| Author | Message | ||
     Marinus |
First, thanks for the picture, Sekalilgai. Before the Oct. 15th announcement, I owned an '08 Uly; it was the first "new" motorcycle I'd bought in 21 years. I wasn't really in the market for a second bike. But, with production ending and the rebates on 1125s, it was now or never to get a new one. Another thing afoot was the mass ride to the Buell plant. That's a reasonable trip for the hundreds of Buell'ers that live in the Midwest; but us Left Coasters were grimacing at the 2000 miles and multiple mountain ranges that lay between us and East Troy, Wisconsin. As it turned out, Hal's Harley-Davidson in New Berlin still had an '09 1125R... and I figured that riding only one way would be half as hard as riding both ways; and my wife said, "Go get it", so I put a deposit on it and flew out on a red-eye Sunday night. Monday, Oct. 26th Next morning, Ryan the salesman was waiting outside baggage claim, and we made it to Hal's by nine. Buell riders from the surrounding states, plus some from Georgia, and at least one from Alaska were congregating at Hal's for the last ride. The coffee pot's on overdrive. The 1125R has custom pearl yellow paint, and it's very pretty. I'd brought my Uly footpegs and the "touring" seat that American Sport Bike got to me in time. I get the lower pegs and tailbag on just as the last group of riders set out. It's raining lightly in Wisconsin, very Portland-ish weather. I have exactly 100 ft. of experience riding the R before we leave Hal's. It's well behaved at low speeds, which is a bit of a surprise. My last pure sports bike, one of the original GSXRs, was a handful in a parking lot, but the Buell's no problem. In East Troy, Buell's plant is smaller than I imagined. Over the years, they've turned out more than 135,000 motorcycles, but it doesn't look like a factory to me; it looks like a high-tech machine shop. The employees filter out as the end of their day nears, and every one I meet is an enthusiast. I'm too choked up to go inside. I have empathy for the workers, of course, but they're exceptional and won't be unemployed long. No, I'm emotional because of the loss of this monument to American manufacturing and ingenuity. It's been a long run for that iconoclastic brand, its designs driven by function, its engineers' pens resistant to fashion but appreciative of elegance. I use the excuse of the long road ahead to leave early. It was lightly raining when I rode away from the plant. Then it rained harder & harder for three hours. Everything was wet. When the rain finally stopped my gloves were leaden. Heading southwest, I reach Savanna, IL, on the road less traveled. I'm looking for a bite to eat when I pass the Iron Horse Social Club on main street. It was not quite dark. As I entered, the proprietors were sitting at a table, engrossed in bookkeeping, and one of them called out, "We're closed, but you're welcome to use the restroom and look around." The Club is full of vintage and antique racing bikes, pre-flathead stuff. The hillclimbers are a special treat. But I still need food, so I head over the Miss. River and down to Clinton, home of perfectly suitable american chinese food and the biggest ••••••• grain elevator complex I've ever seen... by a factor of four. Stopped for the night in good old Coralville, Iowa. The motel desk clerk had been in a fight over the weekend, judging from the contusions on his face. Maybe he's not a Buckeyes fan? 280 miles on Monday. Tuesday, Oct. 27th -- Road Choices I-80 was the central thread of my route home, but not my preferred road. I enjoy riding the state and lesser Federal highways, though travel on them is necessarily slowed by speed limits and municipal areas. There's more room on a little road... more room between me and other vehicles. But as darkness falls, if there are still miles to cover, I retreat to the freeway. Deer and oncoming DUIs are the two main reasons. 