The Royal Enfield Bullet Blog

Flat rear tire

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I was making good time over 40 - 50 mile stretches of completely EMPTY highway -- no cell phone signal out there, that's for sure.

I rode through a small town called Cope, CO.

Before I knew it the town had disappeared from my rear view mirror. The praire was green and rolling and beautiful, I was starting to feel giddy -- Wyoming was only a couple of hours away.

Wrong.

The back and of the bike started slithering this way and that.

Uh oh. I had learned once before about hitting the back brake when this is happening. I very slowly braked until I got the bike stopped after wandering all over the highway.

This is one of the advantages of taking roads no one else takes. In an emergency, you have all the room you need 99.99999% of the time.

Of course the downside is: nobody around.

I had signal, but no numbers to call. I called 911 and explained my situation. They called a guy at a Sinclair station back in Cope. I remembered that station.

Then I stood on the highway next to my bike waiting for help to arrive.

The owner of the Sinclair station, Larry, was really helpful. First we tried to inject air into the tire to see if I could ride it back. Air was blowing out faster than I could pump it in.

Eventually, after an aborted attempt at removing the rear wheel on the side of the highway, Larry said, "I'll go get a trailer".

He came back and we loaded it up.

For the next three hours I labored and managed to change the tire.

A flat rear tire -- the worst thing short of bottom or top end failure I could imagine.

Anyhow I slept in the local park last night. While lying in my tent tossing and turning I realized that I had installed the innertube incorrectly. .

In the morning I did it all over again but it only took 1 and a half hours.

My tire was looking a little damaged, and I freaked about that, because I didn't want to have another rear tire failure -- for any reason. So, now I am in Fort Morgan CO waiting for a new tire to be sent from Illinois. To be honest I think I could get away with the old tire. But, life is dearer to me than the cost of the tire, the installation (which I'm letting the shop do, for once), and the price of shipping.

That kind of thinking made me redo the inner tube install as well. Why ride on something you know isn't right?

I just can't do that.

Don't want to be in Fort Morgan, but life is what happens to you while you're busy making plans.

Besides, my wife doesn't want me home yet. She's studying for boards.

Od 4738

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I could not post at Quitaque Peaks or Tule Canyon or Palo Duro Canyon. The Quitaque jut out of the staked plains, about 500 - 1000 feet high, and form an escarpment.

When you role into Quitaque there is a sign that lets you know how to pronounce it: Kitty-quay

I kind of prefer Kit-talk-ee.

Anyway the promontery is again a Comanche lookout. These were the lairs of the northern Comanche bands. Climbing out of the staked plains through the Quitaque escarpment you come suddenly onto the gently rolling, grassy waves of the central plains. It was really beautiful, a kind of serene nothing where distant showers drifted across distant further hills, an on and on.

Just as suddenly these plains ended at Tule Canyon. I couldn't even see it coming, which is why the plains indians were so good at ambushing enemies. The plains deceive the eye; you cannot tell what lies beyond the next swell.

I ran hard through Palo Duro canyon (stopping at an overlook I was questioned about the Bullet by a group of bikers).

Onto the central plains again. Now heading full steam toward Adobe Walls. I found it after the town of Stinett (not pronounced Stinett, according to a suspicious gas station cashier, but Stin-ETTE). Whatever.

The first and second battles of Adobe Walls had historical significance, but where they happened seem nearly arbitrary.

I almost turned back from the second battle site because I couldn't find it, however a waypoint implanted in my GPS led me there -- down a twisty gravel road.

When I got there, I couldn't understand why anyone would fight over it, although I admit it had a certain beauty. No more than the surrounding area. And in fact I found it hard to believe the Comanche's ever managed to even find those lone traders out there in an outpost now turned to dust.

Well, I accomplished what I'd set out to do, but now was running at least an hour behind what I had expected -- Texas is way bigger than one can believe. Motorcycling across it really brings that fact home hard. Painfully hard.

I sped up a state highway it was getting dark with rain clouds, I flew past a huge snake in the road -- belly up. Six feel long, thick as a strong bicep.

I raced storm clouds to Boise City, OK. Lightning flashed a few miles to the north, I was only 22 miles from Boise City and dry and did NOT want to get soaking wet a few minutes before arriving.

The road kept turning more north, heading me for the clouds.

There is no place to hide out there from lightning. Not a tree, not a house.

Got a room at the first hotel in Boise City, where my grandfather lived when it was ed during world war two.

Slept hard, forgot some of my stuff there (which is part of why I can't post pictures).

