By Joe Berk
Misery makes for strong memories, and nowhere is that more true than on a motorcycle in cold wet weather. I’ve had times when I’ve been absolutely teeth-chattering cold and couldn’t shake it. Hypothermia, they call it.
We have all experienced cold and wet weather riding experiences. These are the ones that reside in my memory.
My First Big Baja Trip
Back in 1994, Baja John and I did our first big Baja ride, from southern California all the way down to Cabo San Lucas. I met John somewhere on the way down in So Cal (I can’t remember where), but what I do remember is starting out around 4:00 a.m. in a heavy downpour. I must have had some kind of rain gear (in those early days of my big trip rides we didn’t wear the kind of gear that came later), but it was relatively ineffective and before long I was pretty wet and miserable. I remember I was wearing jeans and a heavy leather motorcycle jacket. I was on my ’92 Softail, and John was on his Yamaha Virago.
It rained off and on for most of that day. John and I stopped in Ensenada, took a few pictures, stopped again at La Bufadora, and from Bufadora on it was a steady downpour. We were young and dumb, and we just keep going. Somewhere around Vicente Guerrero (about 200 miles south of the border) I saw a hotel and stopped. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably and I felt like I was having a hard time controlling the motorcycle. It was around 4:00 in the afternoon and I was absolutely miserable.
The hotel was a cheap Baja place with concrete floors and no heat. The front desk had a register we both had to sign and I was shaking so badly I couldn’t sign my name, so I just made a big X like a hillbilly (not that there’s anything wrong with being a hillbilly). I remember the hotel clerk gave us a roll of toilet paper. We found our room, I stripped down, unrolled my sleeping bag (it had stayed dry, fortunately), and fell asleep in it shaking like a crazy person (not that there’s anything wrong with being a crazy person). I’d wake up every hour or so, check my watch, and realize I was still shivering. Finally, when I woke up at 4:00 a.m. (exactly 12 hours after climbing into my sleeping bag), I had stopped shaking. I slept for another couple of hours and was good to go.
When we checked out that morning, another traveler was doing the same and I watched in surprise as he turned in an electric heater. We could have asked for one to put in our room, but we didn’t know. I remember thinking those BMW riders knew a thing or two.
That first day riding into the Baja El Nino rains was a brutal experience. We had nice weather and a rain-free ride all the way down to Cabo and back.
The Tibetan Plateau
I am a slow learner. Maybe a better description would be a learner who forgets and has to learn all over again.
When we prepared for the big ride circumnavigating China (20 years after the Baja ride described above), I had a very flaky rain suit that I knew would let water penetrate. Prior to getting on the plane for China, I sprayed the hell out of it with Scotchguard and hoped for the best.
Hope is not a strategy, as I again learned riding through another motorcycle trip downpour. This time we were headed to the Tibetan Plateau, with the very capable Sergeant Zuo leading the way (that intro photo above was on the way up to the Tibetan Plateau in that downpour). The rains were oppressive, the mountain roads were curvy and dark, it was cold, my Scotchguard didn’t work worth a damn, and I was wet and cold. Bitter cold. Not quite hypothermic, but cold nonetheless.
We finally arrived at our destination late that evening. It was wooden hotel in a tiny town with an adjoining dining area, and both looked like Indiana Jones’ girlfriend’s place from his first movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Gresh and I ducked into our room and I changed into dry clothes. The dining area didn’t have a menu. They had but one offering for dinner: Dumplings. All boiling in a big pot that looked like the one you’d see cannibals cooking people in. No kidding…it was that big. There must have been 900 dumplings floating around in that boiling cauldron. It was an all you can eat arrangement, and I ate plenty. They were great, and they were hot, both attributes that were perfect for my low-temperature condition.
Back to the “freeze your butt off” aspect of this blog. The room had some sort of a heater in the bathroom (complete with a Chinese style squat toilet, which was good for a few laughs). Gresh and I could not figure out how to get the heater to work. I’m not that smart, so I wasn’t surprised I couldn’t find the path to enlightenment. Gresh…he’s pretty smart, and his similar inability to crack the code made me feel not quite so dumb. We could get it to give us hot water, but we couldn’t get it to throw any heat. Being an engineer, I finally said screw it: We’ll just let the hot shower run all night and hope that’s enough to keep the room a degree or two above the outside temperature.
I woke up a few times during the night to the sound of the shower running. The room was like a sauna. Steamy, zero visibility, but warm. That hot water worked great.
A Cold Night In Tangke
When we were coming down off the Tibetan Plateau on the China ride, we rolled into a tiny town called Tangke.
