VMA(AW)533 Reunion

I haven't spent much time on this blog (like NONE) but I have "other" things to do most days. Family and friends have been bugging me to write up my recent cross country motorcycle trip. It was "quite a trip" but mainly because of the worst weather I've experienced in many years....I'd do it again, even knowing that.
















Here I was at the start---clean, rested and READY!

Anyway....

PROLOGUE

Last year (2008), was the second of now three reunions of my Vietnam Era Marine Squadron. We started with three brothers in Philly in '07, in Memphis '08 we had twelve, and this year there were 20 of us with five wives/companions (total of 25). At last count, we have located about 40, with two known deceased.

In '08, one brother (Steve Brooks) showed up on a Harley Dyna and reawakened my old dream of owning a big bore motorcycle. When I got out of the Corps in '69 my roommate had a 650 Triumph that I occasionally rode.....my (then) girlfriend Jane (now wife of 38 years) even rode with me once or twice. I wanted to buy a 650 cc Bonneville then, but with little money, a new marriage, and later two children I kept putting it off and eventually the desire faded. Where I now work there are a lot of bikers and even my young female Product Manager rides a chopped Harley Sportster.


Looking over Brooks' bike at the June '08 reunion I started thinking about it again and in July '08 I bought a Harley (Sportster) Nightster (1200 cc twin), got my license endorsement, and relearned how to ride. Subsequent emails with Brooks and another buddy (Steve Haller) resulted in a crazy plan to ride to the Washington DC Reunion in June '09.


When November came I tucked my "Sporty" away for the Winter (it is suicidal to ride a motorcycle in in Winter here). All winter, Haller and Brooks kept telling me that riding that far on a Sporty was a little nutty because it needs another gear for highway speeds and a little more engine.......THEN Harley came out with a "deal" where you could trade in any Sporty for a bigger bore bike with 100% credit for the original price. That was too good to pass, so off came the motorcycle cover and I rode it down to the Harley Store where I swapped it for a 1574 cc (96 ci) Dyna Street Bob. That was the best decision I have made in years. The Dyna has a longer wheelbase, one more gear and a much bigger engine.....the difference in the highway ride is significant. So....BIG BORE machine under me I was READY TO RIDE!! Haller eventually dropped out due to a family issue (he made the reunion but couldn't take the two weeks for the ride), leaving Brooks and I to show the rest of the "old farts" what you can do at 60+.

THE TRIP

I loaded the bike (looked like a two wheeled Gypsy wagon) and left from work on a Friday afternoon, making Rawlins, Wyoming (rode through Logan Canyon, around Bear Lake and on to I-80) that evening. Weather was forecast as wet and windy, so I was going to skip my plan to ride through the Northern Rockies. However, in the morning the weather cleared and I backtracked 45 miles to head South and into Colorado. I rode across high prairie with pronghorn antelope running alongside the road and finally got to the Northern Rocky mountains. Lunch was in Steamboat Springs (the ski resort) and then I meandered through a number of mountain towns before deciding to attempt crossing the Continental Divide at Milner Pass (12,000 feet). That involved riding through the Rocky Mountain National Park. The Ranger at the park entrance took my $10 and gave me one of those "are you sure you know what you are doing" looks, then warned me to take care and watch out for road damage. I later realized the park must have just opened after a severe winter because the road was under repair and in very bad shape. There were Elk all over the park, most in pretty bad shape (starving) from the winter and it got colder as the altitude increased. The park has had a severe pine beetle infestation for about 20 years and has a lot of dead trees but it is still beautiful.

This image is near the Pass.

At points there were 12 to 14 foot snow drifts, no guard rails and it was a narrow two lane road. Some of the drivers were obviously concerned judging by the strained looks on their faces. However, it was nothing for me riding at only 20-25 mph, well dressed for the cold and too dumb to know it was dangerous.....with no top or sides to my vehicle I had the best view of all and it was spectacular. After I crossed the Divide the weather improved and I dropped down into Estes Park where I was canyon carving with local riders on "rice burners" until I reached I-25 where I turned North to Wyoming, finally shutting down at Cheyenne. I called Brooks and discovered he was a day ahead of schedule and was already in Lincoln, Nebraska (our meeting point). It turned out he hit town when there was a Classic Car Cruise-in and so he rode his shiny "PURPLE" Harley down the street in the parade with all of the locals. You never know what will happen when you hit a town and a Harley is a "ticket" into anything HAPPENIN'.

