Had a great time at the Great River Road Rally last weekend- slept great thanks to the musical accompaniment of the melodic creatures in the parkside pond, great saturday supper, rockin’ blues band friday night, and breakfast sendoff on sunday… All for $33, and woulda been five bucks less if I’d bothered to preregister.

But some of the other economic exchanges of the weekend weren’t so pleasant. Friday night one of the local charities offered dinner as a fundraiser, and didn’t sound like much of a meal for $8. Headed to uptown Soldier’s Grove for the friday fish fry so I’d at least get filled up, first tavern had no fish fry and second had already run out of fish by… 7 pm! Tried their soup and salad, but the salad bar was half empty while a staff of two tried to keep up with about 20 times as many frustrated customers. Saturday breakfast wasn’t much better, with the local Lutheran church offering scrambled eggs, cakes, sausage, but no taters for $9… After a plateful I wasn’t full, but ’twas so tasteless I didn’t take them up on the all you can eat offer.

Now I hear tell that the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America (BMWMOA) gets in the neighborhood of an offer a day from chambers of commerce and such wanting to host BMW rallies with the expected intended fleecing of the visiting BMW riders. Look at BMWMOA’s glossy monthly magazine and you’ll see that even BMWMOA is believing their own fantasy- It looks like a cross between a brochure for luxury all-inclusive tours and a high dollar accessory catalog. Now the going rate for charity fundraisers targeted at the general populace around here is five bucks; maybe six or seven if it’s a really outstanding spread. And I expect that now that the BMW riders have left Soldier’s Grove, charity dinners will return to that price range and the local taverns will keep adequate supplies of fish for the friday fry in stock.

So it’s not rocket science that having spent the last few decades trying to prove to the world that we motorcyclists aren’t a bunch of modern day pillagers, we may have overdone it a bit. Heck, with new BMWs and Harley’s often selling for as much or more than cars, depressed local economies are out and out targeting us. Heck, they even think we have the standard 2.2 kids and are normal upstanding citizens ‘cept for us ridin’ them motorcycles!

Clearly, we need to change our image. As a model, might I suggest the TDIers, those cheapskates who horde VW dieselcars that beat 40 MPG even on a bad day. TDIers are infamous for sleeping in their little cars unless they can get a room for less than $30, Carry a couple of them NASA tech food coolers/warmers so they can load up on Arby’s 5/$5 and Subway’s $5 footlong deals, and buy diesel truck oil in gallon and more quantities to get the price break. They pride themselves on DIY repairs and wash their TDIs only when threatened with divorce or matrimony… Months old collections of dead bugs and mud build character! Or maybe the Airheads, who have turned thumbing their collective noses at BMW marketing into an art form and science.

OK, this example of what your bike should look like may be a bit extreme- several vital clutch parts are missing so it’s unridable, and the manure’s been washed off. But you want a bike that will cause bystanders to offer you jumper cables and use of their tools and garages. You want guys with pickup trucks to stop and make sure your bike hasn’t suffered some fatal malady when you stop to check your map. Yes, a map- that pricey GPS is a dead giveaway, leave it at home or at least put it in your pocket.

Your gear should similarly suggest impoverishment… No more color coordinated leathers and $500 boots and helmets. ‘Stiches are acceptable, provided they’re a color that causes bystanders to ask if there’ve been any fires lately or inquire as to what movie you’re in. You want those same Lutheran church ladies to invite you in for a meal, and when their husbands offer to power wash the grime off your bike, tactfully refuse, reminding them that the grime is keeping the oil leaks at bay…

When you roll into the Britt Hobo Convention and the old ‘bos ask what roads you ride and your handle, you’ve succeeded…

Yup, you’ve no more excuses… A check of the calendar over at http://www.bmwmoa.org shows no less than 8 rallies scattered about the country this weekend, 3 more over at http://www.mgnoc.org, and I didn’t even check the RAT or airheads websites. Yup, i know, money is tight… But what’s not to like about a weekends camping, fun, a good meal or three, and mingling with your gearhead buds for less than $50? ‘Bout now the guy with the Harley is raising his hand and complaining that his pickup only gets 15 MPG… Well leave the pickup home and ride! Even out here in the middle of somewhere or other, I’m only 300 miles from the Great River Road BMW rally, and I’ll take in a meeting and do some shopping on the way home. So 5, maybe 6 gallons of gas and the $33 rally fee and I’m good for the weekend, can’t beat that!

