Mystery Rider 3

This photo was taken by me at the 1989 BMW MOA Rally in York, PA. Deb and I rode down there from Hollis, NH in the company of this rider on his R80. I have not spoken with him in years and I'm having a lot of trouble remembering his name. Was he an NEDoD person? A Granite State Beemers guy? A person from work? It's driving me batty. Help!! 

Small World - The backstory for a Homecoming

My first bike was a 1982 Maxim 750. It was brand new, a leftover, when I bought it in 1984 from a small shop in Belmont, MA. Apparently Yamaha had shipped a ton more bikes to the USA in 1982 than they could sell. I was able to get a high performance custom style bike for $2600 with a new bike warranty. Lots of people got their start on those '82 leftovers. How could you go wrong for that kind of money?

The bike I really wanted was an blue '84 Honda Nighthawk S. But they were getting $3400 for those.

Sometime during my first year of riding I stopped into a Honda-Yamaha-Kawasaki dealer that also sold BMW. I was eating lunch at a Wendy's on the westbound side of Route. 9 in Natick, MA. The dealer was right next door. I remember walking over to the dealer after lunch one day. The place was filled with bikes but all I saw were the 1985 BMW K100s and the R80s the dealer had on the floor. Every time I had lunch at the Wendy's I'd wander over and stare at those BMWs. I'd never seen anything like them and they really appealed to me. I can't explain the feeling. Those bikes just made sense to me. I knew virtually nothing about BMWs (little enough about bikes in general) but the BMWs spoke to me. They said, "Buy me! Buy me!"

During one lunchtime visit the salesman at the big bike shop told me they were giving up the BMW dealership. The special tools and parts would be packed up and sent back to BMW. The remaining bikes had to go. The '85 K100RT could be had for $5400. Supposedly dealer cost. But I'd have to find someplace to take the bike for service. After they gave up the dealership they wouldn't be working on BMWs anymore.

I couldn't test ride their bikes (they hadn't been prep'd yet) and I wasn't going to buy a bike I hadn't ridden. At least not at that price. I found a shop in Arlington, MA that had a K100RS demo bike and took it out for a ride. I got on Route. 2 in Arlington and rode up towards Concord, turned around and rode back to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, and then turned around and went back up Route 2 to the shop.

Sure there was a buzz in the handlebars I'd never felt with the Maxim but the smooth almost endless power and the totally planted feel at speed (I had never broken 100 mph before) was seductive. The engine had an almost turbine like feel as it spun up. I was sold.

After obtaining the OK from Deb I headed over to the Digital Employees Federal Credit Union (I'm a charter member) where they were only too happy to lend me the obscene purchase price for the BMW. Now all I had to do was decide on whether I wanted the red one or the "Dolomite Grey" one. I picked the Dolomite. Thus began a nearly 16 year relationship with those bikes made in Berlin.

Actually this story isn't really about Beemers but rather about the interconnectedness of all things and all people. Granted the motorcycling world is pretty small. Still I often meet people who ride, heck who've been riding much longer than me, who've never heard of or met anyone I know, never belonged to a club I've joined, or owned or learned about any of the bikes I've ridden. But then there are the connections I've made in motorcycling that seem to transcend time and space. The true smallness of the world was driven home to me the other day. And it was all because of BMW motorcycles.

My riding buddy, Michael, has a K75RT. Before that he had a K75S. He also still has his first Beemer, a '71 R75/5, which predates my love affair with riding by nearly 13 years. And it wasn't his first bike. Michael has gotten back to riding in recent years after a hiatus of nearly a decade. He's unlikely to ever buy anything but a BMW. They just suit him.

For a long time I felt the way Michael does about BMWs. I never got what appealed to people about Harleys, crotch rockets, or customs. BMW had a logical, functional philosophy of motorcycle design and construction which appealed to me at a rational level. At some other level, an irrational one, the bikes appealed to an inner desire of mine. I wish I understood it. The closest analog would be love. Logic and love. Apparently I wasn't alone. Over the years, through the BMW MOA and RA I discovered there are thousands of folks around the country/world who felt (and still feel) the same way.

