Day 6 Iowa and Back

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I slept great at the Lincoln State Park, but it just wasn’t long enough to rest up from the previous days riding through the weather on the slab. Not being used to sleeping on a Thermarest in a tent close to the ground, I thought I actually slept okay though.

I was up early, and packed up and left before anyone else was awake. I’m sure I awakened some folks as Lil Chubb and I crept out on the camp trail to the main road. After finding my way up to the interstate 64 eastward, I began my very tiring and boring highway ride through Louisville, Kentucky and Lexington.

I don’t even remember where I fueled up and got breakfast, but it must have been at a McDonald’s, I’m sure. With the easily accessible wifi and quick service of coffee and oatmeal you just can’t beat them while out on the slab trying to make time. Besides I had already seen Kentucky up close on a ride a couple of years ago.

In Lexington I picked up I-75 south and headed to Knoxville, Tennessee. I cannot express in written words just how monotonous and boring it is riding the U.S. Interstate highway system on a lightweight motorcycle. I managed to maintain a 65 to 70 mph speed and still was blown around by huge trucks and SUVs attempting to break the sound barrier.

Once in Knoxville I took I-40 east to North Carolina like I was headed to Asheville. Once I made it near Waynesville I took a big sigh of relief and jumped off the big road winding my way down NC 209 to Waynesville. I pulled into a gas station and bought some ice and provisions then picked up 276 to the campground.

Blue Ridge Motorcycle campground specializes in catering to the motorcyclist and the place is spectacular, with grassy open campsites and a lodge and kitchen pavilion for meals and socializing. I got settled in and washed a few things out by hand. Pretty soon my friends from the Georgia BMW club began to arrive also. The evening was a lot of fun eating, imbibing and talking…and generally enjoying each others’ company

 

Day 5 of Trip To Iowa and Back

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Whoa! Day 5! Can’t believe it is on the downhill side now. My host and I went out to dinner the night before and said our goodbyes. I woke up, as usual at 5am local time and departed by about 6. This gave me plenty of time to run up to get ahead of morning traffic going through the Quad Cities area and over the Mississippi into Illinois.

I chose to make it a day of slab riding mostly in order to make good time heading back southeast. My goal for the day was somewhere back in southern Indiana for a camping sleepover at a state park along the way. I had tentatively scoped out Spring Mill State Park as a possible location.

I rode through rain most of the morning and once I made it down near Galesburg, Illinois on I-74, I pulled into a McDonald’s for some breakfast and to dry out a little before continuing. It didn’t seem to want to let up at all while sitting there, so I just mounted up and headed off back into it. The NOAA radar showed it clearing up somewhat down near Peoria. Sure enough, the rain stopped. The sun came out, and it was nice and clear for the remainder of the day.

When I got down to U.S. 150, I headed straight south to pick up I-70 in order to cross over into Indiana at Terre Haute. As I was riding through the little towns along 150, I noticed a small city park and pulled in to have a quick lunch out of my cooler. I ate lunch surrounded by a special needs group of folks who were just astounded that I was among them. It was quite enjoyable.

My plan for crossing at Terre Haute was foiled! There was a tanker accident on I-70 and I had to get off, turn around and get back on 150 to go further south to cross over. This ended up being at Vincennes. I pulled into a gas station to refuel and asked someone where Spring Mill State Park was located. He laughed at me and said it was half way across the state about 75 miles away! Since it was getting late in the day, I opted to ride on down to Lincoln State Park, which was closer, and I camped there for the night.

Grant Wood Pilgrimage Day 4

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Day 4 of my ride began much like day 3, except it really was raining when I left Muscatine at 6am.
I immediately rode up to MacDonalds for some oatmeal and orange juice, after which I reversed my route from the day before. Equipped with better directions for where I wanted to go, and riding back up highway 38 toward Anamosa I managed to escape the rain until I actually arrived near to the downtown area.

 It’s not a large town but remains one of those places that Grant Wood admirers must visit. Just to the west of town lies Riverside Cemetery where he is buried along with his sister and other family members. This is really considered his first and last home. At one point in his career he established the Stone City artist colony in that small community, also west of Anamosa proper.

