Passes & Canyons Blog

For the first time ever a motorcycle I owned is no longer in my possession. I let go of my 1999 Kawasaki Concours for the measly sum of $300. What a sad day.

I went over to Rowdy Rocket Garage on Tuesday morning and walked in and told Mark I was there to pick up my Concours. He didn’t ask why. He had had it there for three months and had not worked on it. No explanation was necessary.

To his credit, when I asked if I owed him anything he said no, of course not. Well, he had told me in January that he had checked it out and found no evidence of a vacuum leak so it had to be the carbs. When I took it in he said he’d have to diagnose the problem and that would be about an hour at $90 an hour. Was that just more BS and he hadn’t really touched it? I’ve never know and at this point I don’t care. I just wanted to get it back from him. It had pained me every time I went by seeing it sitting there exposed to the elements in the dead of winter. I had taken extremely good care of this bike ever since I bought it new in August 1999. It had always been garaged except when I was traveling. To see snow and icicles hanging off it was painful.

Getting it over to Steele’s was not exactly all sunshine and roses either. I have AMA Roadside Service and I called them for a pick-up. After about an hour I got a call from the driver who had been dispatched and as we talked he became aware that I had a motorcycle needing towing. He was not equipped to handle motorcycles. He said I needed to call AMA and tell them to cancel the order and reissue an order with the correct information. Not his fault, I sure don’t blame him.

So I did, and they had to call a different company. Now the wait would be 60-90 more minutes. After about an hour I got a call from that driver and he was confirming I was at 30th and Colorado. No, I was at 3000 South Colorado. Oops. OK, he’d be there in about 10 minutes.

He got there and he was a really nice guy. Some tow truck drivers are jerks but some are nice and this guy was very nice. He rides. He knew where Steele’s is–that’s where he gets his motorcycle parts, he said. So we got the bike loaded and took off in our separate vehicles.

At Steele’s we had to wait for someone else to move so we could get in to that space to unload. I talked with the driver, who had twice commented on how nice my bike was, and asked if maybe he’d like to buy it, cheap. He was clearly tempted but had to say no.

So Rick, the owner at Steele’s, got back from lunch and we talked about the bike. Speaking with him previously he had said he could only offer $300 to $400 for it. Now with the bike there I pointed out all the extras and what a nice bike it was. I told him I hoped he would have his guys work on it and put it on their floor to sell as a whole bike. He cited the mileage (79,125) and said no it would just be salvage, parted out. That’s baloney. These Connies can easily go many, many more miles than any measly 79,000.

Now, he may have just been saying that to justify offering me so little–he only gave me the $300, not the $400–but I was committed to taking whatever he offered. I do think if I’m over that way in about a month or so I may drop in just to see if it’s in the yard or on the showroom floor. It will make my heart glad if it’s on the floor. It will break my heart if it’s in the yard.

So now I have two motorcycles. The CB750 will get a lot more miles on it this year. The V-Strom will be my main bike. Maybe at some point I’ll look for a good deal on a used Yamaha FJ-09 or Tracer. I’m not planning anything at this point. I’ll just see how I feel and whether I’m perfectly content with the two.

But it’s the end of an era. I had that Concours for just a few months shy of 25 years. I bought it on my birthday in August of 1999. And now it’s gone.

Biker Quote for Today

You might be a Yuppie biker if you run into the bros & they say hey let’s go here & you have to call home to check first.

We all know how many motorcycles die: they get crashed and that’s that. But what about those that don’t get crashed? If they don’t keep going, why not?

I know the answer to that now. It’s all about the Benjamins.

I bought my Kawasaki Concours new in 1999. I have ridden it something over 80,000 miles. In July of last year it overheated going up to the Eisenhower Tunnel and I had to have it hauled home. Then I took it to a shop to have that all put right. But when I got it back it was not all right. Now the throttle refused to back off properly, so I took it back to the shop. It has sat there for three months now not getting worked on.

