Arkansas trip day 8 - West Plains to Bowling Green, via St. Louis

Today I deviated substantially from the plan.  After watching the weather, I went out to check the bike.  It had oil, tire pressure was OK.  Then I noticed a little groove on the rear tire.  I thought maybe after riding through some mud I got something caught in the tread.  Then I looked more carefully, and it looked like the belt.

Strangely I had been worried about the front tire before leaving, and decided I would probably replace it after I got back.  The rear tire was newer - the front had 13,000 miles, and the rear had 7000.  The rear tire was also hard to read the tread, because the center of it had no tread.

I decided it wasn't safe to ride any more than necessary on this tire.  Unfortunately, this bike has an unusual rear wheel, and most motorcycle dealers don't stock tires for it.  I called Charlie, my BMW mechanic, and he agreed I should replace the tire, and thought there was a place in St. Louis.  I looked it up, and it was Gateway Motorcycles.  So I decided I should replace it, and had to travel the 180 miles to St. Louis on it.  I talked with Don about how this affected the route, and wondered whether I should go via the fun twisty route through the Mark Twain NF, (shorter) or along the more boring US & interstate highways.  I decided on the bigger roads, figuring if the tire blew while I was on the highway I had a decent chance to keep control enough to pull over, but  if it blew while I was leaned over in a tight turn it could cause more damage.

So I finally got there - Don had warned me to be careful in St. Louis, as it's one of the more dangerous cities in the US - surpassing Detroit for most murders.

Here's the tire after I got to the dealer.

Frightning how quickly it got bad when two days before I was taking pictures to show off my chicken strips and there wasn't any overt sign of wear.

Spent a fair bit of time debating over what to get for a new tire.  The front is a Metzler 880 with a little bit of treat left.  The rear was a Metzler z6.  Because of the oddball rear tire, the options were:

880 on the rear.
Z6's on front and rear (the flat middle tread of the Z6 rear tire is counting on the front tire to split the water.
Michelin pilot road II's.  (Charlie recommended these before).

The 880's will last the longest, especially with the extra weight of touring and riding 2 up.  The Z6's and Pilot Roads will give the best traction, and the pilot road has a harder rubber down the middle, which is supposed to give a little longer life in that area of the tire.  I decided to go with the pilot road II's, and see what the life is.  In the future, realizing the life of a tire on this bike is more typically 6-8 k miles, I need to take that into account before I go on the road.  Changing tires on the road when you're not planning for it is a little stressful.

I got lulled into a false sense of tire security by my Virago 750 - I get 12,000 miles out of the Avon Venom X's I put on that bike.  But, the bike is a lot lighter than the BMW, and I seldom loaded it much.

Okay, here's some photos of Gateway BMW Motorcycles in St Louis

Chuck, the service manager, who did a quick reinforcement of my sagging antenna:

Chuck and the owner, Hans.  The owner's name is Hans, how appropriate for BMW!  Also, St. Louis has historically had lots of German Immigrants.

The support staff:

That's better:

So now I'm in Bowling Green MO, which is actually part way down the road for the day 9 ride.  I have the choice between an easy day today, or riding a little further and having a shorter day tomorrow.  Diane is going to give me a massage when I get home, so that's incentive for me to try and get home earlier on Sunday, so maybe that's the deciding factor.

Side benefit of going to St. Louis - they have those funky hoods on the gas nozzles, so the fuel vapor doesn't leak.  They've had them for years in California, but this is the first time I've ever had to fuel a bike with one.  Took a couple of tries for me to figure out that you can use your hand to compress the hood, and that will allow you to fill the bike's tank up to the top.  Then the little engineer brain gets going, and it would be easy to make something to allow one to use it on the bike more easily.  Then I figure, well, I'm sure someone else has already done this.

One of the benefits of a long trip alone like this is it gives me a chance to look over what I really want from life, what makes me happy, what stresses me out, figuring my obligations to family, friends, work, and maybe how to balance it all.  I definitely need alone time, but I think about a lot of stuff and like to communicate that. So the blogging deal is good, at least for me.  Hopefully some folks are enjoying this blog, too.

Day 9 - I'm in Clarksville MO, and I am at "Cool Beans" coffee shop, indulging my coffee and chocolate habits while taking advantage of WiFi to finish yesterday's blog.  So, if there are pictures in this post, then it worked.

TTFN

Virago Becky

Arkansas trip day 7 - North to Missouri

Today I was a little worried about weather, and I made it a point to pack last night, so, filled w/ Super 8 waffles, I was on the road before 8 AM.  It didn't take long for me to get out of town and back into the Ozark winding roads.  Yesterday, when I started out, there were more pine trees.  Today, there were more oaks, and they were in the middle of brown grass fields.  With the rounded hills, it reminded me a lot of California.

This time I tried to take a few more pictures to give a feel of the countryside.

