So Diana’s 2008 Dyna Super Glide blew a wheel bearing a few yards from Katie and Alan’s house after we safely navigated over a dozen major bridges with sometimes no railings and crossed the mother of all bridges: the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel (23 miles long). You can see in the above picture the sealed maintenace free ball bearing is no longer sealed and the ball bearings are popping out. I rode Diana’s motorcycle slowly the rest of the way to the driveway while Diana went inside to defrost. Thank God for Alan who restocked the fridge again with ice cold Yuengling for us! We needed it! I also thank God for making sure Diana got safely across the bridges before her wheel bearings decided to all pop out the right side.
Alan served up an awesome dinner as usual! Tilapia seasoned with fresh rosemary accompanied by wild rice. We discussed some of our options on what to do about the broktified Harley-Davidson Super Glide. Diana took a hot shower and we went to sleep. I weighed our options in my mind and decided I would like to stay with Alan and Katie two extra days until Alan could trailer us the rest of the way home. We were still 4.5 hours from home.
Unfortunately Diana did not want to wait two days to take action. She had commitments back home and papers to grade. A teacher’s work is never done, not even on spring break! Alan’s schedule changed and he would not be able to trailer us on Saturday so I had to review our options again.
I called the Virginia Beach Harley Dealership and was put on hold. Then I was told the service manager would call me back. He did not. I was told that they did not have their own towing service. Although they are the closest dealership it would be back across the 23 mile bridge and tunnel with expensive tolls to go back there. The next dealership north was in our home state 130 miles away and they didn’t have any tow service available either. If either dealership had told me “no problem, we’ll pick you up and fix your motorcycle right away” I would have been all for it. My HOG and Progressive roadside assistance would take me to the closest dealership and I didn’t want to go back across the bridge and tunnel not knowing if the motorcycle would be fixed right away or in several days. To have them tow me 130 miles would be very expensive.
Diana had mentioned looking into U-Haul the night before and it started to sound like a good option. It was the only option that didn’t involve us riding home two up on my motorcycle and we currently had too much luggage on the two motorcycles to get it all home on one. It was the only option that got everything to our house including us, the two motorcycles and all our luggage. It was the only option that gave us full control, kept us on schedule and together. Our only option was a 17′ 48 hour rental for $250 that would get us all the way home and we could have the truck for two days and return it to the gas station in our neighborhood. We could get home, sleep and then drop off the broken motorcycle at the repair facility of our choice.
I called Derek at Turner Tech in Bear, DE at 302-222-7673 and told him what had happened and that we would be renting the U-Haul and dropping off Diana’s bike the following morning. Katie took us to Cape Charles to pick up the U-Haul. They rented the same truck to us that Katie and Alan used to move there three years earlier from Arizona! Crazy coincidence isn’t it!
We got the motorcycles into the truck. Alan had three monster industrial size tie downs we used to secure the motorcycles in place. I think we left at 3:00pm, stopped for dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s in Salisbury and were home by 8:00pm. We got one car from the house, drove the truck and car to my work. Unloaded my motorcycle with some help from my coworkers on the nightshift. Unloaded all luggage and gear into the car. Only left Diana’s motorcycle in the truck and locked it and left the U-Haul in the work parking lot overnight. I rode my motorcycle home and Diana drove the car. We went to bed. Home sweet home! Our cat was pissed, but she would have been more pissed if we stayed in Cape Charles for two more days!
The next day Diana drove me to the truck and I drove the truck to Turner Tech. Derek had a hard time getting the bearing out of the wheel but he did it. he put new bearings and new brake pads in but had me order a brake disk rotor, rotor bolts and a spacer. At the time of this writing we are waiting for the stupid spacer to come from Harley-Davidson. Hopefully by the time this is published we will be back to having two motorcycles in the garage.
Considering the “what ifs” I am very happy how this turned out. It was a fantastic vacation and in the overall scheme of things $250 for the truck rental is not bad in comparison to what tow companies charge. I’m glad we didn’t get hurt, we stayed together and had the luxury of deciding what to do at Katie and Alan’s house. It would have really sucked to have the motorcycle towed back across the bridge and tunnel to find out we had to wait a week for a stupid spacer! The cost and headaches that would have resulted in far exceed $250 for a U-Haul rental. So that’s the six part OBX story that has been three years in the making and ends with our first mechanical breakdown on the road. I think this puts us up another notch on the experienced biker scale for having survived mechanical failure on the road and handling it 100% on our own and not having to call friends to come get us.
Click here to see all the vacation pictures.
I think we’ll be returning Alan’s tie downs in person, visiting Karen and possibly saying goodbye to Virginia’s Eastern Shore one final time after Diana’s motorcycle is back on two good wheels. That place is bad luck for us, it’s like the Bermuda Triangle! Hopefully in the fall we’ll be telling you about a road trip to visit Katie and Alan at Skyline Drive aka Shanadoah National Park! Cheers!
Thanks for reading,
Jay Green
PS - it was scarey as crap trying to roll my motorcycle backwards down that skinny U-Haul ramp. I could do it on a bicycle but not an 800 lb motorcycle that is as wide as the ramp with it’s saddlebags on. I had to get 4 guys to spot me.
PSS - I knew from watching Fix My Hog DVD’s that the bolts have to be replaced when you replace a disk brake rotor and I told our mechanic that before he had a chance to tell me. From reading my service manual over the winter months I understood exactly what was broken. Good thing I learned what I did when I did. Don’t ya think?
Tags: Trips & Places To Go // 7 Comments »
