My GL is not what you would call a tourer, as you can see from my gallery pics. It's more of a cafe racer than anything, so I first had to build a rack for it. A long afternoon with the welder and grinder produced a decent rack, and I just used the saddlebags from my road bicycle instead of buying motorcycle-specific bags. Here's what it looked like when all was said and done:
Anyway, we loaded up the bikes and headed up I-75 toward the Mackinac Bridge. Everything was going pretty well for the first 70 miles or so, then we turned off the highway to stretch a bit and top off our gas tanks. Dad's '77 wouldn't start - the battery was dead. Hoping it was just a bad battery, I rode half a mile up the street to a Meijer and picked up a new battery. We swapped them out and all seemed good. But just another 70 miles down the road, we stopped for lunch and Dad's battery was dead again. Fearing a ruined stator, we checked over the '77. Fortunately, it was just a case of a wire rubbing on the frame and shorting out, causing excessive current draw and killing the battery. The offending wire was replaced, and all was good with the '77 from then on. My '78 had its own troubles, but we'll get to that.
Owing to the problems with the '77, we were a bit behind schedule, so we only got as far as Manistique before we called it a night. But that's not before we had to cross the Mackinac Bridge. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's an impressive sight. It's about 4-5 miles long and spans the Mackinaw Straits which separates the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan. The center lane of the bridge is not asphalt or concrete like a normal road surface but is instead steel grate. There was construction on the bridge which forced us to ride on this grate. It was definitely a unique experience, as the grate forced the front tire every which way but straight - and if you looked down, you could see right through it to the water below. Faaaar below.
Once we got across the bridge, we took US-2 west, and raced the setting sun to Manistique, where we got a hotel for the night. But, not before discovering that my '78 was no longer adequately charging the battery.
Hoping for a similarly satisfactory resolution, we checked the wiring but found no obvious faults. At this point, I thought that our trip was over, but we decided to head to bed and try it again in the morning. In the morning, I cleaned the ground and battery terminals, and that seemed to help a little. But we weren't able to completely solve the problem; even at 3000+ RPM, the voltmeter only read 12 and the battery was discharging. Fortunately, however, I had recently replaced my handlebar controls, and my new headlight switch has an "off" position. With the headlight turned off, the '78 was able to produce enough current to keep the battery charged. Obviously not an ideal solution, but one that allowed us to continue with the trip - provided we stop before it got dark. The second day, we headed west through the Hiawatha National Forest toward Escanaba, where we stopped for lunch. Dad said his Reuben sandwich was the best he'd ever had.
After Escanaba, we headed north toward Marquette. This time, instead of staying on the highway, we took some county roads. This turned out to be a good choice. The road was nice and winding and just a lot of fun to ride - something learned for future trips: take the back roads wherever you can! We saw a wolf run across the road in front of us, and spotted a few deer in the woods. After about 60 miles, we ran into a pretty decent rain storm, so we stopped to put on our rain gear. Just in time, too, since the drops started falling just as we got our gear on. We pushed on through the rain and made it to Marquette, where we stopped to wait out the storm at a nice little Irish pub with a pint and some "Irish nachos," which were very good.
After Marquette, we headed east on US-28 toward Munising, where we took a little detour to sightsee at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore:
Then, we headed back to US-28 and rolled east again through what's called the "Seney Stretch." This part of US-28 is just a dead-straight section of road that goes on for miles and miles with absolutely nothing remarkable to look at other than some flat swampy land with stunted little pine trees. The good news about the Seney Stretch is that it's a great place to break a clutch cable, since you don't need to shift at all for a very long time. And wouldn't you know it, but that's exactly what happened to me. My clutch cable popped while I was passing a semi. But like I said, it wasn't an immediate problem since I didn't need to turn or stop for a loooong time. But it did make things interesting when we pulled into our campsite for the second night. I did learn how to get going from a stop with no clutch, though!
Here's the damage - the end of the cable just snapped right off:
And here's the jury-rigged fix - step one: clamp a pair of vise-grips to the end of the cable. Add duct tape:
Wrap generously, and presto! The clutch was workable again. I rode it like this almost 400 miles back home:
All in all, we both had a lot of fun on this trip. The mechanical difficulties were annoying at the time, but looking back on them now, they make good stories. At least there weren't any problems that we couldn't fix or work around. We learned a lot about doing trips like this - like the need for radios to communicate with each other - and are looking forward to the next one!
