For once I didn’t have to snag a picture from the internet to show what my vehicle looked like. Plus, unlike the previous My Wheels chapter, there’s no need for paid models to spice things up. The photo at right shows my future ex-wife riding my future ex-motorcycle.
I hadn’t been exactly eager to sell the Chevelle and I was less than comfortable with a truck being my only transportation. My ears perked up when I heard that a neighbor’s brother was selling his motorcycle. In some corner of my mind I’d always wanted a BMW. I started to make that seem more generic by saying I’d always wanted a touring bike but the truth is that a BMW is the touring bike I had in mind. I remember seeing my first Beemer when, as a high school junior or senior, I stepped outside the school as a shiny black one rolled past. I recall its windshield and teardrop saddlebags. The slightly futuristic looking bags might have been part of the attraction but I believe what impressed me the most was how purposeful it looked. That bike was made to go places. It may have been the first vehicle that produced the phrase “road trip” in my mind. I took one test ride on the proffered three-toned motorcycle then bought it.
The motorcycle itself was blue. The after market faring and saddlebags were white and the trunk was black. With all that luggage space and the “made to go places” thinking of the previous paragraph, you might reasonably expect me to spend the next summer touring the country on two wheels. If that’s what you expect you will be disappointed. I did and I was.
I had a nearly new van that functioned as a camper which made it a natural choice for overnight trips. It was also a good people hauler and was a popular vehicle for group outings. That left the BMW with only solo journey duty and, since I was heavily involved with the lady in the photo, there weren’t many of those of any length. I crossed the river into Kentucky several times and made it to Indiana once or twice but the BMW spent almost all of its time in Ohio where I often did take the long — sometimes really long — way home from work.
I laid it down once. I was off to visit a friend living on a gravel road. I moved slow in the ruts that previous travelers had made. It was dry and those ruts had been pretty much cleared of gravel. I let my speed creep up. By the time a gravel ridge did appear, I’d let it creep too much. I shoved the bike away from me as it went down. In my mind’s eye, it rose high in the air while spinning over and over waiting for me to slide under it and be crushed. In reality it was probably never more than a foot off of the ground and flipped exactly one and a half times. It was enough to snap off the windshield and leave scratches on both bike and rider. My scratches healed and the bike’s weren’t bad enough to worry about. A new windshield was purchased.
I also got one ticket. A small group of friends were spending the weekend at one of the group’s family cottage near Indian Lake. I was taking one of the wives on a tour when flashing lights appeared behind us. I stopped and was told I had failed to stop at a stop sign. I really believed that all forward motion had ceased for a second and the officer seemed to agree. “But your feet didn’t touch the ground”, he said. We weren’t far from the cottage so my rider simply walked back while I followed the officer to the unmanned station which he unlocked. I was able to pay the fine which means it couldn’t have been more than $25 or so. As he wrote out a receipt, I commented that if they stopped every motorcyclist whose feet didn’t touch the ground they were probably making a lot of money. He looked up with a smile that stopped just short of a grin and said, “We do alright.”
The last story is about a malfunction. The clutch cable broke on the way to visit a friend in Cincinnati. I don’t recall whether it snapped as I pulled up to the light or started to pull away and I don’t recall whether it was panicked braking or a panicked key removal that killed the engine. Whatever the specifics, I found myself without a clutch at the bottom of the last hill to my friend’s house.
Shifting a moving motorcycle is no big deal and neither is getting it into neutral for a stop. Getting a motorcycle moving without a clutch is significantly more difficult. One way is to start the engine then get things rolling enough to slip into some gear. It’s rather easy going down hill, kind of tricky on level ground, and essentially impossible going up hill. I had my choice of the latter two. There was an empty parking lot about a half block way where I could get the bike started and ride it abound in circles. The reason for the circles was to time my arrival at the the light with it being green. I failed at least once but made it on the second or third attempt.
There were a few more malfunctions and probably a minor adventure or two but nothing big. As I recall, there were some electrical issues with the bike when I changed residences. I left it in a storage area at the apartment complex I was moving from and other things in my life kept its retrieval a low priority. It eventually just disappeared.
