White Rose Adventures

Please Shoot Murphy

I do believe that Murphy has set up shop in one of our pockets! Would someone PLEASE get him out and shoot him! Grab a cup of what ever ya like to sip on, sit back and get comfortable, because recounting the last few days is going to take a bit and you are not going to want to miss it.

Saturday morning we finished that last little bit of packing and hit the road, 3 bikes pulling 3 trailers. We rode over in to Alabama, picked up a skinny road, (two lane road), and went down to the Alabama/Florida line. We crossed into Florida just far enough to say that we entered the state and took a picture.

We then made our way back to the big road, (interstate highway), and hammered down to Georgia. Our plan was to make it to Blue Ridge, GA to my Aunt & Uncle’s cabin. We would spend the night, get up the next morning and ride on up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. But Murphy had to stick his nose into the mix and it just didn’t happen that way.

I had added a handle bar mounted speaker system to my bike so I would have some tunes for the ride without having to put earphones in my ears. It came with a usb charger for my iPod. With all that wired into the bike, the new break modulator and now pulling a trailer that has lights…I started popping fuses. I popped 2 before we decided that eveything I had on there needed a bigger fuse. Once we put a 20amp fuse in place of the 15amp, I have not had any more problems with blowing them. But that was not the only problem going on.

Bert bought a new shinny trailer and it has 4 wires where all our bikes have 5. We got tail lights and break lights working, but no matter what we did, we could not get turn signals. The trailer Bert was pulling had tail lights, one break light and the right turn signal. The trailer I was pulling had tail lights, break lights and left turn signal. We figured that we could re-wire everything when we got to GA for the night. We had spent all day the day before trying to get them working and couldn’t.

The tempretures got up to around 97 going down the road and by the time we got to Blue Ridge we were happy to see it! We decided that if we could get everything re-wired in the morning and get out of there by noon, we would be ok.

Yeap! you guessed it, Murphy struck again! We spent all day there working on trailers and bikes. Bert fried my break modulator and we had smoke curling up from it for a few minuets! We took it off the bike and started again with a different trailer. Nothing was working. Dad & Bert bought lights, drilled holes on the new trailer, mounted them and ran the wires to make them the turn siglals. Whoo! Hoo! We had one trailer wired to two bikes, Dad and Bert’s bikes. My poor bike was left sitting for a while.

Bert decided that they would go ahead and totally re-wire the flatbed trailer I was pulling. He cut out all the old wires, ran the news one and wired the pig-tail……nothing! Not one single light worked no matter how he wired the pig tail or what bike it was hooked to. So the decision was made to leave it.

Pre-trip Thoughts

It’s 0445 in the morning and I am excited about this trip. I can’t tell you how many time I hear people that ride motorcycles talk about how they would love to take off for a month or two, live off their bike and ride all over the country. Well, I am going to do just that…starting today. A few months ago my brother, Bert, said he was going to be coming home from Israel and wanted to criss-cross the country on his bike. One of his sons, Johnny, is graduating from high school in Connecticut and this would be his graduation present. Bert planned giving the Ultra Classic that he has now to Johnny and buying another bike. With him going to be in Israel for a few more years, I thought that was crazy. The bike would only be ridden once a year when he came home on vacation. My Dad, Albert, said he was going to go with them and how great it would be if I could go as well. OH I agreed, but both of us were worried about whether my wrists could hold up to a 10,000 to 12,000 mile, 45 day trip.

For those that don’t know, November 19, 2008 I fell off the top of my loaded flatbed and shattered both of my wrists. That fall ended a 20 year truck driving career. I had pins and external fixators in both arms for 10 weeks. It took me 6 1/2 months to be able to get back on my bike and that was after I added a clutch assist. For months I would walk out to my bike and see if I could pull the clutch lever. I figured when I could pull it back and hold it a few seconds, then I could try to get back to riding it. Five months after the fall I was beginning to wonder if I would ever be ab;e to ride my bike again, did some research and found the clutch assist. By Memorial Day weekend of 2009, I had it on the bike and rode to Gulfport for the All Harley Gulfport Blowout Rally. It was painful but I was happy to be back on my bike. (The old saying where there’s a will, there’s way is one of my favorites.)

In August 2009, I rode to Sturgis, SD for the big bike rally there with my trucker/biker group that I co-founded, Road Dogs on Hogs. By the time I made it to Nebraska and met the main part of the group, I was popping pain pills like they we candy an in tears by nightfall from the pain in my wrists. I put my bike on one of the guys trailer for part of the last day into Sturgis and rode behind other people almost all week there. When the rally ended I only made it about 300 miles out of Sturgis when I decided that I was in to much pain and taking to many pain pills to be safe. I called my Dad and he hooked to a trailer and came to get me. It broke my heart to put my bike on a trailer and realize that I could not do what I had done just a year before.

