BigDogRick
Well-Known Member
So... I posted my best pic on the POTM forum once I arrived in Arizona, regretting that I ended up spending more energy surviving than memorializing the trip. I know the way to and from Arizona very well and had visions of outstanding photographic memories along the way. As it turned out, I do have some pretty fun memory pics, just not what I had envisioned.
This pic is digitally marked as 3.3 miles from Dryden and I dubbed it 3.3 miles from nowhere when I found myself without ignition on the side of the road. Unbelievably, Mike and Pat were 3.3 miles from nowhere too!
They just happen to be 500 feet away right where I broke down. Mike is a former Army mechanic that Pat ran into "in town" and asked him to come out to a piece of property he owned where he had an old motor home, a backhoe, some generators, and other sundry equipment that all had suffered from poor maintenance. Mike had been there for tow days, got the 1972 motorhome running, canibalized a coulple generators to get a third running, and was just digging into the backhoe when I sputtered up.
Fortunately, Mike had cel signal as I did not. That would prove true (i.e., no signal) for the better part of the next two days and three hundred miles or so. We checked out my new Crane ignition module, my coil, my new ignition switch, every wire related thereto without positive consequence. So... I used his cel and called in the cavalry.
Alas: AAA to the rescue! In the meanwhile, Mike showed off his hands-work by cranking up the motorhome and brewing a pot of coffee. The sun started setting, the temps started dropping, and me and AAA headed west to Alpine where there was one part time mechanic I had found on the web with my phone as we crested a hill where I got a spot of cel service.
108 miles later, we rolled into Alpine just as Ernest was locking up at Big Bend Cycle.
This is a pic of the bike waiting with me patiently for Ernest to open the shop the next day. He worked full time for the Border patrol in Marfa and wrenches from 4:30 or so each day into the night and does what he can for the likes of me when we saw up in trouble. There was a great place to stay right across the street called the Antelope Lodge so I got a room and got a good nights sleep.
This pic is the second night after Ernest found the problem - an embarrassingly simple thing. Fortunately, 1/2 mile down US 90 was a convenience store with 4 boxes of left-over chicken on the counter after closing down and cleaning up the kitchen. I enjoyed two of those boxes for late dinner that night, breakfast and lunch the next day.
So, anyway, Ernest pulls up the next day at 4:30 and I walk over from across the street as he is checking my bike out without having even unlocked the door yet. As I approach, he says, "Hey Rick, lets get that seat off. I want to check out your battery". Yes... a loose ground terminal screw!!!!!!!
He unlocked the door, went in and got a phillips screwdriver and a tube of locktite and made the "repair" in all of 60 seconds. I stood there laughing and he looked up and said, "that won't cost ya a penny". I started it up and took it for a ride up and down US 90 in front of his shop to warm it up and see if the short recurred or if I had maybe fried my new module. All was good until the fourth pass and the bike sputtered and died right in front of his shop. I pushed it right back into the spot in that previous pic and asked him to check it out. while I went and got my cel phone from the lodge accross the street. A couple minutes later I returned and said, as he was finally able to rollup the garage door and legitimately open, " I have an equally embarrassing idea before you roll her inside". He smiled and I said, " ya know, I never got a chance to get fuel back there 3.3 miles from the next fuel station". He grinned and said, "is it on reserve yet?" I said, "no, let try it". I turned the petcock and she fired right up! We both broke out laughing and I said, "i'll be right back". Off I zoomed to the convenience store 1/2 mile down and proceeded to put 4.5 gallons in those split tanks. I returnrd to Big Bend Cycle, shook Ernest's hand and told him I would see him the next time Celeste and I get back to Big Bend National Park on the bikes.
The above pic is me about to hit the road at 7am, about 45 minutes before sunrise on Friday morning as the thermometer topped 34 degrees.
I made it to Van Horn without frost bite and thawed at the Love's Truck Stop with an XL cup of coffee and another tank of gas. As I stood there outside drinking the coffee, with my Shure stage monitor earphones on still listening to my "Ribbon of Pavement" playlist of about 2500 of my favorite road tunes, it occurred to me that I should stay outside and not get too warm inside that place. As I made this decision, my Zune started playing Van Morrison's cover of "Comfortably Numb" - a truly memorable moment. I reached into my pocket and felt the piece of quartz Mike had given me back in Dryden with the explanation that he always kept a memorial of all his biker breakdowns and that he had a shelf full of them at home on the wall.
