Thursday, December 31, 2020

From Cool to Comfort - The Geezer Glide Path


2006 H-D Wide Glide

All Harleys are cool, although some are arguably more cool than others and there always those that stand out.  My first Harley was a 2006 Wide Glide.  I enjoyed customizing it and rolling into my favorite biker dive, Stroker's Ice House where it always turned heads.  After a few years, riding to Stroker's and around town had grown old and I started venturing out.  Before I knew it, I was doing 1,000 mile weekends, which in those days was impressive (at least to me) on a non-touring bike.

By 2010, I had the long ride bug and knew it was time to move to a more accommodating platform, both in terms of comfort and storage.  That's when I traded cool for comfort.  I had seen Road Glides, but never really paid attention to them.  I never paid attention to any touring bikes because they were boring to me.  In my eyes, they were one step from a trike and a trike was one step from a Gold Wing and a Gold Wing was one step from a wheel chair.  When I decided to "move up", I focused on the Road Glide because it was different.  Its pointed nose and stationary fairing stood out in a crowd and people called it "fugly". In September, I made a late night deal with a salesman in his end-of-quarter sales stretch and left my Wide Glide behind.  And just like that, I was officially a Geezer Glider.

Hester Has Been There and Back

That was ten years ago and I haven't looked back. I've ridden "Hester" through 49 states to amazing points of interest and across all the iconic and scenic routes.  She was totaled in 2016, only to be reborn with fresh paint and an over-the-top audio system and in 2019, she got a new 110" motor.  At eleven years old, she's as fresh as she was the day I brought her home. And...in the Road Glide world, she's actually cool.

That's not to say I haven't added my share up updates.  I'm not much of a chrome guy and I haven't accessorized with every possible bolt-on part.  But, I do appreciate comfort.  Over the years, I've added Ohlins suspension, a super comfy custom seat packed with gel padding and hospital-grade memory foam, and a windscreen that works so well I can smell my farts at 70mph.  I suppose passengers might not appreciate that last part as much as I do.  I also went overboard with audio.  I usually listen to audiobooks through my helmet speakers, but let's just say that when I crank it up and listen to Led Zeppelin, everyone around me listens to Led Zeppelin.

On my long rides, I usually cash in hotel points to sleep in a comfy room and enjoy a soft mattress,  Wi-Fi and a free breakfast.  But this is not always the case.  I really like camping and I'm pretty adept at it.  In 2011, I purchased camping gear in preparation for my first ride to Alaska and took a few short distance practice trips to sort out suspension load adjustments, added weight handling, and optimal packing.  There wasn't much room, so I learned to pack very efficiently.  The gear I purchased was well-suited for motorcycle camping as it was both lightweight and compactable.  The trip to the REI store on the day of their annual "garage sale" was quite an interesting event unto itself.  You can read about it here.  But I digress.

I've used the gear I purchased in 2010 and 2011 many times and have gotten more than my money's worth out of it.  I most recently moto-camped in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, which was a mere 600-mile lunch ride from my home to the west Texas/New Mexico border.  The tent, while generally serviceable, had a few holes in the nylon here and there, torn zippers, and the flexible fiberglass rods that form the structure had started to split due to age.  The sleeping bag was a super-compact Ranger bag rated to -5°F.  While that's nice, it's also a mummy bag, meaning it's tapered from shoulder width at the top to barely wider than the width of my two feet at the bottom.  I remember being very comfy in this bag over the years, but this time I felt like I was sleeping in a combined coffin and straight jacket.  Temple Grandin would love it.  The bag's zipper had been torn and I was forced to sleep with it unzipped.  While that gave me room to wiggle, it did little to keep in my body heat in the cool night mountain air.  To top it all off, the single-width air mattress I purchased in 2010 no longer held air.  It's time for new gear.

Now that I'm ten years older (if not wiser), I'm taking a different approach to camping gear.  The technology has matured over the last decade and I plan to take advantage of it.  As entertained as I was by the crowd in December of 2010, I will not be attending the REI garage sale.  I may have grown no wiser over the last tenth of a century, but it's a given that the eco-Nazi douche-nozzle crowd that frequents that place will have grown exponentially worse.  I'll buy elsewhere.

Chateau Shrug 2021

My new camping gear approach will prioritize comfort and performance over compact and lightweight.  For starters, I want a tent in which I can actually stand up.  My old tent was described as being able to comfortably accommodate three men.  My experience in that tent taught me that those three men would have to be extremely "close"...and possibly dwarfs.  While I was able to sit upright in it and it did hold the items I wanted removed from the bike overnight, it was oppressively small and confining.  For Christmas this year, my son bought me a new Coleman tent that is taller and also has a larger floor space.  Check one item off the list!

I also want a full-size sleeping bag.  In fact, I want one of those double bags for two people that is essentially two like bags zipped together.  While I foresee no chance of a second person ever occupying the extra space, I want to to be able to spread out in my sleeping bag.  This is especially important after riding for ten to twelve hours day-after-day.  Furthermore, I tend to flop around in bed and when I'm wrapped like a mummy, I wake up realizing I'm confined and then I fight to get comfortable and go back to sleep. Even if I repaired the zipper, he mummy bag simply will not work anymore.