To continue the backstory you have to know that in the 1990s BMW decided that one thing holding them back in the USA were the "Mom and Pop" dealerships that sold and serviced their product. Some were great dealers with loyal customers and some were lousy and did nothing to promote the brand. So BMW decided to professionalize the dealership network. They started pressuring the dealers to build and move into nice new shops with big inventories, spacious workspaces for the technicians, and spacious showrooms for the expanding product line. Some dealers went along with the "upscaling" process. Some did not. One who packed it in and retired was the long time BMW enthusiast who owned the Aloha, OR dealership. By 1999 he'd had enough and closed his doors. That left Portland area BMW riders with a single shop. Unfortunately the remaining shop had a bad reputation among BMW enthusiasts. Many took their business down to Eugene or up to Seattle where enthusiastic dealers were happy to have the extra business.

Ironically I feel I had something to do with creating this mess for BMW enthusiasts in Portland. A couple of years earlier I had worked with a group of business grad students at PSU on a final project. I wasn't studying business at PSU but a coworker was and he and his team were looking for a project to finish up their degree program. I suggested analyzing the Portland motorcycle market and understanding the best marketing approach for BMW in Portland.

The team liked the idea and they and I gathered data and analyzed ownership statistics and market size. I helped buy a tape from the Oregon DMV (you could still do this in those days before identity theft and other concerns led to changed laws) with motorcycle registration data. I also helped them meet and start a relationship with the local BMW NA district representative. He'd be a key player in presenting their proposal to BMW.

To make an already long story short(er) the team did finish their study, write up a report, and finally did present it to the BMW representative. The recommendation was to close both existing dealers and create a single new large dealership to serve the Portland market.

Unfortunately the way things worked out the enthusiast shop in Aloha closed but the other dealer held on. Oregon law being what it is BMW had no leverage to wrest the dealership from the other shop. So now BMW was left with a single shop in Portland but one that few enthusiasts would care to deal with.

About a year ago (in 2005; maybe a bit earlier) a new dealer took over the franchise in Eugene and built an "upscale" shop there. I never did get down there to look at it and meet the owners and neither did Michael though he and I talked about it several times.

Finally this year the shop in Eugene publicized their April open house and Michael and I decided to go.

Saturday we woke up to heavy rain and chilly temps in the 40s. Despite this we headed down I-5 to Eugene and eventually got there sometime after noon. My son, Marc, rode his MZ 125 SX down with us. He was having carb problems that held down his speed.

Soon after we got there I spied her across a room. That's when the small world started to close in on me. I knew I knew her. But I couldn't remember her name. Finally I went up and said, "I know you!" And indeed I did! It was Marjorie who had been in my Instructor Prep course back in '94 in New Hampshire. I thought she worked at the dealership. But no. She was the (relatively) new factory rep from BMW responsible for the Pacific Northwest.

A motorcycle instructor who worked for BMW and promoted the brand in my area. Hallelujah! Maybe BMW would solve their Portland problem after all!

Turns out her previous job was managing the Northeast and she knew all the dealers and people I'd done business with over the years back in New England. Small world!

It was a day filled with connections and a kind of homecoming for me. I ate pretty good barbecue and watched the "Long Way Around" on a big screen in the shop with lots of BMW riders. I ran into Stacey the ex-President of the Portland Mercedes club. He was buying a helmet to use on his new F650GS. I had met Stacey after I bought a friend's 420 SEL several years back and needed a mechanic in Portland.

I ran into a couple of Wetleather folks, Bob Actis and another friend (whose name escapes me). I reintroduced myself to Dianne, the BMW salesperson, who I had known from my not so frequent visits to the Portland BMW shop. She and I had corresponded by email for sometime when I first considered an R1200RT.