He handed it to me right there in the middle of nowhere and said, "here, stick this in your pocket". I finished the coffee and cranked up the Dog and hit I-10 with music blaring and the headwinds ramping up to 40 miles per hour sustained and a balmy 44 degrees. I forgot to mention that during the initial ignition short when I could still re-start the bike, I had lost my oil reservoir cap as it would pop right out from the compression when I sr=tart the bike every other time or so. I could not bring myself to replace that 17 year old cap with the dried up rubber because it had a memorial disk from Rocky Mountain Harley Davidson from a 2004 trip to the Rockies from Michigan that I was fond of. Well, it was gone and there was a quarter quart of synthetic oil all over my the front of my right saddlebag. I bought a truck stop roll of duct tape and made do.
When I got around ElPaso, to Las Cruces, I stopped and got a real live oil reservoir cap.
And on to Lordburg, NM I finally stopped for a burger and realized as I thawed and enjoyed one of the best cheeseburgers I have ever had, my radar app on my cel phone was clearly telling me that it was nasty from San Diego to Tucson and that I was stuck in Lordburg for another early night. It poured down cold rain all night and my same trusty app showed the the storm front was headed northeast to Silver City and on to Albuquerque so.. let's get on with it. I took off into the morning air with a wet butt and a mist in the air with 40 mph winds still sustaining and my typical miles per tank down from 170 to 105 before reserve.
As I got to Wilcox I could see that my app was messing' with me because the western horizon was nearly black. I kept going with the thought that it was coming right at me but moving northerly and that I was probably an hour before I drove right into it. That worked out pretty good because I-10 curves south at Wilcox and I was able to skirt the storm for a couple hours. Approaching Benson, I ran out of luck and started finding any overpass I could or whatever to stop, check the radar, look at the I-10 alignment and take off like a bat out of hell every 30 minutes or so racing around the perimeter of the storm and hiding when it caught me. I made it to Benson this way, stopped for fuel and tried to tell myself it should have passed on to the east.
Yeah. Right-on Bozo. [I just hit my max for file upload so you don't get to see the heavy sleet pic]. I decided that i was not going to spend another night on the road of this 1-3/4 day journey so I started up, put on the tunes, tightened my glasses and took off bare-headed into the sleet with Tucson a couple hours ahead. I was bareheaded because (I forgot to mention) my helmet flew off the bike on the AAA Truck the first night, LOL. I found my gloved hand over my forehead and bending over to put my nose on the back of my windshield and driving with my throttle hand works pretty well. Three hours later, the sun came out and I turned northwesterly toward Phoenix. That's when I was reminded how miserable a 40 mph sidewind is. Up until now, no sun, cold hard headwind - but at least it was a headwind. All the way to Phoenix, I just leaned 15 degrees or so left and plowed on through. Arrived Phoenix 3pm or so Saturday.
This pic is digitally marked as 3.3 miles from Dryden and I dubbed it 3.3 miles from nowhere when I found myself without ignition on the side of the road. Unbelievably, Mike and Pat were 3.3 miles from nowhere too!
They just happen to be 500 feet away right where I broke down. Mike is a former Army mechanic that Pat ran into "in town" and asked him to come out to a piece of property he owned where he had an old motor home, a backhoe, some generators, and other sundry equipment that all had suffered from poor maintenance. Mike had been there for tow days, got the 1972 motorhome running, canibalized a coulple generators to get a third running, and was just digging into the backhoe when I sputtered up.
Fortunately, Mike had cel signal as I did not. That would prove true (i.e., no signal) for the better part of the next two days and three hundred miles or so. We checked out my new Crane ignition module, my coil, my new ignition switch, every wire related thereto without positive consequence. So... I used his cel and called in the cavalry.
Alas: AAA to the rescue! In the meanwhile, Mike showed off his hands-work by cranking up the motorhome and brewing a pot of coffee. The sun started setting, the temps started dropping, and me and AAA headed west to Alpine where there was one part time mechanic I had found on the web with my phone as we crested a hill where I got a spot of cel service.
108 miles later, we rolled into Alpine just as Ernest was locking up at Big Bend Cycle.
This is a pic of the bike waiting with me patiently for Ernest to open the shop the next day. He worked full time for the Border patrol in Marfa and wrenches from 4:30 or so each day into the night and does what he can for the likes of me when we saw up in trouble. There was a great place to stay right across the street called the Antelope Lodge so I got a room and got a good nights sleep.
This pic is the second night after Ernest found the problem - an embarrassingly simple thing. Fortunately, 1/2 mile down US 90 was a convenience store with 4 boxes of left-over chicken on the counter after closing down and cleaning up the kitchen. I enjoyed two of those boxes for late dinner that night, breakfast and lunch the next day.
So, anyway, Ernest pulls up the next day at 4:30 and I walk over from across the street as he is checking my bike out without having even unlocked the door yet. As I approach, he says, "Hey Rick, lets get that seat off. I want to check out your battery". Yes... a loose ground terminal screw!!!!!!!