In the meantime, the last time I went by, planning to take it for a short ride, it had developed an oil leak. After three months of not getting worked on I decided to take the bike to a different shop, so I started calling around. It appears that getting the work done that the bike needs would run me at least $1,000. Meanwhile, I had decided that the time has come to let go of this bike. It has always been a very heavy bike and I am getting older. I can still handle it OK but for how much longer? But it seems doubtful that I could find a buyer willing to pay even $1,000 for it.

The big no-brainer question: why would I pay more than $1,000 for repairs and turn around and sell it for less than $1,000?

One of the places I called about repairs was Steele’s Cycle. Yeah, they could definitely fix it; working on older bikes is their specialty. On the other hand, I could sell it to them either as salvage or, more likely in my opinion, in my hopes, so they could do the repair work and then put it on their used bike floor and sell it. Other than the throttle and the oil leak there’s not a thing wrong with it and it can easily run many, many more miles. And they will give me about $300 to $400 for it, according to Rick, the owner.

So let’s see. Pay more than $1,000 to have it running good again and then sell it for less than that, or sell it as-is with no additional costs and get a few hundred bucks. It’s really sad to say it but I’m planning to have the bike hauled over there–probably on Tuesday–and take whatever they’ll give me for it.

I have loved this bike. This bike has taken me so many places, and I have done so much on this bike. I really hate the idea of abandoning it. Walking away from it after all the good times it brought me. But what am I going to do? Keep pouring money into it? Especially when I’ve already made the decision to move on from it. This will be the first time I have let go of a motorcycle I owned.

And about that. My first ever bike was/is my 1980 Honda CB750 Custom. I still own and ride that bike. And as my first bike I am deeply in love with it. It is in bad need of some work of its own and at some point this year I will pay whatever it costs to get this work done. This is how one bike dies, while another continues to live and continues to run. Sometimes it’s not about the Benjamins.

Biker Quote for Today

100 reasons not to date a biker: 17. We spend more on tires than we spend on you.

One thing after another. I’m feeling now like my Concours is not even my bike any more and all I want is to be done with it. Anyone want a free motorcycle?

The bike has been over at Rowdy Rocket Garage since December 29. Every time I call and talk to Mark over there he tells me he’s hoping to get to it today or tomorrow. Every time. At the end of January I went over and took it out for a short ride just to get a January ride in on it. It’s now the end of February and I went over there on Wednesday to do the same thing. No dice.

First off, I pressed the starter button and nothing. The battery–a new battery–was dead from sitting there for two months. So Mark hooked a charger up to it and it started up but now it started emitting smoke. Not from the exhaust, from the engine. Mark said he could tell by the odor that it was oil, that there must be an oil leak dripping down onto the exhaust and burning. It should all burn off shortly.

After several minutes it was smoking just as much as ever. Looking in through the slots on the body work I could see where it was coming from, with big plumes of smoke rising up and dispersing and coming out everywhere. What the heck?

I’m not blaming Mark for this–the fact is he hasn’t worked on the bike. But it wasn’t doing this before. How does an oil leak just spontaneously happen?

So I did not take the Connie for a ride, so no February ride. So much for never missing a month over 25 years (other than two months off for heart surgery). At this point I just don’t care, I just want to be rid of the bike.

Of course now it’s up to Mark to finally get to it for the throttle issue I took it in for but now also to see what’s up with the oil leak. Presumably throwing good money after bad. Whatever I spend, if it finally gets the bike running well again, I’ll only turn around and put it up for sale for perhaps as much as I will have just spent.

Right now the $200 Vickery offered me for it back when I was lusting for that FJ-09 they had is looking pretty nice. How good hindsight is. I wish I’d taken them up on that.

Oh, and then, as if all this wasn’t enough to make my day less than wonderful, I got home and sat down to put all this into this blog post and could not get to the blog. All I got was a page with an error message, and I couldn’t even get it to see what the problem might be. I did get to Google Analytics, however, where I learned the blog and the mobile side of the site had both been down for two days. Great.