Ate breakfast at a little cafe, Jo Ann's Diner, or something, on main street.

I went down to the town square on my way out, two prisoners where standing on the steps of the courthouse, in thick white and orange stripes. I took their picture.

On the way out of town I was pelted by a pretty ly rain.

Got soaking wet and had to buy thicker socks in Colorado. Some town. Don't remember right now.

Od 4414

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I was unable to send any posts when I got to Double Mountain. It's a land form that rises substantially from the rolling plains and it's easy to see why Comanches used it for a lookout and landmark during their raids and hunts. They also signaled one another on these peaks, by both smoke signals, and also later using mirrors. Intruders be warned ...

Double Mountain, 20 miles distant

The rolling plains are dry, the roads I used to traverse them thinly traveled.

I had almost no traffic, and on one stretch for 40 miles there was no one. If I'd had any sort of breakdown I'd have been hosed.

I was really starting to enjoy myself.

Talked to an old guy at a gas pump in Roby. Then to two other people. The Bullet attracts a lot of attention.

I was running late and so did not go out to explore the small creek area that was once Teepee City, a place where Comanche's often camped until settlers and traders took over. Later, the Matador Ranch bought out the entire town and shut it down. Their ranch hands were disappearing there for days at a time, drunken, uproarious, and brotheling.

Od 4233 overcast 7venty

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Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

Spending night at abilene state park

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Post mortem:

The first day's ride was uneventful except for a little rain (later on I would very wish each day had been uneventful).

Eventually I'll get around to posting the route on the Bullet Blog -- but it will have to wait until I return. Basically I left Austin and went north on 183. It was overcast and easy riding -- not too hot at all. At Liberty Hill I took highway 29 up to Llano, then north from there. That's pretty Hill Country, but I was focusing on how well the motorcycle was doing. I figured I could handle about anything but a flat rear tire, which would require a tow in. Actually a flat front would have screwed me over as well, since I had no way to fill it up with air once fixed!

I got rained on south of Abilene, and was having trouble using my GPS. I missed Pecan Bayou but did get a couple of decent pics of Santa Anna. I can't post any pictures right now, but will later.

Buffalo Gap was a tourist town, and it was pretty much all closed up except for a couple of restaurants and a bar, which I couldn't go in for various reasons. I ate at "The Deutschlander" after I'd set up my campsite. I was really hungry and ordered a double meat -- which was a mistake since it came in at about 1 pound of beef. French fries cold.

I went back to the park and saw some deer and an armadillo.

Looked at the stars until the moon came up. Had trouble sleeping on the hard ground.

Od 4224

Buffalo Gap is a small tourist town southwest of Abilene. When the Comanche ruled the Texas Great Plains, they ran large herds of buffalo through the gap, where they were able to close in on them and kill them more easily.

These days it is filled with scrub oak and cedar, but before cattle were driven through from South Texas the vegetation was mostly grass, which the buffalo feasted on. Herman Lehman tells of charging through an army encampment with a Comanche friend, shooting and stampeding the soldier horses.

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Highway 183 runs from near the Red River at the southwestern corner of Oklahoma clear down to the Texas coastal plain at Refugio. It spans more than 450 miles and from Austin heading north runs almost through the middle of Comancheria. On the way out of Texas I would only use highway 183 as a quick way to leave Austin, but on my return I would ride on it from Vernon, Texas all the way down to the Hill Country. Up north it is not a major highway, but a rural two lane state road. Following 183 alone will expose you to the lands of the north eastern Comanche bands – the Kuhtsoo-ehku, the Nawkohnee, the Tahneemuh, and the Tehnawa.

My bike, fully loaded with close to 250 pounds of gear, tools, and spare parts, wound its way through my neighborhood and then onto the freeway.

It felt good to be moving.

On the way out of town I passed where I worked, which had given me a month of paid sabbatical (in my experience an unheard of policy) but one I was quite happy to make use of. In the weeks leading up to sabbatical I had found myself sitting in heavy traffic inching forward on “freeway”, white-knuckled grip on the wheel, cursing under my breath.

I needed to get out of the city.

We were supposed to use the sabbatical period to reflect on where we were in terms of career development, if there weren’t things we ought to be doing but weren’t -- or perhaps to consider the things we ought not to be doing but were. We were supposed to be thinking about our lives in the broader framework of orientation, our direction -- our goals.

I’d bought a GPS unit before leaving. When I checked it at a stoplight I was at N30 30.287, W97 49.203 with a current heading of 342 degrees. I’d traveled some 16 miles at an average speed of 43 mph, a top speed of 64 mph, and had been stopped for a total time of 3 minutes 47 seconds.

