ron Ayres and a bunch of other Iron Butt types. Mike is a fellow Iron Butt Association member and we decided to ride down together even though we had never met before. It was a decision neither of us would regret.
Mike rides a black BMW R1100RT. I was on the Great White (which I have convinced gullible onlookers as being a BMW K1100LT prototype). Hey, for every credibility gap there's a gullibility fill. Sometimes more than one.
So off we go (intentionally?) into one of the worst heat waves in Texas history. The ride is rather uneventful (good) and we make gas stops about every 200 miles. I ask Mike what kind of fuel economy he's getting and he just says, "Oh, I don't keep track of that sort of thing." After a couple of stops I get curious and I run the numbers. I'm getting about 35 mpg (at about 75-80) and he's getting about 8 more mpg. Although we're both on 1100s, I've got two more hungry jugs to feed. Just a guess.
The trip is the first ride I've taken that's longer than 170 miles since the July 4th weekend. I notice that the first 300 miles are pretty easy. The second 300 miles are quite a bit tougher. By the time we reach Oklahoma all bets are off. It's hot and getting hotter. Although it's early evening the sun is still bright in the sky but I'm getting hungry for dinner - we tried to pass off energy bars and fruit punch as lunch. When we finally stop for dinner I am *needing* a break. Arbys does a good job of filling the void with a Jamocha shake for dessert. I love those things!
The sun is headed toward the horizon but temperature relief is out of the question. And unfortunately, we've still got 4 hours left before we reach the Motel 6 in Plano. By this point, the jacket has been put away for a while and I've been riding in shirt-sleeves. My white cotton dress shirt may not offer the protection of a good set of leathers but I'm less likely to pass out from overheating. But even that is too hot now. I had packed a spray bottle filled with tap water in the trunk so I signal to Mike that I need to stop and I spritz my arms and chest with the water. Fifteen minutes later I realize that the cooling effect of the water stopped working ten minutes ago. So I signal for a stop again and this time I pack the spray bottle in my tank bag - where I can get at it. Aside from a couple of very brief cool spots along the road the temperature remains relentlessly high and I find that five minutes after I soak my shirt with the spray bottle it's *completely* dry again. So I end up spritzing myself a lot. Even though the cooling effect doesn't last long, it *is* effective.
Around midnight we pull into the motel - just a couple of minutes ahead of two riders from Alberta, Canada. (And I thought *I* had a big change in the temperature.) One of the great things about Texas is that no matter how hot it is outside you can always count on the temperature inside to be 70 degrees or cooler. A quick phone call to a groggy wife to tell her I got in okay and then a cool shower and to bed.
The next day, Saturday, is the day of Ron's BBQ. At 10 am it's hot. It feels like it's already in the 90's. Mike and I have breakfast at the little '50s decorated diner and then head over to Ron's house. On the brief ride to Ron's it's even hotter. There's no wind chill when the "breeze" is over 100 degrees. It's actually cooler sitting in traffic than it is riding.
But as we pull into Ron's driveway Ron is there to greet us and give us name tags and give us each a cold bottle of water. I spend the next several hours chatting with people I know and putting faces to people whose posts I've read. I take advantage of Ron's terrific pool to beat the heat. When the BBQ is ready to be served I grab a plate and ladle out several measures of a terrific BBQ sauce on top of beef, pork and chicken.
At some point, someone tells me that Steve Gano is looking for me and points me toward him. After introductions (and seconds on the BBQ) we find a table and chat about XS11s and their electrical systems, auxiliary fuel, and other technical trivia. What a great time. Steve is a really nice guy and is really getting into the endurance riding scene. He's already mounted a fuel cell on the back of his bike and now can carry about 9 gallons of fuel. Considering that most competitive rallies limit you to 11 gallons, you can bet that he's trying to find a way to add an extra 1.5 - 2 gallons to his current configuration.
But, alas, the evening ends (not that I wanted it to) and I link up with three other riders who paid attention to the trip from the motel to Ron's house. So I follow them back to the motel. Unfortunately, as the three of them jostle for lane position, I let myself swing a bit wide to the left to give the others a bit more space.
If any of you have ever driven in Texas you'll know about something called "bots dots." They are little domed ceramic discs glued to the roadway surface to alert you when you drift over the edge of your lane. They're about 3-4 inches in diameter and about 1/2 inch high. Bots dots are usually placed in threes in conjunction with the dashed-stripes in the road. I grew up in Texas. I knew about bots dots. Being smooth ceramic, they're a bit of a road hazard but nothing that will likely kill you. But in the 17 years since I moved away from Texas they've come up with something new.
These days in Texas, they now do something very different to separate the left turn lane from the other lanes of traffic. Something to keep people from zipping into the left turn lane at the last second. They put down MEGA bots dots. These half-globes are about 8 inches in diameter and about 4 inches tall. These are nothing like the regular bots dots when it comes to being a road hazard. These have the potential to be deadly. It is sort of the opposite of a pothole.
So anyway, I had swung a bit wide to the left to afford the other riders a bit more space and I hit an entire row of these Mega dots. About 8-10 of them all in a row. Maybe I'm a great rider or maybe God was just extra diligent on my behalf but after my bike stopped being a bucking bronco I found that I was still on top (I had my doubts that this would be the case) and the bike was still on the bottom and rolling smoothly. Everyone else needed to stop at a gas station and I used that opportunity to check for damage. Several people told me that Michael Gaspar hit one of these mega bots dots last year and really screwed up his front wheel.
Initially, I thought the damage was worse than it was. I thought I had blown a fork seal although that turned out to be just a bit of extra oil that was left on the fork tube as a result of the violent fork rebound. Both back turn signals had their ground knocked loose. The fairing lower was cracked in two places and broken in another. All easily fixable by a good plastic welder. The one thing that really had me worried was a blip on the sidewall of the tire. About the size of the knot you get on your forehead when you don't duck far enough getting into a car. I was concerned that this could end my trip substantially earlier than I was planning.
With a little help from some friends, I took the bike on the highway to see if it did anything weird at speed. It didn't. When we got back to the motel I used the awl on my Swiss army knife to "drill" some holes to stop the cracks in the fairing from spreading. That's all I could do for now. I'd keep an eye on the tire to make sure it didn't get any worse.
I didn't get a very good nights sleep. I'm thinking it's partly because of my little accident and partly because I'm going to be riding with riders whose credentials are quite a bit more substantial than mine. And maybe also because I don't want to oversleep and miss out on riding with the others. Either way, my stomach is fairly upset and I feel like there's a lot of adrenaline in my system. I've got a real "fight or flight" sensation going. It's really got me on edge.
Sunday morning Bobb Todd and I rode over to Vince Putt's house (yes, those are their real names to gather the group to ride to Santa Fe, NM. From Plano, that's about 640 miles. The group consisted of Vince and his fiancee, Karen, Ira Agins, Bobb Todd, me and Stan Fisher. (When we get to Vince's house I realize that all that BBQ sauce likely had a lot of garlic powder which, unfortunately causes me a lot of stomach problems. I took a couple of Tagamet and the stomach problems vanished. If I had been smarter and realized that there was so much garlic in the sauce, I would have taken the Tagamet the night before and probably gotten a much better night's rest too.) You have to understand that it's hard enough to get two LD Riders to ride together, much less a group this size. After a very brief ride we stopped for breakfast and told the obligatory lies and tall tales. Then it was down to business.
