Well, folks, I appologize for disappearing on you and leaving the story haning for so long. My life went a little sideways over the last few weeks, but I’ve got it back on track to some degree. I’m back to doing my Navy Reserve duty, and have finally finished a course of diagnosis and treatment at the LA Area Veterans Administration… we’ll see how that works out…
OK, so I left off on the moring of the first day of Leg 2 of the rally.
Day four started as the previous day ended- it was cold and raining. The motorcycle cover I had picked up at Cycle Gear in Atlanta turned out to be not so waterproof. Under the cover, everything was soaked, but less so than if it had been uncovered completely. Oh well.
I got the RE5 all loaded up. About half the bikes seemed to still be in the parking lot, so I wasn’t feeling like I was too far behinf the curve. It took me 15 or 20 minutes to get all geared up and to repack the bike once I had decided on a route.
The ever present documentary camera was rolling, and got to film me statrt up the RE5. It took a lot more effort than I had expected, and after 15 seconds or so of cranking, I was starting to worry that I had a dead bike. But fire up it did, and I gave it pently of warm up time. On the bike in a light drizzle, and off I went.
My route plan for the day was slightly ambitious- at least it was significantly more so than the first leg route plan I had. On the agenda for this day included a number of odd bonus locations. A Frank Lloyd Wright museum, the National Hobo Museum, down through western Missouri, and into Eastern Kansas. Per the plan, Kansas was to take up the early part of the next day, as I hit such exciting venues as the National Barbaed Wire Museum.
I got going, and made good time en route to the Frank Lloyd Wright bonus. By the time I got there, I was really in the groove with the RE5. It was running beautifully. The weather was grey, but comfortable. An occasional sprinkle but no real rain. Wisconson was a lot more scenic than I expected- nice sweeping roads, happy looking Jersey cows… I was having no trouble picturing myself riding into Spokane on the RE5.
Near Dubuque, Iowa in the hamlet of Keilor, I decided to pull into a lonely BP station to grab some gas and work a cramp out of my calf. I gassed up, logged the fuel reciept, and walked inside for a pee break. Back outside a few minutes later, I hopped on the bike, thumbed the starter, and… I thumbed the starter again… and again. Nothing. Nothing at all.
I bagan to calmly check things. Electrics on? Yep. Kill switch? Check. Pull the spark plug- no spark. WTF? The RE5’s semi-eletronic ignition is based around the ignition box- the CDI. The CDI, when engaged makes a very characteristic high-pitched tone. As I sat there trying to figure out what was wrong, I realized that the CDI was only baking a low buzz- like a transformer box on a foggy morning. I tried and tried, but nothing seemed to make any difference. I called for a tow truck and kept trying to diagnose the problem while I waited.
The BP station I was at sat near a major highway in the middle or rolling hills. The only building visible from there was a truck body fabrication shop a couple of dozen yards away. That was about it. When the tow truck arrived an while later, it was just a pickup truck towing a very lightweight trailer obviously not designed for hauling anything more than a dozen bails of hay. They assured me the bike would be fine, and I had little choice but to conceed. The tow driver wanted to take be to his buddy’s car shop. After some prodding, he admitted that there was a bike shop nearby. In fact, it was a few hundred yards away just behind a little hill! Dammit!
The shop was actually quite large: a Honda/ Kawasaki/ Suzuki dealer with a substantial used inventory and a large shop. The shop was on the rural side with a lot of old 2x4 and plywood fixtures, gobs of open space, some hay scattered about. The leag mechanic, in some well worn overalls and farm boots. He agreed to see what he could figure out. He took my shop manual and began looking a lot of things over. He checked the points, bench tested the CDI, etc. It turns out, the CDI was kaput. It wasn’t wet. It just appeared that one of the resin-encased electronic bits had given up the ghost.
The RE5 was done.
While the diagnostic was going on, I was furiously wearing out my limitedremaining iPhone juice. Bob from BMW or Atlanta was making calls and had located a 70’s vintage Sportster in the area anongst other “hopeless class” possibilities. In the shop itself was the bike that I still regret not choosing” a 1979 Honda CX500 twin. Winjammer fairing and all, it was a small bike and in funky shape. It even had an in-fairing cassette tape player. They tried firing it up, but the battery was dead. With a jump, it reluctantly started and dumped gas all over the floor. The float valve was stuck in a carb. The tires were ratty. But it actually ran quite well.
The guys in the shop looked over the biiks, while I made calls and wandered the showroom floor. There were two C-14s in the new stock, and I can’t tell you how tempted I was. But I wanted to stay hopeless class.