I found the cemetery and walked around a bit looking for the gravesite in the sprinkling rain, having to eventually seek help from a groundskeeper with a mole problem…the kind that burrow under the grass, not the kind that grow on your skin. Once I took a few photos, I took the bike over to Stone City, and since the Country Store was not open yet, I took a few more pictures then found my way back out to the main highway.

Heading west on 151 I pulled into Cedar Rapids, again very early for the 12 o’clock opening of the art museum. I wanted to get some photos of 5 Turner Alley anyway since it had been several years since I was there. Turner Alley is the location of the small upstairs apartment where Grant Wood lived with his sister and his mother for some time, and where he produced some of his most famous art work early in his career. The apartment, and space beneath it are both museums now but only open on the weekends.

I took a break there and made quite a few pictures for keepsakes and rode on over to the art museum a few blocks away. I gave up on going inside since I was early yet again, took this picture of the front, and headed out of town.

My next destination for the day was the American Gothic House down in Eldon, which was some ways away. Grant Wood found this farm house in 1929 while out riding around the countryside. He immediately recognized it as a good background element for his planned painting representing the American farm life. Back in Cedar Rapids he recruited his dentist down the street and his sister to pose for the picture. Once painted, “American Gothic”, was entered into a show in Chicago and became an overnight sensation, bringing fame and fortune to Iowa’s native son. Personally I prefer his scenic landscapes with the soft fluffy trees and hillsides. As a result of the painting’s success and popularity it has become synonymous with rural American values, elevating the once humble farm house to the level of artistic icon. I had to go see it.

Iowa Ride Day Three

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Another most unlucky event happened to me on my way to Muscatine on day 2. At my last fuel stop near Bloomington, Illinois, I went to throw my leg up and over the seat to mount back up and I felt something nasty pull in my right leg muscle. The immediate sharp pain was excrutiating, and managing to get the bike rolling I pulled across the street to a MacDonalds to assess the damage and do some emailing. I could hardly walk! Sitting was okay, but walking was next to impossible. After resting it for some time I managed to carefully get back on the bike and continue my journey.
Muscatine, pronounced ‘Musca-teen’, lies right on the Mississippi River down river a few miles from the Quad Cities, Davenport, Rock Island, Moline, and one I forget. There are several stories concerning how it got its name but the most probable one is after a Native American tribe called the Musquetine…or something like that.
 My host Mark and his wife own an old restored house pretty close to downtown and it was very easy to find when I got there, but the gnats there this years are seriously annoying. Mark says the prevalence of the gnats is an anomaly. They don’t usually have gnats. Maybe it’s a result of all the wet weather they’ve had in that part of the country this year. On the day I arrived, Mark took me on a little driving tour of the city in his new truck and that’s where I learned about Muscatine and the fact that Mark Twain lived here for a short period.
We had a nice dinner at the local Mexican place where Mark knows the owner. It was decent food and filled the void in my stomach. I was so beat after a day of riding across two states, after dinner I fell into bed with my ice on my leg, swallowed an 800mg ibuprofen tablet and slept soundly until 5am the next morning.
Amazingly, my leg felt much better. I was so happy that I wasn’t totally lame, it just made my day much nicer. I dressed for rain, since it was pretty much cloudy everywhere, and rode to eat breakfast with some Letterboxing friends who live in Washington, Iowa, just down the road about 40 miles from Muscatine. We had a super time stamping and talking Letterboxing and they gave me some nice suggestions for a route up through Iowa City to Cedar Rapids.
I wanted to visit the Cedar Rapids Art museum and see some of Grant Wood’s original art. Unfortunately I got there an hour early, not knowing they didn’t open until noon. I decided to try it the following day and proceeded to Anamosa which has some historical significance regarding Grant Wood also. His burial site is there as well as Stone City where he organized an artists colony in the early 30s.
Once I arrived in Anamosa, I realized I had put all my points of I interest into my GPS which was dead in my tank bag. Not knowing where to go, I simply stopped at the National Motorcycle Museum right on the main drag. Once I spent some time there, while it rained outside, I mounted up and headed back south to Muscatine, and after a meal at Taco Bell that ended my riding and touring for the day.

