What a great rally! Thanks to all who made it possible. The trip had been preceded by general maintenance that got a tad complicated the week before we left. I thought I had it all prepared to go but then it turned out that I didn't have things fixed after all. On Monday I'd washed the bike and ridden it about 5 miles and everything seemed fine. On Wednesday, I rode to the church and as I was coming home, the bike started missing. I figured that since I'd washed it, it might be water in a spark plug well, and pulled the tank and looked. Sure enough the #1 plug well was full. I cleaned it up and thought I was OK. Then on Thursday, when the first guy got here, we had about an hour to wait for our German and his escorts to make it, so the first guy wanted to go to McD's for breakfast. On the way back, the bike started missing again. We pulled the tank and the #1 plug wire and the well was full again. This time I *looked* at it -- it was oil. So we pulled the valve cover and realized that I was missing the plug well gasket for #1. Couldn't find it laying around in the valve area. I was afraid it might have gotten chewed up by the cam chain and sprockets, and worried that a chunk might plug an oil gallery and lunch the engine. One guy was sure we could make a gasket that would work and headed to NAPA for material. Another guy with better eyes and a brighter flashlight peered down into the cam chain well and found it. We fished it out and were glad to see that it was unmarked. So, 2 1/2 hours late, we were on the road. We had a good trip to the Rally with Wolfram. He finally broke down and tried something other than cheeseburgers and fries at Davy Crockett's Steakhouse in Tullahoma, TN. He tried and enjoyed fried okra and sirloin tips. We rode from Ft Morgan, CO, to Murph's in Kentucky after staying with Chris and Stephanie Baum in Lincoln and at a Travelodge in Hannibal. From Murph's Steve Cook left us and headed to Lexington to pick up his brother Bill and meet us at the Rally. Wolfram and I rode back roads to Tullahoma and got about a half hour at the Beechcraft Heritage Museum in Tullahoma before overnighting in Chattanooga. Monday we met a group of folks who had come looking for us at Tellico Plains and then rode the Cherahola Skyway to Robbinsville and then to Fontana. I managed to embarrass myself twice in an hour, dropping TumbleToo twice in an hour, once in a parking lot at the end of the Skyway and then in another parking lot just below the lodge at Fontana. I've got my CDA # up to 16:a-n. After great rides at the Rally, a good banquet in a great facility, and a quick trip down to South Carolina to visit my brother and his wife, Steve Cook and I headed home on Friday morning. On the way home, my buddy from Loveland and I rode 675 miles from Fontana Village to Ozark, AR. It took us about 16 hours, but that included an hour for breakfast and lunch (at 4:00 PM) and an hour about 20 minutes after we left lunch. We rode into an awesome storm. There were gusts along the squall line of up to 105mph. I think we were probably in winds of over 65-70mph. I've ridden in 50+mph winds in Wyoming and this was a whole bunch worse. When the first gust hit, it was like being punched in the face and knocked my head about 90 degrees sideways. It was hard staying on the road, plus the rain was so hard that we couldn't see much more than 100 feet. There was no way I was going to stop on the shoulder or under a bridge with all the cars and trucks and, luckily, we came to an exit with gas stations and pulled off. Steve, my riding buddy, didn't even realize that we'd left the interstate until we came to the stop sign. A roof had blown off a motel next to the gas station but hadn't hit anything. There was a sheriff's deputy from Berryville, AR, riding his cruiser back from Georgia who had a Blackberry and we watched radar on it. After an hour the rain had slacked off, the wind was down to just wind, and the lightning had moved off to the east. On Saturday, we rode to OK City, had lunch and then at Clinton, left I-40 to ride back roads up through Canadian and Perryton, TX, Guymon, OK, and Boise City. Then we were planning to cut west just south of Springfield and ride near Kim and up CO-109 to La Junta (one of the great *Eastern* Colorado paved roads, BTW). Before we got to Canadian, we passed one of the storm tracker / tornado chaser trucks. After Guymon, we could see a huge thunderhead down near Amarillo, then another one starting just SW of Boise City, and a third up toward Springfield. Just before we we got to Campo, CO, we met a storm chaser bombing off down to the south and another one filled with three grinning young homicidal maniacs hooking a hard left and heading east towards a horizontal funnel cloud that was maybe 10 miles east of us. The temperature dropped about 20 degrees in ten miles and then we topped a hill and could see fog, lots of fog. We topped the next hill and noticed hail on the roadside. When we topped the next one, there was about 6-8" of hail on the road, plus the fog, plus power poles snapped off at ground level. There were cars in the ditch, and we were driving in a truck rut (BTW, there's a word for truck ruts; it's "truts.") We poked along for about half a mile until we came to a place where our trut ended. That was it for me. We stopped and after a while a plow came south. We tried to flag him down but he didn't even look at us. A few seconds later, another plow came over the hill coming north. He promptly plowed hail into our trut. But a couple of trucks came along behind him and made a new trut about 2' from ours. So Steve kicked a path into that one and rode our bikes through the hail that was still frozen on the road. He's got *long* legs and could walk them through a lot easier than I would have. In about 1/2 mile we were out of the hail. Then about 10 miles west and south of Pritchett, there was more hail covering the ground but none on the road. We got to La Junta and checked into the motel and saw pictures of the exact place where we'd stopped on the Weather Channel. Unfortunately, their cameraperson had taken the video before we got there. There went our chance for fame! We woke up Sunday morning to fog that lasted until about 20 miles north of Ordway. I got home just in time for the 11:00 service. Didn't preach, but it was good to be back and let everyone know you could ride 3,498.5 miles safely. Phil Tarman Ft. Morgan, CO Over the Pond 8 Travel Host COG # 3547 Colorado AAD '99 Concours "TumbleToo" CDA #0016(a-n) IBA # 5811: SS1000, BB1500
