I wrote this for my VStrom forum - but it belongs here. It is true in every detail. It is lengthy, but it was overwhelmingly responded to from my VStrom friends, and it captures a slice of the best of life when you ride an SOHC4 around the West USA. It is probaly not too smart to ride a Rocky Mountain route between blizzards, but it was glorious and I am still here to tell about it. Proof is in the attached picture. Enjoy.
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Thursday I was on top of a roof I had just built and decked with my brother, a 10x30 deck completely roofed and screened so my folks could sit outside in the winter in Las Cruces, NM and enjoy the warm evenings without insect life eating them.
To do this, we rode our motorcycles. Brother Terry from central California and myself from Denver. He had 1100 miles to cover and I had 700. We each do this in our own styles.
Terry has a 2008 R1200GS, an exotic metallic altar of the cult of Exquisite Design built by candlelight and prayer during sacrificial anal retention ceremonies of the warrior monks of Baden-Württemberg. They make good beer there and I enjoy the gluwein (pronounced “glue-vine”) around Weihnachten at the Krismarkt – hot mulled red wine with brown sugar and apples. But I digress ……
He motored into Arizona, stayed overnight in Wickinburg, and then came in on the 10 by the evening of the next day. A veritable gentle knight of the road on a magnificent precision steed with the range of a B52 bomber and the reliability of death and taxes.
My story is slightly different.
As I entered the Carrizozo plain my bike (78 CB750K) began to run badly, puffs of smoke and soot all over the ends of the mufflers. As my tank went on reserve with 100 miles showing on the trip odometer, I entered that dreamlike state that one does when confronted with sundown, 50 miles from nowhere and 50 miles to the nearest gas station. 1 gallon left, 4 gallons used in one hundred miles. Twenty five miles per gallon the tortured brain running at frantic speed calculates in a flash of thought. A glance at the GPS: 45 miles to Tularosa. Hmmm. 25 miles of gas to go 45 miles due to a bike running badly and eating gas like crazy. What to do, what a world, what a world …….
But, the survival trance is an amazing thing when you are cold and cramped after 500 miles. What is common to all 4 independent carburetors on this bike? Out from the jelly computer squiggles the answer from the archive of the dim past: the accelerator pump. A crude mechanism with a leather cup in a cylinder, opened and closed by the throttle linkage. Then the mind spots a key fact – this only happens when it is hot, at full operating temperature. Perhaps it is the expansion of the cylinder around the accelerator pump seal? Maybe a position of throttle will seal the leak? Maybe it needs to be cooled?
I stuck my hand down into the slipstream, diverting the cold air into the area of the carburetor rack. 2 minutes passed – and the bike started running smoothly! I held it at 65 mph for ten minutes, then with my arm about to fall off, I removed the hand. 1 minute later, the bike is coughing and dying. Plan B.
I dropped the speed to 35 miles an hour. The bike purrs like a kitten at this speed, but it is a long way to Tularosa. I could turn around and go back to Carrizozo, but that is admitting defeat, wimping out, giving up, succumbing to the forces of death and depression. Ahead lays glory and victory – it is a guy thing, right? I have matches, I can always make a fire and sit beside the road in the middle of nowhere until a state trooper comes by and rescues me in the morning – maybe.
So I limp along at 35, tucked in behind the screen to eke out the maximum forward progress, and an hour later, darkness enveloping the valley, I shut it off at a gas pump in Tularosa and turn my thoughts to the next critical item – where the hell is the bathroom?! 4.6779 gallons later and an old license plate and some tie wraps, and I am doing 75 towards my goal, Las Cruces, buzzing White Sands in the moonlight, the carb cooled by the world’s only 750K accelerator pump cooling duct. This particular invention worked so well, that I made metal brackets for it and rode it 700 miles back to Denver without difficulties. One day each way, non-stop, no other issues.
Well, except for the deer that I almost hit on the stinking elevated portion of the freeway in the middle of downtown freaking Colorado Springs by Bijou Street! What is a deer doing in the middle of the elevated portion of the freeway??! Classic situation: The deer is prancing down the right apron when I become aware of it at 65 miles per hour, and 45 years of motorcycle intuition go into gear – what does every deer prancing down the side of the road do the instant that a motorcycle approaches? Why, they jump in front of you, that’s what they do! Every time. They are programmed terrorists with hooves.
I did a flick into the gravel in the 6 feet of room I had between the lane and the concrete wall at the same instant the deer made his move. I missed by a huge margin, perhaps a foot. The deer leaped into the lane and on the second bounce leaped into the middle lane and was creamed by the car on my left – just in case you wondered why I chose gravel, concrete walls, loss of control and certain death with over a simple braking and lane change avoidance maneuver. In my rear-view mirror I watched the ensuing slowdown and vehicle collisions and tie up begin, the corpse of the deer still twitching and quivering in the growing pool of blood and I laughed and reveled at victory without the slightest trace of empathy for the devil venison that had tried to take my life. I spit on its moldering corpse, laugh into my helmet and continue to fly down the ribbon of concrete that is unforgiving yet has so much to offer. Chalk one up for the motorcycle world, MC 1, Venison 0, and call it a good day. Thanks for the adrenaline high, Bambi you bastard.
Ride with the wind at your backs and laugh at the world that does not know the deer is around the next corner, my friends. We are a different breed and that is as it should be.
Mark