The next day I rode at 80-90 mph out of Wyoming and across Nebraska to meet him on Sunday at the Harley dealership in Lincoln. That was quite a place, with what seemed like hundreds of bikes. We got our "blue tooth" bike-to-bike communications linked and hit the road, stopping in Davenport, Iowa that evening. Weather had been on and off rain shortly after leaving Lincoln but we always seemed to be in the dry "hole" in the clouds. When we headed out the next day our weather luck held but the main bridge over the Mississippi River was closed, so we had to bypass, costing us some time. We eventually made it to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and checked into the outstanding IRON HORSE HOTEL, just across from the Harley Davidson Museum.

One disconcerting event on the road into Milwaukee shows the stupidity of some drivers and how a motorcyclist has to stay alert. We passed a young woman with a small girl in her car. The girl was not wearing a seat belt, leaning over her mother's shoulder from the back seat, holding the steering wheel while "mom" (and I use the word loosely) was sending a text message on her phone.....at 75 mph on a major roadway. I gave her an "are you crazy look" and she got angry "at ME".......pleas tell me, who is breeding this species of human and how do we get them to stop?

The Iron Horse Hotel caters to bikers but at $200 a night it's not for the average rider. The bikes are parked in special lighted, covered stalls, with 24 hour security....the cars park in a general parking lot.

Brooks & I with our Iron Horses

We had a great dinner, followed by a quiet night of good sleep to prepare us for the Harley Museum.

In the Hotel Lobby with a Custom Iron Horse

Harley Museum

Biker Parking ONLY in front

Four hours at the Museum and we hit the road for our next stop at a Squadron buddies (Roger Philbrook) house in Indiana. He couldn't make the reunion but offered a bed for the night. We crossed, the lower end of Wisconsin and into Illinois (going through Chicago at rush hour), where we had our only near misses of the trip. I was riding in lane 2 of 4 lanes, with nowhere to go, when a Car pulling a house trailer decided to move into my lane. The driver had a change of mind when he looked over to see my motorcycle boot about to crash into his window.....one advantage of a big bore Harley is you are riding above eye level with a car driver and that boot looks very large at that angle......it scared the crap out of him and he quickly corrected his lane change; then Brooks had a young woman in a "bitty car" try to T-bone him at an interchange with another freeway......she saw him, actually aimed her car and literally drove right at him, horn blaring......his angry look changed her mind. We cleared the "windy city" alive and and shut down at Roger Philbrook's place in Indiana for the night.

We had a good restaurant dinner with Roger (he don't cook and neither do we.....), a night of old stories and a few beers, then Roger got a bonus of a CD with pictures of Vietnam that I made for the Reunion group. He appreciated the CD as he had lost his pictures in one of his moves. Brooks and I were off the next morning early, shutting down 100 miles outside Washington, DC. At this point our luck with the weather ended. We left the hotel for dinner at a shopping mall under an almost clear evening sky, only to have it open up as a deluge when we left the restaurant....in T-shirts and jeans..no rain gear.

The next morning found us rolling into DC about noon, over the Potomac River along Massachusetts Avenue, down Embassy Row, to the elegant Fairfax Hotel. President's and Kings have stayed there, Hillery Clinton announced her decision to run for the Presidency there and there were no shortages of Admirals, Generals and politicians in the three days we were there....VERY nice place to hang a hat for the night. The valet could not park the bikes (nor would be have let him), so he walked ahead of us into the bowels of the hotel underground lot where we tucked our iron horses away for the next three days.

THE REUNION

The pictures pretty much say it all.

Iwo Jima Memorial Arlington National Cemetery

Me outside the Marine Museum

Museum of the Marine Corps Entrance

Vietnam Memorial
"Grunts"

The Wall

We did "Marine Things" for three days. Looked each other in the eye and said "Hello Brother" again.....ate, drank, met wives and girlfriends, talked of our families, toasted our dead left in Vietnam, and those that have died since. These are my "brothers" and always will be. We shared bunkers as the mortars and rockets slammed in around us during TET'68, dug fighting holes, filled millions of sandbags, stood watch over our "big ugly" warplanes under a clear Southeast Asian night sky with stars seemingly so close you could touch them; worked 12 hours a day 6-7 days a week for over two years, raised hell on R & R, "relocated" Army and Seabee equipment when our unit needed it, played endless poker games, drank hard, worked hard and lived a life few will ever know.........SEMPER FI BROTHERS!