Nor, for some reason, could I get to my web host online, so I called. After working with three different techs they found the issues and got it all fixed and here I am writing this. What a freaking hassle!

Biker Quote for Today

I’d rather be splitting lanes.

Have you ever run out of gas on your bike? Does the sun rise in the east?

I sure have. Probably the first time was early on and I was taking a young lady I had an interest in for a ride. We were just out cruising when the engine died. I figured I just needed to go to Reserve but when I reached for the petcock I found that it was already in the Reserve position and I had forgotten to turn it back the last time I filled up. Oops. Fortunately I knew there was a station about a mile away and we walked up there, rented (that’s how it worked back then–rent was the price of the can in case you didn’t bring it back) a gas can and filled it, then walked back to the bike. She didn’t complain but she and I never became a couple.

Years later when I was married and my Concours was new my wife and I went for a ride with the local Concours Owners Group chapter. Most everyone filled up in Florence but I figured I had plenty of gas to get home. Wrong. We were coming up CO 83, just south of Franktown, when we sputtered to a stop. Fortunately we were right in front of a farm house and when we knocked they said yes they had a gas tank to supply their farm equipment and yes, they would sell us some gas. Lucky us.

Anyway, this is leading to my main focus here, that I’ve been reading a thread on Adventure Rider where the question is “When was the last time you ran out of gas? Tell your story.” Here are a few other people’s stories.

• I ran out on the way home from work on my NX650 years ago. No cell service… Within 5 minutes a state trooper came by, a wildlife trooper, pickup truck hauling a quad, had extra gas. He gave me enough gas to make it the eight miles home, but not before running my license. I was grateful and a little miffed at the same time.
• My last time was on a two-up day ride with my wife. We were having a great time just knocking around forest roads and backwoods byways at speeds that allowed us to actually have a conversation. Well, my Scramster only holds 3.3 gallons of fuel and I rode it until the trip meter read 176 miles, as we did our best to make it to a gas station that was 176.5 miles away.
• In 2015 I was on my XR650L in Baja. I was deep offroad and completely lost. All the deep sand had used up my gas reserves. I poured in my last gallon of extra gas rode for 35 miles then found pavement. Took a guess on which way to go so made a left turn and started riding. After roughly 10 miles I could see a town I kept riding and when I arrived at the town the engine started sputtering I pulled a wheelie to get the remaining gas to the rear of the Clarke tank. It ran for about a mile then sputtered again but this time could see a Pem Mex station. I pulled another wheelie and rode towards the station, as I stopped at the pump the engine died. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was.
• A cautionary tale; forgot to put gas in my Triyumph Bonneville T100 and ran out of gas near home. I had read that you could shake gas over to the left side, and so i tried to do that. I straddled the bike and laid it all the way to the left hanging the weight of the bike on my left arm and shaking it. Without realizing it I severely strained and damaged my left shoulder and had to go to first care for pain pills and muscle relaxers. Don’t do that. It didn’t even work and I could have really messed my shoulder up. As it turned out I recovered without any more medical intervention, but I will never try that again.
• I’m on my CRF230L which does not have a gauge. Was headed to Rutland State Park on I190 when it started sputtering at 120mi. Switched to reserve. Got off the highway, was looking for a gas station on my way to the park when I ran out of gas after 30 miles on reserve. Pushed my bike 3.1 miles to the nearest gas station on a busy road. No one stopped and asked if I needed help.

Yeah, I’ve probably run out other times but just don’t remember, but not recently. I had a fuel-line issue with Reserve on my CB750 a couple years ago while riding with the RMMRC and Roy pulled out a can of gas he carries everywhere. He told me you can get these leak-proof cans are available at the army surplus store so I bought one. Not a bad thing to have at hand.

Biker Quote for Today

My first love, my motorcycle.