Karen took point and set the pace for quite a while. Her pace, it seemed was about 85 mph. Her Magna had the smallest gas tank and we were stopping about every 100-120 miles. I didn't really mind that much. It made the pace seem more relaxed. I was, after all, on vacation.
At one point, as we were passing through one of the small towns, Stan and I got caught at a rather long red light. Once we got into open country we opened it up a little to try to catch the others. And we did - about 25 miles later. Just goes to show that a little head start can make a huge difference.
Once we left Texas, the temperature got much more reasonable and I noticed that my sinuses were MUCH clearer. It's not often I can breathe through both nostrils at once.
We finally made it to Ira's house in Santa Fe about an hour before sunset and unloaded the bikes and Ira showed us our rooms. After we got a bit settled, we went out for a nice dinner and a tour of the "downtown" area. Quite a bit different than what the city folk call downtown. There was one thing that, having lived in Chicago for 14 years amused me. As we were walking along we came upon a couple standing at the corner of an intersection. No traffic for as far as you could see. And when the light changed, they crossed the street. Fine upstanding citizens. Would have made Barney Fife proud. 
After a nice overnight rest, Ira led Bobb and me to Taos via the "high road." This is a set of twisty mountain roads through some rather indigent looking adobe communities that only a real local can navigate without a map. Ira showed us some interesting adobe churches and scenic vistas along the way. I peeled off in Taos to grab some breakfast before heading out north to Colorado.
As I was cutting back northwest I saw a bunch of cars and RVs parked on either side of a bridge that crossed a ditch of some sort. Traffic slowed to a crawl and when I got to the center of the bridge I realized why. The "ditch" wasn't very wide but it was several hundred feet deep. Sort of a mini Grand Canyon. It was actually a bit scary to look down such a deep crevasse when you weren't expecting to see what you saw.
The road heading into Colorado was wide open and smooth. So open, in fact that there was no real sense of speed. I was just cruising at a comfortable pace. When I glanced at my speedo I saw that it read 95 mph. A while later as I approached a small town I backed off to the posted reduced speed. It felt so slow that I had to wonder if the engine had stopped but the tach said otherwise. As I crossed into Colorado and the mountains closed in on the road - at least closer than they had been. I noticed that there were some randomly placed buildings at the base of the mountain. With mountains you get no real sense of depth or distance. I couldn't tell if the mountains were five miles away or twenty five. The little irregular shaped buildings were too short to be of much help - even though the buildings were probably 25-40 feet tall. The scale of the mountain supercedes all adjacent objects.
The farther I went into Colorado, the more the mountains crept toward the road. Finally the expanse of the valley gave in to the extremity of the mountain. Now the road would really get fun.
But, of course, I was still in a valley. Not as wide as the previous valleys, to be sure, but still wider than the eye expects. And longer too. At the other end of the valley I noticed a very interesting cloud formation. "Is that rain?," I wondered? It didn't look like rain *I'm* used to seeing. More like a weird fog. As I got closer I noticed that the temperature was dropping. As I finally got to the far end of the valley I realized that it was, in fact, rain. But just a little bit. Not enough to stop for the rain gear. I continued north into the higher elevations.
When I got to Salida, Colorado, I spotted a Wal-Mart and I pulled in. It was pretty warm - about 85 without the bike induced wind chill and I quickly took off my jacket when I got in the store. I had every intention of just buying Visine and AA batteries but I began to see some things I "needed." When I came toward the checkout there was an explosive thunderclap and a peek out the door showed a torrential rain. That's weather in the mountains, I guess. I walked around the store for a while looking for more things to "need." About 30 minutes after the rain started it stopped and almost as suddenly. With the sun out again the temperature quickly rose to it's previous level and I packed up the bike with my new treasures and headed out.
My initial plan had me headed in a big "S" as I headed toward Royal Gorge to Fairplay and then to Conifer. A glance at the skies told me that the brief shower I rode through and the torrent I missed in the store were not the only rain clouds to contend with. So I abandoned the Royal Gorge leg and just headed for Fairplay. It didn't take long before the 85 degree heat submitted to the 53 degree rain.
I stopped before I got caught by the storms and put on all my Gore-tex. My rain-suit came from Cabellas and Bass Pro Shops. I think the jacket is from the former and the pants from the latter. It's mix and match because of price. To get a matched set of either would have cost at least $40 more. I think I paid about $80 for each piece. I also have some Gore-tex socks from Rocky that cost $30 or so. Add my $9 Wal-Mart neoprene fishing gloves and I'm about as watertight as I can get. The Shoei Duotec helmet is the only source of dampness as water sometimes drips behind the face shield. Everything else is as dry as talc. This outfit also has the added advantage of not making me sweat when I either stop at a light or ride out of the rain in normal temperatures. PVC makes me sweat just thinking about it.
I ended up stopping one more time to warm up a bit before I came into the Denver area and Sid's house. Sid's garage door was open and there were three XS Eleven standards in there so I figured I must be in the right place. Kathy O'Connor and Linda Higgins greeted me at the door and we chatted until Sid Hansen and John Higgins got back from the store. So I unpacked my bike and waited for them to get back.
One of the advantages of my new saddlebags is that they're designed to be not just watertight but also airtight as well. So much so that the manufacturer put a pressure relief valve on them. I tried to open them but realized that when I was in the higher elevations much of the air must have been drawn past the big o-ring gasket. When I descended into Denver it created a vacuum inside the bags. As I turned the pressure relief valves on the bags I was treated to several seconds of air hissing its way back into the bags to relieve the vacuum.
Kathy was also nice enough to let me use her washer and dryer so I wouldn't have to put on wet shoes the next day. Thanks Kathy! When the guys got back, Sid fired up the grill and cooked up some brats and before long we were all at the table. Good cooking, Sid!
A little later that evening the "James Gang" showed up at Sid's House. It was great to finally meet James Ho, Steve Warren and Mike Cummings. As Bob Canel got off his bike, he excitedly told me, "I think I can do 1,000 miles!" I told him that maybe he and I and maybe Dave Hogue will get together sometime and do a Saddlesore so they can be "official." A bit later the Texas contingent appeared in the form of Lanny Marshall and Joseph Haller. Both appeared to be all smiles in spite of the troubles Joseph was having with his bike. Maybe they were all smiles just because they made it this far.
We all continued to talk bikes in Sid's garage and kitchen for quite a while. At some point the Higgins, Lanny and Joseph headed off to their motel. The rest of the folks carried on until who knows when. I, not being as handsome as the rest, needed my beauty rest.
In the morning, we all got packed and were all just about to leave when it began to drizzle. Steve Warren and I were ready a little sooner than the rest so we decided to grab a quick McDonalds breakfast after we got our rain suits on. I asked Sid if he would pick us up on the way to going to the motel where everyone else was and after a dirty look he said okay. After Sid picked up Steve and me we all headed for the gas station across from the motel.