When Dad talked about Bert’s plans for this trip and everything that he was doing, I really wanted to go. He asked me if I really thought I could do those kind to miles in that many days. I told him I could. “My wrist have healed a lot since last year. I will be fine,” I said. In the back of my mind I really wasn’t sure. Then I got to thinking. Johnny would be getting his motorcycle endorsement in May, and this would be his first big trip. I wonder if Bert would be open to the idea of him, Johnny and me teaming up to keep the two Harley’s going. It would save him from having to buy another bike, give my wrists a break and not put so much pressure on Johnny who is a new rider. Dad talked to him about it and he liked the idea.

So here we are, a couple of months later and will be leaving out on this once in a life time motorcycle trip in a couple hours. It has not been easy getting here. I am going to college at the University on Southern Mississippi and my boyfriend lives 500 miles away in Dover, AR. I had to finish the semester, get to Arkansas to see Danny, the boyfriend, get the bike looked over, got a cat sitter, help Dad get Bert’s bike and all the trailers ready for the long trip and be ready to roll by today. This has not been an easy task. Bert’s bike would not stay running and we took it to the shop. After finals, I rode mine to Dover, AR and put it in the shop there to have a 50, 000 mile service done. One thing after another happened and things were found on my bike that needed to be fixed before this kind of a trip was made on the bike. I got it out of the shop and in less than 24 hours later, laid it down. Luckily, the shop I had it in are great people and they had me back on the rode with a new custom paint job and a bunch of bling in a week and a half.

Dad had picked up Bert’s bike while I was gone. We decided to take it fro a ride and it had problems, the idle was to high. I called the shop it had been in and he told me some thing to look for. I could not find anything wrong with just a look over, but we decided that we would take it back to him on Thursday. I washed and polished my bike and thought I would do the same on Bert’s bike. It has been sitting for a year and really looked like crap. When I went to pull it out of the garage, it wouldn’t stay running. Dad and I loaded in on the trailer and took it to the shop. That was this last Tuesday, we got it back on Thursday and it seems to be running great now.

Bert flew in from Israel yesterday and the 3 of us got the new trailer he bought to pull behind his bike re-wired. We did the last minuet checks and started packing. I think, after we get the last minuet packing and arranging done, we will be ready to roll. I will be blogging as much as I can from the road and taking pictures. We will have cameras and a cam-corder with us. So check back often to see how the trip is going and to share in the ride!

Motorcycle Wreck

I have been told many times that there are two categories of motorcycle riders, those that have laid it down, and those that haven’t yet! Well, I am now a member of those that have. On May19th I was in Arkansas visiting Danny, my boyfriend. I was on my way from Russellville back to his house on a skinny back road. I have run this road several time when I have been up there and it has some very nice curves to hang in to on the bike. But luckily on this day I was taking it easy. I had just gotten my Harley out of the shop and had a new triple tree and it was steering a bit different than what I was use to. So I was having to get use to it again. I was only n 3rd gear when I started into the curve. Good thing, because the county had laid tar and covered it with gravel. As soon as I hit the loose gravel the back of the bike started getting squirrely on me. I tried to get it under control, but nothing I did worked. I steered it toward the grass should on the other side of the road in hopes that I could keep it up that way. The back tire kept trying to go on down into the ditch. I steered it into the ditch thinking that if I guided it there I might have a chance of keeping it up. No such luck! There had been a lot of rain in the area and the ground was soft. I went down and slid about 75 feet on the right side of the bike.

After I crawled from under the bike, I checked myself to anything broken or bleeding and called the shop. Shelby’s Custom Cycles is where I had a 50,000 mile service done and the new triple tree put on. I knew they would help me get it out of the ditch and look it over. Robert answered the phone. I told him what had happened and where I was. He jumped in his car and came right down. He looked the bike over and said that he could ride it out of the ditch. I told him go right ahead because I was not going to do it. My right knee and hip were already hurting and I was still shaking a little.  We called the Sheriff and they arrived a few minuets later. A couple of guys had stopped to check on me before Robert got there and they mentioned that there was no warning sign coming from that direction. So I walk back to check it out. There was a sing, but this is what it looked like…..

The officer that showed up was very pissed when he saw the sign and called the county judge. I don’t know what he said to the judge, but he he told me that the judge said he would be out that afternoon to take a look at things. After the usual questions and answers the officer left and Robert hopped on the bike and rode it to the shop. Once there, and calmed down, I could see the damage a little better.

