Interesting day. For all the stillness and ease of yesterday, today was the opposite.
Meet up with rest of group. That was the plan anyway. They were coming in from Virginia, on a different route. Last night they claimed they would be at the hotel at 6:30am. Seeing as they were 140 miles away, this seemed unlikely. But sure, 6:30am.
Come 6:30 am, get a phone call. “Hey, were running late. Were about 100 miles out, so were going grab some breakfast and be there at 9:00am”. Some quick math make it obvious this is optimistic as well. Needless to say, they show up at 9:50 or so.
We spend half an hour or so exchanging war stories about the trip so far. Gas up, and head out.
We make it about 100 yards down the interstate, and my dad’s bike goes into a tank slapper. Aka, the handle bars begin to oscillate from lock to lock at about 4Hz or so. Needless to say, this makes my dad a bit skittish. He gets the bike stopped okay. Nothing is obviously wrong with it.
So back on the bike.
It seems to be doing better, but it tends to want to wobble a bit at speed, but at a lower magnitude. Enough to make the bike weave back and fourth about 4-6 inches from side to side, but not enough to cause problems. A couple stops to check for different things, but it seems to keep coming back. General consensus is that it’s the steering bearings are going bad, and the triple tree bearing clamp needs to be tightened.
He keeps riding it anyway. We make it to St Louis. Make it down town to check out the arch. Pretty cool, but the area down by the river wasn’t too impressive. Also, the Mississippi though St Louis is actually not that grand.
Leaving St. Louis I see the first part of fall of a Harley while going down the road for the day. Someone loses a side cover and it goes sliding down the road.
At the next stop, after watching my dad’s bike wobble back and fourth for dozens of miles, I convince him to either fix it now, or trailer it. He decides to trailer it. I was glad to here this, as watching his bike wobble was making me very nervous.
We only make it a dozen or so miles before we having more parts fall of a Harley. This time a highway peg off a different bike comes flying off. There is a bit of confusion as we make a few stops while folks go and find it. We’ve noticed it has started to get hot at this point.
But, that was just a hint. For the next section which was Somewhere In Missouri to Somewhere Else In Missouri, it was brutally hot. Apparently it was somewhere in the range of 103F – 106F. It felt a lot like riding into a hair dryer. I was very glad for the full face helmet. When I mistakenly open the visor to “cool off” I was assaulted with scorching hot air. I was wearing my standard gear (nylon armoured t riding pants, and a perf leather jacket, and a full face helmet), and despite the insistence of the rest of the group that I was going to die of the heat, I think I ended up better off. At the temperature, the air isn’t going to cool you down any, so keeping it off you is going to be a good thing. Otherwise it’s just sucking moisture out of you. But it was way hot.
Oh, and there were also lots of cross winds during this section. A bit of foreshadowing for the day.
The roads in Missouri are very boring. Apparently they can not afford amenities like curves. Or lane markers. We road almost 60 miles on interstate that was unmarked. My anarchist part liked this. The part that doesn’t wont to get ran over by a semi truck does not.
But it does make the ride seem like it takes forever. The 103F temperature probably doesn’t help. But at least in the mountains, you have something to concentrate on and a little variety.
We eventually found an exit. These are somewhat few and far between in Missouri. We stopped at a Stuckeys. I didn’t know they even still existed. Sucked down a bottle of Gatorade (After drinking almost two liters of water in the 2 hours or so we were on the road).
Next section we started running into even higher, gusting winds almost immediately. This is a time when having the lightest bike of the group was a disadvantage. We were heading directly into a dark storm cloud, complete with lightning. We did eventually pull over after I pondered the sanity of my fellow riders.
Stop at a truck stop, with the bikes pulled under the gas pump canopy (the most amazingly interesting little social phenomenon happens there during heavy rains, that would make an interesting pop book I’m sure[1]). Big storm, probably 40mpg gusts came though and lots of rain.
The storm started to pass, but there was another storm looming in the distance. Despite my mentioning that the in coming storm looked pretty much the same as the initial one, we almost left. This even after pointing out the radar maps on my phone. “Thats just ground clutter”. Uh huh. In Missouri, where the tallest building is grain elevator.
Eventually a cop car pulled up to where the bikes were parked. The cop got out and interestingly, told us to stay put. There was another huge storm up the road, and traffic on the interstate was stopped as there were down power lines on the interstate. Oh, and apparently 1/4inch hail. We stayed put.
At this point we are still ~40 mile outside of Kansas City. The goal for the day was to get through Kansas City, and headed north.
Last section of the day was interesting. Started off in light drizzle, then 90F+ degree heat, then more rain, then more 90+heat, repeat. By the time we got to Kansas City, there were more visible storm clouds and lighting. We kept going, at increasing high rates of speed. I don’t think we ever went below 75 around Kansas City. Which was starting to suck as the wind was now kicking up with strong gusts again. The leader at this point, is riding a huge BMW touring bike and claims to have not noticed the wind. Uh huh. Those of us on bikes that weight less than half a ton were getting tossed around a lot.
Finally pull off and found a super 8 motel (hey, free wireless…). Grabbed a room. Initial suggestion was for all 8 of us to split two rooms to save money. Uh, no. I have a job so that I don’t have to split hotel rooms with people. ;->
[1] Perhaps call it “Under The Canopy: Conversations with RUB’s, one percenters, squids, and guys with bright green jackets on BMW’s”
[view at adrianlikins.com ]
