Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Scenes from a motorcycle trip.

Lexington has long had an event known as "The Thursday Night Ride".

It was on one of those rides that the above mentioned event took place.

Back in the late 70's, early 80's it was a group of about 30 or 40 of us guys who rode down to Charlie's Steak House on the river. We'd just drink beer, eat burgers, and hang out in the parking lot back then. It's turned into something a bit more active over the course of a few decades.

Charley's Steak House has been replaced by a Bananas restaurant/bar now and several hundred young people typically turn out for the event every Thursday night during the spring and summer.

Here's a fairly current video of it. You'll notice the road is the one mentioned that's on a bluff above the Kentucky River. There's a guardrail along it now, but back then it was only bordered by a series of wooden posts.

I'll 'fess up, I didn't even start riding motorcycles until I was 27, and never have done a wheelie on purpose, though I've been told I've lifted the front wheel on a number of occasions, including on the KLR, always when I was leaned forward accelerating hard.

What I cant figure is, how on earth do you learn how to do stunts without dropping a whole bunch of bikes in the process?

Must be all these guys started out as kids on dirt bikes.

Birdwatcher

you do pretty good for starting at 27 Bird-man. i started at 14, against the wishes of a **very** disapproving father. i earned the money for the bike working in the stockyards as much as i could over hot, hot summers. that was when i wasn't working helping Dad as a veterinary assistant, or building fence and gates at the ranch. summers were a busy time, and usually it didn't even think about getting cool until we were in school for some time...

i learned to ride on an aermacchi (ck. spelling, prolly wrong) Indian 70cc bike. piece of crap motorcycle. prolly the best motorcycle i've owned and shoulda never sold was a kawasaki klr 250, a way scaled down version of the bike Birdy is riding. very capable off-roader, street legal, and capable of sustained 65 mph stuff, although it's at the top of it's game. liquid cooled motor, and while it was underpowered on the freeway, was ideal for tooling around town.

-tom

Ya, threw a leg over when I was 27, and pretty much didn't get off until I was about 40

Anyhoo...

First light, all was well, the bikes still there.

A perusal of the Weather Channel however revealed momentous news....

Last I had heard, two days prior when we were in the motel in Virginia, a tropical depression had passed over the Yucatan Peninsula and into the western gulf. Computer models at that time had it making landfall on Thursday anywhere from Veracruz to Louisiana.

Anyone who pays attention to these things (like just about everyone who lives on the Gulf Coast) knows that computer models more than a day or two out are notoriously fickle. Not innacurate in the literal sense, its just that these weather systems are so unpredictable based on even the best data.

Folks that ain't familiar, like my brother for example, assume the worst of it is the wind. The wind does count for something, but again as anyone famliar knows it ain't so much the wind as it is the rain associated with these things.

And again, even the rainfall varies. We have had hurricanes make landfall just 200 miles away and seen nary a drop in San Antonio, so localized around the eye was the rain. Other times it is like what I saw on the TV that morning.

The eye was still way down off of Mexico, the storm barely a hurricane, but much of the Gulf was covered by rain bands, including a large area of rainfall heading towards New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Then too, the estimated time of landfall had been moved up, Wednesday afternoon in Northern Mexico, putting the whole South-Central Texas coast and San Antonio on the rain side of the storm.

How much rain would fall? No way of knowing. If the eye stalled out after landfall possibly a whole bunch, like in many inches. This was Tuesday morning, landfall due in 30 hours, thunderstorms and heavy rains already forecast for all along the Gulf Coast that day, and we were still more than 900 miles away from home, on motorcycles yet.

We were sort of in a hurry before, now we were in a horse race.

Montgomery Alabama, down the superslab to Mobile, and along the Gulf Coast was out the window, now we were going to head directly west from Mongomery across Alabama and Mississippi, staying away from the coast.

If we could make 600 - 700 miles that day without stopping we would be somewhere in Texas, and maybe only four hours from home Wednesday morning. Only problem was there isn't an Interstate heading west out of Montgomery so we would surely lose time on that stretch. Then too a front was moving down into Lousiana, and at some point we would have to ride along it.

