Boxer Shorts, July, 2004 - 1 of 4
Out and Back
by Kit Wise
Last month I concluded my column with the
thought, "My choice is to ride a little
farther before the trip is over." Well,
I am getting ready to find out what that
really means; in less than two weeks I will
be setting off on what should turn out to
be a nearly 8,000 mile trip for the BMW MOA
rally in Spokane.
When I joined the Yankee Beemers 5 years ago, long distance touring on a motorcycle was the last thing on my mind. I was looking for folks with whom to share my interest in BMWs. I had no ambitions for traveling any distance on a motorcycle. In fact, I had little ambition for traveling much at all. I wasn't even accustomed to taking vacations of any significance. If I took time off from work, it was usually for bicycle racing - fun, but hardly a vacation.
The more time I spent with the YBs, the more I began to realize that you could do other things on a motorcycle than ride for an ice cream on a summer evening. In July 2001 the first actual two-week vacation of my adult career and my first true motorcycle tour turned out to be a trip to the Pacific Northwest for the MOA rally in Redmond, Oregon. Pete Munro arranged for a truck that took 16 bikes to San Rafael, California. I had the best two weeks of my life.
Since then I have done two more trips to MOA rallies in Trenton, Ontario and Charleston, West Virginia. They were good trips, but with the duration of only a long weekend, perhaps don't qualify as long distance touring. In the summer of 2002 I spent two weeks touring in the Alps. You have read about that trip here in the Shorts. And last fall, Moose Laramee, Gordon Bowersock and I took a strong week to ride in Italy.
But riding across the country and back, I think, really will qualify as a long distance trip. When I began to plan this trip last year I didn't intend to ride both ways. I knew from my trip out West in 2001 that riding in the mountains often brings one onto gravel roads. What a good excuse to buy a GS for this summer's trip! I thought I would use the Internet to find a used GS on the west coast, with a little help from the YB-West contingent of Swider and Budimlya. I would fly out, pick up the bike, go to Spokane, ride in the mountains and then ride home - a good 3-week trip.
I had this idea in place all winter and well into the spring, when a friend whom I had told of my plan suggested that I buy a bike locally, and he would ride it out to Seattle for me to pick up. This looked like such a great idea that I went right off and bought The Behemasauris, Steve Terrien's 2004 R1150GS.
Of course, within two weeks of my buying the bike, my friend announced that he was no longer able to deliver it for me. So here I was, with the bike and me on the east coast. I had the choice of shipping the bike out or riding. Somehow the idea of shipping the bike had little appeal. The last time I had a bike shipped, it arrived 10 days late. In that case I didn't actually need the bike, so the late delivery only caused delay of gratification. But a late delivery this time could ruin the trip.
So now I am riding both ways.
I pause in my narrative to answer the question that you might have - why am I telling you all this? There are two reasons. The first is simply that I am so damn excited about the prospect of the trip that I pretty much can't think, let alone write, about anything else. The second is that by sharing my plan with you now I can provide you with the background to understand how this all came about (and out) when I report to you here in a month or two.
I will ride west by myself if I can't find anyone to go with me on my schedule. I know I will have several YBs to ride with after I get to Spokane, and I will meet Moose in Bismark, North Dakota for the ride home. But, as I write this, a serendipitous plan, made wholly out of YB friendships, is afoot. A certain YB rider, who has ridden cross-country several times and whose trans-continental expertise could surely benefit me, has agreed to ride out with another, much newer (and younger) member, who, as I understand it, doesn't have a whole lot of experience riding at all. They can manage quite well by themselves, but if I could join them, they would enjoy a certain extra measure of security that I dare not be explicit about for fear of appearing sexist. (I just gave this all away, didn't I?)
So now I am counting the days, fiddling with the bike and doing wholly unnecessary trial packing and loading. About every other day I find some other essential to order on the Internet. I still haven't got the airflow over the windshield on the GS to be anywhere near as smooth as it is on my R1100S. If the gadget I have ordered to fix the windshield doesn't get here in time and work, I might even abandon the GS and ride the S. The buffeting is that bad.
If I could have looked into the future five years ago and seen myself planning and doing all this, I would have been amazed. As I look back five years and beyond, I regret that I didn't discover motorcycle touring a long time ago.
How did I get to this point, anyway?
I joined the Yankee Beemers.
Kit Wise
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