And that's when the rain really started coming down. When we were all fueled up I went over to the motel to see about John and Linda and Lanny and Joseph. Once we were all at the gas station Joseph told us that he was going to stay in town (Denver) and try to get some mechanical problems taken care of. I gave him my extra quart of fuel knowing that he'd probably never get from Douglas to Gillette without it.
Sid lead the pack out of the gas station and Bob, Mike and I waited for one car to pass before we left the station. Hard to believe it would take so long but 39 miles later the three of us caught up to Sid and the gang. We rode together for another 20 or 30 miles when I had to stop and fix my helmet - it was pinching my glasses against my head. After that I never did catch up with them. I had remembered that Sid said he was planning to stop in Cheyenne for breakfast so I stopped at the first two Cheyenne exits to see if I could find them. I learned later from Kathy that they had stopped sooner than Cheyenne for breakfast and I must have gone right by them after they were off the interstate.
So, travelling solo again, I continued my trek to Ernie Basener's house in the Black Hills. The rain kept on until about Wheatland, Wyoming. The skies seemed clearer so I took off my rain suit. About another hour later I put it back on again and then shortly after took it off again. I did this one more time. In Newcastle, Wyoming I gassed up and got ready to head east on Hwy 16 toward Custer but as I approached the intersection of Hwys 85 and 16 I noticed that it was dark and rainy in the direction of Custer but it was only overcast over northbound 85. Since Momma didn't raise no fool, I changed plans on the spot and headed north on 85. Good move. Not only did it not rain, that piece of 85 is some really fine riding. The road is decent and the curves just keep getting better. Once past Lead, I took Hwy 385 back south to Hwy 44 and to Ernie's house. It took a little longer but I stayed dry. I'd had enough rain for one trip.
Ernie was there to greet me and I got moved in quickly and we waited for Peggy to get home from work and go to dinner. I had not had the pleasure of meeting Peg even though Ernie put me up for Sturgis week last year. Peg's uncle in California had been very ill and passed away during my stay. This year had no such calamities and getting to know Peg was pure pleasure. Ernie was lucky enough to find her and smart enough to not let her get away.
Jonathan Walther called to let us know he was on his way but wouldn't be in till late. I was already asleep when he got in but the following morning he was up and ready to have a go at the world. Ernie had talked to Dale and told me that James Ho had decided not to go on the Beartooth mountain ride but Jonathan said he thought it sounded like fun. Dale kept to his plan of taking the Gillette group through the Black Hills and Ernie, Jonathan and I kept to our plan of doing test rides in Sturgis.
When we got to Sturgis, Jonathan and I signed up for demo rides with BMW, and we all got some breakfast and the walked across the street. We got our free Excelsior Henderson bandanas and signed up for rides at Triumph too. We walked around and looked at some of the vendors' wares while we waited for our rides.
I had signed up for a ride on a BMW R1100RT. After having ridden beside one for so long on the way to Texas I figured I owed it to myself. In all, I was pretty impressed. That horizontally opposed twin has so much torque that when you rev the throttle the whole bike twists on its axis. It reminded me of the Boss Hoss I rode last year. It's a very quick bike off the line. Last year I had ridden a K1100LT (none were provided this year) and I was pretty disappointed with that model. I found that it was a pretty buzzy bike at normal speeds. The buzziness did subside at higher rpms (ergo supersonic speeds) but that meant you had to ride in 4th gear at normal highway speeds if you don't want your hands to fall asleep. The R bike was just the opposite. It got buzzier at higher rpms. But it was a fairly comfortable bike. The seat was not impressive and the handlebars could stand to be relocated for my taste but that's fixable with aftermarket products.
One of the nice things about some of the demo rides is that you could swap bikes with another rider at the midpoint. Jonathan and I swapped and I now found myself on a R1100GS. I had always been uninterested in this model. There's one particular shade of green that's available that makes it look like the seat threw up on the forks.
But I was very surprised by the reality. It has the same powerful engine as in the R1100RT but it is remarkably forgiving in it's ride. The seat looks like a vinyl wrapped brick but is remarkably comfortable. I could see adding some Jesse bags and a plexifairing and riding that thing *anywhere!*
After the BMW ride we met up with Bob Garcia. Yet another really nice guy. He rides a really nice Midnight Special.
On the Triumph ride I had chosen a Trophy 1200 (again). That is such a great bike. With taller handlebars it would be almost the perfect sport touring machine (IMO). Jonathan had chosen the Speed Triple and we again swapped at the midpoint. The Speed Triple doesn't really look like a sport bike (to my eye) but there's no question that it is. It's a real kick-butt-take-names kind of bike. It has NO protection from little rocks that get kicked up by the bike (another Speed Triple) in front of you. Not my kind of bike but a real gas to ride for a few miles.
Afterwards, Bob, Jonathan, Ernie and I had a bite to eat and we told more stories and generally had a good time. After dinner, Bob took off (he's the 5-9am jock at the country station so he needs to turn in early) and we picked up Peggy's cousin, Judy. Jonathan, Ernie and Judy went to the Blue Oyster Cult concert while I went searching for rally T-shirts. I made it "home" by about midnight and Ernie and Jonathan made it home a couple hours later.
The following morning I got up and called over to Dale's house. I got word that Dave Hogue also wanted to cancel the Beartooth Mountain ride. I called Mike Cumming's motel and got the same news from Mike. That meant that only Jonathan and I were interested in the ride and Jonathan was looking for a way out too. At this point the Beartooth ride was looking more like "adventure non grata." A phone call to the motel to cancel our reservation and the Beartooth mountain ride was postponed to another vacation. I didn't really mind that the ride was cancelled because I feeling a bit of pressure about going on such a long ride so soon after putting on all the miles we had collectively ridden.
The cancellation also gave Jonathan and me a chance to meet up with the Gillette gang in Sturgis. But not before Ernie, Jonathan and I went to Rapid City to test ride some Suzukis. Jonathan and I both chose Bandit 1200s and Ernie rode a big Intruder. The Bandit is nice but it's design makes it less of what we commonly call a UJM than say, a Triumph Thunderbird. It doesn't have a lot of protection from the elements and the windscreen does nothing as far I could tell. Still, it's a fun bike. I just don't think I'd want to take it on a long trip. NOTE: Taller riders seem to like it a lot better than I do. Jonathan thought it was the best bike he had ridden of the bunch.
We ended up getting to Sturgis about 45 minutes later than the appointed time but still managed to beat everyone from Gillette. That gathering turned into a big howdy session as we all got better acquainted. I got to meet Horst Unger and his "little" brother Bob, James Dille, Gary LaPook, and probably a few others whose names elude me now.
We kind of split up to browse the booths and buy souvenirs and return to the McDonalds at 6:15. When we all got back together several of us decided to go to Deadwood for dinner. Joseph led the way. I think I have an idea why Joseph gets such poor gas mileage. Maybe you should just mount a 6 gallon fuel cell on the back, Joseph and ride like the wind.
