So the guy helps and in the process I hear a snap, not a good sound in maintenance or extreme sports. The mysterious the snap sounds equals a broken throttle cable. Completely disabling the bike. Ahhh SHIT!!!May 17 - Phoenix to Vegas

This morning I got up around 7 to get ready, eat a hardy meal and be at the storage locker for opening at 9am. I wanted to get there early to get ready so I could meet Vik just at the pre agreed upon time and place because he had a plan for the evening. I needed to meet him in some small town on the outskirts of Las Vegas called Searchlight at 7pm. It wasn’t a super long drive but still a full day in record heat. After the Baja trip I prefer to have easier days with more frequent cool down stops.

Instead of taking a cab the hotel offered the airport shuttle as the bike was stored
near the airport. Well I would have been better off with a cab, the guy had no idea where we were going. I had to direct him and I had spent a sum total of 1 day in Phoenix.

Anyway a 10 minute drive took an hour. So now I have missed breakfast and the storage place opened 5 minutes ago. The idiot driver drops me and all my gear off, and the place is closed! I know it’s supposed to be open as I called the week before and the night before to make sure they are open Saturday at 9am. At 9:40 the ‘dude’ rolls in. At this point I have been stewing on a hot pavement parking lot in some crappy area of a hot American city, I was not impressed with the service offerings in this town to say the least.

I proceed to pay out the contract and go to unpack and unstore the bike. Getting the bike running and out of the locker was easy, except…..some guy along he way offered to help and it would help given how close the fit was in the locker is very tight.

So the guy helps and in the process I hear a snap, not a good sound in maintenance or extreme sports. The mysterious the snap sounds equals a broken throttle cable. Completely disabling the bike. Ahhh SHIT!!!

OK, situation assessment….. broken behemoth of a bike, foreign city, super hot pavement, no food. Hmmm. Well, good news is its near the locker and in a major city and I have my credit card. Old bike though so parts are probably rare.

First option idea is to re-store the bike and go for parts. Will I be able to fix it myself? Well if not I have to tow it to shop ($50), probably order a part ($50) which will take a few days (hotel - $200), then have them fix it $100). Plus I will miss a third of the trip and all of Vegas.

Soooo can I jerry rig it? Get it to a shop on my own? I got looking at the cabling system to see if there was anything I could do. As it turns out the bike has 2 throttle cables, one to pull the throttle on (give it gas) and another to pull the throttle off (pull it back to idle). The cables are the same length and almost the same design. With some creative routing to the ‘pull off throttle’ cable worked to pull the throttle on. How to get it back to idle? Reach down and push the carb sync bar (connects all 4 carbs together) and force the carbs to idle.

That little bit of mechanical engineering took about 2 hours in the hot sun.

The result? The throttle is hard to turn but at least I can accelerate and it will be fine when idling. However I have to manually make the bike idle,,, abit of a bitch in city traffic.

All in all not a bad bit of Macgyvering if I do say so myself ;-) The irony of the fact I was wearing one of my MIT shirts at the time was not lost on me either.

Later I figured out how to make the engine go back to idle by simply hitting a screwdriver sticking out of the side of the engine making pulling up to stop lights with the engine screaming a thing of the past.

It was high noon and just over 100 degrees when I left the storage yard. 7 Hours to do over 400k through the desert on a gimped up 26 year old bike. Doable.

I drove to a restaurant that was pretty slow and made a bunch of calls to dealers. None had the part but they suggested I try Bob’s Salvage. That really didn’t sound too promising really. Bob’s phone was busy, so I thought I would try driving further and see if I could find and if the bike ran ok and he didn’t have the part I would try for Vegas as is.

So turns out the Bob’s is at the far far end of the city. The good news its in a direction I need to go. Soooo did you know that Phoenix is super long and that getting to Sun City, a suburb, involves about a million stoplights, all red? With my jerry rigged throttle I was cursing redlights.

