The 1911s do Reuben Run 7

[bungie4]

Duane, i forgot ask, did you guys stop in at Waterton turn site? One of Canada's most memorable scenes is there with one of the CP Grand hotels featured.

Great Picture!! Stayed there one night about 15 years ago, all I could afford, beautiful location.

Ya, the CN/CP Grand Hotels are spendy to say the least, thiers another at Lake Louise, another in Banff and Jasper in that area alone. You better be willing to spend $500+ night.

[wheatonFJR]

$500 is just a down payment on some of the rooms at those hotels. That's why we happily stayed in Golden, BC at the Pinewood Inn. Definitely reasonable. Good recommendation to stay in Golden by Dave Dykes.

[gixxerjasen]

And here I thought I'd let this thread sit and percolate long enough that I could consume the entire trip in one sitting. Now I'm sad and all I can say is "More!"

Excellent so far, can't wait to read the rest.

[Harald]

Duane, i forgot ask, did you guys stop in at Waterton turn site? One of Canada's most memorable scenes is there with one of the CP Grand hotels featured.

Great Picture!! Stayed there one night about 15 years ago, all I could afford, beautiful location.

Ya, the CN/CP Grand Hotels are spendy to say the least, thiers another at Lake Louise, another in Banff and Jasper in that area alone. You better be willing to spend $500+ night.

There's MUCH cheaper options within walking distance of this hotel in town. Wifey and I stayed at a motel that had a 2 bedroom unit with kitchen and I'm sure we didn't pay much over $100 for a night.

I did go for a run and jogged around the fancy hotel and they didn't even charge me to visit.

[bungie4]

There's MUCH cheaper options within walking distance of this hotel in town. Wifey and I stayed at a motel that had a 2 bedroom unit with kitchen and I'm sure we didn't pay much over $100 for a night.

I did go for a run and jogged around the fancy hotel and they didn't even charge me to visit.

Well sure, I was speaking of the CP/CN Grand Hotels. They're not just found there, but across the country. The Empress in Victoria, the Royal York in Toronto, the Chateau in Quebec City. All of them are pony up time.

[1911]

Flat tires suck. Flat tires as a symptom of a bigger issue suck worse.

Traffic between LaPine and Winnemucca was nonexistent. Interstate traffic after Winnemucca is sparse. Weather, perfect. The campground that we’re headed to is reputed to be a little short on trees but long on stargazing. We’re on schedule to get camp set up and dinner on the stove before sundown. We’ve got a pretty decent day going.

And then, something feels a little off, like hitting a headwind and patch of rough road at the same time. If the pilot of a Jap Zero looked in his rear view mirror after a run-in with Pappy Boyington, it would look a lot like the scene in my rear view mirror. Instincts pull the clutch and chop the throttle, resulting in way more deceleration than expected, and a Peterbuilt grill getting clearer through the smoke. I reapply throttle and power over to the shoulder. I wish I could say these few seconds went by as smoothly as the last couple sentences.

What we find on the side of I-80 isn’t just a flat, it’s a seized wheel bearing that has stopped the wheel from rolling. Now the wheel won’t budge and neither will the nut that holds it on. When the bearing seized it turned the inner race against the nut, running it down about a half dozen threads tighter. The wrench in the uh-oh kit won’t back off the nut, even with me standing on it. And even if I get the nut off, I fear a bearing race welded to the axle.

We contemplate the pickle we are in for a while. Then we contemplate the pickle we’d be in if this had happened earlier in the day, like back on that ridge leading up to Doherty hang glider launch, where there was no shoulder, no margin for less than full control of direction, and no cell service. I call Progressive and ask if I have tow coverage and if it covers this situation. We do, it does. I ask Flow to get a flat bed to take us to the nearest KOA. The flatbed shows up in about 30 minutes. We load the trailer on the truck and we follow it back to the KOA in Winnemucca. The driver waits for me to check in and then drops the trailer at our campsite.

Just a few notes or things to be thankful for here:

No doctors, cops or lawyers involved-all the way to the end of this adventure. This is the primary indicator of a good ride for me. I haven’t been disappointed with the staff or facility at a KOA yet (though I have avoided a few do to online reviews). The real estate that they put KOAs on, however, often leaves a little to be desired. Most of them are close to the interstate, designed more for RVers to spend a night along their way, rather than as a place for a tenter to enjoy nature. I’d call the location of this one interstate/industrial. But the staff is nice and accommodating. At some, probably most, private campgrounds, the owners would balk at letting a wrecker drop a crippled rig off in the park. Here, they let us in and give us the number to a local mechanic. It’s also the first KOA that we’ve seen with an on-site liquor store.

