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Wilkes-Barre PA – Southeast MA
Sun Oct 13, 2024
(~275 miles)

Our trip didn’t end quietly nor without drama — it wasn’t just the typical half-day of boring interstate riding to finish things up, only to be summed up in a sentence tagged on to the previous full day’s ride report. This one ended with a bit of a bang, or rather, a lack of bangs as we experienced a major mechanical malfunction less than an hour from home. Which was both bad and good, you might say, in retrospect.

One of us was up at 05:00 to check on the imminent weather pattern (guess who?). I gathered some coffee and a bite to eat from the lobby cafe after moving the ST under the port cochere, protecting our impending departure from the rain sprinkles which had just begun. Char was understanding, if unamused, by my desire to pack up quickly and hit the road to avoid having to ride the entire morning inside the rain pattern. Without coffee or sustenance, my fellow trooper was geared up and ready to go by 06:00!

It was chilly out! We had our heated liners on, and I added my silk balaclava, plus my Gore-tex lobster mitts, to get comfortably through our first leg across the remainder of Pennsylvania. The roads were wet, but we somehow managed to stay just ahead of the precipitation until we finally pulled off I-84 in Matamoras to get a nice hot breakfast at Stewie’s.

The service was super-friendly as always. Having eaten on the later side last night, I opted for “just” a breakfast sandwich today – egg, sausage, avocado, lettuce, tomato on a croissant. It was actually too messy to eat by hand, but quite filling and tasted delicious all the same. Char got an egg-white veggie omelet that she really enjoyed. Alas, no room for either pie or yummy cinnamon rolls today! 🙁

Feeling warmed and much more human after a good breakfast in our bellies, we could almost smell the barn at the end of the trip. It was in good spirits that we quickly completed the crossing through New York and over the Hudson, with a final gas stop in Fishkill. We didn’t even blink at the inevitable traffic slowdowns through western Connecticut. We were still ahead of the rain, but the weather looked a bit wetter north of us, so we decided to continue in a more direct route toward home through Rhode Island via CT 66/CT 2/I-395/US 6. That also avoids the usual traffic snarl where 84 meets the Mass Pike.

We made a quick nature stop on US 6 just over the RI line at the mini-mart there. The restrooms were closed, so we hopped back on the bike quickly, figuring we’d just tough it out til home. This is when I noticed that the heated gear controller lights were blinking in error pattern and could not be reset as usual by toggling the power. As we started riding down route 6, I then noticed the ABS light was flashing. Uh oh, that’s not normal — it’s supposed to go off once the bike is rolling.

My mind whirled with possibilities of what could be happening as I worried what this might mean. I mentioned to Char that we appeared to have a problem, but that the bike felt OK and I still had drive power, unlike our clutch problem a couple years ago. Then the speedometer and tachometer needles dropped to zero as we continued toodling along route 6, now stuck behind some typical RI drivers doing the speed limit and not a mile more. The GPS units also then lost their DC power input. My instinct was this is a bike charging issue and that keeping our speed up with forward momentum was the only thing keeping the engine from quitting now.

Unfortunately, this was accurate. As we headed through the town of Scituate approaching the annoying four-way stoplight intersection at RI 116, it appeared that everyone else in Rhode Island was here too. Apparently, some sort of autumn festival was being held. Cars were parked along both shoulders of the highway and we could see traffic backed up for about a half mile from the lights. Uh-oh again.

Warning Char that we were likely to lose power as we coasted to a halt in the lineup of idling cars, that is indeed what happened. I tried to keep the engine revving a bit with the clutch disengaged, but it simply died. The bike clearly had no juice to turn the engine over, but at least we were in stopped traffic now. To top it all off, one of our Sena comms units picked this moment to also run out of juice! That felt downright spooky at the time, seemingly connected (but not really) to all the other power loss? Were we being targeted by some alien or military EMP device!?

Putting on my hazard lights, I instructed Char (via some shouting and gestures) to dismount right there in the road, indicating an empty space on the other side of the road between the parked cars as our goal. The oncoming westbound traffic was coming on slow enough to allow me to wheel the bike in a cautious U-turn and over to the side of the road, which had a fairly generous flat shoulder here. We lucked out big time with the timing of this malfunction, that we didn’t have to push the bike very far or worry about fast-moving traffic!

So here we are, stuck on the side of the road in western Rhode Island, roughly 45 minutes from home. After doffing our helmets, we took a deep breath and assured ourselves we were now in a safe spot. Aside from having to use the bathroom quite badly by now, we had plenty of time and daylight in our favor. We began to assess the situation and our options.