Tangke was remote and primitive, and it was cold. It felt like it was going to rain as we entered, but it did not. We stayed in another place that had a restaurant with a hotel behind it. The restaurant was kind of fun because one of our riders (a fellow name Lu) saw a Tibetan woman making butter and asked if he could try it. She agreed. The approach was different than what I would have thought. Instead of churning the butter in a circular motion (like I’d seen done in countless Western movies), her approach involved slowly pumping a big stick up and down in a floor-based bucket. Lu was a real cut up. He started pumping the rod in a manner that could only be described as suggestive, which the Tibetan lady thought was hilarious. We did, too.
To get to the hotel behind the restaurant, we had to follow a dirt path and carefully avoid stepping in dog poop (at least I hope it was dog poop). I was thinking the hotel room would be a real disappointment, but it was actually pretty nice. When the hotel guy showed us the room, I looked around and couldn’t find a thermostat, and not wishing to run the shower all night, I asked about it. He didn’t speak English, but I managed to get my point across visually (I was a mime on a radio show in another life), and he showed me how to work the electric bed. It was like an electric blanket, except the heater was built into the mattress.
I was a little leery about sleeping on a toaster, but that electric bed worked wonderfully well. It was cold, real cold, that night, so much so there was frost on the bikes the next morning. But I was snug as a bug.
The Honda Electric Shower Heater
Nope, this has nothing to do with Honda motorcycles. There’s actually a town in Colombia up in the Andes Mountains called Honda.
Like most of the towns we rode through in the Andes, this one was hilly. The hills were so steep you couldn’t park the bike and rely on the kickstand to keep it from rolling away; keeping the bike in gear was necessary. Good buddy Juan, who led our ride, stopped in front of our hotel, which was securely hidden behind a tall wall and gigantic doors. “Security is an issue here,” Juan explained. The big doors had a little door at eye level. I immediately thought of that scene in Romancing the Stone (which was supposed to be in Colombia, but was actually filmed in Mexico).
Just like in the movie, someone from the hotel opened the eye level little door, conversed with Juan for a minute, and decided to allow us in. We couldn’t leave the bikes on the street (“Too dangerous,” Juan said), so we parked that at a secure warehouse around the corner.
Once inside the hotel, I showered before dinner. There was only one faucet in the shower, and the shower was cold. I saw a switch on the showerhead, and what appeared to be an electrical coil that the water flowed through. I nervously tried the switch (standing naked in the icy water pouring through the showerhead), but the water remained icy. Oh well, I thought. I’ve taken cold showers before (no jokes, please).
At dinner in the hotel that night (which was excellent), I asked Juan about the showerhead. He smiled. “The electrical coil is supposed to heat the water as it flows through,” he said. “That’s the theory, anyway. Most of the time they don’t work,” he added, with a weak smile. Maybe that’s a good thing, I remember thinking.
Dad’s Super Hawk Heading to Cooper’s
When I was a 14-year-old kid back in rural New Jersey, I managed to get my Dad interested in motorcycles. In the space of less than 4 months, he bought a used CB 160 Honda (the baby Super Hawk), a new 305cc Super Hawk, and then a ’66 Triumph Bonneville. Cooper’s Cycle Ranch in Hamilton was our dealer, and in the early days, it was a ranch, with a big barn and all the accoutrements that went with it.
One morning (I’m guessing it was in the Spring, after the snow and ice disappeared, but before the temps starting getting reasonable), we left early on a Saturday morning to bring the Super Hawk in for its 500-mile service. The ride was along Route 130, a highway that ran from our area to Hamilton (a distance of about 35 miles).
It didn’t seem like it was going to be that cold on that distant-past Saturday morning, but let me tell you, it sure was. Dad and I both had jackets, but nothing like the motorcycle gear folks wear these days. And we had not counted on the wind chill. It was bitter. I had Dad to shield me from the wind chill; he was out in it. I guess you could say he was a Popsickle (or maybe a Popcycle).
We pulled into a store and bought a couple of newspapers, and we each stuffed them into the front of our jackets to cut the wind chill. It was a good idea, but it didn’t work very well. We still froze our butts off. I was freezing; it must have been terrible for Dad.
When we reached Cooper’s, it was still cold but at least we could warm up in the shop. The techs (they were called mechanics back in the day) had to wait for the engine to cool so they could adjust the valves, but their wait wasn’t very long that morning. When we left, central Jersey had already warmed up a bit and it was a pleasant ride home. But that ride there…wow, that was a cold one.
I should have noticed (and noted) that our previous blog (published on 6 August) was our 1,800th blog. This one is our 1,801st. That’s a lot of blogging.