Here's a look at our revised route plan that morning (never mind the "1" and "2", that was the only way I could generate this image on randmcnally.com ) .

We were still in Georgia on I 85, and were looking to pick up I 20 eastbound at Meridian MS after crossing Alabama.



Probably we would cut off at Tyler and go through Waco, but note; while not as bad as West Virginia... there ARE no short cuts in East Texas, anytime off of the interstate, you're gonna lose time.

Rain somewhere along our route that day was a virtual certainty. As described earlier in this thread, lubing an "o" ring chain is a pain and of dubious effectiveness anyhow since you are only lubing the outside of the chain. Thus far the chain was still pretty greasy with the original factory lube, but on account of the rain prospects lubing it up further seemed like a good idea.

On bikes lacking a centerstand there is only one way to do it. You spray the bottom part of the chain with some sort of backdrop to prevent yourself from lubing the back tire too (NOT a good idea ), I use a newspaper or anything handy. You lube it stretch by stretch, rolling the bike each time to expose the next length of chain.

So once again I was out at first light, and while lubing the chain I noticed the master link retaining clip had flown off somewhere along the route.

I have noticed in this dialogue that I have no pictures of crises... no photos of a dropped bike, no photos of the bike with the seat taken off, and now no photo of the missing clip. Prob'ly indicative of my state of mind at those moments.

But any how, what I was missing is illustrated in this photo lifted from the 'net....



The master link joins the ends of the chain, the sideplate being pressed on and then secured with the clip.

Most likely the clip had flown off up in the mountains. Due to the range of suspension travel, dirt bikes are set up with the chain fairly loose, and the repeated transition from trailing throttle to getting on the gas while negotiating all those curves must have whipped the chain taught repeatedly.

Naturally, because I needed it, I didn't have a spare clip on hand.

Not likely the side plate of the master link would come off (I have since been told horror stories ), but I planned to stop in at the first dealership I saw.

Birdwatcher

A rich scent of curry cooking in the motel lobby when we checked out�� and a Cop, who was needing security camera footage, from what I gathered, of a group of bikers who had been perpetrating some crime or other at motels along the Interstate.

That we did not stop for breakfast right away is indicative of our haste, instead we made the Alabama state line first, and then stopped at that old Interstate standby�. a Cracker Barrel restaurant; elaborate put-on �country� shtick to be sure, but good, predictable food, and good coffee. My brother, being from New York and all, remarked upon the Alabama drawl of the waitress. I pointed out that everyone talked that way around there, and further opined that the prettiest female Southern drawls can be found in women from Tennessee (YMMV).

After �Uncle Herschel�s Sampler� or whatever, we hit the road again. You might have noticed I have lots of pictures of my bike, after all we tend to take photos of the things we love, and I have always been totally smitten with whatever bike I was owning at the time. Except for a certain BMW that is, that one ended with a bitter, disappointed break-up, after I had such high expectations going in. Ain�t that the way life is? You find something who you think will stay with you the rest of your life but she proves to be expensive, tempermental and unreliable.

Anyhow, here�s the one that has never let me down and which has forgiven me all my neglect, as seen that morning in the Cracker Barrel parking lot�



Rested, fed, caffeined, we were through Montgomery in no time, and then turned east onto Highway 80, towards Selma. Just the highway we needed�divided, two lanes in each direction, no traffic. Open farmland and pastures, not at all the endless longleaf pine forests I was expecting.

I weren�t expecting the history either. Took me a bit to realize it but we were riding along the Selma � Montgomery Highway, the scene of that epochal civil rights march in the 60�s�.

http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/civilrights/al4.htm

I wish I would have read up on it first, as I surely would have stopped to photograph the Edmund Pettus bridge. As it was, by Selma the weather was clearly closing in, the whole sky across the horizon to our left piled high with looming cumulonimbus.