...

The traffic was intense in Austin out through Cedar Park, and clear to Leander. But it subsided quickly when I reached my turnoff at Seward Junction. Once I was past Liberty Hill there was almost no traffic at all.

I had time to think.

A barbeque joint had made me think about food.

That reminded me that there were certain limitations to my motorcycle driven anthropological investigations of stone-age man on the plains.

I’d spent a fair amount of time packing simple but good things to enliven the food that I’d cook while camping out.

I did want to camp out.

I wanted to experience the plains like the people of the 19th century had. Well, at least I wanted to get close to what they experienced. I thought that camping out would help me do that. I would cook meat over a campfire. I told myself that sleeping in a bag on the ground without an air or foam mattress might help me understand those people’s lives better. That eating simple foods grilled or raw would give me perspective on their world and mine.

I didn’t recognize that as a crock.

I had strung a backpack on the rack I’d welded up for my saddle bags. I’d put some beef jerky, an apple, and a candy bar in it. I figured if I broke down somewhere in the middle of nowhere that stuff would come in handy.

Before I’d left on the trip I’d eaten all kinds of things that I really liked but knew I wouldn’t likely get on the trip (while camping out, for instance): gnocchi di potate with red sauce, roasted lemon chicken with braised vegetables and rice, saag panir and fried daal with basmati, humus and babaganoush with arabic salad, linguine with an exquisite pesto sauce made of an assortment of homegrown basils and mints and pine nuts, and with all these meals I had cabernets, pinots, chardonnays – whatever fit. I admit this is snoot food, but I'm no snoot. I like my burgers and beer, too.

My ordinary culinary life had nothing to do with the primitive ways of the plains.

It is often said that food reveals the culture.

Herman Lehmann was introduced to his new culture the first night of his capture. Carnoviste, the chief of the raiding party and whose slave Herman now was, found a calf lying down near their trail in the moonlight. The chief signaled Herman to capture the calf, which Hermann did. Carnoviste slit its throat. Immediately he then cut open its body cavity and sliced out its stomach. He plunged his knife into it and began to eat the congealed sour milk inside. Feeling generous, he motioned for Herman to partake.

Herman flatly refused.

There was no way he was going to eat any of that, just as I would not. In fact, I don’t think I even could feast on the innards of a freshly slaughtered calf. Neither could Herman. Here’s what Herman wrote about his first meal with Carnoviste:

He grabbed me and soused my head into that calf’s paunch and rubbed that nauseous stuff all over my face, in my eyes, up my nose, into my ears and forced some down my throat. He held my nose and made me swallow, but the stuff would not stay on my stomach and I vomited copiously. He then cut out the kidneys and liver and compelled me to eat some of them while they were warm with the animal heat. I would vomit the mess up, but he would gather it up and make me swallow the same dose again, and again I would vomit.

Eventually Herman held it down.

It was not in my plans to kill a calf and eat the soured milk contents of its stomach. Nor was I fan of heart, liver, kidney or intestine, all of which were devoured voraciously by Amerindian hunters when they killed for food. My approach to understanding stone-age man had clear limits that were defined by very clearly by chief Carnoviste. I determined that the closest I would get to their culinary tradition was a hearty grilled steak or some well smoked brisket.

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The Texas Hill Country was unwinding below my tires. Glancing down I could see the road rushing past six inches below my boot. The tires gripped the asphalt, I leaned into an easy left hander. I had just passed through Burnet and was heading briskly toward Lake Buchanan. The motor buzzed warmly, the fresh air in my face smelled clean and earthy. When all is right with the motorcycle, when it is in mechanical top trim, when the course of the road and the pace of the bike are matched correctly, the rider feels as though he is flying, as though the rhythm of the world and his own body are pulsing synchronously, breathing and exhaling the same breath in the same beat. It becomes a vision in itself, it seems incomparable, and yet I felt the rush as a rumor of a distant world.

OD 4157

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Herman Lehmann was a German boy whose family settled in Central Texas during the late 1860s. They located themselves directly in the midst of a territory the Spaniard’s had named Comancheria.

One hundred years before the Lehmanns decided to move in, the horse-mounted Comanches had begun to ruthelessly evict other Amerindian tribes from the southern plains: Apache, Ute, Pawnee, Tarankawa. All of them were driven out or killed. They nearly exterminated the Lipan Apache.

