8-21-07
Beartooth Rendezvous

Dave Wunderlich came by on his way over to the west to meet his brother Gary and ride along with him on the way to the Beartooth Rendezvous. I met Dave and Gary two years ago when I went to my first Beartooth Rendezvous. They are from North Dakoata. Dave had just outfitted his bike with a set of panniers that he made out of a new pair of new ‘old stock’ military insulated food containers. These boxes were made in Wyoming and had two or three round cans inside to transport food either hot or cold. Dave had a hell of a time cutting out the aluminum liner and removing the foam insulation but he has the most bomb proof/ crash proof panniers that I have ever seen. They have a really good seal around the top. Dave used the hockey puck mounting system from Happy Trails and used the BMW racks that he modified a little. He has done other nice modifications to this bike. It is a R100 but you might notice it has a R80GS tank and seat.

You can see the cut out liner and seal in this photo. He plans to use the area in the top for gloves, maps, small stuff when he makes a cover lid for it.

I went over and stayed at Mark Dill’s place on Wednesday night so we could get an early start. Damn, if he didn’t spit polish his toaster. It sure did look good all cleaned up.

We had a nice ride over to the Rendezvous and the bikes were already starting to show up. We found a nice place in the trees to set up our tents. The event is limited to 250 people and they filled up this year and had to turn some bikes away.

In the morning Chad and his daughter Beth, Mark and I took off over the Beartooth Pass. It was cold and a little wet up there. Several places the clouds were pretty thick and visibility was less then a hundred feet.

Between the clouds it sure was a beautiful ride.

This is a really deep canyon this bridge crosses and they have a big parking area so you can walk the bridge and take photos, which as you can see, I did.

As I said it was a little wet along the route and Beth’s backside picked up a little dampness from the backwash of the bike.

We continued on to the Chief Josephs Highway and on towards Cody. The road was damp so we kept the speed down especially on these hairpin corners.

The toaster looks good but that little tank just couldn’t make it in to Cody. Chad had a little can of gas and Mark was glad to use it. The penalty for running out of gas is that he had to buy lunch…….

The big town of Cody with the small pack of black dogs parked for a while as we went across the street and had a Mexican lunch. Yumm, yumm….

Mark had been having trouble with his toaster and when Bob found out about it he went to work on it. A crowd gathered. I was sent off with Keith to Bob’s shop to get tools and supplies to do some technical work on it.

The practiced ‘EAR’ at work. Yeah, it runs, and runs better than it ever has in its life, I’d bet.

Keith was having trouble with his bike too so when we went down to the shop we picked up a diaphragm for his bikes carburetor. As it happened we got the wrong one and he had to borrow one from one of the other motorcycle guys that brought along spares. What a group it was that showed up here. They have tools and parts to fix almost any old airhead BMW.

My cousin Deb was there and it was good to see her again.

In the mornings I go into the chow hall and get my breakfast. I look for a guy sitting by himself and ask if I can sit with him. I sat with this guy one morning. He is from Ohio and drives a UPS truck. I didn’t realize what bike he rode until he was getting ready to leave. I am not sure what all this bike is but it evidently is a fast one. It is called a Boxer Cup and everything on it is light and set up for raceing. He had quite a load packed on the back. He said the valve covers on this bike made out of carbon fiber cost $500 each. He said the dealer and BMW had a special on the bike and he got $5000 off on the price of it. He didn’t say how much it cost.

On the way back we had to stop and get gas and snacks in Billings. That is Chad’s bike in front and he had a pretty good load on it along with a passenger.

I got sleepy after this stop and when we got to the Huntley I bailed off and took a nap in the nice little park that they have there. We all took the old highway over and back and it sure is a nice ride rather than getting out on that freeway. I had been over it several times but this time they had the bad spots fixed and it is a good fast ‘no traffic’ road. I didn’t see any cops either, which was good….J.