Monday morning I leave Mrs1911 at camp and trek 10 minutes to an auto parts store. OK, now I’m kind of liking the location of this KOA. I get the longest ½ inch drive breaker bar that they have and a socket, along with a punch and chisel set and a ball peen hammer. With the new leverage I get the damaged wheel assembly off. No damage to the axle shaft-big honkin' sigh of relief! The spare wheel goes right on Then I check the bearings on the other side and conclude that there is no way these will make it home.

IMHO the bearing set up on the Bustecs is under designed. They are small and, especially the inner, are too exposed to the elements. This particular trip has seen our beloved Bushtec cover some rough ground, like the Forest Service roads to Mount Saint Helens, and the pumice sand and dust of Oregon.

No worry though, there is a set of spare bearings in the bottom of the trailer. Because a forward looking rider with some planning sense carries a set

Or

Because a chronic procrastinator never got around to putting them in before the trip.

Bushtec got me on the oddball sized tires that you can only get from Bushtec $$$ I outsmarted them on the bearings though. I used my power and influence with connections in the auto repair business to cross-reference the number on old bearings and get a set gratis. Or so I thought. All the bearing makers’ cross-reference charts convert the Bushtecs version of a 6203 to their version of readily available bearing. None of them are right. Bushtec’s 6203 has an inside diameter about a 1/16 inch smaller than the rest of the world. And nobody in Winnemucca has a 6203 with the unique I.D. of the 6203 that Bushtec uses.

So I fire up the cell phone and start calling Bushtec dealers, starting with the closest. At the first few all I get is a cog in the parts department of a large dealer that finds it amusing that I might think that they would actually stock a part for a trailer. Then I get hold of Frank at Nunzio’s Custom Trikes. This is the kind of guy you want to talk to when you are in a jam. He doesn’t have all of what I need in stock, and the folks at Bushtec aren’t returning his call. But he does agree to sell me the spare from his demo trailer, so it’s off to Helper, Utah we go. BUT, I’m not feeling real good about getting even that far on the inner bearing in the old wheel.

The guys at the very cool Ace Hardware store in Winnemucca are sure that they have seen an assortment of shimstock in the store, but they can’t find it now. I find some chimney flashing that feels about .030” thick and a cheap pair of shears and head back to camp. This campground improvised spacer will have to get us to Helper.





You can’t ride from Winnemucca to Provo without checking Bonneville, can you?



Provo to Helper should be a pleasant 60 mile ride. The roads closed due to the Spanish Fork fire add a couple hundred miles. The mountains just yards on the other side of the interstate just barely visible.



The hotel in Springville smelled like a campfire and the people on the news were discussing the possibility of evacuating some large cities.

Nunzio’s Custom Trikes is a home based business in Helper, Utah. At first glance I see an air-cooled v-twin trike conversion…..yawn….a something-glide three wheeler. When I noticed the Honda badge I got a little curious and peeked around the corner, looked around the shop. Interesting. Vmax’s from both generations. Frank says the newer one is an eight second bike. It sounds like it could be. Nuzio’s has had some show winning trikes and some calander bikes. Forgive me for not getting better pics of some of the paint work.











We leave Nunzio’s with two good wheel/tire/bearing assemblies on the ground, a spare with a mismatch bearing in the trailer, and Frank’s lunch recommendation, Marcia’s Sammich Shop. I kept my chimney flashing shim as a souvenir. Frank’s lunch recommendation was right on the money.
Helper is a very interesting little town. Check it out. Give the waitress at Marcia’s a little attitude and see what you get











191 north out of Helper DOES NOT suck.



The skies were clear and the shadows were long as we rolled into Craig, Colorado,



and another KOA, with a nice facility and great staff but sandwiched right between a railroad track and the road. Didn’t keep us from getting a good night’s sleep though.

[wheatonFJR]

Wow.

Now I have a new respect for you sir. I believe you could have crossed this great land on a Prairie Schooner with 3 broken wheels and a horse's ass.

[raYzerman]

Well, you didn't need that wheel bearing issue! You should be able to get the proper ID 6203 from bearing supply houses.... that said, very McGyver of you to use shim stock! 191 is pretty good.

[gixxerjasen]

No worry though, there is a set of spare bearings in the bottom of the trailer. Because a forward looking rider with some planning sense carries a set

Or

Because a chronic procrastinator never got around to putting them in before the trip.

This is the kind of forward thinking I can identify with.

[wheatonFJR]

No worry though, there is a set of spare bearings in the bottom of the trailer. Because a forward looking rider with some planning sense carries a set

Or

Because a chronic procrastinator never got around to putting them in before the trip.

This is the kind of forward thinking I can identify with.

Yes. Making America great again, one wheel bearing at a time.

[Hppants]

You are quite the story teller, Duane.

I'm really enjoying this adventure.