At the same time they stopped cold the advance of industrial age culture for over 150 years. At the Rio Grande they put to rest any realistic claims Spain had on North America; and Anglo-American penetration from the east was halted in the area between the Sabine and Trinity rivers. To the north Comanches ranged clear to the Arkansas river, to the west as far the Rocky Mountain foothills. Smack in the center of this realm Herman Lehmann’s father established a homestead. Though the Comache had been cowed by the Texas Rangers thirty years before, inconsistent policy thereafter led to a resurgence of Amerndian activity on the Southern Plains. Because Comanche power had waned, Apache’s risked raiding into central Texas from New Mexico, and in fact Apaches abducted Herman Lehmann. But no one entered Comancheria without risking their scalp, and many settlers were rubbed out, taken prisoner, made into slaves, or adopted into the tribe. After his abduction Herman would plunge from the cusp of the industrial age directly into the stone-age world of the plains Amerindian. Astonishingly, he would excel at it. He rode in raids, participated in battles, stole horses, mules, and cattle, killed settlers -- and after falling out with his adopted Apache tribe he would eventually be taken in by the Comanches as a full bore warrior.

But just as Herman was achieving strong medicine in the primitive world it began to collapse under the heavy pressure of the very culture he’d been stolen from.

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Santa Anna Peaks is actually 83 miles north of where Herman Lehmann was abducted. His family homesteaded in Squaw Creek, near present Loyal Valley Texas, where Herman is buried.

The Apache Indians who nabbed Herman from his homestead took him north, but perhaps not as far as Santa Anna peaks themselves before heading east toward New Mexico.

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In May 1870 Herman Lehmann’s mother sent him and his siblings out to a wheat field to scare the birds away. It was probably a fake chore, maybe she just wanted to get the kids out of the house for awhile. When they got to the field a few hundred yards from their house, they sat down and began to play.

Within moments they were surrounded by Indians. The warriors had war paint smeared on their bodies and faces. Herman’s sister screamed. She ran for the house, and the Indians immediately began shooting at her. Herman’s brother Willie was caught where he sat, and the youngest sister – just a baby -- lay on the ground not knowing what was happening. Herman dashed after his sister.

The Indians kept shooting at them, and Hermann’s sister fainted from fright. Herman kept running, the Indians chased him down and tackled him in the tall grass.

Hermann fought.

He kicked, pulled hair, punched, and bit.

Just as he was about to break free of one Indian another joined the fray. Herman was overpowered. One Indian grabbed his head, the other his feet, and they scurried over to a stone wall that ran along one side of the field.

They heaved him over the wall.

Crashing into the ground on the other side, Herman was stunned.

His mouth was full of gravel and sand, he couldn’t breath, and before he was able to move the two Indians packed him and carried him to a horse. They stripped his clothes from his body and bound him over the back of the horse. Herman saw that his brother was bound the same way. The Indians mounted up, hooted, and drove their horses away as fast as they could.

Departing od 3961

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One hundred and fifty years before I began my motorcycle ride across the Great Plains Crazy Horse and a small band of Oglala warriors charged over a grassy hill in the Nebraska panhandle and rode down furiously upon their Omaha Indian enemies. They whooped as they rode into the Omaha camp, shrieked war cries, and fought fiercely with knife, lance, bow, and war club. Sent to flank the enemy, Crazy Horse, who was only thirteen years old, spied an Omaha crawling through tall grass. He strung an arrow and let it fly. The Omaha slumped to the ground and Crazy Horse let out a war whoop, but when he found the body in the grass and turned it over, he recoiled in horror. He hadn’t killed a warrior -- he’d killed a young woman.

Far to the west in Montana, near the Little Bighorn, an eleven year old orphaned Crow named Two Leggings entered a sweat lodge. He was already beginning his painful search for a powerful vision, a medicine which would allow him to become a great warrior, a pipeholder, a leader of his tribe. His father had died when he was an infant while demonstrating to his wife how black powder was supposed to work. Laying the powder out in the lodge, he placed it too close to the flames. It exploded. Two Legging’s father was burned so badly that he died two days later. To complete his personal tragedy, his mother died after giving birth to his younger brother a year later. After that the band took basic care of Two Leggings (boys that could become hunters and warriors were far too valuable to waste); yet he was destitute, and Two Leggings’ poverty turned him into an extremely ambitious boy. He was determined to prevail against the odds and rise up from his humble state to become a Crow war chief.