Michael had to leave for a prior engagement. Marc and I hung around and I chatted with Marjorie and Dianne as things quieted down. Finally it was time to go. I left on an upbeat note and with a renewed committment to sell the Harley and get a new BMW. Marc's carburetor self-healed and I actually had trouble keeping up with him on the way back up I-5. Good karma? Or maybe just my fat fingering the choke cable before we left? Who knows?

After six long years I was headed back towards BMWs. But there is more to the story.

Belt Blues

Last summer (2005) I went down a road that turned out to be 35 miles of well groomed gravel. It was a really pleasant road, called Hogback Rd, despite the gravel with beautiful views east and south as I went from Oregon 395 to Plush, OR.

Map of Plush, OR US

I actually found myself enjoying the slower pace and greater concentration demanded by the gravel.

I finally pulled into Plush and stopped at the general store for a drink. The folks from Plush were surprised I had taken that route to the town since most bikers come into town from the south on the well paved road. But I told them I thought the views from Hogback Rd were worth the trouble, the dust, and the slower pace. One thing led to another and the locals steered me on a longer but much nicer route down to Oregon 140 through Adel. The views of lakes (one of them pictured) along the way were beautiful.

Maybe its my inner dark self or maybe its Jewish guilt. Whatever it is the net result is that sometimes it seems that nothing can be enjoyed without pain. The pain can come first or it can come later but there is always pain.

In this case the pain was getting home and discovering a rock lodged in the final drive belt on my Road Glide. The service departments I spoke with all recommended replacing the belt before it began to separate and eventually fail. Both shops wanted around $700 for the job. To replace a simple belt? This had to be highway robbery!

I had the parts department put together a package of all the parts needed, shelled out $250, and headed home to do the "simple" belt replacement.

The folks at Harley-Davidson who approved the design for the current generation of big twins are as good an argument in favor of the death penalty as any I've heard. They replaced a time honored solution, the chain, with a high tech kevlar belt, supposedly to improve the product. The belt is cleaner, zero maintenance, quieter, and lighter than an equivalent chain. However there are two glaring problems with the belt. The first is that it has no master link and so can not be installed without removing major components of the drive train. The second is that any small piece of rock or other sharp object can lodge between the sprockets and the belt and cause damage that requires belt replacement.

As I complete what has turned out to be around 25 hours of disassembly and reassembly of my Road Glide just to replace the belt (which at $200 ought to last a lot longer than a chain) I am left with the feeling that cost of ownership is perhaps not as well understood at the Motor Company as it should be.

Don't give me a maintenance free gadget that's more likely to break than the low tech proven solution it replaces. I'm more than happy to have a drop of oil grace the tarmac beneath my bike (not uncommon with the automatic oilers of old) in exchange for avoiding hours of tedious and pointless assembly and disassembly.

Buell has just come out with a new BMW GS competitor called the Ulysses. This bike has a belt, too, and is meant to go down gravel roads. There is a mitagating factor for the Buell; based on the Sportsters it has the belt on the right side thus avoiding the need to remove the primary case when changing the belt. And despite the guard intended to protect the belt from stones you know they will find their way in there and damage the belt. Seems that the good old chain (or, horrors, the shaft) might have some value after all.

I'm all in favor of high tech that makes things better. But I have to describe the belt as a Schlimbesserung or "an improvement that makes things worse."

For many years I lusted after BMW motorcycles. And I still belong to the big BMW club and read the mag every month. Nowadays there are few products BMW sell that have the visceral appeal of the old air cooled twins and early K-bikes.

In 1999 the dealer I took my BMW to closed and I was left "stranded" in Portland with the closest palatable dealer at least 100 miles away.

Now before you call me a wimp let me say that I spent several years traveling to a BMW dealer in NH that was at least 45 miles from home and it was a pain. I suppose 100 miles would be doable but certainly not convenient.