Finally, I'll have a real air mattress with a battery-powered inflation pump.  Even as small as that old mattress was, blowing it up the old fashioned way made me dizzy back then.  I'd probably slip into a coma if I tried today.  I picked up a double bed-sized model and used it on my Guadalupe trip.  Now I'm spoiled and there's no going back to the slim  compact mattress that was barely wide enough to keep one skinny guy off the ground.  And since I'm spoiling myself, I might as well pack a real pillow.  Although the postage stamp-sized pillow that I used for the last decade compressed tightly and packed down to the size of a corn dog, if I'm being honest with myself, it never was really comfortable.

Hester - Packed for Action
Don't read me wrong here.  I have no regrets over the gear I purchased in 2010.  Indeed, it served me well on numerous camping trips.  Of equal importance to its longevity is the fact that it all packed neatly onto Hester in a single dry sack that fit on the passenger seat tucked between me and the backrest.  So given that fact, you may be asking yourself just how the hell Shrug will be able to pack all this larger gear and not look like the Clempetts when they loaded up the truck and they moved to Bever-lee...Hills, that is.  The answer is...I won't.  Although the new tent is compact, it still packs a bit larger than the old one.  That ranger sleeping bag could be rolled down to the size of a small coffee can, but the new double-sized bag that I plan to purchase comes with with extra padding and a thick flannel inner lining.  I'll be fortunate to be able to roll and compress this one down to the size of two BBQ grill propane tanks laid end-to-end.  And since we're talking comfort over compact, might as well make the new pillow a full-size memory foam one and a real chair to the mix.

The solution?  A trailer!  I've seen motorcycles pulling trailers for years and as it turns out, there's a plethora of models and styles available.  Once I decided to head back to the Arctic Circle, I also decided to find a way to bring more creature comforts this time.  I'd like to claim that my tastes have been refined, but the reality is I'm old and brittle and I just think I deserve it.  I started researching pull-behind motorcycle trailers and the first fact I learned is those damned things are expensive!  A company called Bushtec makes the Cadillac of motorcycle trailers.  Actually, make that the Mercedes Benz; way out of my league financially...even for the used ones  Besides the trailer itself, there's adapting the bike with a secure and robust hitch with witch to tow the trailer.  Even a moderately-loaded trailer will subject the motorcycle's rear end to torque and stress that it was never designed to handle, and negotiating the physics on two wheels is far more challenging than on four.  A good hitch kit is not cheap and a cheap hitch kit is probably not good.  Actually, it might be, but that's not a risk I am willing to assume on the roads and for the distance I will be riding.  Once the trailer is hitched to the motorcycle, it has to be wired to the brake lights and turn signals.  Research has taught me that this wiring is more complicated than just splicing the trailer harness to the brake lights like we do for cars.  The additional electrical load from the trailer's lights that can adversely affect the motorcycle's electrical system has to be countered.

I found a trailer that will do the job and that I can afford.  It's not the Cadillac by any means, It's not even a Ford.  I'd say it's somewhere between a Ford and a Yugo.  The bottom line is it is structurally sound, lightweight, and has more than enough room for the gear I plan to take; even with my full-sized pillow and super-sized sleeping bag.

Once I knew what I would be towing, finding a safe hitch system that would do the trick was easy and it turns out that hitch is manufactured by Bushtec.  I may not be able to afford their trailers, but I know I can't afford to use a cheap hitch and theirs is beefy and very well designed to distribute the stress on the motorcycle frame.  If the difficulty of installation is any indicator, the Bushtec hitch ought to perform like a Mercedes, although I suppose I'll settle for a Ford.  I was able to piece together and install a wiring harness that won't tax Hester's nervous system.  The trailer I bought has all LED indicators, so there's practically no measurable additional electrical load on the bike.  I registered and plated the trailer and am now fully prepared to hit the road...in-tow.

Beefy Struts for Reliability & a Removable Ball for Invisibility

I have six months to play around with towing practice and to sort out loading and weight distribution, all while finding the ideal packing arrangement to keep the tongue weight down.  The storage area's clam shell design has plenty of room.  In fact, it may have too much.  I suppose I can also pack oil for a mid-trip oil change, tools, and some more creature comforts as long as I don't go overboard. Still, I will have to figure out a means of  securing things in their place once they're packed.  The last thing I need is for my carefully-planned and strategically-packed supplies to be moving about inside the trailer unbeknownst to me until I hit the brakes or dive into a corner.  I will also have to develop my trailering skills.  The good news is I can barely tell the trailer is back there when I'm towing it.  The bad news is I can barely tell the trailer is back there when I'm towing it.  I can see where I could easily become complaisant and forget to leave sufficient room for curbs when cornering or obstructions when fueling up at a gas station.  Speaking of fuel, after eleven years, I can predict Hester's fuel consumption and range to within a few miles.  Now, I will have to become acquainted with the reduced mileage per tank.  It may feel like there's no trailer back there, but the motor will be well-aware of the additional load and by the time I leave, I should too.  All of this can be overcome with practice rides around town and on the highway; and as I said, I have six months.

Those who know me know I name things.  My orange Kubota tractor is named "Bevo".  My Saab 9-3 is named "Saabrina".  I even named my zero-turn mower "Twister".  You know where Hester's name came from, so it's fitting that I name the trailer "Pearl".  Stay tuned for updates on my skills progress and perhaps an improved look for Pearl.