So we have a HUGE trip planned for Labor Day. I’m starting out in Minneapolis, MN (flying there) while Jim heads out on the bike from Raleigh. We’ll head through South Dakota and Wyoming and wind up in Colorado Springs, CO. Here’s a basic map of the route:

View Larger Map

All told, it is a bit over 1,000 miles, and we’ll have about a week to do it. We plan to see Mount Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, Pike’s Peak, and a few other sights along the way. There will be plenty of pictures!

My loyal readers,

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I have written! Jim has been harassing me to write a post for weeks. My initial excuse was, hey, it’s winter, we’re not riding!

But it’s summer now! And we’ve done some trips. Let’s see, we did a trip to the Anza-Borrego State Park in February, and a trip to Milwaukee for Buell Homecoming the first weekend of June.

First, Anza Borrego. This state park is north of San Diego, where we were travelling to visit my sister. We decided to rent a bike in Escondido, at a dealership. Conveniently, there was one that has 2007 Uly for rent, so went there to pick it up.  The dealership was actually in San Marcos. From there, it was a mere 2 hours to the State Park.

Anza Borrego is known for its wildflowers. Unfortunately, we came out a bit too early for them this year, as there had been so little rain that nothing was in bloom.

The trip up was interesting. We went from San Diego, whee it was in the 70s, over the mountains to SNOW! Actual snow, within a hundred miles of San Diego. It was surreal.

The roads into the park are amazing.

The road leading into Anza Borrego State Park

This road is just past the snowy parts, which I unfortunately didn’t get a picture of. But it was freezing!

Anza Borrego has some amazing cacti and other plants, but everything was brown and dead. It was somewat eerie.

This is the most green we saw in Anza Borrego.

Some cool cacti

We didn’t spend long in Anza Borrego; it was pretty warm with all our gear on in the desert, and the sun was fierce. Plus we had to have the bike back in San Marcos by 4:30. I would highly recommend the trip though; the roads along the mountains there are wicked, with some crazy nailbiter curves and no guardrails.

First off, let me just say, Sorry for not posting for a while! I took a longer than anticipated Christmas break.

So, back to the bike story. The dealership discovered that the engine would have to be completely rebuilt, essentially, which was an expensive job. But, since the issue never should have happened in the first place, they thought that the Uly would be a good candidate to ask H-D to pay for the repairs, even though the bike was well out of warranty (over 50,000 miles…).

While at the dealership for the 1125R test drive, we saw another ‘06 Uly that had been traded in, that they were selling, with 40,000 fewer miles on it. Making a mental note, we headed back to wait.

And wait we did! It was weeks before we finally learned that H-D would cover the repairs. As soon as we heard it, Jim decided to ask if he could trade the bike in on another. He wound up trading it in on the ‘06 Uly we had seen. So, with that and a few thousand dollars changing hands, he managed to remove 40,000 miles from his bike, and we could ride again.

Unfortunately, the wait for the new bike happened to be during the last of the really nice fall riding weather. Therefore, we haven’t been out recently as much as we would like. But… I got heated pants and chaps for Christmas! We might just get a bit of riding in after all!

So there is Jim, stranded on the side of the road. He wound up having to call AAA and have them trailer the bike back home, about 50 miles. It ruined his whole planned bike trip, of course.

So he had Ray Price Harley come out and pick up the bike at his house. It’s a busy shop, and they didn’t have time to thoroughly look the bike over for a couple of days. When they did, they told Jim they would have to open up the engine in order to see the extent of the problem, which would cost a fair amount of money.

But, as everyone at Ray Price knows Jim, they decided to see what they could do to get Harley to do the repair for free, since it was obviously a mechanical defect on the bike. Even though it had 50,000+ miles on it, there was no other reason for the engine to fail.

When they did open up the engine, they found this:

Rear cylinder on the bike, with the piston removed.

The exhaust valve had broken and dropped into the cylinder, contacting the piston and shearing off metal fragments. Of course, this wrecked both the front and rear cylinders.