My wife had found an old 1985 Honda GL1200 Goldwing Aspencade nearby, but the owner wanted $3500 for that 78,000 mile beast. The only other real option was a 1983 GL1100 that was “mint” in the area, but the owners wanted $4500 (!!!) for it. I eventually called the guy with the GL1200 and talked him down to $2,700. As it would turn out later, that was probably about $2000 more than the bike would ever possibly be worth. But the guy was willing to pick me up, take me to the bike, and store the RE5 for as long as necessary.
About that time, the folks from the shop came over and said they’d give me the CX500 for $600 out the door with an hour of work on the carbs. Also, they could throw a new set of tires on at a discount. Why I didn’t take it, I don’t know. Besides, they were willing to store the bike for a while.
The old timer with the Wing showed up with a livestock trailer that was 2 or 3 inches deep in fresh green cow shit. He had just been hauling calves in it. We strapped the poor old rotary down and headed to his farm, which was several miles out in the middle of absolute no-fucking-where. Lots of turns on lots of dirt roads, up and down hills… We got to the farm shortly before sunset. The light was fading, and the bike appeared fine, if very worn out. It started and ran fine. In my frazzled state, that seemed like enough. A half hour later, I was loaded up and pn my way.
It was dark, and I got lost. The GPS- no hardwire set up yet, and battery low- led me to a washed out bridge, and getting around it was a journey. It took me an hour to get back to the BP station, as the GPS showed no roads where I was, other than that over the bridge. I wished I had had it on on the ride to the farm to allow me to backtrack.
I gassed up at the same pump that saw the death of the RE5. I got on the road, but my route, by then, was screwed. I had now missed out on a substantial number of daytime bonuses, and there was nothing to speak of in terms of available bonii to make up for them. I headed down the road a ways and decided I needed to stop at a hotel and get my bearings. I wason a completely unfamiliar bike, and it turned out several electronic built-in dooo-dads didn’t work on this particular beauty.
I got a room, reexamined my route, and got some sleep. I realized that the timing of the breakdown was going to cut deeply into my route plan. It seemed fine, as my route plan included a lot more potential point bounii than would be required to hit the target for this leg, make up for my Leg 1 shortfall, and give me a few extra point for the next leg. At this point, it looked like the fiasco was going to cost me about 6,000 point, but that was OK.
In the morning, I set about hard wiring the GPS. I decided to leave it at that, and keep systems simple for the time being. After all, I was expecting high temperatures for the next few days and wouldn’t likely need my heated gear. The GPS included an integral XM radio, so I got plenty from that one thing.
In Iowa, I collected a few early bonii, my favorite being one of the Bridges of Madison County. The weather was beautiful, and the setting was peaceful... just what I needed!
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On the road, I noticed that the rear end felt really bumpy and vibration prone at several speed ranges. Huh. I ended up stopping to check it out and found the brand new rear tire had no lead weights on the rim. I lookd really closely and saw some clean squares on an otherwise dirty rim. At a gas station, I found some stick-on wieghts and tried two of them, roughly corresponding to the clean spot on the rim. After a while, I tried taking one off, and later putting two more on. Three seemed to be the magic amount. Another hour wasted, I was on the road again.
It was becoming clear to me that it would probably make a lot of sense to go ahead and get back ahead of the time crunch in case I statrted having any other problems. I behind at this point, and didn’t like it. I figured the best route to that end was to skip bonii in Oklahoma and haul butt across Nebraska on I-80.
For any of you who haven’t examined the bonus distribution for Leg 2: the biggest hole in the bonus distribution pretty much consisted of most of the stated of Nebraska. Along I-80, there was nothing. I was going to make great time, but I’d be getting no points while I did so.
I got to Lincoln, NE. My dad works right off the 80 there, so I planned a gas stop where he’d meet me. We had a few minutes to visit. I looked a map over, and off I went as the sun was setting. I zipped across Nebraska, stopping for a couple hours sleep in Colby, Kansas- the Northwest corner of the state. I planned to get going before dawn.
In the predawn hours, I headed out for the Sand Creek Massacre NHS bonus, setting myself up for a good solid point-value day. A string of bonii, including some challenges in the area of Cripple Creek, Golden, and the Ludlow Massacre Monument in colorado, followed by several in New Mexico were on the agenda to help make up for the previous days’ losses. With good efficency, I might even make the Billy the Kid grave site before sundown and pick a few night bonii up through Albuquerque. This would be a great day… or so I thought!
This was to be the dawn of the toughest day of my rally.
