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Although my wife Jen and I have been on a dozen or so extended motorcycle trips, until this last one, we never needed to be towed. This year, we headed North, then West, from Orlando on “Sally”, our 2013 R1200GS, en route to Seattle by way of Calgary, Alberta. Jen, intelligently, met me in Denver to miss crossing the “flatlands.”
The Calgary to Tacoma leg of our trip was planned for the last week -- and on Tuesday of that last week, we crossed back into the US near Osoyoos. From there, we took Highway 97 to Oroville, and turned West down Loomis-Oroville Road to pick up Section 6 of the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route. Once past Palmer Lake, we left the pavement and climbed into the mountains on the Backcountry Discovery Route, two-up. Sally was in fine shape as we climbed.
As a side note, when I took offroad lessons at BMW’s training facility in Greer, S.C., they taught me to disable ABS when I wasn’t on pavement. A practice I religiously followed until this trip. As I read more deeply about the Enduro and Enduro Pro ride modes, however, I learned that BMW had “tuned” ABS for off-road use. I figured we’d give it a go, so this particular day was the first time that I didn’t disable ABS off-road, and the braking took some getting used to, especially two-up with a near-capacity gross weight of about 950 lbs. Section 6 is beautiful and isolated and we enjoyed the ride. Although some sections were rather steep and more rocky than we anticipated, Sally, Jen and I managed to navigate them without incident.
During the ride, I did notice some weirdness on my rear braking. From time to time, it seemed a bit different than what I anticipated based on my inputs. I chalked this up to the BMW ride modes “tuning” and didn’t think too much about it. As we descended out of the mountains, back to blacktop on the way to Conconully, however, the bike seemed to drag a bit, like I was applying the brake. I pulled in the clutch to roll to the side on the slight downhill, but as I pulled over, the bike slowed too quickly. I realized that something must be wrong with the brakes. Bummer.
I got off and looked at the front and rear discs, and other than smelling “brake” everything seemed in order. I played with the levers. Check. I turned Sally off and on a few times. Check. I couldn’t find anything wrong, but Sally was rolling freely again, so off we went, with a bit of trepidation. We made it to Winthrop, our planned stop for the night, without further incident.
On Wednesday, with only four days left in our trip, our plan was to ride two of the most beautiful roads in Washington State: in the morning we were going to ride West on Route 20 through North Cascades National Park (away from the sun); and then in the afternoon we were going to ride East on Route 2 to Leavenworth (again, away from the sun). We loaded up and shoved off after breakfast.
Just a few miles outside Winthrop, while on cruise control at about 60 mph, Sally decided to gently apply the brakes. There could be no mistaking it, it wasn’t just offroad weirdness -- once we stopped, we were fast in place, the wheels weren’t rolling. My uneducated routine began again: I played with the brake controls, “rebooted” the bike a few times, and eventually, the wheels were free. But we weren’t. It seemed to me like Sally had an intermittent and exotic brake problem. So Jen and I decided to head back to Winthrop, rather than forge ahead on Route 20, as going on would mean we are out of cell range for about 4 hours. From Winthrop, the nearest BMW dealer is about 200 miles.
We pulled back into Winthrop, and started to call around for roadside assistance. My first call was to BMW. They were prompt and courteous, and even though we were out of warranty, they were happy to send a tow truck at my expense. The expense? BMW apparently has a flat negotiated rate of $4.50 a mile. And the nearest BMW dealer? About 200 miles. Ugh. We told them we’d call back if we still needed a tow after checking some other options.
We have a MOA Platinum Cycle Club membership, so that was our next call. They were courteous and happy to help. Apparently, however, the Platinum roadside assistance entitles you to a tow of up to 100 miles. According to the representative, you can pay at the tow company rate to go farther, and the rates are “usually between $3 and $10 per mile.” Again ugh.
We told them we’d see if we need them, and we called SafeCo, our regular insurance company. After a brief hold, we learned that our SafeCo insurance will tow us up to 10 miles, or to the nearest qualified service center. We asked the representative what that meant, and she responded by asking where we wanted to go. “BMW Motorcycles of Seattle” we responded. “184 miles. Fine, I can authorize that” was her reply.
SafeCo arranged it all, and we got towed from Winthrop to BMW Motorcycles of Seattle. We planned to leave the bike there, and ship it home to be repaired (we were going to ship it home from Seattle anyway). We had already arranged a rental for our last few days. But when we got to Seattle (some five hours later), the guys were intrigued by our exotic problem. They had never heard of this happening, and after a bit of standing around and discussing all of the possible causes, they rolled the bike in and inspected it.
These guys rock. Or should we say, can find a rock?
After just a few minutes of inspecting the bike, the techs found a pebble lodged between the brake lever and the frame. It was small enough to get in by (maybe) ricocheting off the exhaust system, but just a tad too big to get out by itself. With a little coaxing, it was out, and we were on our way. No charge. A big shout out to Pete & Jim, and the other guys at BMW Motorcycles of Seattle who treated us so well, and took such good care of us during our (thanks to them) very brief stay.
We may never have found that rock, but we should have known about our towing insurance. We urge anyone taking a road trip to check out their policies, and we urge the MOA Platinum Cycle Club to revisit their coverage.
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