Rallying!

I’m rallying!

We got to the BMW MOA rally at the Deschutes Fair and Expo Center in Redmond, Ore. about 5 p.m. yesterday and quickly located the Indianapolis BMW Club compound.

After a long hot ride across the high desert of central Oregon, and pitching my tent in the hot afternoon sun, I was too busy and too tired to blog.

The folks who got here a few days earlier had shivered through overnight lows in the low 40s and high 30s. I brought a light summer weight sleeping bag and realized immediately that I was in for four nights of misery if I didn’t get a heavier bag. So Rick Nelson and I drove over to a sporting goods store where I snapped up a ridiculously bulky bag for $50 that’s rated down to 25 degrees. Rick made me a birthday gift of a pink canvas camp chair. (It was my 65th birthday, btw.) The bag works wonderfully and I’ll UPS it home on Sunday.

We fussed over my recalcitrant GPS cradle without success. I worked on it again this morning and finally gave up. I decided to go for an extreme fix – buy a new cradle and power cord. I ordered them from Touratech in Seattle and they’re overnighting them – should be here by noon tomorrow.

I had coffee with Charlie and William of the BMW Riders Association of the Mid-South – Charlie is the coffee chairman for the rally – and had breakfast with his wife Deb at the $10 buffet in the biergarten.

I found BMW Motorcycles of Western Oregon’s tent and was pleased to see my old Thorntown neighbor, Larry Parker. He hooked me up with his son-in-law who co-owns the business and I made an appointment for 10 a.m. Monday to get my low beam headlight bulb replaced at their shop in Tigard. Larry tells me our renters are being good neighbors and that their golden retriever is ultra friendly.

The dealer is running a special on riding pants that normally cost $275, on sale for $125. I tried on a pair, but the inseam is impossibly long, so I had to pass on what is a killer deal.

I also checked in with the Gerbings rep and bought the connection stuff I need to make my electrics useful.

Sean Franklin and his CycleGadgets.com is conspicuously absent from this rally. I had hoped he could help me with the GPS puzzle, so I phoned him at his store in Eureka Springs, Ark. He referred me to Touratech.

And now for the bad news. Webb Bernhard hit a deer en route to the rally with his wife Cindy Fort and Tim Balough. The report we got was short on details, but the gist of it is that Webb is only bruised, but his bike is unrideable and they won’t be at the rally. My guess is that they were fairly close, since they left on Monday.

Redmond is apparently bad juju for Webb. He had an episode of acid reflux, barfed in his helmet and crashed while leaving the first BMW MOA rally in Redmond in 2001. He injured his hand and they had to haul their bikes home to Indianapolis in a U-Haul truck.