Anyway I had spent nearly two decades bad mouthing Harley and it dawned on me that while I was now in a town with no acceptable BMW shops I was simultaneously in a town with at least three Harley dealers (counting the dealer in Vancouver, WA). Seemed to me that it was time to find out what the Harley thing was all about.

It turned out to be about a Dyna Sport Touring (FXDXT) for me. Bought one in 2000 and rode it for about two years. Decided for a number of reasons that I needed a sportier bike after all. Spent a year in a relationship with a blue Suzuki SV650S. But then the lure of the big bike took over again and I was soon back on a Harley. This time a Road Glide.

Now a Road Glide is a bit of a pig as bikes go. It's about 700+ pounds of steel, aluminum, and plastic. And it feels every bit that heavy when stopped. Underway its not half bad and as long as you don't forget that it has little ground clearance (which I have done) and don't crash into anyone (which I have also done) its a pretty darn nice bike to ride around on.

All the while I was becoming involved with American made motorcycles more and more companies were becoming involved with Indian and Chinese made software engineers. The frustration of seeing so many local people un- or under-employed while the places I worked loaded up on H1 visa folks from elsewhere was starting to get to me. I began to see my motorcycle in geopolitical terms. This was new to me. I had never thought much about the Germans or the Japanese who made my previous bikes.

I spent the 1980s watching restructuring throw millions of blue collar Americans out of work. I saw the migration of more manufacturing during the 1990s as China picked up the job of making everything we buy here. It finally dawned on me that if I didn't care who made my bike then why should anyone else care who made their computer or the software that runs on it? Didn't I have to ride and drive American? Not because I thought the people making my truck or bike would buy what I make, but simply because I thought that sending all computing jobs overseas was wrong. So how could it be right to send all the domestic manufacturing jobs elsewhere? Good for the goose, good for the gander or something. The world may be flat (again) but do I want to live in a community bereft of any concern for the welfare of its own members?

I think it fundamentally matters what happens to individuals. This has nothing to do with my Harley per se. I like knowing that there are towns in the US like Milwaukee and York, PA, and Kansas City where people make a living, support their families, and enjoy life because I ride a Harley. Would those folks find something else to do if Harley folded. Some would. How would I be better off? How can what hurts someone else be good for me? I don't pretend to know the answer, but the question bugs me.

GPS Blues

I have had a Garmin eMap (OK really a couple of eMaps) for years. They are in many ways suboptimal for motorcycling. Not waterproof. Apparently not shockproof (witness the two that have died). But they are cheap and they do work for me.
If one is patient an eMap can be obtained on eBay for around $50. I say patient because some fools bid these units up to $125+ on a regular basis. This time it took nearly four months to get one.

My third one is on it's way to me as I type. And why not? I already have the memory cards, mapping software, cables, the RAM mount, and experience with the unit to offset its limitations. I might as well buy one and use it up and then get another. And when it dies its only a $50 used gizmo. Can $600 GPSs really provide $550 more hapiness?

One good thing about the eMap (good being in the eyes of the beholder - me) is that it has no routing capability. You can't ask an eMap how to get someplace. The main job of the eMap is to tell you where you are and to remember where you've been. Sure I download routes crafted on a PC into the eMap and the eMap may indicate when I have to turn (if I'm very lucky). But that's not really what it's for.
The eMap can tell me my speed, miles left to travel, elevation above sea level, travel time, and a bunch of other useful information.

What I really like is that is up to me to read the information and integrate it. The gizmo does not think for me nor does it substitute for my judgement and experience. Since it can't route me where I want to go I still have to pay attention and have a mental image of what I'm doing. No chance of surrendering to the device. It's radio to the fancy GPS's TV.

I enjoy pulling the track logs off the eMap onto a PC and viewing the information in the context of a map. I like it's ability to save waypoints (the location of that forest service campground or intersection). But its a multitool, not a CNC mill.

