Alrighty. I said I’d give the details about the trip this weekend, so here goes nothing. This is long. Really long.
Ever since I got laid off, I’ve been figuring that I might as well make the most of some of the free time that’s been handed to me. There are great roads up in the NC mountains (and elsewhere around the Appalachians and Smokies) and there are some decent campgrounds that don’t cost much. I did a bit of searching online and some planning but never quite got around to getting out there until Dave told me that he decided to take a quick weekend trip up around the Cumberland Gap this weekend and would I like to come along. So we packed up and headed out early on Saturday morning.
We followed 485 and then 85 south until we got to Gastonia, NC and then we picked up 321 headed north. We went through Blowing Rock and Boone and crossed into TN while we followed some nice, twisty roads through parts of the Smokies. Around Bristol, TN (there’s also a Bristol, VA which ought to give you an idea of how closely we followed the state lines) we pretty much adjusted the route to travel due west on Route 58 across the south-western edge of VA until we got to the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park at almost the exact spot where VA, KY and TN meet.
We set up the tents, relaxed and cleaned up, and started to think about dinner. The closest town was Middlesborough, KY so that’s where we headed. And here’s where the, um, “exciting” part started.
If you saw the pictures (just take a look over on the right side bar for the latest Flickr photos), you might have noticed one of the shots of the campsite with my bike pointing toward my tent. There was almost no room to the right to make a proper u-turn so that meant starting up the bike to inch it forward and then pull it back a bit and repeat the whole process in an interminable multi-point turn until I got it pointed in the right direction. Normally, this isn’t a big deal. We do it all the time when we park head-first into parking spaces and such. But this time it was a little tougher than normal. That should’ve been my first clue.
Finally, after getting turned around, we took off toward the main park entrance and turned right onto the main road. Pulling out onto the highway, I felt the rear wheel get loose like I’d slipped on a patch of gravel or something. I caught it, straightened up, and keep moving but the whole rear end didn’t feel right and the steering was off. It wasn’t until I got to the restaurant some 10 minutes away that it became clear what it was: a flat tire.
Now, I don’t know how many of you out there have had to change a tire on your car along the side of the road. It isn’t any fun at all. It’s dirty, sweaty work. But a motorcycle is a different animal entirely. To change the tire, especially the rear tire, you need something to stand the bike perfectly upright, remove several bolts, disconnect the rear brake hanger and caliper, remove the muffler hanger and muffler (which also unhinges the rear shock), remove the drive chain, and lift the bike at least about 6 – 8 inches off the ground to give yourself enough clearance to get the wheel out. And all of that before you can actually start the process of removing the tire and tube, patching it, putting it back on and repeating the whole mechanical mess until it’s back together. This is a 2 hour job, at least, in a properly equipped shop with a hydraulic lift and a complete set of tools. I had a change of underwear, my iPhone, a camera, and several packs of cigarettes. Not ideal. Except for the cigarettes. They came in handy.
By now, it was around 5:45 in the evening. Thinking through the problem with empty stomachs and slightly tired from riding about 375 miles, we tried to call around to see if there were any MC shops that might still be open (a long shot) and there weren’t. And no MC shops open on Sundays. I tried AAA which was a great option if I had an extra day and another mode of transportation since the best they can promise is to take your ride somewhere to have it fixed.
There was a Wal-Mart across the street so while I talked to AAA on the phone, Dave rode over and picked up a Slime emergency flat repair kit. Now, Slime normally works great on tubeless tires. Cars and many bikes have tubeless tires. I have tubulars. See the problem? But what the hell. We didn’t have any other choice so we put in about half of the bottle, filled the tire up with air, and I rode around the parking lot for a few minutes to give the Slime a chance to fill in whatever puncture inside the tube needed to be fill in. Then we went in to eat.
After about an hour, back in the parking lot, it looked like the Slime did the trick. The tire was holding up so off we went to pick up a 6-pack of O’Douls (had to go into TN for this as Middlesborough, KY is a dry town. Which makes absolutely no sense when it comes to non-alcoholic beer) then back to the campground in VA. Are you keeping up?
The Cumberland Gap park ranger service sponsors weekend events at the campground and this weekend, there happened to be a band. As if our trip wasn’t already getting to be somewhat bizarre enough, the band turned out to be this really strange group of 5 women who played what can only be described as feminist, activist, bluegrass music. And I am not making that up. They were rather good, though. So it was nice to have some entertainment. We chatted til it got dark and hit the sack around 10:30 or so. The plan was to get up early and get on the road again by around 6:30 or 7 to beat the heat and give us enough time to maybe make it down to the Tail of the Dragon which is highway 129 that runs for about 11 miles between TN and NC. We went sort of south-west for 30 miles or so, then pulled off to the side of the road to do a quick tire check.
