Charlotte: Ride Planning, 3rd Thursday Pizza-Meet and General Hooliganism

GPS Track from yesterday's ride:


Thanks for another great ride. My girlfriend had a good time as well, but I think she was a little tired after BBQ and probably could have used a nap!

Count me in...it's on the calendar now.

One a big 650 too. Maybe I should get some new rear rubber before this as well...

Also, this a camping trip or just a one day ride kinda thing?

Nice one, please remember to charge the gopro. ROFL

Gonna go ahead and jump into this thread.

I won't be jobless and bikeless forever.

Welcome, come out to Hawthornes on the 17th at 6 ish. At least you can look at bikes.

I'm interested, if there is a detour route. I could haul a lot of gear on the Buell if this turns into a camping trip.

But I'll see your "big" 650's and raise you a 1203cc. The weak point on my bike is the lack of a skid plate / under slung exhaust... And the 17" wheels... And the weight... I really need a DRZ400...

So many bikes, so little time.

Now maybe Koolranch will get off the couch and come along to witness the flying bits of plastic himself?

I would enjoy hauling some stuff up there in my ammo can panniers (hey, I'm a KLRista afterall), riding around all day and enjoying some brews around a campfire that night.

...but they don't sound as cool!

Stop antagonizing me. If the Ulysses is going maybe we could do a separate big bike ride. Let see the recon that wessdawg is doing and go from there.

I'm just jabbing you a little. We need your KTM to class up the ride a little, lord knows we need all the class we can get.

Maffud and I are going to ride some local trails in the Concord area Saturday morning. Most are actually just south of Concord. Hopefully we won't get a ton of rain between now and then, but there could be some muddy spots. There will be a few rocky creek crossings. Probably ride for a few hours. Let me know if you want to join us and I'll pick a meeting place.

Heck, you should be able to carry your'n and Koolranch's camping gear and brews with those big ole cans and that new 500lb. rear spring, (if ya'll dont git too carried away with the brewsky drinkin part. I might even tag along and brush up on my camping skills. We can possible even talk Numa into bringin a box of his finest smokes.

I like how this is shapin up! I promise to only drink beer or licker. Is that what you mean augie?

It's been too long since I've been camping (and not bivouacing - Uncle Sugar pays me to set up a defense, not a camp site) but thanks to 16 years of Soldiering I do have a nice collection of camp gear!

Honestly, I'd love to get out camping for a night. There's also "Buells in the Alps" in Little Switzerland that weekend, but I'd rather hang out with y'all than stay at a motel with a bunch of Buell nerds. (wait a minute - I resemble that remark!)

If we get enough big bikes so that we have our own "detour" group, then count me in. I have a stash of Hoffman hot-dogs I could bring for bonfire cooking. (It's a NY thing - if you think hotdogs are those things made my Ocar Mayer, then you need to try these.) I might have to pick up an insulated growler for this trip though... hooray, another beer farkle!

I can certainly bring a cigar for you Augie, but I don't think I'll be able to camp. I will just be getting home from business travel to Atlanta right before that weekend.

Numa

Just wanted to check in from the road...

Jon and I left Charlotte on Thursday the 3rd (in the midst of pretty big traffic jam) and are currently (Wednesday the 9th) in Radium Hot Springs, British Columbia, Canada. Jon may weigh in here as well but I'll summarize a little...

The trip so far has been both awesome and "interesting". We are staying put for today to rest up and then we need to be in Prince Rupert, BC (over on the Pacific Coast) by Friday evening - about 900 miles from here.

We stopped for gas about an hour North of Charlotte and I promptly let my bike fall over at the gas pump, adding to my small collection of saddlebag scratches. The helmet fell off the bike too but I didn't give that much thought at the time....

The next morning we hit the road from Beckley, WV early and about 20 minutes out of town I reached up to close the vent on top of my helmet and the vent cover fell off in my hand before blowing away in the wind - leaving a 1/2" vent hole wide open in the front of the helmet and promptly freezing a quarter-size spot on my head! I didn't have long to contemplate that however since Jon's Pelican Top Case then fell off his bike right in front of me at about 80 mph. I managed to miss running over it somehow. By the time I got stopped and turned around it was absolutely nowhere to be seen. Jon soon realized I was missing and came back to find me - you should have seen the look on his face when I pointed out that some of his luggage was missing! It's a long story involving guardrails and embankments and bushes and it took about 90 minutes to find the damn thing but we got it strapped back on, stuck some tape over the hole in my helmet and got back on the road.

Oh... While looking for Jon's case my bike informed me that one of the headlight bulbs had stopped working (turned out to be the right-side). We stopped in Northern Ohio to fix that and I'll spare you the details but what should have been a 15-minute exercise ended up taking another 90 minutes and at one point had a body panel off the bike (hint - don't ever drop anything inside the fairing side panels).

We did make it to Michigan that night and met up with Eric on his K1600GTL. The next day we went through the UP of Michigan and into Wisconsin. Then my LEFT headlight burned out but at least we had practice replacing bulbs and this one only took 30 minutes. It took us a couple of days to get through Minnesota, North Dakota, Manitoba and Saskatchewan (there's another adventure involving some big flooding in Central Canada and the resultant difficulty of finding hotel rooms).

Yesterday morning (Monday) we left Medicine Hat, AB and discovered that Eric's bike was leaking a bit of coolant around the water pump - so we detoured to a BMW dealer in Calgary and were shocked to learn that the K1600 for the US market uses a DIFFERENT WATER PUMP then K1600's for the Canada market. WTF? The dealer ordered in the pump and Eric is keeping an eye on his water level before he returns to Calgary on Thursday for the work to be done (we had planned to split up Thursday anyway as Eric is not going on to Alaska).

SO..... a little excitement but it's been a great ride and we're excited about getting on the Ferry for Alaska early Saturday. Pics? We haven't take many but here's a couple...

Crossing Canada looks EXACTLY like this for three solid days:



But then past Calgary it gets better:



And then much better:



I just had to stop and take a pic of this sign - struck me as funny for some odd reason:



More to come in a few days.... And the piece of electrical tape on my helmet is holding up nicely.

Joe

Looking good Joe!

Sounds like a proper adventure. Be safe.

Sounds like an "interesting" trip for sure!

The water pump issue on the K16's has been going for a long time. I know some guys who have had it replaced as many as 6 times under warrenty and the new pumps just keep leaking. Wonder if BMW finally got around to correcting the problem with a new pump design and if that has anything to do with the difference in part numbers.

Keep the updates coming. Super jealous of this trip!

BMW makes some truly excellent motorcycles that always feature leading edge design and technology. But they occasionally have a problem with a model that seems to take them way too long to remedy. My R1100GS had a problem they called "hiding oil". You would check the oil level using their procedure and it would show that the bike was 1+ quart low. After you added oil, it would show that it was overfilled by the amount you added. It was just as likely to give you an accurate reading on oil level as a false one. You could never trust the reading. Don't know if or what they did to fix that problem on the 1100GS; mine was still doing it when I traded it in on a new K1200LT.

Numa