I find it relaxing to plug the old beater laptop into the Powerlet socket on the Harley at the end of the day and review the eMap's carefully saved track logs.
I think there is time and a place for a high end GPS. But it is probably not on my vacation riding or weekend day trips. For the Iron Butt rider or business traveller a fancy unit would probably be an indispensible tool. For me, well, I'm excited that my next eMap is winding its way through the UPS system to my door. I look forward to reviewing my riding at the end of the day with a good map program, a bag of munchies, and my eMap.

My Lovely Wife

Yes, OK, I have some babe shots of Deb but they're not really blog-appropriate. Here is another photo from Ludlow, VT. Same day as the photo of the unidentified rider below. I could still fit into a 1 piece Aerostitch in those days. Sigh. Deb could probably still wear those leathers (she sold 'em though). This is also one of the only decent photos of my beloved '91 R100GS. God I loved that bike. Would still be riding it if I hadn't needed the money in '94. So this shot must be in the fall of '93 because I sold it to Peter Peterson in the spring of '94. I think he paid me $4600 for the bike. Heck its worth more than that today. Peter then rode the damn thing all over the western hemisphere for the next year and shipped it back to Denmark. As far as I know he still owns it.

Crummy Subject. Nice Portrait. :-)

I could go watch TV but instead I decided to embarrass Rich Bemben. Rich and I have not laid eyes on each other since '96 but we stay in touch via email. I still have fond memories of digging through piles of Triumph parts with Rich at the British Bike meet in Southington (or was it in MA near the CT border??). Somewhere I have pin from that meet. I have a roll or two of photos from that day and will post some when I get a bit further into the "vault." But for now I bring you Mr. Bemben and his faithful Bonnie. This was taken in '94 at the Bedford Farms lunch place. I forget what route it's on, but right off Rt. 128 if I recall correctly.

Myster Riders 2

So who are these folks? I think I know all of them but can only access names for the three right most people. The others are on the tip of my tongue. I'll probably get them 1 minute after posting this. Pasker? Yeah. I think that's him. Help me out here.

Mystery Rider 1

Do you know this rider? He was photographed in 1993 or '94 in Ludlow, VT. This was a NEDoD Fall Ride (notice the leaves on the lawn).

Photos, riding, and staying in touch

When I first learned to ride motorcycles in '84 I had no one to ride with. I went stag to a couple of camp outs, rode with my wife, Deb, to Aspencade in '85 and commuted to work. But it was mostly a solo thing.

Then in '86 I discovered rec.motorcycles on usenet. I had been reading other groups on usenet for years but never realized there was a r.m community full of geeky riders just waiting for me to find them. By '89 I was friends with many of riders I had never met. By '90 I had met and started riding with the NEDoD crew in and around the northeastern USA.

These folks and the world wide r.m community became a kind of extended family. I visit them when I travel. I try to stay in touch with varying degrees of success.

This blog is just an extension of my experiences riding motorcycles. Its about enjoying the company of my online and local friends who ride. Its about sharing photos and memories. Most of all its about my third decade of riding.

I've tried writing about riding elsewhere with limited results. Maybe this blog will be something I'll stick with and work to perfect. I have no real idea at this point. It's just possible though.

Over the last few days I've been digging into my negative vault which stretches back at least into the mid-70's. Actually it's just a big 12 gallon plastic covered tote I picked up for $5 at Home Depot a few years ago. But it beats the cardboard box I once used. There are about 30 lbs of negatives and a few prints stuffed into the "vault".

My goal is to sort the negatives chronologically and then to identify and scan each packet. In the process of digging through layer 1 I discovered some unlabelled packets of negatives which turned out to be early to mid-90's family and motorcycling photos. I started feeding them into my Acer ScanWit 2720S film scanner and sorting the resulting images with Picasa2.

A few images included people I remember but can't put names to. So the idea of sharing the images and asking for help identifying the subjects occurred to me. That was the motivation for starting this particular blog.