I got the V-Strom back from the shop the day before the OFMC left on this year’s trip and then on the last day of that trip my Concours overheated going up to the tunnel in blazing hot weather. I managed to get it home finally but then I needed to get it into a shop. Some shop. Which shop? Ever since Joel got out of the business that’s a question I’ve been trying to resolve.

I had taken the V-Strom to Colorado Moto Service and they had done good, and for the most part timely, work on it. But their customer service needs some improvement and they are not close to home. It was a pretty obvious move to try again to get work done at Rowdy Rocket Garage, which is much closer to where I live. If once again the guy, Mark, couldn’t find time or space for me then I’d try CMS again.

So I called Rowdy and, as before, Mark told me to call again later. I did and this time, lo and behold, he said sure, bring it in tomorrow. Yahoo! That date was August 22. The bike had overheated on July 30 and it took me that long to get it at least semi-operational and then find a shop to get it in to. As I rode it over there that morning Nick and I were getting ready to take off on a three-day ride so we wanted to get it there as early as possible. That meant during commuter traffic–slow going, stop and start–and just as I expected, it started to overheat again. Fortunately we didn’t have far to go and I made it there.

Recognizing what a valuable resource Rowdy might prove to be, I didn’t want to risk annoying Mark by pressing him on getting the work done. But as time dragged on I did contact him now and then and very tactfully ask about the progress on the bike. These guys are super busy which means two things: One, it was definitely going to take some time, and two, they don’t need my business so don’t hack them off so they tell you to take your business elsewhere.

Long story short, I finally got the Kawi back on September 28. Almost five weeks. I didn’t care, it was done. One thing Mark noted in a text was that “It also has a tendency to be slow to lower the RPMs when releasing the throttle.” I came to understand that the instant I started it up to take it home. Mark had probably run it before I got there and so when I gave it total choke before starting it exploded to life and the revs went through the roof. I hastily shoved the choke lever all the way down. But still it raced a bit, only slowing down gradually. Hmmm.

I headed out and on the way home it was obvious there was an issue. Mark had said it had to involve the vacuum valves and that was a deeper internal issue that they had not had the time–or my prior authorization–to pursue. I was familiar with this sort of thing because I had had a similar issue about five years ago and Joel had replaced the vacuum slides on the carburetor. But it hadn’t been doing this before I took it in to Rowdy.

I spoke with Roy, my resident motorcycle mechanics guru, and he suggested that when the gas tank was lowered back into place that it was crimping the throttle cable. I figured that should be easy to check out. If I just lifted the tank an inch or so any crimping should be relieved but when I tried that, every time I lifted the tank the engine cut out. Roy also said if it had not been doing that before it was in the shop, go back there and insist that they fix it.

I did go back by the shop and spoke to Mark. He said he’s been doing this a long time and knows the proper routing of cables, plus, the throttle cable is encased in a rigid metal sheath that would not easily be crimped. No, he said, it has to do with the vacuum mechanism somewhere, and that’s a devilishly tricky problem to suss out. He said he currently had a Triumph in for which he was trying to find the leak but it was a slow process. Bring the bike back in and they would address the issue.

But are you super busy still? Do thinks slow down for you in the winter? Yes and no. When could you get it back in? Not any time in the next couple weeks. The same situation I had encountered before.

And that’s where the matter sits. Do I go through the rigamarole of calling every couple days until Mark has room to get me in? Do I just go ahead and take it CMS? Is there someone else I could turn to? Who? Where? Man, do I miss Joel.

Biker Quote for Today

F.E.A.R: Forget Everything And Ride.

This story just came to a close about 15 minutes ago, although the broader story is still ongoing.

Yesterday we were coming home from a 10-day ride, 2,400-mile through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah and back to Colorado. We left Grand Junction about 8:45 a.m., taking I-70 all the way, and I was looking forward to being home about 1 p.m. Ha! I finally made it home last night at 10 p.m.

