Orthopedic Bike

Orthopedic Bike

LEANINGS

Peter Egan

IT WAS NOT A GREAT BEGINNING FOR A 6000-mile motorcycle trip, but by mid-morning I was tired of waiting for the weather to clear, so I put on my clammy rainsuit and hit the road. As I left our Wisconsin home and headed for Oregon, the rain hammered down in sheets while bolts of lightning actually struck trees on both sides of the road ahead of me and wind whipped the leaves into a white froth. Not a nice day.

I knew within 25 miles of home I’d made a mistake. Not by leaving in the rain, but by changing the handlebars on my Harley-Davidson Road King, just two days before the trip.

The stock bar made me lean forward from the waist a little too much (I thought), so I’d foolishly installed some “Big Sky” touring bars-the kind that come back to meet you.

Should have tried them out on a short, experimental trip. Now I was pinned, bolt upright, against the back rise of my seat with no way to change position. My lower back-always a lurking source of trouble-was starting to ache. Should I return home and put the stock handlebars back on the bike?

Nah. There’s nothing I hate more than turning around at the beginning of a long trip. If the bars still bothered me after a day or two, I’d stop at a Harley shop on the road and change them. Maybe in South Dakota.

As I crossed the Wisconsin River at Spring Green, the sun came out, so I pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot in Richland Center to take off my rain gear.

Naturally, I sat on a curb to peel my rainsuit over my boots and immediately threw my back out. Big time.

Nothing to do but lie on the grass and pop a couple of the muscle-relaxant pills and aspirin I always carry with me (since Daytona three years ago). Then I staggered into the restaurant, got a Coke and waited for the pills to kick in. After about an hour-and probably just before they were about to throw me out for vagrancy-! shuffled back to the bike, put on my Malcolm Smith Gold Belt, turned around and rode home. Carefully.

Pain pills, sleep.

The next morning, I lurched out to the garage and stared forlornly at the Harley. A long-planned vacation in ruins. My wife Barbara already had plane tickets to fly out to Sunriver, Oregon, to meet me. We had a cabin rented, and a bunch of our California riding buddies were meeting us there for a week in the Cascades. Then we were supposed to ride down the coast to Orange County for my niece’s wedding. Barb would fly home and I would ride back to Wisconsin. What to do now?

I couldn’t get back on the Harley because sitting bolt upright made my vertebrae feel like a stack of dominos about to topple over. Changing the bars back involved disassembling the headlight, which was too much work in my stove-in condition. Yet I had to ride.

I walked over to my old 1984 silversmoke BMW R100RS with 91,000 miles on the odometer and stared at it. The RS was a bike I’d sold four years ago and then just bought back from my old friend Mike Puls this summer, in a fit of nostalgia. Barb and I had ridden it to British Columbia and all through the West in the summer of 1991. A good old friend, and still running fine. Mike had just put new Metzelers on it, changed the oil and installed a new battery.

I carefully climbed onto the saddle of the old Beemer, stretched my arms forward to the short, back-angled bars, put my feet on the roomy but moderately set-back pegs and felt my back muscles relax as my spine stretched into a wonderful underslung concave slouch.

It felt...good.

Better than sitting in a chair or standing. Better than lying in bed and looking at the ceiling. Better than anything I’d tried.

“Maybe I should just sit here and have my meals delivered,” I mumbled to myself. “Or maybe I should ride to the West Coast and let my back heal as I ride.”

So I transferred my luggage-slow^-from the Harley to the BMW, put on my helmet and jacket and left.

I did four 500-mile days getting to Oregon, via Pipestone, Minnesota, Gillette, Wyoming and Idaho Falls. Everything was fine-as long as I stayed on the bike. At gas stops and motels I had a little trouble straightening up, walking around like an early hominid from one of those “Ascent of Man” charts you see, somewhere between Neanderthal and the first amphibians. I’m surprised anybody rented me a room. No restaurant meals during the day; I snacked my way west at gas stations, to avoid being off the bike. The classic Butterfinger lunch.

The hot tub at our Oregon cabin (real rustic) helped, and I was able to take several day rides through the Cascades. Barb and I then rode down the coast to Southern California for the wedding. I changed the oil and adjusted the valves and spent four days riding home, through Sedona, Arizona, Colorado Springs and Grand Island, Nebraska.

When I got home, my back was vastly improved. Almost normal.

A week later, I’m fine, back up to running four miles a day, riding my bicycle and able to hoist a 20-oz. beer can with either hand while eating nachos.

I changed the bars on the Harley, and it feels much better now. But still not quite as good as the old Beemer. After 35 years of riding all kinds of bikes, the RS remains my personal long-distance comfort champ. It has a wide, flat seat, a little weight on your outstretched arms and wrists, a little on the arches of your boots, with footpegs you can stand up on when you want to stretch or soak up road bumps.

It’s some other kind of champ, too. With 97,000 miles on the odometer now, it used just half a quart of oil in 6000 very hot miles of Western road and ran flawlessly the entire trip. It was fast on the plains and fun in the mountains. At least a dozen times during the trip I found myself saying, “This is a great motorcycle.”

Good to have the old girl back. And just in time to save the trip. If I didn’t like the bike so well, I’d open a backpain clinic and rent it out.