In Deadwood, we got on a list to wait an hour + to do a buffet. I was starting to get the low-blood-sugar shakes and Horst, little Bob and I got some hamburgers down the street. We had a nice time chatting before the Ungers took off for Gillette. I caught up with Jonathan and he and I had a good chat too. One of the benefits of staying where I did was that I got to ride "home" through the Black Hills each night. If we ever get together during Sturgis Week I highly recommend camping in the Black Hills. There are hundreds of campgrounds to choose from. But I suspect that you'll have to book early.
The next day was the day the Gillette group planned to go to Devils Tower. Ernie, Jonathan and I got up and went down the road for breakfast. After breakfast I didn't feel very well. I had planned a day trip through the Black Hills but I was feeling light headed and sleepy. I decided that I was unsafe and just stayed at Ernie's to rest and perhaps take a nap. After an hour of resting it became clear that I really needed some sleep. So I took a brief (4 hour) nap. When I woke up I was feeling a bit better and I decided to take a short final trip through the Black Hills. I had intended on riding to Gillette for the Virtual toast but I didn't feel like a 200 mile ride was the best thing, especially under the circumstances. So I stopped in Rapid City to get a few more souvenirs for the wife and kid and turned in early.
Little did I realize, I had caught some kind of chest cold - probably from all the hot/cold/wet/dry riding over the previous few days. Or maybe it was from the different water supplies I sampled. Hard to say, but in three days time it would be quite clear that I was not a well puppy.
The start of the ride home (Saturday) was again uneventful. The South Dakota miles rolled by. One of my newer gadgets is the Road Whiz Plus. When you're on the interstate, it'll tell you how far to the next gas station, food, motel, hospital, etc. All you have to do is tell it what state you're in, which interstate you're on, and what mile marker you're at. It even tells you which restaurants and gas stations are ahead (by name) and how far they are. I was hoping to stop after about 100 miles for McDonalds but lo and behold the nearest one is well over 200 miles away from Rapid City. So a family diner made me a nice and cheap sit-down breakfast. After breakfast, gas and go.
[After my first trip out west I have never made the mistake of getting gas before I eat. One of these little out-of-the-way gas stations must have been stretching their profits by putting their own additives in. The result was that the heat from the engine caused the gas to expand out the top of the tank - eating the paint wherever it could. So the rule now is, Eat and Get Gas. (And only buy gas from major brands) Easy to remember. ]
I've gotten into the habit of buying a 20 ounce bottle of Hawaiian Punch and transferring it to my flexi-flask in my tank bag with the Anaconda bite hose so I can sip and ride. But SD and CO both seem to be mostly Hawaiian Punch "dry" states. The thought of putting carbonated drinks in the flexi-flask seemed pretty bad. I could just see it spraying out of the hose uncontrollably as I rode down the road. BTW, at least one of the two flexi-flasks leaked a bit from one of the "welded" seams. The bite valve was less than effective on the anaconda hose as well. Guess I'll be taking them back to Target to see what they have to say.
After about 8 hours on the road, I started feeling pretty drowsy. So I pulled off at the first exit that had some buildings around and I looked for some shade. This is not as easy as it sounds when you're in the Minnesota prairie. Fortunately, being this far north, all it takes is the northern side of a 1 1/2 story building. A car dealership next to a gas station filled the bill well enough and I set a timer for 20 minutes for a wake-up call at the "Iron Butt Motel." When the timer went off (I have a Screaming Meanie timer I got at a truck stop. The instructions warn not to use it near graveyards :-) I found that I was still not completely refreshed. 20 more minutes did the trick. In the meantime, my centerstand had sunk into the soft asphalt making it quite a bit easier to get the bike *off* the centerstand than it was to get it up *on* the centerstand. Back on the highway and on to Wisconsin!
I should warn any potential travellers that I-90 through Minnesota is one of the worst riding bits of interstate I have ever had the misfortune to ride. The incessant thu-thump thu-thump thu-thump of the gaps between the concrete slabs ranks right up there with the infamous Chinese water torture.
Anyway, I was making pretty good time as I came into Wisconsin. I stopped at the first McDonalds and got gas for the bike too. Shortly there after I noticed a car coming up on me fast from behind. Before I can even get out, "I wonder if that's a ..." the mars lights come on.
So, I pull over and take off my helmet and gloves and almost before I can get the side stand down I'm talking to one of Wisconsin's finest. I don't recall the entire conversation. Most of it consisted of, "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" on my part. He seemed a bit intrigued by the bike. He asked if I was going home, where I'd been, why I shouldn't get a ticket. I did my best to give good, honest answers. I had to ask him to repeat himself a bit because he was so soft spoken and the traffic was drowning him out. I wasn't sure if he was satisfied with my answers when he said, "Wait here."
A couple minutes later he came back and asked me, "Is that a 79 Yamaha under all that?" I told him yes and he handed me my license and said, "I'm the supervisor for this region all the way to Madison but my radio is patched through the whole state. You've got a rather distinctive bike and my officers know you're on the way. If they pull you over you *will* get a ticket." He went on to say that I must never have gone down on a bike because if I had I wouldn't be riding so fast. He said he had dropped it at speed a couple times and he knows better. I asked him what he rides and he said he used to ride Hondas but not anymore and I got the feeling that he didn't want to continue the dialog. It was enough for me to be on my way without injury to my bank account or insurance status.
It didn't take me long to realize that everyone was going at least 10 over the 65 mph speed limit. I thought about what I should do. I could probably very easily find a rabbit to go either the speed of the rest of the traffic (or faster) and just follow him at a safe distance and watch for either brake lights or the lights on the rabbit's radar detector. I'd probably get away with it. And that would mean that I would get home as much as an hour to 1-1/2 hour earlier than if I stayed at 65. That's not an insignificant amount of time.
But as fast as I realized that I wasn't going to pass anyone - that's how fast I realized that I gave the guy my word that I would stick to the limit. It wasn't that I thought that I would get caught by the other LEOs. I just figured that a guy is only as good as his word. I owed it to myself to honor my word.
Then I looked at it from another perspective. I had wanted to check my fuel economy at a (lower) constant speed. This speed was about as constant as it gets.
The temperatures at the end of the last 900 mile leg were significantly better than they were at the end of the first 900 mile leg. It wouldn't have been a significant struggle to have gone another hundred miles to do a SaddleSore - even with my stock seat. The nap in the middle of this leg of the trip helped a whole lot with that. I'm fairly convinced that most people *could* do a thousand mile day if they would only believe that they could. But that's another subject for another post.
I pulled into the garage with a total of 3722 miles ridden over 9 days (at least 350 miles in the rain). I ran 113 gallons through at a total cost of $124 and an average of 30 mpg. (I've really got to work on that.) The highest recorded mpg was 34.85 mpg and the lowest was 26.68 mpg.
I had the distinct pleasure of riding with several old and new friends and was blessed by the hospitality of four of them in their homes.
It wasn't a perfect ride (although even a rainy day on the bike is better than a good day at the office) but it was a good ride and it ended safely. And that's probably the best any of us could reasonably ask for.
Well, the long awaited trip has come and gone. It was kind of unusual in that I didn't have any of the typical problems at the start of this one. Maybe I'm finally getting it right. (?) [On my way to the 97 Honda Hoot I lost a footpeg I forgot to tighten and on my way to the 98 Hoot my leather jacket fell out of my locked trunk!?!] So anyway, nothing fell off (that I know of) as I headed south toward Texas.