We figured leaving Junction when we did we would beat the really bad traffic down the mountain that you always get on Sunday. Ha! We started getting into heavy traffic at about Vail. Still, we kept moving at good speed. We stopped for gas and lunch at Frisco, then got back on the highway and traffic was no longer clipping along. Down to Silverthorne and starting up toward the Eisenhower Tunnel it was traffic like you expect to see on a Sunday at maybe 3 p.m., and it was only 11:30.

Laboriously, clutch-hand-killingly, we inched our way toward the tunnel. There are three traffic lanes going up and there is an emergency vehicle lane on the right and I was eyeing that really wanting to do it. If any other bike had come along up that lane I would have gotten right in behind them, but none did.

Suddenly, about half a mile from the tunnel, vapor started rising from my engine and I could smell coolant. Oh crap. I pulled my Kawasaki Concours over into the emergency lane and parked. Getting off the bike I could see coolant dripping onto the ground. Damn!

I belong to the American Motorcyclist Association and am signed up for their roadside assistance program so I immediately called. Yes, the bike is off the road and yes I’m in a safe spot. Fine, they’ll text me when a tow truck is dispatched for me. Fortunately, after all this ungodly hot weather it was cool up there, and in fact while I waited I added an extra layer to stay warm. Vastly better than baking out somewhere with no shade.

While I sat there a few bikes passed in among the rest of the traffic but three bikes individually cruised by in the emergency vehicle lane. I knew I should have done that.

Nearly two hours later I hadn’t even received a text and a tow truck driver pulled up and asked if I wanted a ride. Probably, I told him, but let me check with my service provider. The lady at AMA roadside assistance said yes, do it, especially since it was now starting to rain and there was lightning all around. File for reimbursement later.

This guy was a total character. He was an “emergency vehicle” so he used that status to his advantage to the hilt. He took routes you and I don’t even know exist. When he needed to get back into regular traffic he informed the cars on the road that he was coming–he did not ask.

We talked about where to go. I had figured it just made the most sense to haul the bike all the way to my house. He told me that would cost more than $1,000. For $350 he could take me to Georgetown, to the visitor center right there by the exit. Fine, let’s do that. Then as we cruised along he suggested that for a tip he could take me on to the Evergreen Walmart. Why would I want to go there? That’s way out of the way. No, he said, it’s right off the interstate. It’s at the Chief Hosa exit. How much for a tip? $100. I don’t think fast on my feet and just said no, Georgetown will be fine. Wrong choice!

At Georgetown I again called AMA and put in a new service request. This time I got a text almost instantly that Scorpion Towing, out of Idaho Springs, had the order and would be there in 90-120 minutes. A not unexpected time frame.

At the stroke of 120 minutes I got a text from AMA asking if he had arrived or otherwise contacted me. I said no. I immediately got a call from an agent who said she would reassign the order. After sitting on hold for a long time she came back on and said she was having trouble finding someone to do the tow and we would hang up and I would receive a text when a provider was assigned.

At the stroke of three hours I got another text asking me if I was still waiting. I said yes. Call the tow company or call us back, was the directive. I called the tow company but all I got was a message saying “if you’re calling about arrival time just wait and we’ll let you know when someone is on their way.” Oh, that’s encouraging.

Another hour passed and I called AMA again. Now the woman (a different person each time I called) told me it was time to take a different approach. Quite simply, she said, they were not going to be able to get anyone out to me today. But they could schedule a pick-up for 8 a.m. the next morning. OK, I said, I’ll call my wife in Denver to come get me in Georgetown. As long as the fork was not locked and the bike could be put in neutral I would not have to be there. Fine. I called Judy, she drove up, and finally at 10 p.m. I was home. But the bike was still in Georgetown.

In the morning I tried calling AMA but they were stacked up so I didn’t wait. The visitor center opens at 9 a.m. so at 9:05 I called and asked if there was still a burgundy motorcycle in their lot. Recall, the pick-up was scheduled for 8 a.m. Yes, the woman told me, the bike was still there.