If you gotta stay home and work or take care of a loved one, we understand. But poverty is an excuse to ride and camp and rally, not a deterrent. Heck, during the couple years between my tenures at Hostess Brands and Postal Service I was on the road most every weekend I couldn’t find work, and I never even had to dig into my savings. And this “rally” thing ain’t just for motorcyclists, just saw a flier for an old tractor, etc. swap meet in Iowa this weekend, with cheap camping and even breakfast served on the grounds. Bummin’ around was never so much fun… 

Or make that the leather work gloves, and insulated ones at that. Florida Airhead Tech Days, your supremacy has been challenged!

The parking area pix certainly matches Florida’s, but with not a /2 in sight I had to settle for a /5 to frame the photo. And the shop was busy too:

Replacing pushrod seals on an R100GS… Sorry, no “from the crank out” engine rebuilds, we’re simply too nice with our machinery up here. Yah, sure…

But we did bust open a tranny, with the full “sturm and drag” theatrics involving an impact wrench and lengthy breaker bar as well as the pictured flames. Disassembled said tranny, reassembly delayed while awaiting parts I assume. 

And we attempted to untangle a tangled /5 electrical “system”.

OK, FLairheads, I’ll concede defeat… We had a mere 3 bikes apart at once compared to your 7, and though our host Minnesota Air Marshall Curt Henry offered overnight camping, I don’t think anyone took him up on it. Maybe best that we didn’t get Curt in conflict with his suburb’s zoning commissars, And the FLairheads do have the advantage of being in a state with no local government outside the big cities, and helps too that some of the FLairheads have some acreage to work with… I mean, you can hide a lot in a 600 foot deep lot in the tropics! So without near a week to complete our “repairs”, we were kinda careful in how severe a mechanical maladies we took on.

But we ate good- Curt’s most awesome blueberry scones for brunch followed by a leisurely pulled pork with all the trimmin’s lunch. So we matched the esteemed FLairheads in the culinary department. Now if we can just line up a half dozen lifts, a full machine shop at our disposal, and a city that won’t complain if we take up permanent residence. Oh yah, we need some of Florida’s airhead gurus too… Hey guys, gettin’ a little hot and stuffy down there? Maybe wanna come up north for the summer?

Heck, it’s looking like another rail century!

Now you’d think the most read articles on this attempt at journalism (the standards for blogs are pretty low) would be tomes on the latest and greatest motorcycles and high performance cars, followed closely by articles on old bikes and maybe truckin’. But despite the fact the I haven’t written about railroading in what seems like months, the most popular articles are on railroading. Heck, every day I get a several readers of a heavily opinionated piece I did on the rise and fall of EMD locomotives a year or so ago! And when the most popular topics among gearheads are trains, that says what will be the major mode of transport this century… Rail!

A bit of history is probably in order here… The 1800s are widely considered the century of rail, as railroads grew their webs across the continents at the expense of water borne transport. Then came the 1900s, the century of air, autos, and trucks as overbuilt railroads went belly up. By late in the 20th century every major american railroad was in bankruptcy court or expected to appear their shortly. Subsidized with near free access to the Interstates, truckers could match rail rates with faster service. Thanks to Uncle Sam’s funding of applied research (every wonder why a 707 looks so much like a B-47) and aviation infrastructure, the airlines stole the passengers off the trains while Greyhound picked up the scraps.

Now if that trend line had continued, there’d be no railroads left. But you can’t fool physics, and rail has the advantage of the inherent lower rolling resistance of steel wheels on rail plus the aerodynamic advantage of being able to couple mile long trains of “drafting” railcars together. Aviation doesn’t have to concern themselves with rolling resistance much, but it takes massive amounts of fuel to create the lift to keep a plane from crashing. Therein lies the secret of why the 21st century will be the second rail century… The cheap fuel is gone, the roads are being all but abandoned, and aviation has largely become a cesspool of bankrupt “zombie carriers” and literal “fly by night” under capitalized upstarts flying on easy credit and cheap labor. Meanwhile, the rails are largely the only mode seeing reinvestment- While there’s barely highway funding to patch potholes, BNSF is reinvesting 20% of profits in maintenance and upgrading of their tracks and trains.