My first waypoint was within the first hour as I stopped to pick up Mike Pecora from the LD Riders List. Some of you may remember that the reason I was headed to Texas was to have BBQ with Ron Ayres and a bunch of other Iron Butt types. Mike is a fellow Iron Butt Association member and we decided to ride down together even though we had never met before. It was a decision neither of us would regret.
Mike rides a black BMW R1100RT. I was on the Great White (which I have convinced gullible onlookers as being a BMW K1100LT prototype). Hey, for every credibility gap there's a gullibility fill. Sometimes more than one.
So off we go (intentionally?) into one of the worst heat waves in Texas history. The ride is rather uneventful (good) and we make gas stops about every 200 miles. I ask Mike what kind of fuel economy he's getting and he just says, "Oh, I don't keep track of that sort of thing." After a couple of stops I get curious and I run the numbers. I'm getting about 35 mpg (at about 75-80) and he's getting about 8 more mpg. Although we're both on 1100s, I've got two more hungry jugs to feed. Just a guess.The trip is the first ride I've taken that's longer than 170 miles since the July 4th weekend. I notice that the first 300 miles are pretty easy. The second 300 miles are quite a bit tougher. By the time we reach Oklahoma all bets are off. It's hot and getting hotter. Although it's early evening the sun is still bright in the sky but I'm getting hungry for dinner - we tried to pass off energy bars and fruit punch as lunch. When we finally stop for dinner I am *needing* a break. Arbys does a good job of filling the void with a Jamocha shake for dessert. I love those things!
The sun is headed toward the horizon but temperature relief is out of the question. And unfortunately, we've still got 4 hours left before we reach the Motel 6 in Plano. By this point, the jacket has been put away for a while and I've been riding in shirt-sleeves. My white cotton dress shirt may not offer the protection of a good set of leathers but I'm less likely to pass out from overheating. But even that is too hot now. I had packed a spray bottle filled with tap water in the trunk so I signal to Mike that I need to stop and I spritz my arms and chest with the water. Fifteen minutes later I realize that the cooling effect of the water stopped working ten minutes ago. So I signal for a stop again and this time I pack the spray bottle in my tank bag - where I can get at it. Aside from a couple of very brief cool spots along the road the temperature remains relentlessly high and I find that five minutes after I soak my shirt with the spray bottle it's *completely* dry again. So I end up spritzing myself a lot. Even though the cooling effect doesn't last long, it *is* effective.
Around midnight we pull into the motel - just a couple of minutes ahead of two riders from Alberta, Canada. (And I thought *I* had a big change in the temperature.) One of the great things about Texas is that no matter how hot it is outside you can always count on the temperature inside to be 70 degrees or cooler. A quick phone call to a groggy wife to tell her I got in okay and then a cool shower and to bed.
The next day, Saturday, is the day of Ron's BBQ. At 10 am it's hot. It feels like it's already in the 90's. Mike and I have breakfast at the little '50s decorated diner and then head over to Ron's house. On the brief ride to Ron's it's even hotter. There's no wind chill when the "breeze" is over 100 degrees. It's actually cooler sitting in traffic than it is riding.
But as we pull into Ron's driveway Ron is there to greet us and give us name tags and give us each a cold bottle of water. I spend the next several hours chatting with people I know and putting faces to people whose posts I've read. I take advantage of Ron's terrific pool to beat the heat. When the BBQ is ready to be served I grab a plate and ladle out several measures of a terrific BBQ sauce on top of beef, pork and chicken.
At some point, someone tells me that Steve Gano is looking for me and points me toward him. After introductions (and seconds on the BBQ) we find a table and chat about XS11s and their electrical systems, auxiliary fuel, and other technical trivia. What a great time. Steve is a really nice guy and is really getting into the endurance riding scene. He's already mounted a fuel cell on the back of his bike and now can carry about 9 gallons of fuel. Considering that most competitive rallies limit you to 11 gallons, you can bet that he's trying to find a way to add an extra 1.5 - 2 gallons to his current configuration.
But, alas, the evening ends (not that I wanted it to) and I link up with three other riders who paid attention to the trip from the motel to Ron's house. So I follow them back to the motel. Unfortunately, as the three of them jostle for lane position, I let myself swing a bit wide to the left to give the others a bit more space.
If any of you have ever driven in Texas you'll know about something called "bots dots." They are little domed ceramic discs glued to the roadway surface to alert you when you drift over the edge of your lane. They're about 3-4 inches in diameter and about 1/2 inch high. Bots dots are usually placed in threes in conjunction with the dashed-stripes in the road. I grew up in Texas. I knew about bots dots. Being smooth ceramic, they're a bit of a road hazard but nothing that will likely kill you. But in the 17 years since I moved away from Texas they've come up with something new.
These days in Texas, they now do something very different to separate the left turn lane from the other lanes of traffic. Something to keep people from zipping into the left turn lane at the last second. They put down MEGA bots dots. These half-globes are about 8 inches in diameter and about 4 inches tall. These are nothing like the regular bots dots when it comes to being a road hazard. These have the potential to be deadly. It is sort of the opposite of a pothole.
So anyway, I had swung a bit wide to the left to afford the other riders a bit more space and I hit an entire row of these Mega dots. About 8-10 of them all in a row. Maybe I'm a great rider or maybe God was just extra diligent on my behalf but after my bike stopped being a bucking bronco I found that I was still on top (I had my doubts that this would be the case) and the bike was still on the bottom and rolling smoothly. Everyone else needed to stop at a gas station and I used that opportunity to check for damage. Several people told me that Michael Gaspar hit one of these mega bots dots last year and really screwed up his front wheel.
Initially, I thought the damage was worse than it was. I thought I had blown a fork seal although that turned out to be just a bit of extra oil that was left on the fork tube as a result of the violent fork rebound. Both back turn signals had their ground knocked loose. The fairing lower was cracked in two places and broken in another. All easily fixable by a good plastic welder. The one thing that really had me worried was a blip on the sidewall of the tire. About the size of the knot you get on your forehead when you don't duck far enough getting into a car. I was concerned that this could end my trip substantially earlier than I was planning.
With a little help from some friends, I took the bike on the highway to see if it did anything weird at speed. It didn't. When we got back to the motel I used the awl on my Swiss army knife to "drill" some holes to stop the cracks in the fairing from spreading. That's all I could do for now. I'd keep an eye on the tire to make sure it didn't get any worse.
I didn't get a very good nights sleep. I'm thinking it's partly because of my little accident and partly because I'm going to be riding with riders whose credentials are quite a bit more substantial than mine. And maybe also because I don't want to oversleep and miss out on riding with the others. Either way, my stomach is fairly upset and I feel like there's a lot of adrenaline in my system. I've got a real "fight or flight" sensation going. It's really got me on edge.
