Wednesday, 4 May, Cortez, CO to Mile-marker 147 on US Hwy 550 (just south of Bloomfield, NM).
    Mileage: 90 miles.
    Catastrophic Failure of Internal Combustion Engine: 1 (But it only takes one to really fuck up your day.)

Next morning, I was up with the sun -- Hey, the sun!  Even though it was pretty cold -- upper thirties -- the sun was shining, the rain was gone, and it looked like maybe it would be a nice day.  All right!

I skipped the free continental breakfast 'cause I was eager to hit the road.  I followed 160 east toward Durango, turning south on 140, which becomes 170 when it enters northern New Mexico.  The bike was running great.  I was feeling great.  It was gonna be a great day!

At La Plata, I caught Highway 574.  I stopped at a McDonald's in Aztec for an Egg McMuffin and some coffee.  While taking in this healthy sustenance, I checked my maps and reviewed my travel plans.  I was wanting to visit Chaco Canyon and eventually take the road from Cuba to Los Alamos that had gotten my buddy Greg's panties in such a bunch that one time on his VFR (ref this ride report), just so I could see what all the fuss was about and hopefully poke some fun at him when I got home.  If he'd made it on his Viffer, surely it wouldn't be difficult on the Tiger.  After that, I thought I might go through Cimarron Canyon and visit the Capulin Volcano, eventually heading home by way of the Oklahoma Panhandle.  Though I'd been through northeastern New Mexico several times before, I'd yet to swing by the volcano.  You can ride to the top and it's supposed to be pretty neat.  My tires looked great and I hadn't a care in the world.

Little did I know that my trip was about to reach a very abrupt end.

After breakfast in Aztec, I took Highway 550 south.  I'd just passed the little burg of Bloomfield when suddenly there was a loud crunch! from my engine and I felt an immediate loss of power.  Clackety-clackety, something didn't sound right down there.  My immediate thought was that my chain had broken.  I hit the shoulder of the road, clutch in, and eased the bike to a stop, shutting off the motor.  As the bike stopped, a wave of smoke wafted up around me and I could smell oil burning on my exhaust.  I looked down and discovered that my left boot was completely soaked in steaming motor oil.  Stepping off the bike, I was shocked to discover that an enormous hole had been blown in the side of my engine casing.

Clearly this was something that none of my tools or duct tape could repair.  I was royally screwed.  I got out my cell phone, certain that I wouldn't have a signal.  It seems as if my Nextel phone never gets a signal very far from an interstate and I knew from past experience that it rarely works anywhere in New Mexico.  In fact, it hadn't even worked last year in the middle of Taos.  I just knew it wasn't going to work here in the middle of nowhere.

Lo and behold, I did have a signal!  Who to call?  I'm over 800 miles from home and don't know anyone.

I dialed 9-1-1.  The operator came on immediately and I explained my problem.  "Are you injured?" she asked.  I told her no, I was fine, it was just the Tiger that was bleeding all over the road.  Then I asked if I'd done the right thing by dialing 9-1-1.  I didn't want to be tying up the line if someone actually had a real, life-threatening emergency like their finger was crushed in the garage door and they couldn't get free (a poke at my wife, who actually got her finger caught in the garage door once).  The operator assured me that I'd done the right thing.  She asked where I was located.  "Somewhere on Highway 550," I told her, "just south of Bloomfield."  She wanted me to be more specific, so I trudged a half mile to the nearest mile-marker (why'd the bike have to die almost exactly between the nearest mile-markers?).  She asked if I wanted the number for a tow service, and I agreed that seemed the most logical thing at this time.  "Do you have a pen to write the number down?" she asked.  "Yeah," I said, "back at the bike.  Give me a couple minutes, I'm walking back."  She could hear me huffing and puffing, sweating in my riding gear.  It seemed like just a few minutes ago that it'd been in the low forties and I'd been cruising along quite comfortably.  Now there was sweat running down my face.  Maybe some time spent on a mountain bike would have me in better shape, eh?

The Tiger at the end of a 100 foot trail of oil, a puddle forming
as the last of its visceral fluids spill out on the blacktop of
Highway 550 in New Mexico.