During Two Legging’s early struggles, far to the south in Texas, Quanah Parker was about three or four years old. Quanah was a half blood, an equal mixture of European and Amerindian. His mother was a Comanche captive and his father was chief Peta Nacona. Quanah would himself become a war leader, fighting and raiding throughout the southern Great Plains. When the struggle against the European invasion became utterly hopeless and their wildlife commissary was destroyed Quanah led his half-starved band to the reservation in Oklahoma and adapted himself into the role of a Comanche peace chief. Through his creative efforts to merge the old ways and the new he helped save his people from complete annihilation.

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My plan was to ride from Comanche lands to Crazy Horse country.

I would begin in Austin, Texas and head west-northwest, using back roads, two-laners, farm roads, and scenic byways. Anything that followed the Amerindian travel routes of old. In fact any number of Texas highways and farm roads transit various Comanche hunting and raiding routes.

I would try to visit as many Comanche landmarks and sites as possible on the long ride to the northern Great Plains – Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska.

The Great Plains was a place where disaster befell a people who had been living the same life for forty millennia. Had the Amerindians had a different social organization then perhaps the same mistakes would not have been made from south to north, from east to west -- then perhaps the promises of the invader would never have been accepted, or a realization of the unstoppable nature of the coming onslaught might have led Amerindian chiefs to work together to negotiate a more equitable solution for all of their people.

However the social organization required for such politics was the hallmark of the invader, not the invaded. Amerindian culture was frozen in form, as though it were in a bizarre time warp, having changing little if at all from a time tens of thousands of years before the last ice age. But in a little over one human lifespan, stone-age life came to an abrupt and violent end on the prairie of the Great Plains.

I finished painting the rack I built for my luggage carriers on Friday night. Here's a pic:




I had to teach myself to weld to get that one, but it was worth it, since bags available for the RE are all too small for my needs.

I a couple of hours I'm heading out toward Santa Anna peak, Pecan Bayou, and Buffalo Gap.

Posts from now on will be short until I can get to a library or internet cafe to fill them out.

This is a test of the mobile bullet blog network.

Let's see if I can subsequently edit this. I believe so.

Yes, it is so.

I spent the last two months working on my Bullet and beginning to map out my plains ride.

In March I installed a 19 tooth countershaft sprocket. The goal was not necessarily to go faster, but raise the speed at which the engine vibration sweet spot occurred. Normally, with a 17t countershaft sprocket on the Bullet 500, that speed was about 55 to 60.

To go faster I had to really wind it out into an RPM range that was uncomfortable. I also prefer a lower RPM for engine stress reasons.

The 19t sprocket has raised the sweet spot into the 70 - 80 mph range.

Here's a pic of the installation process:


Primary drive case completely removed

Once I had the 19t on, though, I discovered that the linkage system Royal Enfield invented to convert the bike to a left hand shift for the US market was unable to move far enough up or down to allow shifting.

The solution was to go to a right hand shift.

I spent the month of April fabricating a RH shift mechanism from the parts on hand from a left hand shift. I had to teach myself to weld, as I need a left hand brake pedal and a right hand shift lever. I had to machine the crossover shaft and cut it so that it could be made to stick out of a hole I drilled in the outer gearbox case.

Here's a couple of pics of the mockup and then the converted outercase sitting loosely on the innercase (I didn't have a camera to take a pic of the finished deal, but may put it back on later and then I'll post a pic of it):



Internal mechanism (mockup)




Finished case

I got it working, but test rides made me suspect that the design was potentially not strong enough to take the beating of a very long ride. So, in the interest of not breaking down in the plains of Wyoming or Montana, I paid for the conversion kit and installed it.

Once I got it all back together I had ignition problems -- I'd let the battery electrolyte levels drop too low. Bought a battery, but it was slightly too big. Anyway I think I'll fabricate a holder for it and install it instead of the usual RE battery.

Still wouldn't light up -- somehow the plug was not firing regularly. It would fire once, then not for a long time. Changing the plug fixed this, but I may install a new condensor to boot.

The other project that I'm finishing up is a rack that holds two 20mm army surplus ammo cans -- that's what I'm using for saddle bags. They actually look pretty good on a Bullet. Pics of that project next time.

I've picked a route from Austin to Abilene that follows old Comanche trails and encampment areas. I'll spend the night at a lake just south of Buffalo Gap, where Herman Lehmann busted through a detachment of US Cavalry while he was being a real life "Little Big Man". He charged through early in the morning with a group of Comanche comrades. Riding past at full gallop they fired into the troopers, who were still bleary eyed and stumbling around in their underwear.

I suspect Thomas Berger read Lehmann's Nine Years Among the Indians, because the story of Herman Lehmann looks a lot like what happened to the fictional character Jack Crabb.

We'll see about that.