I called AMA again and this time got right through. The guy I spoke with checked the ticket and found that it had a pick-up set for 8 a.m. on Tuesday, tomorrow. Oops. He corrected that and then set about finding a tow company. After being on hold a very long time he came back on the line and told me they simply could not find anyone to help me out. Every tow company he contacted declined either because of the distance or because it was a motorcycle. I was on my own.

I had no idea what to do but then I thought of Joel, my mechanic. I called him and told him, Joel, I desperately need your help. His truck that he uses for towing is in North Dakota with his wife at the moment but maybe he could get his neighbor’s truck and his own trailer and do it. He’d let me know. A little later he called and it was a go. Whew!

Finally, about 45 minutes ago now, the Kawi was delivered. At this point I didn’t care what Joel asked in payment, I would have given him the moon. But he actually asked a very modest–by towing standards–amount and I gladly paid it.

And by the way, he told me, it’s probably not a coolant line rupture, just overheating and overflow. He said if a line breaks it dumps all the coolant immediately. My description of watching it drip tells him it was just overheating, despite the liquid cooling system. You’ve still got to have airflow through that radiator. If it had been him, he said, he would not have hesitated to take the emergency vehicle lane.

So the simple test, Joel said, is just to fill the coolant tank with water and run the bike up to operating temperature. If it was just a matter of overheating it will be fine and nothing will come out. If liquid still comes out it really is a problem. But if it doesn’t, no problem. Just refill it with coolant.

Man, what a hassle. And if Joel is right, I could have just ridden on home after letting the bike cool off for a while. So now I need to run a test.

Biker Quote for Today

The path to enlightenment is not always straight and narrow.

After that ride that wasn’t I got home OK but I still needed to figure out why my bike didn’t want to start. I figured–and hoped–it was just the battery.

I removed the seat on the CB750 and pulled the battery and then took it over to Batteries Plus and asked them to test it. I had forgotten it is a gel-pack battery and it had a sticker on it that said “7-18” which I took to be July 2018. So that’s five years, but I would expect a gel-pack might last longer. I googled that question and found that six years is considered typical. Fine, I’m not going to quibble.

At Batteries Plus the guy first did a simple meter test, and that was fine, so he did a load test. When a guy at a battery shop tells you your battery is good you kind of tend to believe him. They’re there to sell batteries and if he tells you he doesn’t need to sell you a battery I’m generally going to believe him. And what he told me was that the battery was fine, though it could stand to be charged.

So that’s good news that I don’t have to buy a new battery but it’s bad news because not I have to figure out what the real problem is. And I am now a skilled mechanic. But I know that Roy knows a lot more about these things than I do so I called him. He said he could come over the next morning and in the meantime I put it on the trickle charger overnight.

Come morning I put the battery back in the bike and hit the starter. It roared to life instantly. OK. Now I’m thinking alternator. We’ll see what Roy thinks after he does some testing.

Roy arrived and we got to it. The battery definitely had a charge, no question about that. But was the alternator feeding it power? The meter said yes it was. Roy had me start it, stop it, let the lights burn while the motor was off–all this stuff, testing this and that.

In the end he arrived at the same place he had been when he got started. Despite what the guy at the shop told me, he believes it is the battery. It might not be all the way dead yet but he figures a five-year-old battery is probably the problem.

Where this leaves me is that I will go on riding the bike with this battery and I’ll be observing. I’ll keep it on the trickle charger but after taking it out I’ll see if it is slower to start, indicating that the battery is draining. And maybe sometime soon it will be bad enough that I’ll pull it again and take it to the shop again and they’ll tell me it needs to be replaced. I don’t know what else to do.

Biker Quote for Today

No plans. No maps. No GPS. No rules. Just ride.

It was only a terrific stroke of luck for Tom that when his motorcycle died in Arizona on one of the loneliest, most out-of-the-way roads around that Dave was right behind with his Ford F-250 pick-up and a trailer. Dave had planned on doing the ride but then had surgery the week before and couldn’t ride. On the morning of our departure, on the spur of the moment, he decided to heck with it, he was going even if that meant he had to drive. And as long as he was driving the F-250 he figured he might as well bring along his trailer, just in case someone needed it. And Tom did.