Iowa Vacation Trip Day 2

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Robert’s humble abode lies right in the middle of a freshly planted corn field. What appears to have once been the location of a farm house, complete with big shade trees and a massive barn, now holds Robert’s mobile home, one additional “derelict” mobile home, remnants of the aforementioned barn and several worn out old BMW automobiles, along with a big red Dodge truck.
Robert is a ceramic artist and has his barn studio up the road on some property that belonged to his father. At that other location he is also restoring and building in another old barn to be his future home. He has lived at his current location for about16 years and his home abounds with artistic accoutrements, books, one adopted dog, and a warm lived in, comfortable feel. I felt very good there and had a very nice overnight stay with broiled chicken and potatoes for dinner.

 

We got up bright and early Monday morning and Robert made some great oatmeal with chia seeds in it. once I was fed and all packed to go he drove down to his studio where he has his K1200RS stored, rode it back and led me through some nice back roads out to the main highway.
Upon departing Robert’s place, I noticed my little Garmin Quest GPS was acting strangely. I don’t know what caused it to lose external power, but soon the internal battery died and left me directionless…so to speak. I had to resort to using the old fashion paper maps for the remainder of the ride across Indiana and Illinois. Actually, for Illinois I had to take the slab across the state line at Terre Haute and stop in at the first rest area to secure a paper road map, or else I really would have been directionless.
Illinois farm scenery was not a whole lot different from Indiana farm scenery, except from my perspective Indiana seemed just a bit better groomed and neater when it came to farm buildings and farm planting layouts across the rolling land. One of the reasons I wanted to come here was to see the big corn. I neglected to check online to see when planting times and harvesting times are, and it appears that June is early planting time. I haven’t seen any corn for now obvious reasons. Too bad, so sad. Next time I’ll come in September.
Well, I made it across the Big Muddy on highway 92 crossing at Muscatine, Iowa, which was my destination for the day.

Iowa Trip Day 1

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The storm was supposed to have passed through while I was sleeping Saturday night. I woke up at 4:30 with that hope. Looking outside and seeing a completely dry driveway told me a different story. It had not made it here yet. Sensing a possible clear window through which I might get clear of the foul weather, I quickly made my breakfast and finished last minute packing. I had no way of knowing, except the weather reports on the Internet, just how close the thunderstorms might be. Throwing caution to the wind, I strapped the bags onto Lil Chubb and took off.
My destination for the first day was a little town in southeast Indiana, less than 50 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky.
A fellow Motorcycle Travel Network member lives out in the farm country near Lexington, Indiana and I had arranged to crash there for Sunday night.

 

Leaving before daybreak has it’s advantages, one of which is there are fewer cars to contend with and traffic lights seem to all be green when approaching them. I made over to I-75 north very quickly and fueled up at the RaceTrac. I was expecting to run into the weather at about Dalton or Chattanooga, but I only saw a little rain and it seemed like I had escaped the wrath of the tempest once I made it through Chattanooga. Then on the little loop of I-24 back into Georgia it began to rain. It got worse and worse with each mile, and by the time I reached Monteagle, and was passing through the mountain cuts, the lightning started…along with the downpour. At one point a lightning bolt hit something on the hilltop right in front of me. The pucker value was right up at about 8.9 and I was never so glad to see an exit sign. By the time I got pulled over under a gas station pump cover, the worst was done. I calmed down some and headed back out. Sure enough, the rest of the trip was very nice. Even the alight misty stuff stopped once I got past Nashville.

 

By the time I got into Kentucky, it had begun to warm up and I had to switch gloves because the soggy wet ones were colder than the mesh ones I brought along for hot weather. The outer Frogg Togg jacket came off as well.

