Motorcycling

What a great time!  Shane is an avid enthusiast, great guy, mostly-BMW and long distance rider, and once a year opens his home to 300 of his closest friends for some great food, great story telling, and otherwise wonderful comraderie.  It was a lot of fun to attend and meet a great cross section of folks from the LDRider, IBMWR, and WOTI mailing lists, along with Shane's friends from McComb and points nearby.

McComb, MS is nearly Louisiana, so it's nearly 600 miles from STL...all interstate on I-55.

Held over the weekend, I took time off work on Friday for the ride down, and dawn broke in St. Louis on a beautiful day.  I had "reserved" a spot with Shane earlier in the year, with the caveat that, given Missouri weather, it could be iffy that I'd actually be able to get out of town.  It can snow in late March, or be 75 degrees, depending.  This day was blue skies, sunny, starting out in high-40's with a forecast for low 60's once the sun got started.  Very ridable.

I didn't quite get the LDRider mandate of finishing packing at least 2 nights before leaving, but close, so there was little to do as I suited up to leave around 8:00 or so for a dinner-time arrival in McComb.  Plugged in my new Widder electic vest, fired up the SR and made my way to I-55 south, where I'd stay for the next 10 hours or so.  With the greening terrain and the vivid blue sky, crisp spring air, and the warm body glove that was my Widder vest, it made for some nice riding.  This stretch of I-55 passes some neat historical stuff on either side...Perry County (German Lutheran settlements), Ste. Genevieve (first settlement in MO), Potosi mines area, et al.  No time today, though...making tracks.

I sputtered onto reserve a bit early, 95 miles on the clock.  Odd, it should be better mileage running on such a cool day.  I was trying to maintain the speedo on 70 indicated to keep pace for my desired arrival, but oddly also, it was taking "extra" rpm to hold 70...instead of about 5000 rpm, more like 5800.  Hmmm.  (Please bear with me...I can tell what you're thinking, and I'll reveal in a few minutes why I'm not an engineer).  I drank water, ate some cashews and refilled my couple of gallons, reconnected heat, and continued south.

The ride continued in this fashion...stops at 100'ish miles, and by mid-day electric heat was no longer required.   I was making great time, running ahead of schedule, and was keeping clear and ahead of most traffic.  I found a good "rabbit" in the form of a Mitsu Mirage sedan driven by a couple of Gen-Y types, so we traveled together for a good tankful.  Nice day, easy riding.

My SR's previous owner had rigged a cheapo headlight modulator in the form of a 536 flasher wired/soldered into the circuit and buggering the original headlight shell to mount a couple of toggles to control it.  It sorta worked ok when I bought it, but 8 years of thumping had claimed the flasher unit, and I never bothered to fix it.  Of late, this flasher had decided to come loose once in awhile...last time at the Yamaha shop, they'd claimed it had shorted against something and burned out the fuse. 

I mention this, because in north Mississippi I was doing one of my usual "sweep the bike for thumped-loose and/or missing parts" inspections while riding and noticed this flasher waving in the breeze.  Not good.  I beat it for and exit, and congratulated myself on just recently adding some electrical fix-it items to the toolkit.  A quick study showed that I could "surgically remove" this flasher and tape the wires to continue on with no worries.  Being 9/10ths sure I'd still have a headlight after, I snipped that rascal loose.  Everything still worked, hooray, and no more shorting-out worries.

More uneventful riding, and I found my motel exit for McComb.  Wow, what good time, about 4:45 or so, well ahead of schedule...gee, I sure made good time.  Checked in quickly to try to get a room on the first floor (did so), and then beat it for Shane's.

I hope the pictures show how neat a place Shane has...truly a beautiful spot, enhanced of course by several hundred bikes!  So many different riders, a lot of LD types of course, but also Dixie-area BMW folks, some Harley guys from Mississippi, and other locals.  A nice mix.  Shane's garage is truly legendary, a nice separate building, maintenance schedules on the wall, and a pro-style bike lift.  Very cool.  But I really appreciated that, among Shane's several BMW's he had tucked a GB500 Honda thumper.  Very cool indeed!

I spent quite a bit of time Friday night sharing a chili supper and conversation with Roger and Jerry, fellow Missourians from Jackson, MO.  Wing riders, nice guys, and we talked a lot about favorite Missouri roads.  Roger asked if I'd be interested in riding down to New Orleans with them on Saturday morning with the idea mainly of wanting to ride the Lake Ponchatrain bridge/causeway...all 26 miles of it.  Sounded neat to me, I said that would be fine, but mentioned that a) I usually ride 65-75, is that a problem, and b) I get 120 miles per tank, would that be an issue.  No to both, I was told, and we planned to hook up the next morning.

Roger said they'd have a nice, easy pace for the almost 80-ish miles to the bridge, and we planned to buy gas (mainly for me) since it was a 52 miles further round trip across the bridge and back.  Following these two Gold Wings, they sure *were* taking it easy....about 45 mph?  Wow.  Pretty nice morning, but gee guys, can't we make a little time?

