From my recent ride to TN:

One of the problems with working in the motorcycle industry is that you often find yourself riding less than before you became one of the “inside guys”. You’re going to the races, but you’re not racing. Your weekends are consumed working when you should be playing. After being a vendor at the Loretta Lynn’s Amateur MX Nationals for ten years straight, I decided to take a year off. That said, I couldn’t just not show up either.

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I’d been working on my grandfather’s 1983 Honda Sabre 750 since the winter as it had been in storage for twenty years and it was pretty close to being done; it’s a great road burner with a big windshield and saddlebags, perfect for the 900 mile trip to Tennessee. My friend Scott Watkins helped me wedge the four carburetors into the V-Four engine on Sunday, I was trying to leave on Tuesday. By Tuesday, I’d put a hundred miles on it which really isn’t enough test time for a forty year old bike, but let’s go!

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I didn’t get going until after 7:00 PM and I stopped soon after to get some dinner; that’s when I found the Red Bull that had broken open in my tank pack. Nice. Time to put down some real miles. The Sabre has pretty spooky handling above 75 MPH, it gets into a light floating wobble/weave, especially when it’s catching the turbulence off trucks. Crap, the fuel light went on on the Washington DC beltway and there haven’t been much in the way of gas stations lately. Seeing an exit for Dulles Airport, I peel off because there’s always a gas station near an airport. So it’s a dozen miles to Dulles and I’m on locked on the airport access highway with no option to take one of the exits that roll by on the other side of the barrier. This trip isn’t really off to a promising start…but I do manage to fill up before running completely dry.

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Years ago, my grandfather had said the bike was handling odd and he asked if I thought putting air in the shock would help. The manual says it should have 0-40 psi and it helped him then, so I’ll see what it does now. At the next gas stop after Dulles I found the air pump and pulled my luggage off to get under the seat. I still had to loosen the battery to make room for the air chuck, but it really helped the handling out. I knocked out about 300 miles before stopping at a hotel around 4:30 AM.

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I was only on the road for a half hour the next morning before I lost the clutch at 10:30. You can ride alright without a clutch and smooth shifts are possible with some good throttle/shifting timing, but on a 500 pound bike, starting from a standstill may become impossible so I needed to fix it. I made a bunch of phone calls to local shops hoping that one would have a master cylinder rebuild kit for the hydraulic clutch but that wasn’t going to happen. One of the guys I talked to suggested I just bleed out the old fluid as it may simply have boiled due to the engine heat. I like a simple answer and should have thought of that myself; the clutch came back to life and I was soon back at speed on the highway!

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Two hours later, the bike goes from occasionally losing a cylinder to losing two as traffic was starting to back up. There’s not enough power out of just two cylinders to keep going and I was lucky to jump off the highway onto an exit ramp. The bike died as I approached the stop sign at the end of the ramp so I coasted dead-engine onto the road and then into the first side entrance I saw. Luck kept playing in my favor as I rolled up into the shade alongside a building where I could work on it. It’s been mid to high 90s all day and the sun would be a killer. Opening the drains on the carbs showed that two were empty, it’s a fuel flow issue, the float bowl valves were sticking closed. I can’t take the carbs off on the road, so it’s just basic techniques here. Tapping on the carbs doesn’t shake them loose, I need to blow some air in the fuel line to try to jar them a bit. I can’t believe it, I’m 20 feet from the service bay of the Sam’s Club that I’ve pulled into. I don’t even need to ask anyone for an air line as it’s just right there for anyone to use. I should probably buy a lottery ticket, but I don’t want to use up the last of my luck.

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Three hundred miles later, I pull up to the Days Inn near the track. They are always fully booked six months in advance, but I have to try. Yup, I’m cashing out the last bit of luck, they’ve got a room.

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I spent the next day at the races, which was important, and headed home the day after that. The return trip was much the same with some thunderstorm dodging added in. It’s interestingly almost like flying a plane among weather disturbances. You look around at the sky, judge the wind direction and strength, look at the radar versus your route and ride accordingly. Sometimes you’re blasting along trying to ride out from under a storm, other times you’re waiting at a gas stop for the storm to cross over the highway ahead of you. The rain pants that were in the bike’s storage from years ago shredded in the wind. The fairing would keep a lot of rain off me at speed, but there’s only so much protection it can give. I preferred to get wet and then dry slowly rather than get a little wet and put on the rain jacket because then you’re just damp inside the jacket. Comfort is a state of mind.

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Late that night, I’m cruising at around 90 and a car comes up from behind. If I’m going faster than the general traffic and someone comes up, I always back off to see who it is. OK, it’s just a car, so I let them get ahead a bit and pick the pace back up. There haven’t been any speed traps this entire trip, but I slowed up when the car hit the brakes just in time to see the cop’s headlights come on in the median. Not it, not it, not it! He passed me and played wingman on the car before pulling him over for a big one. How can there still be any luck left in my bucket?!

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I only had to stop four more times to free up the float valves and got home after a short stay in a hotel along the way. 1,837 miles total, 56 gallons of gas, and 33 MPG. It was good to be at the races, but it was the ride that I needed. The best part? Walking in to my grandfather’s room to tell him about his bike and the trip! He’s 102 years old and, with a lifetime of riding himself, knows just what a long distance solo trip like that means. ?