570 miles on Tuesday, with a stop in Omaha for the first service. Thanks to Fresnobueull for helping me see sense about changing the oil on the road. Wednesday, Oct. 28th In North Platte, NE a fitful night's sleep gave way to a grey moist morning. Two hundred miles to the west, Wyoming was submerging in a snow storm, and Interstate 80 was closed to Cheyenne. The weather maps showed a solid line of winter weather stretching from Montana to New Mexico. Unwilling to go south to El Paso and Interstate 10, I wouldn't be riding west for a while. Riding west wasn't an option. So, other possibilities: Park the bike at relatives' in Kansas/Eastern Colorado and fly home? Hunker down in Nebraska and wait for it to pass? Hitch a ride with some passing truck/trailer? Rent a truck and haul the machine west? I dithered a bit, during which time I-80 to Cheyenne opened, then rented a moderate-sized U-Haul truck and tied the Buell down in back.  Large cup of coffee, check. Emergency blankey, check. Food and water and a full tank of gas, check. I drove out of town into a pallid landscape, and flakes were coming down within an hour. Once inside Wyoming, the wind picked up, traffic died away, and only the semi trucks were driving above 40... those that weren't in the ditches.  Made it to Cheyenne, but almost got stuck on the offramp; judicious throttle control let the U-Haul crawl up a hill, slow-spinning the dualies, and we ricocheted into a gas station parking lot. The WY DOT website said I'd be there a while: all roads closed out of town. Time to hole up; I scoped out the approach on foot, then, with a running start, got the truck to a hotel parking lot and joined the other stuck travelers. Thursday, Oct. 29 Daylight reached around the edges of the double curtains at the Holiday Inn, and I drew them back hoping for a clear day. It was rather the opposite. Gale winds from the north stirred a soup of now-falling snow and that which had fallen in Casper last night. Haphazardly parked trucks and cars and trailers filled the parking lot, abandoned where they'd stopped moving. Drifted snow streamlined every projection above the ground. All roads closed, into and out of town. But! The breakfast buffet was open, and the wait staff only looked mildly puzzled when I asked for some granola. The weather forecast was not encouraging. I decided to hedge my bets and buy tire chains for the truck. A local helpful CarQuest had some, and dropped them off at the hotel desk. I put on my riding suit and carried them out to the parking lot for fitment; it only took three episodes of hand-warming and coffee-drinking to get them lashed up. I triumphantly motored around the parking lot with my steel galoshes. When the freeway opened, I'd be ready. But afternoon came and went with no change in the weather or the forecast, and only two changes in the road closure report: 1. Conditions around Cheyenne and Laramie had stranded so many that hotels and parking lots were full -- so WY DOT closed the freeways even further out to avoid gridlock. 2. I-25 was open southbound to Denver. That wouldn't help me; even if I could make it to I-70, that Interstate goes across a 10,000 foot pass and then runs in a nasty tight canyon... and Golden, CO, had'd 40" of snow at that point. The Winter Storm Warning ended at 6 p.m., but no one remembered to tell the wind, and it continued as before. Friday, October 30th Hilltop Holiday Inn, Cheyenne, Wyoming Overnight the snow has stopped falling, but it's hard to tell at first 'cause the wind's still howling out of the north. The parking lot is almost unchanged -- but the semi that'd hung up on the curb trying to get in has been pulled out, and so the entryway is clear. The trucks lined up in the back are still three deep, still idling, visible proof that the roads aren't open yet. The thaw, if one is coming, hasn't reached southern Wyoming. A quick visit to the wydot site confirms my suspicion. The bottom right of the map is a spiderweb of red lines marking "road closed". The truck backup's spread far beyond Laramie -- the freeway eastbound is closed at Rawlins (by the end of the day, it would be closed at Rock Springs, roughly 200 miles west of Cheyenne). I check out in a mood of grim desperation. Though unpromising, there is a road that's at least open to Laramie: US-287 from Fort Collins, Colorado. To catch 287, I'll have to go down I-25, still possible southbound. Crunch, crunch, crunch... the chains propel the U-Haul out of the lot and over surface streets to the freeway. Semis are stacked everywhere, clogging the parking lots, on the shoulders crowding the roads, stuck in the ice where they've been for 36 hours or more. The wind is gusty, here, away from the