And well they should be… Throughout the recession, rail freight and passenger volumes continued to rise. I live along what would charitably be called a “secondary main track”, a single track connecting a couple more important mainlines. But  few years ago you’d seldom see a full mile long train on such tracks, just a few locals with ten or twenty cars and maybe a 50 car through train or two a day. Heck, volume is up to the point that between the unit trains of coal, oil, ethanol, grain, and frac sand several hundred car “mixed trains” pass daily, full of refrigerated, flat, gondola, and just about every other imaginable car except intermodal well cars… Probably would get them too if it wasn’t for a low bridge or three. Not just empties either, saw one mixed freight the other day with “distributed power”- A remote control “pusher” engine at the rear of the train! The same picture is seen all over the world… For example, Florida East Coast recently picked up a bunch of short haul intermodal business because their trucking company competitors couldn’t find drivers to move the trailers at the starvation wages they we’re offering. That’s the same FEC railroad that’s planning to offer passenger service without needing a cent of subsidy. They’ll probably pull it off too, given that Amtrak’s Empire Builder’s fares alone are covering nearly 90% of operating costs. And that’s on a train where scarce high priced sleeping car seats sell out months in advance- Give the ‘Builder a couple more sleeping cars and it’d probably be Amtrak’s first train to turn a profit!

Now of course, not all is sweetness and light on the rails- For example, Canadian Pacific’s new management team is doing their best to chase away customers, just like they did at Canadian National. And no doubt the newbies at EMD’s new Indiana plant are still trying to figure out how to build locomotives, and probably similar manufacturing misadventures are underway at GE’s new Fort Worth plant. But the 21st century rail renaissance is so robust that it won’t matter much- CPR’s jilted customers will move to competing railroads or pay more, and with shortlines running hundred car freights and Amtrak’s fleet pushing two decades age the market can only grow.

Good thing there’s a siding on that track by my home… We may need it!

Now the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America is an outfit that we BMW riders sorta tolerate. Pick up their monthly mag and you’ll see why… Looks like it was produced by a travel agency in partnership with BMW and any aftermarket supplier high profile enough to afford a glossy full page ad. In fact, it’s pretty much a compendium of full page ads for their vision of the BMW lifestyle, which involves spending way more money than most of us have on a continual stream of new motorcycles, accessories, thousand buck riding suits, and the latest BMWMOA all inclusive tour. Camping, old BMWs, riding to work or somewhere cheap? Buried deep in the glossy pages, and findable only by dedicated old grouches like this writer. No surprise that most BMW riders aren’t BMWMOA members, as we let our memberships lapse when we’ve had it with the “lifestyle” promotion, then maybe come back when they add some useful DIY tech columns, especially when they help us keep our old bikes alive. I came back with a 5 year membership when I bought the F800S in 2009, but given that BMW has deemed that their nearest dealer be 150 miles away from my home, I’ll probably let my membership lapse again.

Or maybe I’ll renew… Couple months ago was an excellent test of oils, even including Rotella T diesel oil along with the pricey motorcycle oils. Then last month we get a multi rider tire comparison of dual sport tires. This months feature was on camping, and after a few pages of “product placement” there was a couple seriously good articles on camping for the newbies. But this is still BMWMOA, that holds their sole affordable even, the national rally, in the hottest spots in july… Maybe in hopes we’ll give up on camping, see the light, and go on their pricey all-in hotel based tours instead.

Then I hear the other day that after this years national rally in wet but cool western Oregon, next years rally will be in Minnesota at the state fairgrounds. What’s not to like… Square miles of space, bus service at the front gate, light rail two miles away, a bellyache gulch of eateries in multiple directions, couple a miles to REI, and ACd indoor space galore if global warming makes a comeback. And heck, don’t even need to ride… The rally is but a light rail and bus transfer away from the Amtrak station!