Broken valve spring

Damage to the front cylinder from metal debris

Fortunately, Harley was convinced to do the repairs gratis due to the obvious mechanical issues. But Jim decided, the bike had just become too unreliable for both of us to do the long rides we enjoy. So he started looking for another one.

The process up to this point had taken about 2 weeks. While Jim does also have a Buell Blast that he was able to ride, I hadn’t been on a bike, and we hadn’t been on a ride together, in that time. He had always wanted to try out an 1125R, though, one of two SportBikes in the 2009 Buell lineup. If you know anything about sport bikes, they are not meant for passengers. But, being game for just about anything involving riding with Jim, we hopped on for a test drive of the 1125R.

Almost the instant we headed out of the driveway at Ray Price, I knew this was not the bike I wanted to ride. Take a look at the specs from Buell. See the pointy end at the seat? That’s where I was sitting. Not the most comfortable place in the world – especially on a 146Hp bike with a V-twin. Now, Jim is a great bike driver. He’s careful, pays attention, and doesn’t take too many chances. But on that bike, I felt constantly like I was just going to fall right off the back of that pointy seat. It was precarious, painful, and downright unpleasant.

When we returned to the dealership (after about 20 excruciating minutes), I told Jim I didn’t think it was the right bike for a passenger. I assured him, however, that should he choose to buy a new bike, he should get the one HE wants and not one that will be the most comfortable for me as a passenger. Because, at the end of the day, it is his bike, and his ride.

He agreed, though, and said there was no way he could ride a bike like that on the 1,000 mile trips that we do every few months. And he wanted something comfortable for both of us.

Next: A goodbye and a hello.

Jim enjoys nothing more than a good problem to fix, so he was looking forward to getting his hands dirty with the bike. I was there to document the process, as well as lend a hand when needed.

He started by checking the 77 connector – this is a frequent point of failure on Buell Ulysses motorcycles. His was fine.

Buell Ulysses 77 Connector

On to checking under the primary inspection cover. This is where he found the problem.

Buell Ulysses Clutch Adjustment

Rotor and clutch basket with cover off

This picture shows the rotor on the left and clutch basket on the right. The gears on the left perform the same function as an alternator on a car. The only difference is that on a bike, the rotor is on the outside and stator is on the inside. There is a great picture of this here.

The inside of the left wheel has magnets glued on the inside – extremely strong magnets. These rotate around the assembly of copper wires called the stator. One of the wires in the stator had shorted out, and the battery was no longer charging because of it. That’s why the bike had died in the driveway.

Since the stator problem usually takes out the voltage regulator too, Jim replaced all of it at once. That got it running fine again. The weekend after Suches, Jim was planning to do some riding out near Asheville, which is about a 2 and a half hour drive, up in the mountains.

Halfway there, somewhere outside Greensboro, Jim heard an odd noise from the engine, like something breaking. Then, the bike cut out.

Next: Bigger problems… the Uly goes into the shop.

It took me forever to finish this one — sorry about that. Life has been busy!

We went to this beautiful little town Jim knew near Suches, called Helen. It is done up as a Bavarian style town, and is in fact a sister city to a town in Germany.

Helen is the sister city of Fussen, Germany

It turned out to be Oktoberfest while we were there! So the place was packed, but being a cycle-friendly town, there were bike-only parking spaces. We love you, Helen city planners!

Jim and I had lunch at a nice little German restaurant which had waitresses in dirndls and hosts in leiterhosen, as well as a guy on guitar taking song requests. We sat out on the deck and took in the gorgeous weather and the people walking around.

The town of Helen, Georgia

Town Square, Helen, Georgia

After buying a tee shirt and a few other souvenirs (there was a fantastic leather shop downtown – not an expected find in a place like that!) we headed back to Suches. The next day, it was time to take the loooong ride back to Raleigh. With no detours like the ones we took on the way down, we were able to make the trip back in about 8 hours, with stops. All told, we rode 1045 miles on the Buell that weekend.