buildings nearer the center of the city. After checking the tie-downs and gulping a McMuffin, I set out towards Fort Collins at a conservative pace -- 32 mph or less. Six miles up the highway, not yet to the state line, I lose my nerve. The truck's broad sides make a perfect sail, and the wind's power pushes the back end around unexpectedly more than a few times. Rivulets of snow cover the road. It's like driving in a whitewater creek. The rumble strips on the shoulders are the only guide to where the road goes. Visibility goes from 100 feet to 5 feet in seconds. Chickening out, I plow through a median crossing and go back to Cheyenne. But once there, I'm ill at ease. A final check of the wydot site shows the closure situation unchanged. Grrr. So I headed south again, pushing through the same mess as before, holding the speed even lower, making progress by stubborn persistence. An hour of that passed... and then the sun came out, and the road was clear. I took off the chains, almost whistling. Cutting across to US-287 on an unpaved county road,  I found the highway and joined a small stream of (fool)hardy motorists headed for Laramie. The first hint that there was more to come was an SUV stopped well off the road. Backwards. Nearing it, I saw a huge patch of ice in the lee of a hill; the road was clear before and after, but that stretch of rink covered both lanes. The SUV'd been going 50, perhaps, and lost it instantly on the ice. Four long black smears on the highway beyond told of the resulting spin, and the rutted shoulder and plowed ditch spoke of a near roll. From there on, the road went uphill, and the conditions, contra. The chains were back on, and the driving was more of the experience on I-25. It was not easier the second time.  Note that I only took pictures of the "good" times. The rest of the time I was growing gray hairs. When the sight of Laramie emerged from the milky mists, I felt like Scott being rescued. (wasn't he rescued from one of the polar expeditions?) The freeway west was open. That road to Rawlins, though, held no respite from worry, only an shuffling of the most-likely-error list. Despite steady plowing, the drifts owned the road for long stretches; and the rude wind alternately whined and barked. OH YES, I had a beer in Rock Springs, when finally through it. And I tell you now I'll never go back through Wyoming in Winter without AWD and Hakkas. Friday, October 30th By evening, the lumbering U-Haul and I'd reached western Wyoming. Alongside the Interstate, some snow still lingered from the week's storm, but the roadway itself was clear. Gun shy from surprise slick spots, I was reluctant to let go of four wheels, and pushed the ungainly beast down into Salt Lake City. I pulled in at the first U-Haul dealer I found, and released the Buell from bondage. I rode up the road about twenty miles just to check that the bike was still shipshape, then took one last hotel room in Ogden, UT. Saturday morning I found the road west from Cheyenne was still closed, which made me feel better about the risky detour I'd taken. Once the sun peeked over the mountains, I hit the road for home. Ice fog, sunshine, rain; saw between 31 degrees and 65 degrees on the inlet temp display; between 0 and 111 on the mph display  11 hours and 720 miles later, we reached Portland, and the 1125R settled down for a rest next to the Uly. (Message edited by marinus on December 14, 2009) | ||
| Wolfridgerider |
Glad ya made it home.... cool story We wanted to miss the Chicago rush hour traffic so we headed west to go to OHIO. It was raining like hell as we headed home.... The real fun part was riding out of the rain only to ride back into it as we started to head east.... I think your trip looks like it sucked a good bit more than ours.... LOL | ||
| Steve_mackay |
AWESOME story. I'll forward this off to Ryan and Bud at Hals. Glad you made it home in one piece. Riding the whopping 15 miles home from the Buell factory that afternoon in the cold rain, I couldn't help but think of "the guy riding an 1125R to Oregon", and thought... "Better him than I!"  | ||
| Ratbuell |
Epic journey for an epic motorcycle, from an amazing company. Appropriate on many levels. Glad you made it home safe. That bike was gorgeous, loved the color when I saw it at Last Ride. Ride, grin, repeat |
