Glacier - Day 1

Most everyone was still asleep when the alarm went off. Five-fifteen comes early, especially on a Saturday. But this was no ordinary Saturday; this was the beginning of the Glacier trip, long awaited and anticipated. Most packing was completed the night before and all that was left was to mount the new T-bag on the sissy bar and load up the side bags. Weather was supposed to be in the 70’s so and dry so all the cold weather gear was packed away. Shortly the bike was loaded and all that was needed was a rider.

Odometer stated 16, 061 and I knew it would be over 4000 miles higher when I returned a short 9 days later.

We had a new rider join this trip; Jason Johnson, an old family friend had acquired a ‘new to him’, Beamer – 650GS and was available for the first leg of our journey. Plan was to meet him in Tulia between 12 and 12:30. Sure enough as I pulled in to Tulia about 12:15, there was Jason refueling from his cruise from Lubbock.

After filling my bike, we scooted over to I25 and high-tailed it to Amarillo with a keen eye out for some lunch fixings. Not much on that road by the way if you happen to be there looking for some food. We caught the south loop around Amarillo and ended up at a Love’s truck stop where we fueled both us and the Bikes.

We then hit the road and headed toward Clayton NM, through Dalhart and then, that’s when we ran into problems. Jason’s Beamer started sputtering and stammering like it didn’t like the gas or something. We pulled over and contemplated the situation and thought we’d try to ride it out to Raton. We just passed through Des Moines NM and we’re about 30 miles from Raton. As we tried to push on the situation only got worse, less and less power and harder to keep the bike running. The battery was dying and there was not enough power to activate the starter. Fortunately there was no one there to take pictures of me pushing Jason to get the bike started.

We pulled over and he called the BMW dealer in Santa Fe and I called Kevin to give him an update on our situation and that we would be delayed. Dealership thought possibly bad gas and suggested we utilize the choke some to allow it to run a little richer. Checking the battery I found that it was completely dry. Pulling some Ozarka bottled water from my side bag I filled up each little cell thinking that, this should help the dead battery, but not the bad gas. After pushing the bike again to get it started I suggested we head back to Des Moines, where I had already gone to purchase a small gas can and new gas, should we decide that it definitely was bad gas. The choke thing was not a good idea as the catalytic converter got red hot and melted his little plastic cover on the left side. I loaded up his gear on my bike and headed toward Des Moines where I hoped to find him at the gas station waiting on me. Instead he was pushing his bike on the side of the road as it had died on him. But the starter worked now and the bike fired up after turning the fuel valve on and he headed into Des Moines. With the water in the battery the bike started acting like it’s normal self and did not sound like a bad gas problem. We loaded up his bike with his gear and headed to Raton… only to stop shortly after that to put on our rain gear as we were approaching the following storm.

Jason put on his banana suit and I put on my rain gear.

We rode in the rain about 20 miles into Raton and decided to get a bite to eat to see if the rain would pass over us. After an about an hour, the rain was still falling, but we decided to press on to Colorado Springs as we had a full day of riding the next day as well. The rain continued to the top of the pass, until we crossed into Colorado when it seemed to magically stop.

I had placed the small gas can on my bike and as we headed down the pass we hit a large bump and the can went flying off the bike onto the asphalt at about 80 MPH. I immediately pulled over when I figured out what I had lost and saw the can on the side of the highway. Not wanting to litter I headed back up the pass and found the can completely intact with nary a drip spilt. Pretty tough little can. I placed it more securely on the back seat and we headed down to Trinidad.

We had rain off and on, mostly on, from that point on to Walsenburg. At this point it was pretty miserable with darkness, rain, poor visibility and cars all around us. Not the best driving situation, especially when you’ve been on the road for over 12 hours already. Made it into to my brother’s house in Colorado Springs about 10:30 that evening after about 13 hours for Jason and 18.5 hours for me. But Kevin and Brenda had a warm dry place for us to put up for the night.