As we got to within 5 miles of the house, Jim pulled up his visor at a red light and said to me, “That’s odd.” The engine light had come on, on the bike. We continued on toward the house… and the bike died at the top of the driveway.

Jim took a look, and said he thought it was the voltage regulator. This was apparently a relatively easy thing to fix, so I (and he) thought nothing of it, and he said he would fix it the following day.

Next Post: It wasn’t so simple… bike repairs.

And as I hold you in suspense, wondering “Did she or didn’t she…?”

Here is your answer. I didn’t.

I chickened out. Jim even pulled over so I could talk to the guys. But I’m all too human, and I have a life, a family and a job. Who knows where those shots would wind up someday?

Deals Gap Dragon Killboy Picture

So here is the shot they got. Not too bad, huh? Even though you can’t see my face. (Or maybe that should be “because”)

So after cruising on down the Dragon, we continued into Suches. By the time we got to T.W.O., it was about 8:15. We had to ride Wolf Pen Gap in the dark. It’s a darn good thing Jim is so good with the bike – that’s a scary road in the daylight.

By the time we got to T.W.O., we were starving. They shut dinner down at 8:30, so we caught it in the nick of time.

We finally arrived at our cabin around 10 PM, feeling like – well, like we had just ridden a bike for 12 hours. Ready to hit the hay. The cabin we stayed in was beautiful – hardly what one would think of as a cabin. Exposed wood, lots of amenities. 2 full baths, 2 bedrooms, big living room and kitchen. We wound up in the bedroom with 2 twin beds, but we made do nicely. I was so tired that first night, ANY bed was more than adequate.

Next: our trip to Helen GA during Octoberfest!

When Jim saw my post yesterday, he prodded me to change the time I spent on the bike on the way down to 12 hours, rather than 8. But I pointed out to him that we did stop for breakfast, lunch, and gas/bathroom breaks. So all told, that 8 hours was pure ride time (and plenty of it, I might add…)

Riding through Tennessee and Western NC was gorgeous. At one point, mountains surrounded us on all sides, rising up around the road as we zoomed past. I had never been in the southwest corner of the state before.

We headed over to Deal’s Gap, to ride the Dragon (aka US 129). The Dragon’s big claim to fame is 318 curves in 11 miles of road. Of course, being a dragon lover anyway, I had to get a t-shirt to commemorate my trip. Pretty cool, don’t you think?

Naturally no trip to Deal’s Gap would be complete without a spin by the KillBoy film crew. Jim and I had discussed it once, and I had said that given the chance, I would do what hundreds of women (and a few guys!) have done before me, and flash the camera crew. So in the ladies’ room at Deal’s Gap, I took off my tee and zipped my leather jacket up, and we headed off in search of the KillBoy crew.

This past weekend (10/3-10/5) I traveled to Suches, Georgia on the back of the bike. A while before the trip, the longest thus far in my short time riding as a passenger on the back of a motorcycle, I prepared by purchasing a BeadRider seat cover, to avoid the dreaded Monkey Butt.

We were really excited for this trip. About 65 people from BadWeb (badweatherbikers.com) were coming down for the second annual “Buelltoberfest” – basically, an excuse to go into the mountains and ride like hell through the twisty roads that are everywhere in that area.

We left around 8 on Friday morning. Our route took us across North Carolina, with a short detour into Tennessee ( to ride the Dragon and go through Deal’s Gap, of course), before crossing into Georgia.

Our route from Raleigh to Suches

To give you some idea, from Raleigh to Asheville is normally about 4 hours’ drive. So, excluding the side trip into Tennessee, we were looking at about 6.5 hours without stopping (which you will know if you’ve ever ridden on a motorcycle for 6 hours non-stop, is not an option). With the Deal’s Gap detour, it’s about 8 hours.

Imagine, if you will, a typical 8-hour work day. Now imagine spending that 8 hours on the back of a motorcycle.