Sunday morning Bobb Todd and I rode over to Vince Putt's house (yes, those are their real names
to gather the group to ride to Santa Fe, NM. From Plano, that's about 640 miles. The group consisted of Vince and his fiancee, Karen, Ira Agins, Bobb Todd, me and Stan Fisher. (When we get to Vince's house I realize that all that BBQ sauce likely had a lot of garlic powder which, unfortunately causes me a lot of stomach problems. I took a couple of Tagamet and the stomach problems vanished. If I had been smarter and realized that there was so much garlic in the sauce, I would have taken the Tagamet the night before and probably gotten a much better night's rest too.) You have to understand that it's hard enough to get two LD Riders to ride together, much less a group this size. After a very brief ride we stopped for breakfast and told the obligatory lies and tall tales. Then it was down to business.Karen took point and set the pace for quite a while. Her pace, it seemed was about 85 mph. Her Magna had the smallest gas tank and we were stopping about every 100-120 miles. I didn't really mind that much. It made the pace seem more relaxed. I was, after all, on vacation.
At one point, as we were passing through one of the small towns, Stan and I got caught at a rather long red light. Once we got into open country we opened it up a little to try to catch the others. And we did - about 25 miles later. Just goes to show that a little head start can make a huge difference.
Once we left Texas, the temperature got much more reasonable and I noticed that my sinuses were MUCH clearer. It's not often I can breathe through both nostrils at once.
We finally made it to Ira's house in Santa Fe about an hour before sunset and unloaded the bikes and Ira showed us our rooms. After we got a bit settled, we went out for a nice dinner and a tour of the "downtown" area. Quite a bit different than what the city folk call downtown.
There was one thing that, having lived in Chicago for 14 years amused me. As we were walking along we came upon a couple standing at the corner of an intersection. No traffic for as far as you could see. And when the light changed, they crossed the street. Fine upstanding citizens. Would have made Barney Fife proud. After a nice overnight rest, Ira led Bobb and me to Taos via the "high road." This is a set of twisty mountain roads through some rather indigent looking adobe communities that only a real local can navigate without a map. Ira showed us some interesting adobe churches and scenic vistas along the way. I peeled off in Taos to grab some breakfast before heading out north to Colorado.
As I was cutting back northwest I saw a bunch of cars and RVs parked on either side of a bridge that crossed a ditch of some sort. Traffic slowed to a crawl and when I got to the center of the bridge I realized why. The "ditch" wasn't very wide but it was several hundred feet deep. Sort of a mini Grand Canyon. It was actually a bit scary to look down such a deep crevasse when you weren't expecting to see what you saw.
The road heading into Colorado was wide open and smooth. So open, in fact that there was no real sense of speed. I was just cruising at a comfortable pace. When I glanced at my speedo I saw that it read 95 mph. A while later as I approached a small town I backed off to the posted reduced speed. It felt so slow that I had to wonder if the engine had stopped but the tach said otherwise. As I crossed into Colorado and the mountains closed in on the road - at least closer than they had been. I noticed that there were some randomly placed buildings at the base of the mountain. With mountains you get no real sense of depth or distance. I couldn't tell if the mountains were five miles away or twenty five. The little irregular shaped buildings were too short to be of much help - even though the buildings were probably 25-40 feet tall. The scale of the mountain supercedes all adjacent objects.
The farther I went into Colorado, the more the mountains crept toward the road. Finally the expanse of the valley gave in to the extremity of the mountain. Now the road would really get fun.
But, of course, I was still in a valley. Not as wide as the previous valleys, to be sure, but still wider than the eye expects. And longer too. At the other end of the valley I noticed a very interesting cloud formation. "Is that rain?," I wondered? It didn't look like rain *I'm* used to seeing. More like a weird fog. As I got closer I noticed that the temperature was dropping. As I finally got to the far end of the valley I realized that it was, in fact, rain. But just a little bit. Not enough to stop for the rain gear. I continued north into the higher elevations.
When I got to Salida, Colorado, I spotted a Wal-Mart and I pulled in. It was pretty warm - about 85 without the bike induced wind chill and I quickly took off my jacket when I got in the store. I had every intention of just buying Visine and AA batteries but I began to see some things I "needed." When I came toward the checkout there was an explosive thunderclap and a peek out the door showed a torrential rain. That's weather in the mountains, I guess. I walked around the store for a while looking for more things to "need." About 30 minutes after the rain started it stopped and almost as suddenly. With the sun out again the temperature quickly rose to it's previous level and I packed up the bike with my new treasures and headed out.
My initial plan had me headed in a big "S" as I headed toward Royal Gorge to Fairplay and then to Conifer. A glance at the skies told me that the brief shower I rode through and the torrent I missed in the store were not the only rain clouds to contend with. So I abandoned the Royal Gorge leg and just headed for Fairplay. It didn't take long before the 85 degree heat submitted to the 53 degree rain.
I stopped before I got caught by the storms and put on all my Gore-tex. My rain-suit came from Cabellas and Bass Pro Shops. I think the jacket is from the former and the pants from the latter. It's mix and match because of price. To get a matched set of either would have cost at least $40 more. I think I paid about $80 for each piece. I also have some Gore-tex socks from Rocky that cost $30 or so. Add my $9 Wal-Mart neoprene fishing gloves and I'm about as watertight as I can get. The Shoei Duotec helmet is the only source of dampness as water sometimes drips behind the face shield. Everything else is as dry as talc. This outfit also has the added advantage of not making me sweat when I either stop at a light or ride out of the rain in normal temperatures. PVC makes me sweat just thinking about it.
I ended up stopping one more time to warm up a bit before I came into the Denver area and Sid's house. Sid's garage door was open and there were three XS Eleven standards in there so I figured I must be in the right place. Kathy O'Connor and Linda Higgins greeted me at the door and we chatted until Sid Hansen and John Higgins got back from the store. So I unpacked my bike and waited for them to get back.
One of the advantages of my new saddlebags is that they're designed to be not just watertight but also airtight as well. So much so that the manufacturer put a pressure relief valve on them. I tried to open them but realized that when I was in the higher elevations much of the air must have been drawn past the big o-ring gasket. When I descended into Denver it created a vacuum inside the bags. As I turned the pressure relief valves on the bags I was treated to several seconds of air hissing its way back into the bags to relieve the vacuum.
Kathy was also nice enough to let me use her washer and dryer so I wouldn't have to put on wet shoes the next day. Thanks Kathy! When the guys got back, Sid fired up the grill and cooked up some brats and before long we were all at the table. Good cooking, Sid!
A little later that evening the "James Gang" showed up at Sid's House. It was great to finally meet James Ho, Steve Warren and Mike Cummings. As Bob Canel got off his bike, he excitedly told me, "I think I can do 1,000 miles!" I told him that maybe he and I and maybe Dave Hogue will get together sometime and do a Saddlesore so they can be "official." A bit later the Texas contingent appeared in the form of Lanny Marshall and Joseph Haller. Both appeared to be all smiles in spite of the troubles Joseph was having with his bike. Maybe they were all smiles just because they made it this far.
We all continued to talk bikes in Sid's garage and kitchen for quite a while. At some point the Higgins, Lanny and Joseph headed off to their motel. The rest of the folks carried on until who knows when. I, not being as handsome as the rest, needed my beauty rest.
