Carpinteria Road
Run
October 22 - 23, 2005
By
Tom Hart
A small band of SoCal
members made the trip to Santa Barbara this year, Hakan M. ‘47 HD Bobber, Craig
Dillamm‘76 HD, Dave “Sportster” Cook , Dave Williams on a new Road King, Mike
Menezes ‘56 Triumph, me ‘39 Chief and the lovely Irma keeping track of all of
us on the back of Craig’s bike.
I started my day by
waiting for the sun to show up. That never happened so I took off anyway,
unenlightened. I made the 55 mile ride to Craig’s garage drenched by what the
weatherman called a “marine layer”, I prefer to it call rain. The weather
stayed cool and a little drier for most of the ride to Carpinteria, but the
marine layer returned that evening leaving puddles of marine juice all over the
place. The ride home on Sunday was much better insofar as the weather was
concerned with lots of sunshine after leaving the coastal area. Personally, I
had a heck of a (good) time thanks again to old iron, great scenery and the
company good friends, no matter what the weather conditions were like, or what
tribulations I make note of later.
The ride up (and back)
took us through Moorpark, Fillmore, Santa Paula,
Ojai, Montecito, Carpinteria and Santa
Barbara. It was very interesting to see how the
personality of the landscape had been changed by the recent fires. We made the
regular lunch stop just outside of Ojai before continuing on to Santa Barbara, the Pier
and refreshments. After riding around Santa Barbara
for a few minutes (totally lost), we were finely able to make our way to the
Pier only after asking directions from various Santa Barbara transients. We used the
directions given to us by a guy we spotted sucking down suds on a bus bench
because it was clear to us that this was a guy who could show us the way to a
bar. We found the Pier and Bar and had a couple relaxing lemon aids before our
next stop at the Motel 6 in Carpinteria. More relaxing at the motel before
heading out to the Palms Restaurant for a surf and/or turf dinners. Very nice.
As is my custom, I will
now embark on a trail (and tale) of facts, near facts, myths, lies,
embellishments and just plain old ragging to further complicate the life of
this rides unfortunate one, me. As almost everyone is aware, old Chiefs never
die they just lay down and go to sleep for awhile and my Chief is no exception.
However my bad boy went into a coma rather than just a nap. Naturally this
could only happen after the Chief got me a long, long, long way from home and
with no trouble truck in sight. The Chief had been acting up for most of the
day. I should have paid more attention to the symptoms of its illness like any
good physician or a student of the “Homer School of Maintenance”. It was hard to start (a Ralph Krogh Vincent
specialty), using lots of fuel (a normal big block issue), unable to generate
enough juice to light up one lousy 6 volt light similar to any Lucas “Prince of
Darkness” electrical part, oil pouring out of the rear most push rod housing
like it was a Tom Lovejoy machine, loss of uphill power like a Kevin Spear JD,
and a horn that didn’t work so I couldn’t warn other motorist that I also had a
braking problem like a Homer Knapp beast. The only thing it didn’t do was smoke
(issues Vaughn Bandonian and Phil
Shore deal with
regularly). When I evaluated all of the above symptoms, I realized that maybe
the only problem was that my bike had been hanging around a lot of bad
influences, or caught something awful from one or more of these other guys
bikes. I guess a lack of maintenance really wasn’t an issue after all.
On the positive side, I
did look cool in my half chaps which kept me dry and warm. I thank Ken “The Bolt
Man” King for the legging protection idea. After all, isn’t looking cool just
as important as anything else we do on
or with motorcycles, even during the total melt down of one’s equipment. Think
about it Timmy G, you know I’m right.
Sunday morning started
with an IHOP senior breakfast special. Dave Cook was old enough for all
of us to qualify for the senior special. After breakfast we walked back to the
motel and fired up the machines for the ride home. Everyone except me that is.
No amount of kicking, pushing, sweating, or cussing was going to lite a fire in
the Chief’s burner this day. A quick look inside the distributor cap revealed
the ugly truth. The coil’s solid lead nipple inside the distributor cap was
gone, completely worn away. That allowed the rotor to rise on the camshaft and
nearly destroy the two spark plug prongs inside the cap. The only thing left
was a small amount of a gold color dust spattered inside the distributor
housing. A check of the local auto parts stores failed to produce the needed
Studebaker repair parts. Not good, not good at all. How the Chief ever made it
as far as it did is beyond me.
The main group departed
Carpinteria for the ride home after calling me a tow truck, “Hey dude, you a
tow truck, see ya later”. Very funny guys, I’m still laughing. HA! HA! I called
my wife to meet me half way at Craig’s place in Chatsworth. I relaxed by the
pool, waiting for my tow when a thought came to mind. Why not do something? So
I did something with some things and stuff
I found here and there and before you could say gee whiz the Chief fired
up. I cancelled the tow, my wife (her response, not her) and caught up with the
group just as they arrived in Chatsworth. That’s my story and I’m sticking to
it. I’ll supply pictures of my field repaired parts at a later time if my
truthfulness is an issue. And once again, a good time was had by all. End of
story.