The sight that greeted me when I stepped off the bike, hoping
against all odds that the problem would be minor.

As I was returning to the bike, a guy in a truck with a Honda dirtbike in the back stopped to see if I was okay.  He was the first of at least a half dozen people who stopped to see if they could help.  I told them all there was nothing they could do unless they wanted to haul me and the bike into the nearest town.  None of them had a ramp, so I thanked them for stopping and sent them on their way.  The 9-1-1 operator gave me the number for a tow service in Farmington.  I called them and they quoted me a price to come get me.  $175!  You gotta be freakin' kidding me!  "Is there a bike shop in Famington?" I asked the girl on the phone.  "Sure," she said, "there's a Honda dealer just down the street."  "Would you mind giving me that phone number?"  She did.  I thanked her and called the Honda dealer to see if they could come get me.  First thing the Honda dealer asked was what kind of bike I was riding.  When I told him it was a Triumph, he told me there was a Triumph dealer just down the street from him and gave me that number.  Second miracle of the day -- who'd have thought there'd be a Triumph dealer just 18 miles away in Farmington, NM?  (There's also a Kawasaki dealer as well -- saw it as I was driving through.  Maybe there's even more.  Who'd have thought there'd be that many bike shops in such a small town?)

I called the Triumph dealer, explained my situation, and he agreed to come get me (charging me $78, which was a whole lot better than the $175 the tow company wanted) -- "in about an hour," he said.  I told him to take his time, that I wasn't going anywhere.  While I waited, I called Chris and Rich to see where they were at.  I knew they were somewhere on the road home, having spent the previous night in Gallup.  They probably couldn't be of any help to me, but you never know.  If they were close enough, maybe they could come load the Tiger on the trailer and take us both home.  Chris didn't answer his phone (probably 'cause he didn't have a signal -- Chris's service is also Nextel), but I left him a message.  (I only learned later that, thanks to Nextel's wonderful service, Chris didn't even get my voice message for a couple days.)

Next I called my wife, who also didn't answer.  I left her a message saying that the Tiger had blown up and that I might need her to come to New Mexico and get me.  Then I walked offroad a ways -- far enough that people would quit stopping by the bike to check if they could help -- and sat down to wait.  I'd pretty much hit rock bottom and just wanted to be home on my couch in front of the television.  Screw this motorcycling around the country crap!

Bill Dees from the Motorcyclists' General Store in Farmington arrived sooner than I expected.  As we loaded the Tiger into the back of his truck and strapped it down, he asked if the bike had recently been down.  I confirmed that it had (leaving out exactly how many times).  "And was it hard to start afterward?  And did it smoke a lot when you finally got it running?"  Oh yeah.  "I've seen this before," Bill said.  "Got a Triumph Daytona sitting out back of my shop in the same exact shape.  What happens with these motors is oil floods the number one cylinder when it's dropped.  Only thing you can do is remove the plug and drain the oil from the cylinder.  If you run it with the oil in there, it stresses the piston rod ... which eventually breaks and blows out the side of your engine."

It would have been nice, of course, if I had known this beforehand.  Maybe there could have been a big sticker on top of the tank for morons like me: "Warning: motorcycle will self-destruct if you drop it."  But who designs a bike that's obviously going to be offroad and see the (in)frequent drop such that you have to tear the whole damn bike apart (which is what it takes to get to the plugs) each time it goes down?  I can't even remember the last motorcycle I've owned (in 24 year of riding) that I hadn't dropped at some point in time.

"You can fix it, though, right?  Rebuild the engine?"

"I can," Bill confirmed, "but it's probably not worth it to you."

"How much?"

"At least four grand."  (Bill's actual estimate, when I got it later for insurance purposes, would exceed $6,000.  I had only paid $6,000 for the bike when I bought it five months earlier.)

I got to thinking then.  If the engine blew because the bike had been down on the trail ... because I had crashed ... that is, had an accident ... then this was an insurance claim.  I asked Bill what he thought.  "Might work," he said.  I asked if an insurance adjustor came and looked at the bike, if he would tell the adjustor the same thing he had just told me, that the engine failure was the result of my crashing on a dirt road.  He said that he would.