In the morning, we all got packed and were all just about to leave when it began to drizzle. Steve Warren and I were ready a little sooner than the rest so we decided to grab a quick McDonalds breakfast after we got our rain suits on. I asked Sid if he would pick us up on the way to going to the motel where everyone else was and after a dirty look he said okay. After Sid picked up Steve and me we all headed for the gas station across from the motel.
And that's when the rain really started coming down. When we were all fueled up I went over to the motel to see about John and Linda and Lanny and Joseph. Once we were all at the gas station Joseph told us that he was going to stay in town (Denver) and try to get some mechanical problems taken care of. I gave him my extra quart of fuel knowing that he'd probably never get from Douglas to Gillette without it.
Sid lead the pack out of the gas station and Bob, Mike and I waited for one car to pass before we left the station. Hard to believe it would take so long but 39 miles later the three of us caught up to Sid and the gang. We rode together for another 20 or 30 miles when I had to stop and fix my helmet - it was pinching my glasses against my head. After that I never did catch up with them. I had remembered that Sid said he was planning to stop in Cheyenne for breakfast so I stopped at the first two Cheyenne exits to see if I could find them. I learned later from Kathy that they had stopped sooner than Cheyenne for breakfast and I must have gone right by them after they were off the interstate.
So, travelling solo again, I continued my trek to Ernie Basener's house in the Black Hills. The rain kept on until about Wheatland, Wyoming. The skies seemed clearer so I took off my rain suit. About another hour later I put it back on again and then shortly after took it off again. I did this one more time. In Newcastle, Wyoming I gassed up and got ready to head east on Hwy 16 toward Custer but as I approached the intersection of Hwys 85 and 16 I noticed that it was dark and rainy in the direction of Custer but it was only overcast over northbound 85. Since Momma didn't raise no fool, I changed plans on the spot and headed north on 85. Good move. Not only did it not rain, that piece of 85 is some really fine riding. The road is decent and the curves just keep getting better. Once past Lead, I took Hwy 385 back south to Hwy 44 and to Ernie's house. It took a little longer but I stayed dry. I'd had enough rain for one trip.
Ernie was there to greet me and I got moved in quickly and we waited for Peggy to get home from work and go to dinner. I had not had the pleasure of meeting Peg even though Ernie put me up for Sturgis week last year. Peg's uncle in California had been very ill and passed away during my stay. This year had no such calamities and getting to know Peg was pure pleasure. Ernie was lucky enough to find her and smart enough to not let her get away.
Jonathan Walther called to let us know he was on his way but wouldn't be in till late. I was already asleep when he got in but the following morning he was up and ready to have a go at the world. Ernie had talked to Dale and told me that James Ho had decided not to go on the Beartooth mountain ride but Jonathan said he thought it sounded like fun. Dale kept to his plan of taking the Gillette group through the Black Hills and Ernie, Jonathan and I kept to our plan of doing test rides in Sturgis.
When we got to Sturgis, Jonathan and I signed up for demo rides with BMW, and we all got some breakfast and the walked across the street. We got our free Excelsior Henderson bandanas and signed up for rides at Triumph too. We walked around and looked at some of the vendors' wares while we waited for our rides.
I had signed up for a ride on a BMW R1100RT. After having ridden beside one for so long on the way to Texas I figured I owed it to myself. In all, I was pretty impressed. That horizontally opposed twin has so much torque that when you rev the throttle the whole bike twists on its axis. It reminded me of the Boss Hoss I rode last year. It's a very quick bike off the line. Last year I had ridden a K1100LT (none were provided this year) and I was pretty disappointed with that model. I found that it was a pretty buzzy bike at normal speeds. The buzziness did subside at higher rpms (ergo supersonic speeds) but that meant you had to ride in 4th gear at normal highway speeds if you don't want your hands to fall asleep. The R bike was just the opposite. It got buzzier at higher rpms. But it was a fairly comfortable bike. The seat was not impressive and the handlebars could stand to be relocated for my taste but that's fixable with aftermarket products.
One of the nice things about some of the demo rides is that you could swap bikes with another rider at the midpoint. Jonathan and I swapped and I now found myself on a R1100GS. I had always been uninterested in this model. There's one particular shade of green that's available that makes it look like the seat threw up on the forks.
But I was very surprised by the reality. It has the same powerful engine as in the R1100RT but it is remarkably forgiving in it's ride. The seat looks like a vinyl wrapped brick but is remarkably comfortable. I could see adding some Jesse bags and a plexifairing and riding that thing *anywhere!*After the BMW ride we met up with Bob Garcia. Yet another really nice guy. He rides a really nice Midnight Special.
On the Triumph ride I had chosen a Trophy 1200 (again). That is such a great bike. With taller handlebars it would be almost the perfect sport touring machine (IMO). Jonathan had chosen the Speed Triple and we again swapped at the midpoint. The Speed Triple doesn't really look like a sport bike (to my eye) but there's no question that it is. It's a real kick-butt-take-names kind of bike. It has NO protection from little rocks that get kicked up by the bike (another Speed Triple) in front of you. Not my kind of bike but a real gas to ride for a few miles.
Afterwards, Bob, Jonathan, Ernie and I had a bite to eat and we told more stories and generally had a good time. After dinner, Bob took off (he's the 5-9am jock at the country station so he needs to turn in early) and we picked up Peggy's cousin, Judy. Jonathan, Ernie and Judy went to the Blue Oyster Cult concert while I went searching for rally T-shirts. I made it "home" by about midnight and Ernie and Jonathan made it home a couple hours later.
The following morning I got up and called over to Dale's house. I got word that Dave Hogue also wanted to cancel the Beartooth Mountain ride. I called Mike Cumming's motel and got the same news from Mike. That meant that only Jonathan and I were interested in the ride and Jonathan was looking for a way out too. At this point the Beartooth ride was looking more like "adventure non grata." A phone call to the motel to cancel our reservation and the Beartooth mountain ride was postponed to another vacation. I didn't really mind that the ride was cancelled because I feeling a bit of pressure about going on such a long ride so soon after putting on all the miles we had collectively ridden.
The cancellation also gave Jonathan and me a chance to meet up with the Gillette gang in Sturgis. But not before Ernie, Jonathan and I went to Rapid City to test ride some Suzukis. Jonathan and I both chose Bandit 1200s and Ernie rode a big Intruder. The Bandit is nice but it's design makes it less of what we commonly call a UJM than say, a Triumph Thunderbird. It doesn't have a lot of protection from the elements and the windscreen does nothing as far I could tell. Still, it's a fun bike. I just don't think I'd want to take it on a long trip. NOTE: Taller riders seem to like it a lot better than I do. Jonathan thought it was the best bike he had ridden of the bunch.
We ended up getting to Sturgis about 45 minutes later than the appointed time but still managed to beat everyone from Gillette. That gathering turned into a big howdy session as we all got better acquainted. I got to meet Horst Unger and his "little" brother Bob, James Dille, Gary LaPook, and probably a few others whose names elude me now.
We kind of split up to browse the booths and buy souvenirs and return to the McDonalds at 6:15. When we all got back together several of us decided to go to Deadwood for dinner. Joseph led the way. I think I have an idea why Joseph gets such poor gas mileage.