We rolled through the miles, and found a multi-islanded super station for gas.  Filling my tank, I asked them why the pokey 45-mph pace?  Whadda you mean, 45, they said...we had it on 65 the whole way.

Oh...my speedo is not working right...oh...that means that I was riding 80'ish most of the way south?  Yikes....I passed several LEO's with no sweat, thinking I was perfectly legal.  Why I'm not an engineer: well gee, if the bike usually does 5000 rpm at 70, and it's not clutch slipping and sprockets didn't change and tires didn't change, it should still be doing 5000 rpm for 70...there's no other explanation for higher revs needed to maintain a speed except speedo failure!

The causeway was as neat as advertised, and riding across it was a thrill.  I was warned about crosswinds, and there were some...but nothing dangerous.  If you've ridden it before, can you explain the right-lane "on-ramp" that merges onto the roadway about half-way across?  Who's merging there...King Neptune?  Anyhow, it was truly weird to be surrounded by water for that long, and we stopped for iced tea at the other side.  Trying to return, the toll booth guy said the winds were too severe to allow bikes or RVs to cross...funny, we'd just come across?  No dice, so we were sent the *long* way around back to McComb.  Roger and Jerry put me in the lead (I had the map) so I tried to pick out some interesting two-lanes for the return...not bad.

Saturday night was the main event...several hundred pounds of crawdads/crayfish/mudbugs were prepared for us, with all the trimmings.  Beforehand, I had a good time visiting with a number of folks.  Andrew Duthie rode the whole way from Nashville two-up with Peg on a Ninja 250, and got to visit with Mike Sachs again for a bit.  Met B2, Greg Roberts, John Harrison, One Thumb, Jack Tollett, Allen Dye, Mike Kneebone, many others, and thanked Shane for hosting the event. 

When the drizzle started, I called it a night and rode back to the motel.  Switching to high-beam, I got a nice flash from the handlebar switch and that smell of ozone from a electrical component that has just "toasted".  Oh fine.  I low-beamed it to the gas station, then topped off the tank for an early start on Sunday for the ride back.

Sunday awoke gloomy, grey and menacing.  The rain started about 45 minutes north of McComb...for about 8 hours of my 11.5 back to STL.  Not exactly frog-choking at any point, but sure enough plenty of it and as much rain as I had ever ridden in.  Much standing water on the roadway, and I soon bagged my plan to return home on 2-lanes...too much to concentrate on while trying to ride.  I'd never felt "weirdness" in the tires (hydroplaning?) while I hit those troughs of standing water, felt odd.  And I had the experience of seeing cages pulled over due to a downpour, and riding by them on my 22-year-old thumper.

Nice to see some other riders on the road also, I was passed mid-morning with a friendly honk and wave mid-downpour; glanced over to see a gold Venture with Illinois plate "IGOFAR", Mike Kneebone on his way back to Illinois. Waved "howdy" also and sloshed on.  It had to be quite a day for the auto traffic on I-55 that morning to see so many bikes with riders in wet-weather gear making good time going home.  "Lookit that fool riding in this weather...why, there's another one...and another one...". 

That much rain pretty much overwhelmed my gear.  My faithful Joe Rocket suit began to leak thru zippers and sleeve fabric, overcome by so much rain on an unfaired bike.  My Olympia gloves soaked thru in 45 minutes, fair performance considering they're not billed as waterproof.  I switched to my Widder electric gloves at the first gas stop...blessed dry warmth for about 30 minutes, then they too succumbed.  My hands remained cold/cool all day, a big problem and one needing research soon. At least the Widder's kept some heat flowing even when wet.  And it occurred to me that without an electric vest, I'd be holed up in a motel to wait this out; so much rain, soaked, 55 degrees; very dangerous without the vest keeping my torso nice and warm.

A gas stop in rural Arkansas was towards the end of one of the brief dry spells.  Four Harley riders were finishing lunch, getting ready to hit the road north, into an obvious squall line.  I visited with them in full gear, Widder, et al and a young-faced rider of the group asked me, "That stuff keep you warm?"  They saddled up to go north in leather jackets, beanie helmets, fingerless gloves.  Too cold/damp for me to travel like that.  Then there was the older gent on a well-worn Wing, pulling a small trailer.  He and the wife were just making their way back from Daytona, and putting on rain suits for the trip ahead.  A veteran.

Mercifully, my final stop in southern MO saw the end of the torrent.  I bought some brown jersey gloves as liners for my usual dry-weather cowhides and had my first fairly warm hands for a long while.  The St. Louis southern 'burbs were upon me in no time, and only upon getting home did I notice how pitiful my SR looked after a day of soaking in road-gritted rainwater.  But it got me home safe...11 hours or so.

Gloves were still wet two days later.

Hope to make Shane's again next year...rain or shine!