I called my insurance company, State Farm. They said they would have someone get int touch with me. Shelby said to not worry about it, he would have my bike back to me “better than it was” by time I was  to head home. It took till the following Monday to get an adjuster out to the shop. They started tearing the bike down before she left and had everything that needed to be painted down to Russellville to the pain shop that afternoon. Shelby explained that I had a PGR mission on the following Monday and he wanted to make sure that I didn’t miss it. They brought paint chips by Danny’s house that evening so I could pick the colors.  They told me to just relax, the bike would be fine, I would get home in time for the mission and my big 6 week bike trip with my Dad, brother and nephew.

Friday morning Shelby called me about noon and told me that they got the paint back that morning and would have the bike ready for me around 1600. At 1600 he called again and said it would be another hour. At 1645 his wife showed up to pick me up. I was excited. State Farm had totaled my bike and I had bought it back. Shelby asked me how much he had to work with on the pain and other thing that the bike needed and for “bling.” I told him and he said that I could not see the bike till it was ready to pick up. He said he wasn’t to surprise me with the paint job and everything else.

The bike was sitting out front when we pulled up. If not for the fact that I had picked the colors and know the stickers on my windshield, I would not have known it was my Harley. I was very pleased with how it looked. Shelby had chromed out the motor, put the brake mod in my back break lights and the paint looked great!

To say that I was surprised and pleased with how it came out is a BIG understatement! Shelby, Robert and the paint shop did a great job is a very short time. I was treated like family the whole time. Let me tell ya’ll this, I will take my bike back there any time that I need something done that I can’t do myself.

If you find yourself up in northwest Arkansas on hwy 7 north of Russellville, go about 10 miles north of Dover and stop in and say hi to Shelby and Robert. Tell them Cindy sent ya!

Warning from ALDOT!!!

Howard McGhee Transportation Technologist Sr. Alabama Department of Transportation Third Division Pre-Construction 1020 Bankhead Highway West Birmingham, Alabama   35202-2745 Phone: (205)581-5641   Fax: (205)581-5624 Email: mcgheeh@dot.state.al.us

IF YOU ARE DRIVING AT NIGHT AND EGGS ARE THROWN AT YOUR WINDSHIELD.

DO NOT OPERATE THE WIPER AND SPRAY ANY WATER BECAUSE EGGS MIXED WITHWATER BECOME MILKY AND BLOCK YOUR VISION UP TO 92.5% SO YOU ARE FORCED TO STOP AT THE ROADSIDE AND BECOME A VICTIM OF ROBBERS.   THIS IS A NEW TECHNIQUE USED BY ROBBERS.

PLEASE INFORM YOUR FRIENDS AND
RELATIVES.

“Bikers Are Animals” Children’s Book

I get many emails pointing me here and there toward all sorts of subjects, but this one I had to look at. My grand-daughter is around 17 months old and I am always teasing my son that I am going to make a ‘biker chick’ out of her. When I saw this email and looked around the site, I decided that I am going to have to get this book for her.

From the site:

Short Description:

“BIKERS are ANIMALS” – A Children’s Book on Motorcycling” by Paul Jamiol is a unique and fun way to introduce young readers to the world of motorcycling. Using a menagerie of cartoon animals in motorcycle dress and riding “cool” motorcycles, the author shows children and parents alike that motorcycle riding is fun and that motorcyclists are intelligent, appealing, hardworking, independent and family-oriented individuals. They are concerned with helping others and working together, regardless of who or what they are.

The characters in this riding adventure speak to the child by what they do. Their brief little stories tell of what they love, and how motorcycles and riding enhance their lives and their relationships. The emphasis is on safety, working together and caring about yourself, others and your motorcycle. read more

Excerpt:

Thor is one of the founding members of the Bears Motorcycle Club. He can be seen riding the highways of Maine on most days in the late afternoon and evening.  read more

About the Author:

Paul Jamiol, an avid motorcyclist, has been cartooning and illustrating for the past 40 plus years. He has been recognized for his work locally, nationally and internationally. His cartoons and illustrations have been featured in various motorcycle magazines and mainstream newspapers.

He produced the Classic Motorcycle Calendar© (a collection of his pencil drawings of classic motorcycles) and has illustrated a children’s book on motorcycling, Patrick Wants to Ride. He created a 30-ft mural, Women in Motorcycling, for the opening of the American Motorcyclist Association Heritage Museum in Westerville, OH. In addition, Paul’s award-winning editorial cartoons have been seen and appreciated worldwide. Read More

OUT NOW: Road Dogs on Hogs in Feb 2010 issue of “BIKER”

The February issue of Easy Rider’s “BIKER” magazine is out now. If you do not have a regular subscription to the magazine, you can order a copy of this issue only, at this link: “BIKER“. I am ordering mine today! We have had one person make a comment about the article and he says it is great. You can read his comment here. I can’t wait to read it myself! Please come back here and post your comments after taking a look at it!