Many of us hadn't seen each other for over 40 years yet it was like we just walked out of a room and then returned.....the old stories brought back memories (good and bad). It gave us a chance to correct our "tales" by comparing memories and weeding out the parts we had "filled in" over the years. Next year is in planning now and it will be bigger than ever. We were even joined by Charlie Kazinski, a member of VMA-533 in 1943. Charlie heard about our reunion through a VFW notice and came down to join us from New York City. At age 87, he was our oldest "brother" so we added him to our group and listened to his stories of our Squadron's exploits long before many of us were born. We also had a brief visit from one of our Sargent's, who couldn't stay but dropped in for dinner one evening. In the days there, we saw the Iwo Jima Memorial, the Vietnam Wall, the Korea Memorial, WW-2 Memorial, the Marine Museum at Quantico, and attended the Marine Barracks 8th & I Street Evening Parade as Unit Guests. Some of us had a Congressional Tour of the White House and Congress that took most of one day. All-in-all, it was a GREAT event and one we will remember for a long while.

THE RETURN

Brooks and I loaded up Sunday morning, said our goodbye's and headed West. We made Indianapolis by early afternoon in time for him to attend Church while I found a cheap motel. The next day we parted company, after a 30 minute search to find my motorcycle key. Brooks headed home to Alabama (with a stop at the Corvette Museum) and I headed back to Utah via Peoria, Illinois. Jane and I have been concerned about her parents, so I diverted a hundred miles or so to see them overnight. That made for a short day of only 250 miles or so....weather still was my friend but that was soon to end.

One of my goals for the ride was to get my Iron Butt Certification (Iron Butt Association - IBA) for either a 1500 mile (in 36 hours) or 1000 mile (in 24 hours) ride. I saved this for last and my father-in-law certified my departure from his house at 8 am. I rode like crazy but about 250 miles into the days' ride I came on another Harley rider and his wife broken down in the middle of nowhere with a dead cellphone battery. He was homeward bound after a couple of weeks out West and had a blown engine and a dead cellphone battery. He used my phone to arrange for a tow and a repair at the nearest Harley Store (in Des Moines, Iowa). They had been down for an hour and nobody had stopped, so they were walking to a nearby offramp which I knew had no services........his comment, "only another biker would stop to help". It cost me an hour and was the first of several things that doomed my IBA ride to failure. Later that night at the 750 mile mark the sky opened up and I was riding in a torrential downpour, only able to make 40 mph at night on I-80.......CRAZINESS, so I shut down for the night. With less than a thousand miles left on the ride home there was no chance to make the numbers work and I got a good night's sleep, abandoning my IB attempt. The night brought nearby tornado's, heavy rain and hail but a relatively clear morning. I hit the road and ran into patches of heavy rain (wall clouds would appear and buckets of rain then fell), often with pea sized hail (not a problem with my "crash jacket", a rain suit and a full face helmet....but annoying anyway. Just west of Rock Springs, Wyoming I hit heavy rain and lightning striking in the fields next to the road, so I pulled under a road bridge and waited it out. Another Harley rider and his son (son riding pillion) on a Road Glide rolled under just after I did, so we talked until I left. They were from Nashville, Tennessee doing a Western National Parks Tour and I know many of the Parks, so I was able to give some advice. Finally, the lightning stopped so I started again in the rain, eventually leaving I-80, headed to Bear Lake and down beautiful Logan Canyon, arriving home in Smithfield about 6 pm. I suspect Jane was glad to see me because the garage door opened as I rounded the corner to the driveway with my bike running on fumes (I didn't want to even stop for gas the last few miles), both the bike and I were filthy dirty and I was very tired.

STATS

4,775 miles round trip

Longest day 750 miles, with at least three over 600 miles

Crossed or rode through 11 States and the District of Columbia

5 days outbound

3.5 days return

Hundreds of waves from other riders....lots of good road advice at rest stops....two kids with their Dad's "checked out" the bike........noticed that bikers are not like people in cars.......they "talk to each other"!

NO major incidents and I would do it again....maybe taking a few days longer each way!!

Anyone ready to go with me is welcome......a basic requirement is you have to have a motorcycle. I'm planning a run up to Yellowstone and back, and West Coast ride (probably St George-to-Vegas-to-San Diego and back) before the end of the riding year.