 

I had planned, if I had time, to stop in at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, which wasn’t far off I-65. I realized I was making good time so when I got to that exit, I steered Lil Chubb off to the east. After visiting the Book store and getting my National Parks Passport book stamped, I rode the bike over to a little picnic area and had some lunch out of my cooler. This is a very nice place to visit, and even camp if you like camping. I didn’t do the cave tour but I suppose it would be pretty cool to see those since that’s what the park was made for.

 

After lunch I goosed my pony on northwards and eventually found my friend’s little place on the farmland. What a day! 435 miles with an average of 57 miles per gallon of gas.

One Sunday in May

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It was a ride loop. I guess you’d call it a loop. I left my house, rode around with a group of other motorcyclists, and ended up at my house later in the afternoon.

It was sort of a quickly planned BMW MOGA club ride. A new club member over here in my neighborhood, wrote on the club forum that he would like to go on a nice casual ride to the north Georgia mountains, since he was a new rider and had just bought a used R1150R and needed some practice riding in the hills. Well, I had already befriended him online and felt compelled to join him on this ride. Then someone else piped up on the club internet forum, and volunteered to plan a route and lead if needed. Well, my new friend quickly took the other guy up on his offer and the route was planned. It wasn’t long before a couple of other fellows decided it would be a nice day to ride also and they joined in. Then, lo and behold, another new guy said he also wanted to ride along for some newby practice, and before we knew it we had 9 or 10 bikers all waiting for Sunday and chomping at the bit to join for this little club ride.

It was decided that the majority of the group would meet at Simply Southern restaurant in Free Home and depart on the ride at 10AM sharp. I got there about 9:15 and joined one other hungry rider for a bit of breakfast. I had my delicious oatmeal with brown sugar and banana with a cup of coffee, and after a while of eating and visiting, we noticed the group began to arrive in the parking lot one by one.

Sure enough, our entrepid leader cranked up his little phone GPS at 10 o’clock and the group quickly followed him out of the parking lot. I had walked over to my bike, which was in a different area of the parking lot, to get geared up to leave and when I was ready to go I looked up and they had all left me! What a bunch of goobers! How could they leave me?

rideleave

Well, I took off, and knowing the planned route I caught up with them pretty quickly. We rode at a pleasantly casual pace to accommodate the newbies and made it to Riders Hill in Dahlonega at around 11AM where we picked up an additional rider. After a short break, and a visit to the men’s room, we took off again and headed up Hwy 60, took a right somewhere up the road and ended up at Turner’s Corner on 129 where we stopped for lunch. LUNCH!! I just ate breakfast at 9:30.

ridershill

It was about 11:30, and since I hadn’t eaten anything for 2 hours, I was almost famished, so it was a good thing we stopped. I might have stared had we waited much longer. No one could understand why I only wanted a salad for lunch.

TurnersCorner

Once we were done with lunch, which took forever actually, from the very slow service, we got back on our ponies and went back the way we came, continuing up 60 to Suches. We all wanted to see the progress of the new T.W.O. motorcycle only campground which is scheduled to reopen soon. We didn’t stop, however, but took a right onto 180 and the turned onto Richard Russell Parkway headed toward Helen. By this time, I was kind of sleepy from the lunch and found other riders passing me to get around slow moving cages ahead. The whole group stopped at the stop sign and waited for me and the rear rider though…which was the new guy. Before the new guy could arrive at the stop sign, they all took off! I chose to wait for him and when he arrived, we pretty much rode alone on to Cleveland where we stopped for a drink of refreshment and much needed rest. The new fellow was cramping real bad and needed to rest, stretch and rehydrate.

He suggested I ride on without him to finish the loop home since he thought he needed longer to rest. I found out later, he had to stop a couple more times to stretch out more cramps. I found my way to 115 and the back south on 400 to hwy 369, which took me back to hwy 20, then East Cherokee Drive to Woodstock, where I completed the loop.

My new chain worked fine, but stretched out slightly from the ride. It is still within measurable tolerances so I won’t bother to readjust until later on. The three ounces of Seafoam I added to the day’s tank of gas gave me a little extra pep on the ride that day and I thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful weather on board Lil Chubb.

