Shannon Bruns’ Ride Report
I've never taken rallying too
seriously. My goal has always been to have fun, and put a score on the board. this
is a big reason why I prefer to run in the Two-up class, as I like to have
someone to talk to during the event. For the 2001 mn2k my wife Donna would be
unable to attend, as she would be busy taking car of Samantha, our new baby. My
brother Ashley volunteered to come along though. His logic was "If my
little brother can do that stuff, it must be easy." Hard to find flaw in
logic like that.
The weapon
of choice this year was my '98 Moto Guzzi Ev11 with the Velorex sidecar
attatched. I dialed the toe-in and Lean out so that the bike would run straight
down the road at 75mph. Figuring that this would be a good interstate speed for
the Saddlesore group ride. It looked odd set up this way, but drove great.
Keeping with tradition, things began to break for me at about 20 miles from
home, on the way to Minneapolis from my home in Watertown South Dakota. First
the power cord for the GPS died, then the bike began to lurch and buck like an
injected BMW. Visions of leaving a trail of broken and lost parts and
accessories over a three state region, just like the Minnesota 2000 flashed
through my head. We limped into Warner power Sports for my annual dose of harassment
from Eddie and Adam. Eddie gave us directions to Trackstar so (hopefully) they
could solve the bucking and surging problem. Trackstar gave it their best, but
was not able to solve the problem. We decided to run the event, come hell or high
water, figuring the Goose would either deliver us to the finish, or leave us to
die in the middle of no where, either way, sounded like fun.
We
left Bobs Java Hutt the third bike out the gate, and were promptly passed by
pretty much every bike in the field. We got very accustomed to being passed, as
the 70 HP engine just didn’t' seem to have enough power to drag the 1400 lbs of
bike, sidecar, and two fat South Dakotan’s at any speed over 65mph into that
strong wind. We were further limited by the Guzzi's funky transmission that
made 4th and 5th BOTH overdrives. We left it in 4th for the duration of the
ride. We cruised along waving at all the nice motorcyclists as they passed us.
We were in good spirits and figured once we turned south, the wind would die,
and we would be able to increase our speed. Unfortunately for us, the high
winds had further reduced our fuel range to LESS than the 125 miles between
fill ups that we had planned, and just outside of Fargo, we ran out of fuel.
Several riders stopped to offer assistance, but without a fuel cell, they could
not help us. One fellow did stop; he didn't have a fuel cell, but wouldn't be deterred.
He pulled off the fuel line from his engine, and tried to drain off some fuel,
when that didn’t' work he pulled out a hose, and proceeded to siphon the fuel
out, sucking a mouthful of 91 octane unleaded in the process.
"Oh man, that’s
nasty" I said, "whets your rider number, you gotta let us make this
up to you at the end". The smiling guy looked up, and said
"One". AAAw shit, it had to be him. Rider number one. I couldn't go
and inconvenience someone else, like maybe Will Outlaw, no, not me, I got Rider
number one sucking gas to cover my goof up. Hoo boy, we were doing well. I
still feel really bad for Mark foster, and hope he was able to get the taste
out of his mouth, he sure deserves an award for sportsmanship, that’s for sure.
Past ma's cycle and onto South Dakota, we were repeatedly passed by t he same
group of Triumph riders. They would wave as they passed, and be waiting
for us to arrive at the next fuel stop, we would fuel up, and be on the road
quickly, only to be passed by them again 20 miles down the road. This game of
friendly leapfrog would continue for the rest of the event. Into the evening
darkness, we would pull into the fuel stops to be greeted by their waves and
cheers. It really kept the fun in the rally for us. Especially cool for me
though was getting to hear that sweet piped TT600 as it rolled past us about 12
times over the course. Very sweet sound.
I make a really bad sidecar passenger. With this in mind I had tried to let
Ashley drive during the daylight hours as much as possible. That way I, the
more experienced rider, would be at the controls and Ashley would be asleep in
the sidecar when we struck the deer on the interstate at 2am. Ashley, of
course, knew nothing of this plan. Apparently neither did the deer, as we did
not see a single one during the ride. This was a very good thing for as my
partner from last year, Bill Ager, says. "When it comes to sidecars, there is
over and there is through, there is no around".
We
tooled in to trackstar with smiles on our faces. I found a piece of grass to
sleep on; Ashley took care of our paperwork. Once home I found the surging
was simply a dirty crankshaft sensor, and could have been fixed in about 30
seconds if I had only been smart enough to check it. Oh well, maybe next year
I'll actually compete solo in the MN1k, or maybe I’ll get Donna on the back,
Ashley in the hack, and we'll be the first to run Three up!