From Bill's shop, I called my insurance company, explained the situation, and asked them to file a claim.  I got the run-around for a while, got transferred to different offices -- first in Tulsa, then somewhere in Arizona -- and tried to get them to send an adjustor out that very day (you know they've got those people just sitting around on their asses doing nothing most of the time), but eventually decided there was nothing more that I could do there.  The only decision was whether to find a U-haul and take the bike home or just rent a car and drive myself home, leaving the bike with Bill.  I really didn't want to screw with the bike.  Looking at it made me ill.  I knew no matter what happened, I was royally screwed.  The insurance company -- thieving bastards that all insurance companies are -- would never pay me what it was worth, if they paid me anything at all.  I was out six grand, plus all the money I'd invested in it since I bought it.  All my travel plans for the remainder of the year were shot.

I just wanted to be home.

Bill's wife Kellie, the owner of the Motorcyclists' General Store, looked up the number for Enterprise Rent-a-car for me.  They're the ones that advertise that they'll bring a car to you.  Well, what they don't say in all their fancy advertising is that they won't rent a car to you if you don't intend to bring it back.  Sure, they have offices all over the friggin' world, but they won't let you take one of their cars from one agency and leave it at another.  Fuck you, Enterprise Rent-a-car.  You'll never get my business again.

Avis rented me a monstrous Chevy Trailblazer -- probably a vehicle that particular office was happy to get rid of with today's gas prices going through the roof.  I didn't even bother trying to talk them into something smaller and more economical.  They charged me a whopping $140 and told me it'd be another $140 if I didn't get it turned in at the Avis in OKC within 24 hours.  Bill was kind enough to drive me across town to the airport where Avis was located.  Then I drove back to the bike shop, stripped all the gear off the Tiger and tossed it in the Trailblazer, said my goodbyes, and hit the road for home.

Thirteen hours or so later, I pulled into my driveway about 1:30 in the morning and crawled into bed my wife, totally defeated.  She hugged me, told me it would be okay.  Big pussy baby that I am, I just felt like crying.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Afterword:  What next?

The short answer is I just don't know.  The Tiger's dead, that much is clear.  The next day, after I'd had time to rest and think about it, I totally regretted having left the bike in Farmington.  It made sense to leave it -- and still does -- because the best place for the insurance adjustor to examine the bike is at Bill's shop, where Bill will explain that the blown engine is the result of a crash and not simply a mechanical failure.  But I'd abandoned my bike, which, no matter what you say, is more than just a machine.  I'd left a friend on the battlefield.  Worse, that friend would likely never be the same again.  Call me sentimental, call me stupid, call me an emotional wuss, but those are the facts.  Ask any real motorcyclist (I'm referring to people who genuinely love their bike and ride it for more than just to be seen or from one bar to another on Saturday nights) and I bet he'd say he would feel the same.

I should want to cuss the bike and say I hope I never see it again, but part of me wants to rebuild it, no matter the cost, no matter the trouble -- even though another part of me recognizes that I could never again trust it on a road trip, certainly not on the trips to Mexico and Alaska that I'd planned. Those plans, of course, are shot for the moment.  If the insurance company pays me for the bike, I doubt I'll get enough to replace it right away.  If they don't pay me, then I am even more totally hosed.

Over the course of the next week, I kept thinking I should go get the bike and bring it home. Maybe I could find a salvaged motor to drop into that frame.  Surely a salvaged motor wouldn't cost me more than a couple thousand?  But I'm stuck waiting on the insurance company.  They're in no hurry.  When I call, they put me on hold and they transfer me around.  Once, the guy says, "Hang on a second," and I can hear him typing away.  I know what he's doing.  He's sitting there emailing his girlfriend or something.  Buying new sock garters on ebay.  Updating his resume so he can get a better job.