I took one of the side routes Don had listed as an alternate on the map:  AR 16.  It looked like it was going to follow the ridge line of the hills, and that's one of my favorite things to do.

The chipped stone they put on the roads looks nice, and gives a pretty good riding surface.  And, if I missed that curve, I'd just slide into those nice cushy rolls of hay.

Now, if you look carefully at the picture above (click on it to open larger in another window) you will see that the sign with the arrow on it has buckling occurring between the reflective sheeting and the aluminum.  This must not be 3M reflective sheeting, because the engineer who designed the process to put the adhesive on the sheeting did a way better job than that.  How do I know, you ask? ...........

Doesn't that look like a car with two front ends?   Maybe a Corvair? A classic, but a fixer-upper.

There are rock cliffs above many of the roads.  And the country is so hilly that the roads do the roller coaster thing, or else are occasionally blasted through the rock.

Here's a couple of houses that make a little town at a corner in the road.

Ho hum, another road winding through the hills and cliffs :)

Don - you're sending me to Mountain Home - a stronghold of the KKK!  I even though I needed to pee, no stopping there, no way.

Crossing the Buffalo River

Okay - heading to the town of Peel - that's where the ferry takes me to the Missouri side of the lake.  This lake...

Okay, now I'll try and upload a video of the ferry arriving at the dock.  Note the rain, yes, after using luck and skill, and Don's weather reports, I finally had a significant rain event.  Rained all afternoon - which "dampened" my enthusiasm for taking pictures.

I have a video of the trip as well, but it's taking a long time to upload.  I'll keep checking until midnight, and then go to bed.  (note, didn't make it - try my youtube account

On the way across the lake, the rain got worse.  I reached the other side, and rode to the first place of shelter:  Tony's Pizza.  I stopped, and sure enough, there were two Russian motorcyclists who had stopped there to wait out the rain as well.  They were headed the other way, and left shortly after I got there.  There was a grandfather there with his grandson who wanted to give me advice on which way to go.

Anyway, on the road again, light rain, occasionally stronger, and then I stop at Dawt Grist Mill.  Which is now a restaurant, and they no longer have the mill set up, just the water wheel (not near the water) and some of the parts.  I took video of the sluice and dams, so you can at least get a feel for how the water is brought to the wheel.  I'll put that on youtube eventually.

So I pull into the Super 8 in West Plains, MO, and it turns out the guy behind the desk (Chris) just finished motorcycle mechanic school, and was really interested in the trip, the bike, etc.  We probably gabbed for an hour.  He suggested some roads for my trip north tomorrow, and sure enough, they are exactly the same roads that Don has on the map.  He got me a room on the first floor.  Anyway, the Super 8 in West Plains MO is definitely motorcycle friendly.

Okay, time for breakfast.

My Bke #4, Yamaha Venture Royale

I was happy with my dinner mint green Virago xv750. I had put a lot of miles on it, and it was my first "big bike", and I identified with it. But I was always looking at bikes, and one day when I was getting parts at the local Yamaha dealer, strolling through the used bikes, and I saw a pretty, black and white, low mileage, Virago xv1100. Well, I was thinking, my bike had 33,000 miles, this one had 8,000 miles, it was a little more powerful, maybe I should think about upgrading.

But next to the Virago 1100 was a maroon, 1988 Yamaha Venture Royale. It looked in great shape, had only 30,000 miles (low for a touring bike). This is the bike that our road captain and our tailrider ride. I'm not sure if it was wanting to be one of the crowd, or wanting a bike that I could ride hundreds of miles in comfort, but it really appealed to me. I could trade the old 535 for it, and it was so old that I wouldn't be paying too much for it.

So I decided to call Don the Road Captain and have him take a look at it. He felt it was in pretty good shape, but maybe had more than the 30,000 miles indicated due to wear on the footpegs. He also thought it was overpriced, and bargained with the salesman for me. Anyway, I traded in the xv535, and I was the owner of a 1988 Venture Royale. Riding it home was an adventure, as I'd never been on anything nearly that big before. It's a full dress tourer - Yamaha's answer to the Gold Wing, with a lot of storage space. The 1300 cc motor was a adapted from the V-max, and as a result this bike had serious acceleration.

It turned out the bike needed some work. A strange whine on deceleration ended up being an indication he rear end was shot - I had the dealer's shop fix it, but I had to find the part and pay for that - a serious expense. I had Al, our club mechanic, put progressive shocks in the front. After that, the bike was rideable. I enjoyed it for half a season, with amazing acceleration, wind fully blocked, and surprisingly good performance in turns, once the new shocks were installed. The biggest problem with it is it was really heavy, and really top heavy. I dropped in the parking lot, in the driveway, turning on a narrow road on a steep hill. It was just a monster, and once it started to go it was going to go.

Eventually I sold it to George, our 70+ year old tailrider, who loved it. I replaced it with a 2000 BMW R1100RTP, a former california highway patrol bike with 80,000 miles on it.