It was flat again. Middleborough was a really small town. But compared to where we were now, it looked like Manhatten. I know that 30 miles doesn’t seem like a long way, but trust me when I say that we were in the middle of nowhere. What happened to the Slime that was working so well the night before, you might ask? Maybe the road friction heated it up enough. Maybe it never really held against the inside wall of the slick inner tube. What ever the reason, it had been slowly pushed out through the tiny hole in the tire and was now coating the entire inside of my frame and fender. Green Slime on hot pipes equals a scorched, smelly mess.
Now what?!? It’s Sunday morning. We’re outside of a town we came to find out later was called Bean Station, TN. (Go ahead. Look for it. I dare you. You won’t find it because its too frickin’ small!) The only option was to hope to find a friendly house nearby, beg to allow us to leave the bike there, ride tandem to the next closest town and then call Kim to come and get me while Dave travels home on his own. The next closest big city is Knoxville, TN which is easily 4 hours from Charlotte by car. I didn’t like this idea. But what else could we do? We had no tools to change a tire so we had no choice. We filled up the tire and quick as I could, I got on and started up the road rehearsing my plea: “Excuse me sir and/or ma’am. I have a motorcycle with a flat tire. Could I trouble you to keep it and all of my stuff for me until I can get it picked up by whatever repair shop is around this godforsaken, middle-of-nowhere place? I’d be very appreciative.”
Not 2 minutes later, I saw a hand-painted sign for an auto repair place and I pulled in figuring, if I have to leave my bike somewhere, I’d at least want to leave it where it might be looked after by an actual mechanic. I pulled up to this pathetic cinder block building with, I shit you not, a telephone number spray painted on the side, parked my bike and grabbed my phone.
You might be thinking that the worst of the troubles were over at this point. You’d be wrong.
I called the spray painted number and a woman picks up. After partially explaining my situation she says, “You’re gonna be wantin’ my husband.” “Yes, ma’am,” I said. So he gets on and after hearing my story, says something like “I don’t work on no motorcycles.” I said, “Yes, that’s really OK. No problem. All I want is someplace safe to leave it. OK?”
Before he can really answer, I glanced at my bike. Maybe I was starting to feel some separation anxiety. Maybe my sub-conscious was trying to tell me something. Whatever it was, I looked over and in the span of a few seconds I thought about the following 2 things:
- I seem to have parked on a slope that leans just slightly away from the kickstand
- The tire is now flat enough that it won’t support the weight of the bike like its supposed to
And before I could blink, the bike went over on its side. Yup. If you’re keeping score, it’s now bike, 2 – BJ, 0.
There wasn’t much to do but laugh at this point. That and picking up all 500lbs of my bike. But while we’re picking up the bike, a young guy comes walking out of a nearby mobile home asking us what the trouble is. Turns out, he’s the son of the guy I just talked to on the phone. And he works at this garage. And he says he’d be happy to open the garage to help us fix the tire. Really. He actually said all of this. Although his accent was bad and I only caught every other word. This was an auto repair shop so they didn’t have much of the equipment that would’ve made the process easier, but we improvised and we managed. 3 hours later, the tube was patched and the tire was back on the bike. When we asked how much we owed the guy he said, and once again, I am not making this up, $40. $40! We gave him $60, thanked him profusely and motored on.
We still would have had some time to make it to the Tail of the Dragon if it wasn’t for the fact that Dave got us lost both getting into and getting out of Knoxville. We burned over 1½ hours just trying to figure out which way to go and then burned another hour in bumper to bumper traffic trying to get through the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area. By now, the temperature was nearing 96° and it was already after 1:30 in the afternoon and I had told Kim we’d be back sometime around 3pm. Once again, we’re about 4 hours by car from Charlotte. You do the math. The only thing to do was fight our way up to I-40 and follow it through TN, into NC where we’d pick up I-26 back toward Charlotte. The rest of the trip passed by uneventfully and we got back to Charlotte, sore and dirty, by about 6:30. After around 650 miles, a flat tire, a veritable comedy of errors, and the friendliest most helpful red-neck auto mechanic I’ve ever met I came to the end to my first trip on the motorcycle.
You might wonder if this has soured me on long motorcycle trips. Nope. I’d do it all again (minus the flat tire, of course) this weekend if I could.