Dang, I may have to reup my membership! But not much chance of BMW selling me anything…

I know… Your significant other(s), condo board, housing inspector, nosy neighbors, your mother, and even your dad think you should clean out the garage/basement/parking spot so they can park their shiny new car/bicycle/big screen TV in it. That assumes you’re lucky enough to even have a garage… Many big cities are even pressuring developers to build new housing with no parking space, never mind garages. Yup, the Condoing of America is a threat to rolling history. Take a look at Europe or Japan, which are a few decades ahead of us on this deadly (to history) trend… Thousands of innocent citizens jammed into clustered and stacked cubicles, with so little space that the only wheeled transport allowed, bicycles, end up out on the decks. They keep this up and future generations will have no knowledge of history other than old video games.Yup, that’s an original Mini in the background, a Cooper S in fact. Only about 30,000 were ever built, last in the early 70s. Thanks to the excellent website http://www.howmanysurvive.co.uk which downloads data from the Great Britian’s licensing agency, I found that even in the Mini’s homeland probably less than 1000 of this model remain. Reputedly something like 10,000 Minis emigrated to America before the ramp was pulled up in 1968, but most of them were humble 850s and milder 1000 cc. plain Jane Coopers instead of homologation special 1275 cc. Cooper S at twice the price. Looking at how few genuine Cooper S are advertised and show up at meets, it ain’t rocket science that way less than a thousand of them survive in America, and maybe in the world.

Now that 1000 number is significant, because it tends to be the threshold population a vehicle needs to maintain to keep an ecosystem of parts and knowledge alive to maintain the species. In the public eye and that of museum managers, 1000 of the species surviving tend to keep the species alive in the public consciousness. That’s why the common icon of the diesel streamlined locomotive is the EMD E and F series, because at least a hundred of them survive versus at best a handful of similar Alcos and maybe a sole surviving Baldwin “Sharknose” hiding in the U.P.. Thus when the surviving population of a vehicle slips below a thousand in North America it should be put on the gearhead’s endangered species list, and woe be any busybody dogooder, amateur or paid, that tries to haul it off to the crusher. Crushing is forever… A piece of history forever lost!

Back to the Cooper S and it’s garage mates… Over 30,000 R100G/Ss were built, and with public records from GB and Australia showing that after 20 years about 10% of motorcycles survive, it’ll probably narrowly avoid the endangered species list. But the R80ST and R65LS easily make the endangered list, with only 6000 of each ever built and maybe 600 surviving. The Quota behind the big hack has probably already made the endangered list with maybe 1500 built and 100 to 200 shipped to North America over a decade ago. The population of a vehicle “species” tends to be halved just in it’s first decade of life, and a collector vehicle may see but 10% survive past their 20th birthday. For more common vehicle, something like 2-3% survive 20 years, with continuing decimation thereafter… That still leaves thousands of 57 Chevys and 60s Mustangs to litter car shows. Given that there’s only a handful of hack makers left in the country and even the most prolific might build a hundred in a good year, there’s probably less than a thousand of any model hack in existance… Thus both the Motorvation sidecars in the pix should be on the endangered list, although with a handful of sidecar builders still building, we’ve at least got some mating pairs. Even the crashed and tweaked bicycle frameset on the wall might make the endangered list, Trek 7500s with Women’s frames seem pretty rare. State Farm already paid it off, but they never said I couldn’t tweak it straight and refit it. Got maybe three other bikes that qualify for the endangered list- a Teledyne Titan (at most 2000 built), Santana tandem, and even my daily rider Bike Friday folder has never been built in great numbers.

This little post got started a few weeks back when I was reading up on museum collecting techniques and such in anticipation of adding to the “collection”. Well, turns out I’ve already got a collection and haven’t been totally responsible in preserving these endangered species… Though I have at least kept them from the crusher and indoors now that I’ve got adequate garage space. So it’s time to forget schemes to cannibalize one airhead to keep another alive, and the Cooper S at least needs to be pulled out of that corner and cleaned up, maybe even made runnable but rusty for now. The Quota’s paint wont be bastardizeded to match the hack’s, the ST and LS will be kept quick instead of dead, and the hacks have a home forever!

But first gotta run up to the Motocycle shop and get a new tire for the ’07 F800S today… only 700 of them imported!