Aside from the electrical, the bike had otherwise been running completely fine, so I was convinced all we needed was a battery with enough juice to make it home. Changing the battery out wouldn’t make a bit of difference if it wouldn’t charge while riding. This reeked of an alternator issue, and a quick online search via my phone turned up a similar diagnosis for the symptoms we’d experienced.

For a second opinion before taking any rash action, I made a quick call to my ever-helpful mechanic friend Jim, who agreed it seemed like the charging system or in the worst-case, the ECU computer “brain” of the bike. He suggesting trying to get a jump and see if it started, which would further point to a (slightly) more straightforward alternator issue.

If we had been halfway across the country, I’d have had no qualms about asking passerby for a jumpstart, however I didn’t think one jump would be enough to get the bike home. We needed a car to offload Char and our gear and to follow along to provide supplemental jumps as needed. Time to phone another friend, or in this case my sister Susan, who lives fairly close to us. Luckily, she was available and willing to come pick us up.

She arrived in about an hour. What a hero! I didn’t want to trouble her more than necessary, so she took us (and most of our luggage) straight home. There we could retrieve our own vehicle and tools, in order to execute a more careful and relaxed rescue plan for the motorcycle.

After (finally!) a much needed nature break, I grabbed what supplies I thought might be needed and we drove our 4Runner back across Rhode Island to where our poor, powerless bike waited amidst festive family traffic. Everything was as we’d left it, and there was even space in front of the bike to back the truck in, then on the grassy shoulder alongside the bike to get the jumper cables close enough to reach. Remnants of The Great Peanut Exchange Failure back in Missouri were evident under the saddle, but easily brushed away for the local squirrels to enjoy later. 😉

We confirmed immediately that the bike would start with the jumpers attached… success! That was quite of a relief as replacement ECUs are hard to source these days. Plus it means we can definitely get home under our own power.

We let the battery charge for perhaps 10 minutes while I removed the remaining luggage from the bike, toggled off or removed all electric accessories, and donned all my gear to be ready to ride as soon as the cables were removed. Char would tail me home as my support/charging vehicle as we made our way to the interstate over some local roads I’d picked that would hopefully keep us away from this festival traffic and all the additional traffic lights that were ahead of us on route 6.

That 10 minutes was definitely nowhere near enough. And the overflow traffic from this festival was even clogging up the local roads that we were using to circle up to I-295. We only made it a few miles when the bike died again, luckily right in front of a farm stand with a parking lot to get off the road. By now the weather we’d escaped int PA/NY had started to catch up with us again. We hooked up the cable and charged for 20 minutes with an umbrella perched above it to keep the rain off.

That bought us perhaps 15 miles to a rest area on I-295, where I decided to pull in for a safer spot to charge before it actually died. Charged for another 20 minutes, which got us to within about two miles of home when I decided to stop again before it died. This fourth and final charging session was on a small neighborhood road that happened to have detour signs set up that served as a barrier to park by and avoid traffic. We finally made it home just before 17:00, pooped and coming down from the adrenaline of a final few stressful hours of our journey.

Things could have gone a lot worse, which we knew even at that time. After travelling most of the way across country, to have the bike break down this close to home was a bit of a miracle. It could have happened a thousand miles away, or in heavy traffic going through a city, or on a road with no shoulder. It had been a short mileage final day and we’d gotten an early start, so we were grateful to be home at last before dark, where we could reflect on the trip, and I could begin at leisure the process of researching next steps for testing and fixing the mechanical issue.

The next day, I discovered there were only 11.5 volts reading between the battery posts after a full charge with the engine running, confirming a problem with the charging system. A bad alternator is the most likely culprit, and after 220K miles, it really owes me nothing! I knew I’d be able to solve the problem, with help from the ST community, though I didn’t realize then that this would be the most intense and time-consuming motorcycle maintenance I’d ever undertaken, consuming the next three months of my spare time. 😬

Aside from our somewhat unfortunate ending, the tour was a resounding success. We completed the trip whole and unharmed. It had been a fantastic journey, taking in three completely different areas of the country in a short couple weeks, plus the excellent riding in between.  It had been fun exploring new roads and territory, as well as visiting some familiar old haunts and reliving memories from an earlier chapter of life that I was able to share with Char.

The ST had performed admirably as usual, though it decided it’s trip was done a bit before we were ready ourselves. Never fear, it will be resurrected…

Trip Stats (simplified)

Days: 14.5
Miles: ~5926
Pie: 10 (including empanadas, fried pies, and the BEST pie ever)