[wheatonFJR]

You are quite the story teller, Duane.

I'm really enjoying this adventure.

Yeah, it's like an old western movie...where the hero uses bailing wire to cross the canyons in Colorado with 1000 foot tall cliffs make an escape.

At that KOA that sells liquor...I would have just said "sorry dear, but we're screwed"...lets see what the liquor store has in stock. Instead, ole John Wayne here gets some tin snips to some metal and rides that wagon hundreds of miles to Frank.

HOLY CRAP.

[1911]

Final Approach

Our little tire detour, and the fire detour on the tire detour, means that we’ll save southern Utah for another trip. Anybody wanna do Moab next spring?

This is not tragic. The Helper area would make a great day ride, especially when all the roads around Manti-la Sal National Forest are open. Forgive me if this is common knowledge to folks that hang out on the more western parts of the forums.

So we trade Bryce Canyon and Moab for Salt Lake, Helper and Rocky Mountain National Park.

The first thing we do leaving Craig is to stop by the big W to restock. A WalMart that stocks RCBS and Nosler-coolest thing I’ve seen since WalMart stopped selling SingleSixes.



We roll into RMNP and set up camp at Timber Creek Campground amidst a cool drizzle and the elk rut. First choice for dinner is to find a restaurant in Estes Park. The mileage to and back seems easily enough doable.

By the time we get up to 11,000 feet the temp is down to the low 40s and the rain is steady and sideways, and mixed with a little frozen stuff.



We bail on crossing Milner Pass this afternoon, drop back down to camp and throw something on the propane. We fall asleep to the lullaby of bugling elk, yipping coyote and a light rain on the fly.

Thursday’s attempt to cross over to Estes Park is drier and goes much better. We even catch a few spots of sunshine. A little color in the trees and the traffic that goes with tree color makes it feel like home (BRP).

















And we walk a little tightrope. I’d sure hate to have a wheel bearing seize here.



RMNP is our last attraction but not quite our last excitement. We drop down into hazy Denver traffic and then strike out across Kansas. There is a north/south line of thunderstorms that stretch nearly from the bottom of the nation to the top, moving west to east. The kids are at home. They have come up from Florida to attend that big horse thing in Tryon, NC. Since they are going back to Florida Sunday, we want to get back home Saturday afternoon. It would have been perfect to spend an extra day putting about Colorado to let the storms clear out but our desire to get home overrides.

We catch up to the front and then ride along with it, getting gradually deeper and deeper into it. You can imagine seeing this from very far off in the wide open Kansas skies and running it down. It’s not too bad until we get to the leading edge, where the traffic comes to a crawl. We start thinking about Dorothy and Toto and take cover, motel in Salina. When we watch the local news we learn that the traffic jam was due to an 18 wheeler getting blown over.

Friday, Salina to the KOA in Paducha Kentucky is fairly uneventful. In the homestretch on Saturday, fate smiles on us a little, as far as the location it chose for our second flat tire of the trip, just south of Chattanooga.



By then we are finished with the slab and turn on final, through north Georgia. We beat the kids to the house.

A little more adventure found than sought, but still an AWESOME trip. Great memories that will last a lifetime.

I still have stacks of old magazines from before the internet days. There is nothing in them that ever inspired me to do a trip like this or armed me with enough info to enable it. MAYBE by this point in life I would have found said info and inspiration without motorcycle forums. Generations before have. MAYBE we’d have done a trip like this without the little bit of courage that a hard copy of the FJR Assistance list provides, or the countless examples of how far a stranger will go help a fellow rider that we find on the boards. MAYBE, but don’t bet on it. So, as for me, now, I’ll thank the forums for the info and inspiration, and the people that organize stuff like Reuben Run, YFO and EOM, for great memories.

YeHaw!

Leaving with a couple “after” pics

[wheatonFJR]

Thanks Duane for sharing...awesome adventure.

All of a sudden I have this urge to visit Moab in the Spring.

[NTXFJR]

What he said. ^^^ Awesome RR and photos. I'm still in awe of the Canadian Rockies. Thanks again for bringing us along with you on this epic adventure.

[Bugnatr]

Hey Wheatie, can't you see the sweet black and orange KTM 990 hidden in that line up? (hint: it's not a FJR). When yer ready it's waiting for you to throw a leg over it, get your butt out here again.

Duane...Epic RR. Most excellent!

[Hppants]

Somebody has absolutely stepped up their camping cooking game. Right on, man!!

[Uncle Hud]

Excellent report, sir. It got my wanderlust revved up pretty high.

[escapefjrtist]

Awesome trip, report and pics. Thanks!

~G

[gixxerjasen]

Well worth the wait. Such a great time it looks like the two of you had, with a sprinkling of adventure on top. Thanks for sharing.