How much would a tow truck have cost to get him anywhere the bike could be worked on, and then how long might he have to stay in that town until parts arrived? We’re talking a significant chunk of cash here. As it turned out, the problem was just in the switch that keeps you from riding off with your side-stand down, so not expensive to fix at all. But Tom had the leisure of handling the problem back at home and the only cost, besides not getting to do the rest of the trip on his bike, was paying Dave for gas.

Not surprisingly, this whole situation has ignited a discussion within the RMMRC. Perhaps it would be nice to have a sag wagon along on all our long trips. After all, it was just last year that Dave was the one with a problem–bad stator on his Beemer–that resulted in him staying in Minnesota while the rest of us rode on home. Then he had to deal with this away-from-home dealer rather than the local shop he knows and where they know him.

Of course the real issue here could simply be, who among us wants to make the trip but not ride? Somebody would have to drive the truck. Well, the RMMRC has another long trip coming up soon, out to the Columbia River and the Cascades. And Tom has volunteered to be the driver. If, he adds, everyone else pays for his gas.

It would be like insurance. Everyone pays a little, hoping truthfully to get nothing in return, but really happy to have the coverage if you do need it.

This pay-for-the-gas provision has generated some discussion. Initially some people were immediately willing to pay it; some others were hesitant. On its own the cost would not be negligible–except compared to a huge towing bill. An F-250 gets about 15 miles per gallon. Let’s figure $3.50 per gallon, and a 3,200-mile trip, like this Columbia River thing. That would be about 213 gallons, with a total cost of about $745. Let’s say there are 10 guys going; that would be about $75 each for insurance. You see where this is heading?

Suppose eight guys are willing to pay but two are not. If one of them does break down then what? We’re not going to abandon them. Maybe at that point they have to make the choice to pay the entire gas cost or else figure out some other way out of their predicament. I mean, at that point if one of the guys who paid for the insurance broke down he would not have his sag wagon available that he was paying for. That totally doesn’t work.

If you just decided, as a group, that anyone going had to join in on the insurance are you going to drive people away? Nobody wants to do that.

And even if everyone is paying, what are you going to do if more than one person breaks down?

To get some perspective, let’s look at what would happen without a sag wagon. Just last year, coincidentally not 50 miles from where Tom had his problem, Bill had a problem. He hit a big rock in the road and bent his wheel, causing the tire to lose air with no possibility of reinflating. Amazingly, the tire did not go flat until we reached our day’s destination.

After exploring several options what he finally ended up doing was getting a tow to the next town, where a shop put in a tube that we figured had solved the problem. That tow cost about $150 and delayed our next day’s start till 3 p.m. on our longest day of the trip. But we handled it and we rode on. (Although by the time we got to Farmington the tube had lost air and the next morning Bill paid $2,000 for a new tire and wheel at the local Harley shop. At home he figures he would have gotten the wheel and tire for half that.)

As a different example, in 2018 on an OFMC trip we had a major disruption when Dennis unknowingly put diesel fuel in his Indian. Obviously we didn’t have a sag wagon so we replicated one. That is, Dennis made phone calls and then we rode him over to the nearest town where there was a U-Haul shop, he rented a truck and we went back to his bike, we loaded his bike on, and we altered our course to go to the nearest Indian dealer. It wasn’t cheap, especially since it was a one-way rental on the U-Haul. But we made it work. And it cost Dennis a pile of money.

In short, there is no obvious best answer. Perhaps the thing that will keep this from becoming too much of a dilemma is what I mentioned before: Who wants to get stuck driving the truck? Tom is willing on this next trip but then what? Who? Certainly not me–I came to ride!

Biker Quote for Today

A dirt bike is like your buddy. A road bike is your lover.