Tales From the Tour

Tales from the tour

UP FRONT

David Edwards

WHAT MAKES A MEMORABLE MOTORcycle tour? Well, strange birds that we are, it seems misery has a lot to do with it.

I think back almost 30 years to my first long-distance jaunt on a bike, in this case my trusty 1971 Honda CB350, candy-apple gold with rustedout baffles that-I thought-bellowed with the deep, authoritative air of a factory racebike. Up front, originally fitted to deflect the cold Maryland winter, was a Wixom Bros, handlebar fairing in white gelcoat, picked up for $10 sans windscreen at a garage sale. A hardware-store sheet of plexi persuaded into shape by a shaky coping saw completed the aero package. Out back was that once-ubiquitous fixture of American motorcycling, the luggage rack, this particular model from Triple A, one-time aftermarket powerhouse now gone the way of buggywhip makers.

My destination was Pocono International Raceway, about 350 miles distant, to see an AMA double-header: on Saturday a motocross national, on Sunday a big roadrace. Duffelbag and Army-surplus sleeping bag strapped in place, sweatshirt on, jeans-jacket buttoned up, suede work gloves pulled tight, blue-metalflake helmet (with tastefully applied reflective red racing stripe down the middle, I might add) cinched down, I pointed the CB’s nose north toward the Pennsylvania mountains early Friday afternoon.

Straight into a wall of thunderstorms. As my raingear at the time consisted of exactly bupkis (hey, I was 16 and stupid), I dove into the nearest discount store to return a few minutes later with a box of plastic garbage bags and roll of masking tape. The Man from Glad goes touring. The bags also kept my gear from getting wet...well, from getting any wetter, and later, at the track, pulled apart at the seams, made a ground cover and impromptu lean-to taped to the leeward side of the Honda. It is in such circumstances that one appreciates newfound friends and the healing properties of their beer cooler.

Four years later, on the way from Texas to Florida for my first Daytona Bike Week aboard a brand-new Yamaha XS750 Triple ($2000 out the door, just to further date me), I was better

prepared. Had a Bates leather jacket just like all the magazine guys wore and a zooty Rukka one-piece rainsuit in a shade of yellow effervescent enough to do Van Gogh proud-halfprice at the local bike shop ’cause it had picked up some tar stains in shipping. Even had shelter, in the form of a cheap K-mart tent.

I’d need it. Got to Daytona in the middle of a typical Florida deluge only to find all the nearby campgrounds fully pre-booked and NO VACANCY signs glaring from every cheap motel in town, even the by-the-hour flophouses. I finally found a scrap of space at a swampy KOA 30 miles away. My (soon-to-be-ex) girlfriend, who flew in a few days later, failed to find the romance in the situation.

My first Gold Wing excursion in 1983 as a staffer for Cycle News was memorable for all the wrong reasons, too. I’d left Long Beach on December 23 aimed toward Dallas and a Christmas Eve at my folks’ place. My defense against the chilly weather was a new electric vest, a wonderful device that worked exactly as advertised until midway through the second day, somewhere southwest of Midland-Odessa at the exact moment the thermometer dropped to 19 degrees. Faulty switch, then a common problem, I’d find out later. My ride then became a series of numbing sprints from Dairy Queen to Dairy Queen, thankfully by Texas state law placed no more than 30 miles apart.

This DQ hopscotch worked reasonably well, store proprietors taking pity on me while I thawed out (“Ya sure I can’t getcha ’nother Beltbuster? S’on the house.”), until the outskirts of Abilene, where the GL1200 popped a middle-gearcase seal, oiling down the rear of the bike and a goodly portion of 1-20. Time to phone home. The Wing went the rest of the way in the back of a pickup, me up front wedged between my father and brother getting unnaturally intimate with the heater vent.

So it was with some trepidation that I green-lighted this month’s cover story, taking a new Honda Gold Wing GL 1800 straight from its press intro on an epic, outside-edge tour of America, almost 12,000 miles in all. The idea took hold last year when I ran into a Valkyrie rider gassing-up near Yuma, Arizona. In the middle of a “Four Corners Tour,” she told me, hitting the most remote points in the 48 contiguous states-Blaine, Washington; San Ysidro, California; Key West, Florida; and ever-popular Madawaska, Maine. Sanctioned by the Southern California Motorcycling Association (www.usa4corners.org), the tour must be completed in 21 days or less by a single rider. We’d do it nine days sooner, but with 11 different riders.

I wasn’t all that worried about the new GL making it, and I had faith in the editors who would shepherd the bike along its route, but anything can happen in a succession of 1000-mile, 18-hour riding stints. Then there was the weather. We’d originally planned to do the story in early autumn, but Honda couldn’t get us a bike in time, so we didn’t depart until October 26. With a cover and 14 blank pages to fill, I scanned the weather maps with anxious eyes. Turns out that Don Canet just missed 13 inches of white stuff in Montana, my scud-running between Oregon and California was about 5 degrees away from becoming a real adventure, Paul Dean stayed just ahead of some nasty flooding in Texas, and Messrs. Seredynski, Miles and Catterson cleared the Northeast less than two weeks before a paralyzing blizzard. Color us lucky, the Wing sailed through without a hitch.

Did kinda miss the Dairy Queens, though.