A bunch of bikers get together, and somehow the conversation always gets around to death and tragedy, and probably three or four guys trying to out-do each other with crash stories. "Yup, had to lay her down at 80; slid right under that truck."
Golly gosh, if I were some innocent bystander eavesdropping, I'd never go near a motorcycle. Too many of us like to exaggerate our woes, try to impress others with the dangerous lives we live. Sort of the opposite of when I was 16 and working hard to convince my mother that motor cycles were not dangerous.
I consider riding a bike to be a lot safer than having a cheeseburger and a beer in front of the television set. I ride every day, as I haven't owned a car for over 30 years, although Sue lets me use her pickup. I also presume that every car and truck driver on the road with me has a cup of coffee in one hand, a cell phone in the other, is steering with his knees, and is legally blind.
Last spring, I was on the East Coast, heading west, on a Softail with bags and a duffel bungeed to the back seat, and at a gas station came the typical "Then Came Bronson" question, "Where you headed?"
"California," I said. "All Alone?" "Yup." "That's quite a trip. Aren't you a bit, well, nervous? Being all alone and all." "Nope." And he got into his Taurus and drove away.
What is there to be worried about? I ride sensibly, and when I'm tired, I stop. If a comet comes out of the sky and clobbers me, hey, that's fate. If I get involved in an accident because I was not paying attention, that's stupidity. Far as I know, there are no stray landmines or IEDs along the American highway system-or highwaymen yelling at me, "Stand and deliver!"
Not to say that bad things can't happen. Like breakdowns. But in this day and age, such events are usually attributed to bad luck. Or bad mechanics. A properly maintained Harley is a damned dependable machine, and as long as the oil is up to the mark and the battery is in good condition, I have no qualms about going from ocean to ocean.
Not to say there have not been incidents over the years. I was out in Kansas in the days when Harley base gaskets were changing over from asbestos to other products. For a while the replacement versions weren't noted for reliability. It was dusk; I stopped to fill up so I would have a full tank in the morning and noted oil around the base of the rear cylinder. After wrapping a dirty T-shirt around the problem area, I went to find a motel. I knew the situation was not critical, just messy, but it was certainly going to take the pleasure out of the next 1,500 miles.
In the morning I was on the road for an hour or so and got to Dodge City. Goshdarnit, I would run out of T-shirts long before I would get home. There was a Harley shop in town, and it was just opening up. I know that yanking a cylinder is not a quick job on an Evo, but the head wrench took a look, heard my story, flipped me the keys to his car, and said, "Go have a look around town;
the job will be done by four o'clock." And it was. And the rest of the trip was great.
I've heard of guys busting con rods, holing pistons, breaking crankshafts. But that shouldn't happen unless somebody's been doing foolish things to the motor. If you want 120 horsepower out of your Harley Twin Cam, trade in the Dyna on a V-Rod. Most of Harley's mechanical problems are man-made.
Like the time I was riding an FLH and forded a Virginia stream along an old, disused dirt road near the Blue Ridge Parkway. I whacked a rock in the process, but everything looked fine when I gave the underside a cursory inspection. I didn't think too much about it, until some 800 miles later, between Memphis and Little Rock-out in the middle of the rice paddies and late in the afternoon-I stop for gas. And the bike won't start. Things could have been worse, I suppose, with half a dozen Hueys and gunfire, but here all I had to do was call Little Rock Harley. They sent out a flatbed, and the shop stayed open just to accommodate me. At that time, the rectifier sitting in front of the engine had a bunch of wires running back underneath, and it turned out I had pinched one in my rough-roading, causing a short that had burnt out the alternator.
The shop had me going by the next afternoon. (Many thanks again to you guys!) And, I continued on my way back to California.
The point being that taking a trip on a Harley, whether it is to grandmother's house or across the country, is just a matter of getting those wheels to roll.
Last spring I had to go do some things at this big touring rally at Lake George, New York, and I could not afford the time to ride there. I called Harley and asked if I could borrow a bike out of the York plant. Sure. Okay if I ride it back to California? Sure. So I picked up a Softail Deluxe and put 5,000 miles on the odometer in the next 10 days. All I had to do was put gas in the tank. I checked the oil every 1,000 miles, but none was needed.
I also checked the tire pressures every day. The Deluxe was running spoke wheels, which means tube-type tires, and my only niggling fear was running over a roofing nail and getting a flat. A roadside fix requiring the removal of the Harley's rear wheel is not within my competence. For me, a minor horror would be suffering abrupt rear tire deflation somewhere in the wide-open spaces around 6 p.m. on a Saturday evening, with the nearest dealer a half-day away.
Tubeless tires, of course, are a different matter. I still check the tire pressures religiously, but if the worst happens, I carry a plug kit and a little electric pump I connect to the battery. We all should have that simple skill. If you are a right-living motorcyclist, you may never suffer a flat in your life, but just think how grateful some doofus will be when you fix his tire.
Horror stories? I know a lot of them, true ones. Like a logging truck losing its load as riders are going by. Or an earthquake taking out a section of elevated freeway in the middle of night as a motorcyclist approaches at 70 mph. Those are what I call bad luck-seriously bad luck-incidents, and I do not lie awake at night fretting about such things.
Most of what pass for horror stories could easily have been avoided if the rider had been a little, or a lot, more attentive.
|