At one point I needed directions to the parts place so I stopped at a gas station that had a ton of harleys out front. I parked old Bobby Sue and as I approached the people were coming out of the station; all black biker people wearing biker vests. I don’t mean to sound racist at all, but as a Canadian I don’t ever really see many black people so it was abit of culture shock for me. That added with the fact they were bikers gave a brief moment of apprehension. I always like to relate to people and I was riding a bike as well so…

“Hello” says I.

“Aye mn, ow you’ll dwin” says the 6’4”, 275lb black dude with pork chop sideburns and a 4 inch long goatee.

Sooo I didn’t reallllly hear what he said but the tone was friendly. It was about this time I was thinking ‘damn, I am one very small, preppy, and very white guy’.

I keep walking and hold my hand out. He grabs my hand in his huge mitt and does the thumb grab handshake, ‘damn I’m square’ thinks me. I notice on his vest the word Treasurer for some reason. I guess I noticed it because it was the last thing I saw before the guy grabbed me in very weird one armed bear hug.

‘Well its obviously friendly’ thinks me again.

While feebly trying amp up my ‘cool and fluid’ factor I say smoothly “hey, you guys having a good ride”. At which time I realise its not all guys, but half women too.

“oh yea, ‘ad a big ole ri out da valle n roun da feeway y’know”….ok, I got most of that.

“Cool, Cool” says I the hipster. “My bike is broken, do y’all (abit of American slang) know where Bab’s (American accent) Motorcycle Salvage is?”

“Oh yeah, Bob’s, sure I know” Heavy American and black accent but muuuuch more easy for my foreign ears to understand. I look down the line to one of the women waving her hand.

So I walk over say “hello” (dang, shoulda with S’up, or ‘Yo’, or at least ‘Hey’) and shake her hand, the same way the big guy did to me but no hug. We exchanged cordials, sorry, props, about the rides we were having. IT was about this time I realised I was having chat with a beautiful and very buxom black woman riding a harley in jeans and leather chaps with only a vest on top, and it was an interesting experience.

She was really nice, gave me directions, wasn;t offended when saw me accidentally looking at her ample cleavage (I checked to see if the huge dudes had noticed) and even commented on my ‘get-up’. Riding jacket, jeans and leather shoes…..My get-up?

Bob’s salvage was a huuuge salvage place. I ended buying a new cable from Bob or one of his 10 or 12 staff people for only 16 bucks!

The jerry rig I had was ok, if it failed I had the part to fix it and I had a schedule to meet Viktor, so I just decided I would install that later.

Good ride, hot as hell. Booked it in a hurry in case it the cable gave way, to Searchlight and made it an hour early. In this very small town I left my bike in a conspicuous place that Vik would see should he arrive early, and I left a note on it telling him where I would be….out back in the shade having a much needed nap.

Next thing I hear is ‘cheese’ and rouse from sleep to a flash exploding in my eyes. Apparently Vik did find me, yeah.

There we had dinner and caught up after not seeing each other for a week. Other than a few message back and forth about plans and gear we were both in our corners the week before working our jobs hard to afford the time off.

The other thing we did there was to watch millions of little grasshoppers fly around the light so the gas station, and our hair and in our gear. Millions of them...

That night we a gorgeous drive through the desert into Vegas. The moon was huge and full and just over my right hand shoulder. I couldn’t help imagine it to be the headlight of some gigantic celestial motorbike, riding along with us.

Vik and I talked about taking pics of Vegas from afar, when we could see the lights. Well we could see it right away, from 50 miles away!

In Vegas we cruised most of the strip, I had never been before, man what a spectacle! Its both impressive and pathetic in a way. Impressive that we can come together and build some thing like that, oh and pay for it, soooo much money. Also kinda pathetic that it is a sin city and obviously thriving.

Oh yeah, and the MacGyvered bike made it the whole ways with no problems!!!!

Vik’s bike was really hot and I was really tired so we went to get a room. As it was saturday night the only one we could find was the MGM Grand. Abit higher than our average room budget but what the hell. The look on the Valet guys face when pulle dup to the huuuuge front entrance and the baggage dudes took alllllll our little bags of geear was worth it!
We took a short walk around and both totally crashed out!