He unlocked the door, went in and got a phillips screwdriver and a tube of locktite and made the "repair" in all of 60 seconds. I stood there laughing and he looked up and said, "that won't cost ya a penny". I started it up and took it for a ride up and down US 90 in front of his shop to warm it up and see if the short recurred or if I had maybe fried my new module. All was good until the fourth pass and the bike sputtered and died right in front of his shop. I pushed it right back into the spot in that previous pic and asked him to check it out. while I went and got my cel phone from the lodge accross the street. A couple minutes later I returned and said, as he was finally able to rollup the garage door and legitimately open, " I have an equally embarrassing idea before you roll her inside". He smiled and I said, " ya know, I never got a chance to get fuel back there 3.3 miles from the next fuel station". He grinned and said, "is it on reserve yet?" I said, "no, let try it". I turned the petcock and she fired right up! We both broke out laughing and I said, "i'll be right back". Off I zoomed to the convenience store 1/2 mile down and proceeded to put 4.5 gallons in those split tanks. I returnrd to Big Bend Cycle, shook Ernest's hand and told him I would see him the next time Celeste and I get back to Big Bend National Park on the bikes.
The above pic is me about to hit the road at 7am, about 45 minutes before sunrise on Friday morning as the thermometer topped 34 degrees.
I made it to Van Horn without frost bite and thawed at the Love's Truck Stop with an XL cup of coffee and another tank of gas. As I stood there outside drinking the coffee, with my Shure stage monitor earphones on still listening to my "Ribbon of Pavement" playlist of about 2500 of my favorite road tunes, it occurred to me that I should stay outside and not get too warm inside that place. As I made this decision, my Zune started playing Van Morrison's cover of "Comfortably Numb" - a truly memorable moment. I reached into my pocket and felt the piece of quartz Mike had given me back in Dryden with the explanation that he always kept a memorial of all his biker breakdowns and that he had a shelf full of them at home on the wall.
He handed it to me right there in the middle of nowhere and said, "here, stick this in your pocket". I finished the coffee and cranked up the Dog and hit I-10 with music blaring and the headwinds ramping up to 40 miles per hour sustained and a balmy 44 degrees. I forgot to mention that during the initial ignition short when I could still re-start the bike, I had lost my oil reservoir cap as it would pop right out from the compression when I sr=tart the bike every other time or so. I could not bring myself to replace that 17 year old cap with the dried up rubber because it had a memorial disk from Rocky Mountain Harley Davidson from a 2004 trip to the Rockies from Michigan that I was fond of. Well, it was gone and there was a quarter quart of synthetic oil all over my the front of my right saddlebag. I bought a truck stop roll of duct tape and made do.
When I got around ElPaso, to Las Cruces, I stopped and got a real live oil reservoir cap.
And on to Lordburg, NM I finally stopped for a burger and realized as I thawed and enjoyed one of the best cheeseburgers I have ever had, my radar app on my cel phone was clearly telling me that it was nasty from San Diego to Tucson and that I was stuck in Lordburg for another early night. It poured down cold rain all night and my same trusty app showed the the storm front was headed northeast to Silver City and on to Albuquerque so.. let's get on with it. I took off into the morning air with a wet butt and a mist in the air with 40 mph winds still sustaining and my typical miles per tank down from 170 to 105 before reserve.
As I got to Wilcox I could see that my app was messing' with me because the western horizon was nearly black. I kept going with the thought that it was coming right at me but moving northerly and that I was probably an hour before I drove right into it. That worked out pretty good because I-10 curves south at Wilcox and I was able to skirt the storm for a couple hours. Approaching Benson, I ran out of luck and started finding any overpass I could or whatever to stop, check the radar, look at the I-10 alignment and take off like a bat out of hell every 30 minutes or so racing around the perimeter of the storm and hiding when it caught me. I made it to Benson this way, stopped for fuel and tried to tell myself it should have passed on to the east.
Yeah. Right-on Bozo. [I just hit my max for file upload so you don't get to see the heavy sleet pic]. I decided that i was not going to spend another night on the road of this 1-3/4 day journey so I started up, put on the tunes, tightened my glasses and took off bare-headed into the sleet with Tucson a couple hours ahead. I was bareheaded because (I forgot to mention) my helmet flew off the bike on the AAA Truck the first night, LOL. I found my gloved hand over my forehead and bending over to put my nose on the back of my windshield and driving with my throttle hand works pretty well. Three hours later, the sun came out and I turned northwesterly toward Phoenix. That's when I was reminded how miserable a 40 mph sidewind is. Up until now, no sun, cold hard headwind - but at least it was a headwind. All the way to Phoenix, I just leaned 15 degrees or so left and plowed on through. Arrived Phoenix 3pm or so Saturday.