My Previous Wheels: Chapter 22 — 1970 Chevelle
My Next Wheels: Chapter 24 — 1983 Renault Alliance
The trip count was down a little but one of them was a duesy. My 41 day 11,000 mile trip to Alaska broke all previous time and distance records and pretty much accounted for the jump in total days on the road all by itself. Pictures posted increased accordingly and posted road trip pictures topped 2000 for the first time. I did not break the 1000/trip mark however. My count for Alaska trip pics is 999. In addition to the 52 regular weekly blog posts, there were 8 reviews, 7 road trip links, and 2 miscellaneous asynchronous posts. After having three of 2015’s new blog posts among the year’s five most popular, this year saw no new posts in the top five but it was close. The most visited post in 2016 missed being published in 2016 by twenty-six days. I’ve no choice but to consider that close enough and declare it the top new post. On the other hand, after two years with none, a pair of newly minted entries appear in the the non-blog top five.
I’ve never met Jaimie Vernon but we’re friends. We’re the kind of friends that didn’t even exist a dozen years ago. Yes, we’re Facebook friends. It’s because of music. Vernon runs Bullseye Records which represented the band Klaatu through part of their career. I’m a Klaatu fan and stumbled onto a related online group in which Vernon played an active role. The e-group eventually became more or less dormant but we remained e-friends in the Facebook world. I’m sharing this, not because it has anything to do with the contents of this book, but to explain how I even know of the book’s existence. I am not in the habit of chasing down either cop books or cemetery stories.
DeLorme Street Atlas is one of my oldest tools. I started using it in 2001. I’ve talked about it in a few posts but was surprised to see that it has never been the primary focus of a post. The reason, I suppose, is the old story of taking something for granted until you lose it. The first version I used was 9.0. There were a few more numbered revisions and a misstep into a Road Warrior version before the numeric year was used in the product name and a string of annual releases began. I didn’t grab every one. I more or less fell into biennial mode and upgraded just every other year. 2016 was to be my next planned update but plans changed. In early 2016 Garmin closed a deal to acquire DeLorme and all Street Atlas development was stopped. 2015 was the final version produced. This first post with DeLorme in the title will also be the last.
It’s exactly what you’d expect. That’s not to say that there is no new information and no surprises but the sometimes almost poetic writing style is exactly what I expected from a man who has produced some of the most notable English language lyrics of the last four decades. It’s no secret that some of those lyrics were just a bit autobiographical so it’s possible to think of this as sort of a much longer and more detailed version of the story he’s been singing since he first greeted us from Asbury Park.
A few days later I was in San Diego 
I’ve sometimes said that the Cuban Missile Crisis was the scariest time of my life and that’s true in the sense that there was a very real possibility that the world would be completely destroyed before Walter Cronkite even had time to announce it. But in other ways, the fear that followed Kennedy’s assassination was probably worse. Until it was proven otherwise, it was natural to assume that it was the work of our Cold War adversaries. Flying a silver ball over our cornfields was intimidating and pointing loaded rockets our way was a clear threat but eliminating our leader was the real thing. If the USSR had a hand in the assassination then the Cold War wasn’t very cold anymore. What would be our response? What would be their next step?
1968 was the first election I was old enough to participate in and there are indeed some similarities between it and the one just past. Then many wanted McCarthy or McGovern but got Humphrey. This year many wanted Sanders but got Clinton. Humphrey and Clinton both lost and maybe for some of the same reasons. I suspect it’s a much older joke but I first heard it applied to the 1968 victor. “If Nixon ran unopposed he’d have lost.” It’s possible the same thing could be said this year regardless of whether it was Trump of Clinton who came out on top. I believe I heard just as many people proclaim who they were voting against as who they were voting for. The convention that nominated Humphrey was preceded by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and accompanied by police violence directed at protesters. The latter was, to me, the most frightening occurrence of a very frightening year. Things aren’t the same today but they’re not entirely different either.