Maybe you should just mount a 6 gallon fuel cell on the back, Joseph and ride like the wind. In Deadwood, we got on a list to wait an hour + to do a buffet. I was starting to get the low-blood-sugar shakes and Horst, little Bob and I got some hamburgers down the street. We had a nice time chatting before the Ungers took off for Gillette. I caught up with Jonathan and he and I had a good chat too. One of the benefits of staying where I did was that I got to ride "home" through the Black Hills each night. If we ever get together during Sturgis Week I highly recommend camping in the Black Hills. There are hundreds of campgrounds to choose from. But I suspect that you'll have to book early.
The next day was the day the Gillette group planned to go to Devils Tower. Ernie, Jonathan and I got up and went down the road for breakfast. After breakfast I didn't feel very well. I had planned a day trip through the Black Hills but I was feeling light headed and sleepy. I decided that I was unsafe and just stayed at Ernie's to rest and perhaps take a nap. After an hour of resting it became clear that I really needed some sleep. So I took a brief (4 hour) nap. When I woke up I was feeling a bit better and I decided to take a short final trip through the Black Hills. I had intended on riding to Gillette for the Virtual toast but I didn't feel like a 200 mile ride was the best thing, especially under the circumstances. So I stopped in Rapid City to get a few more souvenirs for the wife and kid and turned in early.
Little did I realize, I had caught some kind of chest cold - probably from all the hot/cold/wet/dry riding over the previous few days. Or maybe it was from the different water supplies I sampled. Hard to say, but in three days time it would be quite clear that I was not a well puppy.
The start of the ride home (Saturday) was again uneventful. The South Dakota miles rolled by. One of my newer gadgets is the Road Whiz Plus. When you're on the interstate, it'll tell you how far to the next gas station, food, motel, hospital, etc. All you have to do is tell it what state you're in, which interstate you're on, and what mile marker you're at. It even tells you which restaurants and gas stations are ahead (by name) and how far they are. I was hoping to stop after about 100 miles for McDonalds but lo and behold the nearest one is well over 200 miles away from Rapid City. So a family diner made me a nice and cheap sit-down breakfast. After breakfast, gas and go.
[After my first trip out west I have never made the mistake of getting gas before I eat. One of these little out-of-the-way gas stations must have been stretching their profits by putting their own additives in. The result was that the heat from the engine caused the gas to expand out the top of the tank - eating the paint wherever it could. So the rule now is, Eat and Get Gas. (And only buy gas from major brands) Easy to remember.
]I've gotten into the habit of buying a 20 ounce bottle of Hawaiian Punch and transferring it to my flexi-flask in my tank bag with the Anaconda bite hose so I can sip and ride. But SD and CO both seem to be mostly Hawaiian Punch "dry" states. The thought of putting carbonated drinks in the flexi-flask seemed pretty bad. I could just see it spraying out of the hose uncontrollably as I rode down the road. BTW, at least one of the two flexi-flasks leaked a bit from one of the "welded" seams. The bite valve was less than effective on the anaconda hose as well. Guess I'll be taking them back to Target to see what they have to say.
After about 8 hours on the road, I started feeling pretty drowsy. So I pulled off at the first exit that had some buildings around and I looked for some shade. This is not as easy as it sounds when you're in the Minnesota prairie. Fortunately, being this far north, all it takes is the northern side of a 1 1/2 story building. A car dealership next to a gas station filled the bill well enough and I set a timer for 20 minutes for a wake-up call at the "Iron Butt Motel." When the timer went off (I have a Screaming Meanie timer I got at a truck stop. The instructions warn not to use it near graveyards :-) I found that I was still not completely refreshed. 20 more minutes did the trick. In the meantime, my centerstand had sunk into the soft asphalt making it quite a bit easier to get the bike *off* the centerstand than it was to get it up *on* the centerstand. Back on the highway and on to Wisconsin!
I should warn any potential travellers that I-90 through Minnesota is one of the worst riding bits of interstate I have ever had the misfortune to ride. The incessant thu-thump thu-thump thu-thump of the gaps between the concrete slabs ranks right up there with the infamous Chinese water torture.
Anyway, I was making pretty good time as I came into Wisconsin. I stopped at the first McDonalds and got gas for the bike too.
Shortly there after I noticed a car coming up on me fast from behind. Before I can even get out, "I wonder if that's a ..." the mars lights come on.So, I pull over and take off my helmet and gloves and almost before I can get the side stand down I'm talking to one of Wisconsin's finest. I don't recall the entire conversation. Most of it consisted of, "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" on my part. He seemed a bit intrigued by the bike. He asked if I was going home, where I'd been, why I shouldn't get a ticket. I did my best to give good, honest answers. I had to ask him to repeat himself a bit because he was so soft spoken and the traffic was drowning him out. I wasn't sure if he was satisfied with my answers when he said, "Wait here."
A couple minutes later he came back and asked me, "Is that a 79 Yamaha under all that?" I told him yes and he handed me my license and said, "I'm the supervisor for this region all the way to Madison but my radio is patched through the whole state. You've got a rather distinctive bike and my officers know you're on the way. If they pull you over you *will* get a ticket." He went on to say that I must never have gone down on a bike because if I had I wouldn't be riding so fast. He said he had dropped it at speed a couple times and he knows better. I asked him what he rides and he said he used to ride Hondas but not anymore and I got the feeling that he didn't want to continue the dialog. It was enough for me to be on my way without injury to my bank account or insurance status.
It didn't take me long to realize that everyone was going at least 10 over the 65 mph speed limit. I thought about what I should do. I could probably very easily find a rabbit to go either the speed of the rest of the traffic (or faster) and just follow him at a safe distance and watch for either brake lights or the lights on the rabbit's radar detector. I'd probably get away with it. And that would mean that I would get home as much as an hour to 1-1/2 hour earlier than if I stayed at 65. That's not an insignificant amount of time.
But as fast as I realized that I wasn't going to pass anyone - that's how fast I realized that I gave the guy my word that I would stick to the limit. It wasn't that I thought that I would get caught by the other LEOs. I just figured that a guy is only as good as his word. I owed it to myself to honor my word.
Then I looked at it from another perspective. I had wanted to check my fuel economy at a (lower) constant speed. This speed was about as constant as it gets.
The temperatures at the end of the last 900 mile leg were significantly better than they were at the end of the first 900 mile leg. It wouldn't have been a significant struggle to have gone another hundred miles to do a SaddleSore - even with my stock seat. The nap in the middle of this leg of the trip helped a whole lot with that. I'm fairly convinced that most people *could* do a thousand mile day if they would only believe that they could. But that's another subject for another post.
I pulled into the garage with a total of 3722 miles ridden over 9 days (at least 350 miles in the rain). I ran 113 gallons through at a total cost of $124 and an average of 30 mpg. (I've really got to work on that.) The highest recorded mpg was 34.85 mpg and the lowest was 26.68 mpg.
I had the distinct pleasure of riding with several old and new friends and was blessed by the hospitality of four of them in their homes.
It wasn't a perfect ride (although even a rainy day on the bike is better than a good day at the office) but it was a good ride and it ended safely. And that's probably the best any of us could reasonably ask for.