Fast and Furious
I keep two motorcycles out here in San Diego. My primary bike, as it has been since 1987, is a BMW. Beemers always start and rarely have problems. One time about seventeen years ago, on one of our May trips through Utah, the drive shaft rear end differential on my KLT bike shit the bed and caused me to let the group ride on to Durango while I waited in Moab for the Salt Lake City BMW dealer to come down with a van to pick it up and give me a loaner (a Triumph 900). It was a wild and memorable adventure playing catch-up into the evening hours on twisty Colorado roads on a bike meant for someone much lighter and much younger than I was. I have always felt that BMW could be allowed that one problem over a 30+ year history with me. But now my new K1600 GTL, the top of the BMW line-up, has once again shit the bed and this time it has again done so in its rear end (tell me that isn’t symbolic).
I was out a month or more ago with Kim for a day trip to San Clemente and the Ortega Highway and the warning light for the ASC (Automatic Stability Control) started flashing at me. The warning on the screen of the GPS just says to drive carefully and does not imply there is a danger in continuing, so we made it back to the barn and the next day I was at the Escondido BMW dealership. I left the bike there, and decided it was the perfect opportunity to ride my reserve bike, which I keep for guest riders and an occasional short jaunt up into the Lilac Road orchards. The other bike is a Kawasaki Versys 1000, which is an all-road sweetheart of a black bomber that rides very nicely for all of the 600 miles I have put on it over the last few years in NYC and now out here as a reserve bike. I’m lending the Kawasaki to my pal Chris for the ride in Utah in May that now may or may not happen thanks to the pandemic quarantine.
After that Ortega Highway episode, the BMW shop told me the bike was fixed so I picked it up at the same time I picked up my new super-comfortable Shoei Bluetooth full-coverage tilt-up helmet. In the ten minutes of driving back home, the bike went right back to screaming at me that the ASC was kaput. I called the shop and they said to bring it back whenever it was convenient. When I did that, the head mechanic, CJ, was there and told me he would sort this out. I asked if it was likely an indicator light problem or an actual rear-end traction control problem? I have never had a bike with ASC so I had no way of telling right from wrong in the feel. I know how ABS works and feel that has value, but I’d never heard about ASC and didn’t know if it did anything for me other than frustrate me by making me visit the shop. This is a bike that is 1 year old and has 1,800 miles on the odometer, having been ridden on one 1,500 mile Death Valley trip and a few local day trips.
CJ called me the following week and asked if I had put any after-market do-dads on the bike or changed out the tires? The answer was no. I am a strictly stock guy who owns motorcycles not to tinker with them, but to ride them, and I never touch these new highly computerized rigs the way I used to work on my old high school Triumph TR6R 650 Tiger. After another week, I called and CJ told me he was still waiting for the German engineers to call him back with some added suggestions, since he was stumped. Apparently, they were a bit stumped as well. I spoke to Rudy at that point. Rudy is the sales manager that sold me my last two bikes including this one. He was fully aware of the problem and so I started in on him for pushing me in the direction of the the K1600 when I had always been perfectly happy with the RT. I told him I wanted him to swap me out and he went stone-cold silent. He said there was nothing the dealership could do, but if I was patient, there might be something to do with the mother ship.
Around that time, I got a proper recall notice from BMW based on some sort of rear end transmission problem. When I spoke to the shop this week they said it was anybody’s guess when the recall replacement parts would come in. Rudy was very coy and I sensed there was something else afoot. Then I looked up the California Lemon Law (which applies to motorcycles as well as cars). If my bike (which was bought within the 18 month window allowed) is in the shop for 30 days and they are unable to resolve the problems in that time, I am automatically allowed a full refund from the company. This comes from BMW, not the dealership. I think that may have been what Rudy was trying to tell me without telling me. It has now been 17 days and given that the dealership is closed on Sunday and Monday, let’s call that 19 days. If I can get another 11 days without a resolution, which I bet this Coronavirus situation pretty much assures, I think I have a new bike in my future. I could go the route of an all-road GS Adventure, but given my Kawasaki, I’m more likely to just go back to my good old reliable RT (which has the same engine as the GS only with more fairing and comfort). I like the GS, but Kim and I will be more comfortable on the RT.
In the mean time, today was a nice sunny but cool day here in Southern California and I decided to take a ride despite the Stay-At-Home order. I geared up in a black Kevlar-padded Kawasaki riding jacket, black riding boots, black leather Kevlar gloves and my new Shoei full-coverage black helmet. I felt like Mad Max all in black and Kevlared up on my black bike. It occurred to me that a full-coverage helmet with a visor makes a good substitute for an N95 face mask…and it has a Bluetooth playlist from my iPhone playing its loop in my ear. Nothing like Billy Joel’s Captain Jack to rev you up for a pandemic-busting run up to Mount Palomar.
The ride is my classic with lots of twisties heading up and down boulder-strewn hills through Valley Center with his trucks piled with hay bales (I guess cows still gotta eat), through the Rincon Reservation, past the quiet Rincon Casino and Hotel and to the base of the mountains with their upper-level cloud cover. On the way I encountered an unusually large number of riders coming and going. Saturday is a riding day, but this was more than usual. I am used to knee-scrapers passing me on this ride up S6 with its switchbacks, and there were plenty, but today was different. They seemed to be riding with more abandon. And then I found something that was decidedly not usual, a number of groups of Fast and Furious street-racer cars started coming up fast behind me. I am always all about letting racers race, so I waved them past one at a time and pass they did, with a quick downshift and a burst of speed to swing wide for the next corner. The whole way up the mountain there were more sport-racers and knee-scrapers than I’ve ever seen on Palomar. With the roadside snow up top (chilly, but sunny), I didn’t pause at Mom’s Cafe, but slid down on S7 to take the sweepers down into the Lake Henshaw Valley. There were hardly any racers on that calmer and very pleasant route.
I stopped at my usual cafe and bought a to-go cup of Chile and Sourdough Toast and sat on the steps (no table service allowed). Everyone maintained the weird social distancing rules. I sat on the stoop and pondered the day as the regular array of bikes and fast cars zoomed past. I think everyone is getting furious about this sequestration and the change to their lives. I think that is driving those who are Motorsport inclined to get out and drive faster than usual. Man is a risk-taker by nature and when government curtails risk (as they should), man lets the risk out in another direction. Keep that in mind when you are out on the roads….and keep your helmet lid down against the road rash and the virus.