In downtown Selma we needed to take a left and I got in the left lane behind some traffic. My brother, in front, had missed the sign and was pulled up at the light in the right hand lane, three lanes over. I beeped the feeble KLR horn and called his name. No luck, he was wearing earplugs. The elderly Black gentleman in the old pickup to my right saw my dilemma, beeped his horn and called out my brother�s name too. In case that weren�t enough, a pedestrian walking by also paused to get his attention.

See? Ya never can tell WHAT to expect when you go somewhere new. My impression was just then that Jesus would NOT have advised folks to �shake the dust from their sandals� and leave this town.

We met up again at this gas station by the intersection, and got gas there since we were stopped anyhow. Note the sign by the front entrance, shades of Chris Rock�s classic �How not to get beat-up by the police� video�



By now there was a thunderstorm practically marching up the highway from the south, clearly with our name written on it, we could feel its winds and smell the rain. With moments to spare we mounted up and skipped town, quirting our horses in the direction of the Mississippi state line.

Birdwatcher

I wanna buy a 400 Suzuki Burgman to tour on,..but my wife thinks it'd make me look like a dork.

I would think that, if you married a child bride like I did, anything you can do in later years to promote the illusion that you ain't actually up in the mandatory prostate exam age bracket yet is probably a good thing.

I think Honda still makes a 450 "Rebel".....

That's not how her mind works. She just looks at something and either "dork" or "non dork" registers.

Age has no bearing on her perception of dorkism.

But I got a plan,...I'm gonna get the Burgman and ride it while wearin' one'nem bandanas with skulls and crossbones all over it tied around my head.

I was down to the Harley dealership yesterday and they had quite a selection available,..starting out at under $85 each.

The sound of someone on a 400 Bermann blowing by a Kentucky State Trooper on a freeway through town.... throttle pegged....

"eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

(speedo needle approaching "60"... )

How ya gonna do wheelies on Thursday nights on that thing?

lol,...actually, they top out at about 100 and cruise fairly comfortably at interstate speeds.

I'm probably gonna ride one in shortly and just let the wife deal with the fact that I've reached the age where I care not about her dork perceptions.

Well, I have to 'fess up and admit that although I threw a leg over a number of dirtbikes and scooters when I was 14-15, I didn't climb on a cycle again until last spring. I'm having a helluva good time now that I'm back on. It's gonna take me a while to make up for 40 years of not riding, but I'm doing my damnedest. Put 1200 miles on in 2.5 days a couple weekends ago.

But I have to say I'm enjoying this travelogue even more than your winter/blizzard travelogue from a couple years back, and looking forward to the next installment!

No shifter, how are ya gonna hustle down a backroad without a shifter?

This is gonna be just like what happened to Henry Winkler after he quit being "The Fonz."

That'd be the curmudgeon stage of male development...

Wheres the motor? Or the pedals? Needs one or deother..

I've had two wives like that.... , but never a motorcycle... (I 1st straddled a motorcycle and grabbed the grips when I was 18 yrs old... Bike was a Norton Atlas, 750...

You don't think about stuff like that on a Burgman. You just twist and go.

Automatic transmission, big, fat seat,..running boards. It's basically a comfortable chair on two wheels that you sit on and watch the scenery go by.

Birdwatcher,

This is a fantastic thread. Thank you for posting it. I'm certainly glad you're enjoying the trip too.

Your mention of the Atlas put things over the top for me here. I'm a sexagenarian heart attack survivor whose bike days are long behind me. I started with a '66 Suzuki X6 Hustler but quickly moved to a snortin' Norton. Over the decades I had 8 of them, ranging from a stock 750 Commando to an 850 with a California Sidecar to a '70 Dunstall Road Racer. None had a klunky electric start thankfully.



Took many a road trip with the. Some from my then home base in Onondaga County, NY. One of the more memorable was into Canada and north for hundreds and hundreds of miles. Most fantastic Northern Lights and starry skies I ever saw. Always carried a stash of spares to ensure I didn't get stranded. Your saga here brought back fond memories. Again my thanks!

Birdwatcher is the OP

dork is not the word or phrase my wife used when I showed up on a 1100 V star harley clone.
My dog house has HD tv........hope yours does.
Rick
Bike loves me though......So does the Dog.