My husband says the title shoud be Charlie rides a URAL
Saturday morning, we departed our home under bright blue skies and pleasantly crisp temperatures, no humidity and headed to our HOG chapter meeting. Scheduled after the meeting, was a ride to a local Veteran’s Hospital and Fish Fry. We were in a pack of about 25 bikes when half way through the trip (an hour or so) my radio stopped working. At first I just thought it was the XM skipping, so I figured I just had to wait it out a couple of minutes. I tried to turn radio off, nothing. I started to notice that what sounded like radio noise/squelching was coming from the speakers, but nothing happened when I pushed any buttons. We were rolling right along so I did not get a chance to try to turn the bike off then back on. Then when we were just making a turn onto River Road, off Route 6, I smelt the smell of burning electronics. I motioned to my husband that I had to pull off. Three buddies pulled off with us.
As soon as I put my feet down, smoke came pouring out from under them. Someone helped me get my kick stand down – bad cambre on edge of road – then the diagnosing began. We had just unloaded our bikes from the VA State HOG rally and had not replaced the things that came out – like all our tools. Thank goodness, others had all kinds of tools - and all kinds were needed. Some melted wires to the starter were identified, wrapped in tape, zip tied out of the way and we figured what ever the problem was, it was temporarily repaired and we could be on our way. We figured there was no way to join our original group, but lunch could be found anyway.
I was a little shaken and not doing things in the order I would normally do them. I pushed the kill/run button to run, and then turned my bike on prior to mounting. Well it leapt forward and was trying to start even though the start button was not engaged. Ooops, [smiley=oops.gif] no, we have not solved the problem and lunch plans are slipping away.
While all this prior diagnosing and fixing had been going on, many people stopped and offered their assistance. One of those folks was Charlie. Charlie was riding a Ural with a side car. He made us kinda laugh as he was a Willie Nelson look alike, talked about the days he did things to see life with a different perspective, rode a Russian motorcycle and could spin it around on a dime. He had McGuiver beat with all the bungee cords, air compressor, battery booster, string, gum, tin foil and things to fix a broke bike on the side of the road with him. He offered to tow the bike to speed so we could try to jump start it. We did not actually attempt this feat, although we did try to push the bike to start it. We looked at his bike but said thanks, we thought we had things covered and he went about tooling around enjoying the day on his cycle. Well we really did not have things covered. A mechanic at the shop walked us through a procedure of cutting wires under the control housing and how to force the bike to start, but the battery by now was no longer strong enough to turn over. Charlie drove by us a couple more times as the hours started to slip away between fix attempts. Finally he drove by and said, “I live fives miles down the road and I have a trailer, if you like.”
We agreed this was the best thing to do. Five people with broken down knees, hips, back and not able to run and push like we used to, getting towed in seemed like the inevitable thing to do – too bad we had not come upon this decision three hours earlier. Well Charlie was gone a long time. We started to get nervous that he was abandoning us, but finally he showed up with a 4 cylinder jeep, that he felt was underpowered for towing and most assuredly was not, and a home made trailer that made all of us look in wonder – the wonder was – will this hold such a big bike. He had all kinds of straps - a come-a-long that he attached to his jeep, I don't think we actually ever used but he envisioned we'd use it to haul the bike up on the trailer. Well Charlie’s trailer was able to tilt. Steve bravely offered to ride the bike on the trailer while we all pushed him up and on. We got the trailer tilted up and locked in place. Then we had six different minds all making decisions on how to best tie this bike down, but finally it was locked in place in what everyone agreed was as secure as we could get. We limped our way into the dealership. Got the bike dropped off just before they locked the doors, so I have no idea at this point, what their diagnoses might be.
Now Charlie, thought that his involvement was just the best thing that had happened to him in some time. He was going to be able to tell tales for some time, how he with his $10,000 Ural had saved the day of a Harley rider. Even though we offered payment for his kindness and the use of his vehicle and trailer, he absolutely refused any payment. We did get to take our fellow HOG members to the Texas Road House for some exquisite cat fish. The seed had been planted for lunch, and by the time we got to the restaurant, there was not enough water to quench our thirst and the fish really was fantastic and filling.
And this is the story about Charlie rides a Ural / Fish Fry in VA.
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Topic: Fish Fry in VA (Read 4592 times)