So, I wait.  And I ache for my Tiger.  There's a big empty spot in the garage where it's supposed to be parked next to the ZZR and my daughter's dirtbike.  Right there ... beside the new set of tires waiting to be mounted after the Utah trip.  Right there ... beside the old battery, which reminds that I just spent $60 to put a new battery in the bike.  Right there beside the hard bags that I pulled off and brought home.  In a drawer over there are the stock grips that I took off when I installed the expensive heated grips ... and the old springs that I took out when I rebuilt the forks.  Tires and hardbags and whatnot that won't fit any other bike but the Tiger that isn't likely to be coming home.

Damn.

What next?  I honestly don't know. Watch my website for updates...

Brian A. Hopkins
at Road's End, Oklahoma City
14 May 2005

Acknowledgements:  I'd like to thank Chris and Rich for being such great trail brothers.  I can't wait to ride with them again.  Chris is generally up for a ride, street or trail, so I'm sure we'll be out together before too long.  Rich is a bit harder to get out, because all of his leave (from the office) is tied up with his street racing.  I'd take up racing with him, but you can just imagine how badly I would thrash a poor innocent motorcycle on a racetrack.  Ha.  I'd like to thank Kellie and Bill Dees from the Motorcyclists's General Store in Farmington, NM.  Great people with a very nice motorcycle shop. If you're ever in town, stop in and say hello.  Buy stuff from them.  Tell them I said hello.  I'd like to thank Mother Nature for creating the incredible state of Utah.  I'd like to ask the bitch, however, to please hold off on the rain next time I visit.  I do plan to revisit the Moab area, because we just barely scratched the surface of the great offroad riding that's available there -- next time, however, I'll be on a smaller bike.  I'd like to thank Nextel for actually giving me a signal for once, when I needed it the most.  Thanks to Avis Rental Cars.  Thank you, as well, to my Triumph Tiger.  It could have been a lot worse.  My rear tire was totally soaked in oil when the engine blew.  Had it blown while I was leaned over in a curve, instead of on a nice straight stretch of road, I'd have probably gone down.  Who can say how that might have turned out?

Panoramic Photos:  Here are some panoramic shots that I took while on the White Rim Trail.  Click any of them to view a larger image.

Disclaimer: Do not attempt these stunts at home.  Brian, Chris, and Rich are trained professionals.  (Hahahahaha!)

Final Exam:  I promised you there'd be a test.  If you score less than 70% on this test, you will be flogged. 

1. An appropriate choice of motorcycle for the White Rim Trail would be?

a.       Suzuki DR-Z400

b.      Triumph Tiger

c.       Harley-Davidson Fat Boy 

2. When encountering mud that has the consistency of camel snot, you should:

a.       Pin the throttle!

b.      Pray.

c.       Get off and walk.

d.      Make sure your friends have their cameras ready. 

3. Which of the following is not a good place to find sand?

a.       The crotch of your shorts.

b.      The crack of your ass.

c.       A nice tight switchback on the White Rim Trail.

d.      Your girlfriend’s diaphragm.

e.       All of the above. 

4. Chris can’t tell the difference between yellow and blue.

a.       True.

b.      False. 

5. Rich hates maps.

a.       True.

b.      False. 

6. Brian loves wallowing in the mud.

a.       True.

b.      False. 

7. Which smells worse?

a.       Chris’s summer sausage.

b.      Rich’s sleeping bag.

c.       Brian’s shorts.

d.      That shit Chris was eating on his bagel. 

8. The White Rim Trail is located where?

a.       Utah.

b.      Oklahoma. 

9. How much oil does a Tiger’s engine hold?

a.       Enough to create a puddle two feet in diameter.

b.      Enough to leave a trail 100 feet long.

c.       Enough to completely soak a rider’s left leg.

d.      More than enough to drench the rear tire.

e.       All of the above. 

10. Which of the following is a true statement?

a.       Triumph Tigers look really good in a horizontal position.

b.      Holes in the side of your engine offer great ventilation and don’t hinder performance in the least.

c.       Brian wishes he had stayed at home in bed.

d.      Chris is a master at packing for a trip.

e.       Rich loves to take Chris shopping.

f.        When riding in mud, it’s normal for the ass end of your motorcycle to swap places with the front end.

g.       None of the above.