 

Bike Maintenance 2013 Continued

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After installing my new front tire last week, I soon realized I had accumulated a whopping 31,000 miles on my stock chain and sprockets. And even though I still see no signs of excessive wear on either I made the executive decision to replace the chain and front sprocket this week. 31,000 miles is a LOT of miles on a chain and sprocket!

Now, on this bike there are 2 kinds of chains that one can get. The normal chain with a master link and an “endless” chain which has no master link, therefore requiring the removal of the bike swing arm to install it. I kind of like taking things apart to clean them, so I bought a new BMW endless chain and a new front sprocket on Tuesday. When one removes the swing arm, one has to disconnect the bottom of the shock absorber from the swing arm. The repair manual says that you must replace that bolt once it is removed.

  

I assumed it had something to do with the distortion of the bolt when torquing at installation. Upon further research, I found this bolt to be what BMW calls “micro encapsulated”. This means the bolt threads are coated with a dry microscopic layer of teeny tiny capsules of thread locking material which burst open upon being torqued the specified amount, thus locking the threads in place without compromising the torque values with wet thread locking compound. This new high tech bolt costs $20!!!……And I paid it! But it had to be shipped from a secret vault in a hidden bunker in Bavaria somewhere. So I have to wait for that bolt to come in this week one day To complete the chain replacement process.

If I had bought a nice new RK chain and sprocket with a master link, I wouldn’t have had to remove the swing arm and replace that expensive high tech bolt…BUT, I got that thing  all cleaned of grime, oil and road gunk in the process. There’s something to be said for that.

 

 

Bike Maintenance 2013

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Yesterday I realized I have been remiss in doing the routine maintenance items on my bike, so today the little cool nip in the air got me busy in the garage…after I ran to Auto Zone for some Castrol 4T Motorcycle oil.

It takes longer than anything else just to get the bike heated up to operating temp. With this bike I just have to let it run until the radiator fan comes on, then shut it off and open up the oil drain plug. See that bright light behind me in the picture below? That is what is known as a wasted riding day. It is absolutely gorgeous out today.

oilchange

I might have delayed the oil change a few days and enjoyed riding today, except…after further examination of my bike’s maintenance history, I realized I really need a new chain and sprockets. The front sprocket is actually an obvious goner, but the chain and rear sprocket still show no visible signs of excessive wear. However, the chain and sprockets on there are the factory parts, and the bike has 31,000 miles on it! Can you say, “O-M-G!!” Nobody I have spoken to has ever heard of a chain and sprockets going that long. So I decided not to ride anymore until I can get a new chain and sprockets installed…probably next weekend. Insert image here of someone smacking me behind the head.

And since I am not going to be riding this week, I went ahead and removed the front wheel. Ken’s Motorcycle Tires has me a new one on order which is due in on Tuesday.

fronttire

Routine Bike Maintenance and Forgetfulness

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As I sipped my nice hot cup of coffee this morning, began to ponder some of the things I needed to do to the bike to prepare for my little summer trip in June. Today is supposed to be one of those “maybe” rain days with some clouds and some sunshine, so I’m thinking it would be a good day to catch up on some things.

I couldn’t remember if I had done my latest 6,000 mile oil change, which was due at 30,000 miles or April 15! Well, I have been kind of preoccupied with several things these last few months, but I didn’t realize I had let my oil change date and mileage slip right by me. Moving out to the garage with cup still in hand, I pulled out my bike manual/maintenance record and opened it up to the maintenance record section. Oh my goodness! The last oil change was at 24,300 in April of 2012! A year ago. I just have a hard time realizing it has been a year! Here I was thinking I had changed the oil at 29,000 miles back in January. I must be getting old in the head.

manual

Upon further research, through my old receipts for parts, etc. I found my last order for oil filters from BeemerBoneyard and sure enough I had ordered and received 4, two of which are still on my shelf. The other two were accounted for in the last two oil changes in my book. I gotta pay closer attention.