Wednesday North Central ROMEO Lunch Ride for 10-7-15

[Richard]

Guys - Hey I really appreciate it when you set me on a path to a brand new place. Such is the case this week. One of our ROMEO's, Richard Schrader from Great Bend, handed me a piece of paper a week or so ago and on it was information about a brand new town we had never been to and a grill I had never heard of. I just got off the phone with the kind lady and am excited about going there already. I know I must have gone by it in the past but it must be almost unidentifyable as to what they do.
My note doesn't reflect the actual address of the place and I asked the kind lady for the physical address of the place and she just said 'you won't need one'. She said the town is so small that if you stopped anywhere along the highway, you'd be in front of the place. What a description, but...I'm game if you are. Actually, it may be kind of exciting!
Don't expect anything exotic or unusual she said....just good ole fashioned burgers etc. Could be the best one you ever ate....who knows?
Oh, I should point out that this place is not normally open at all on Wednesdays. The owner is opening special for us so keep that in mind and make every effort to come if you can. I think it's quite a courtesy that she's doing this just for us.

Here's the time.............................................High Noon

Here's the place........................................The Timken Grill
Hwy 96
Timken Kansas
(Located 9 miles West of Albert)
785-355-2355
Linda Hampton, Owner

As always...............................ride carefull, ride safe and I'll see you in Timken. Richard
http://mapq.st/1FGty7L
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Guys - Check out the photos below taken by Mark Unruh and Marty Hauk. Thank goodness they have relieved me the agony of trying to make sense out of this computer thingy. This ride may have just been the most fun I've had on a lunch ride for ages. Why you may ask and it may sound silly b ut because we started out waay early and I didn't lead. Harvey
Weis and I left alone from Lindsborg three hours early. It was straight up nine o'clock when Harvey pulled out with me following. Harvey has covered this area we were going to frequently hauling farm equipment and was familiar with the area so I just sat back and relaxed while he chose the path. I played with my throttle lock, ran up his tailpipe just to get a good listen to the dreamy Vance and Hines pipes he has on his Honda 600 VTX. I told him that if he could get those recorded I would buy a CD....it sounds so good when he gets on the gas. I had to back off a bit for Joyce however but I occasionaly crept up when she wasn't paying attention.
I thought we might be first on the scene but Louie and Dwayne beat us there. Weather was great all the way. We did go thru some areas that had had rain sometime before but the pavement was dry by the time we hit it. There was a patch just outside of Hoisington where they were working on the road and had a pilot car but Harv had timed it just right. The car arrived just as we got there. We were second in line and barely even had to stop.
Harv turned south at Otis and we had a nice ride to hwy 96. By then I was lost in my mind. I thought we should have turned
east but Harv was leading so I left it up to him and he had a map. Five or six miles west and we were there. I would have got us lost again! I think my map was upside down!
The place opened special just for us so I was quite pleased to see bikes continue to roll in. Forty was the final headcount which made for smiles from the limited staff that showed up on their day of just to accommodate us. Joyce and I had the same menu item, the 'special' but what I really wanted was to get to the brownie covered sundae with strawberries. Yummy!
Harv chose to head back the same way asking where we could get gas. Now, Harv has a quite small tank but I knew he had a hidden gallon in a can he carries with him in his saddlebag. He took off back to Otis and east to Herrington and when we got there, there was no station in sight. I think it's downtown but there's not one on the highway which I think is kinda strange but Harv pulled over and said he's running low and what should we do. I knew about the hidden gallon so I said I was going to gas up at Geneseo and he didn't argue about it being too far and took off in the lead again. We passed a gas station in Claflin that was open and he cruised on past. We hit the road construction crew again and weren't al lucky this time. We stopped and waited quite a while until the pilot car came into view and we started the engines wasting precious fuel. Off we headed again and I saw Harv bend over obviously looking for the petcock. He straightened back up and continued on. This was the first time he had ever gone so far on a tank that he had to experience this heart stopping moment. A few hundred yards and he was pulling over to the side of the road. It turned out he had been riding all along on reserve. Joyce suggested this was an appropriate time to use his spare gallon. We removed his tankbag, retrieved the spare gas from his saddlebag and poured it in using a homemade funnel he had formed from what loooked like an old Marvel Mystery Oil bottle
having the botton cut out. He said he didn't like the new fangled anti siphon tubes that come on all the new cans anymore. I agree, I don't either.
I got down to look at the petcock on Harv's bike and I had not ever seen one like it. It was confusing! Instead of being vertical like ones i'm used to, it was of a horizontal design. One side did indeed show RES and the other side said ON. Which way was the proper way to turn it? Harv said he had the manual with him so to prevent the same thing from happening again, I suggested we look it up when we get gas.
It was 15.4 miles int Geneseo and thank goodness, the little station was open. This place has saved my buns on many an occasion. We filled up and mine took 3.43 gal. Harvey took just a tad less. We checked the manual and it gave a perfect photo of the petcock which showed when the handle points to the tank that's the tube you're pulling from. Good to know. Harv had indeed been running directly from the reserve tube. Now he knows haw far he can go on his tank. Good information to have in your mind. Later on the way home I was going over these things in my mind and realized.....I had forgotten about the extra gallon we had added to Harv's tank and the mpg he thinks now that he's getting.....isn't!

[Richard]

chronology adjustment

[beemermark]

Wednesdays ride turned out to be a cool ride with a few light sprinkles on the return trip. No pictures of the town of Timkin as this was just a wide spot on the road. Didn't find the bearing factory either. The Timkin Grill on the highway provide good food and service for the 40 riders with no one leaving hungry.

Ride safe -- Ride with a smile. Mark

[Roadpounder]

I'm Back!! Hide the kids!! After two weeks on the road Leo and I got back pretty well out of steam. But we both came through none the worse for the wear. We started out for Warsaw MO and made that leg in one day. We spent a week there celebrating my mothers 101st birthday. We decided to forgo the candles on the cake fearing a conflagration that would rival Chicago. It was a relaxing time until I took Leo for a walk. The first thing we learned is that Leo and I need to do a lot more walking. After returning to the house I saw Leo's eye was very inflamed and wandering. My sister lives in a wireless black hole about fifteen miles out of Warsaw. No cell service, no internet. It's like taking a step back into the 19th century living with the Ingalls on Little House on The Prairie.

There are two vets in Warsaw. Of course it was the “good” vet's day off, so I opted for the only other choice. So I loaded Leo on the bike and set off for town. The vet determined that Leo had scratched his cornea and gave us some eye drops. This happened when we were on our walk and he jumped into a ditch with tall weeds. The eye drops amounted to a saline solution and did absolutely nothing. Dropped $50 on that adventure.

Saturday we set off for St. Joseph MO for the Guzzi rally. I delayed my departure from Warsaw for a day owning to weather, so I only had one day at the rally. I started making camp only to find that some of my tent poles were missing. Not a good time to receive this revelation. Fortunately they were the poles that held the rain fly off the tent, not poles that hold the tent up. That's what happens when you loan your gear out. The club putting on the rally also put on the feed bag and after getting a full belly we visited with some old friends that I haven't seen for a while. Before long the band set up and started their show. Mostly oldies from my long faded youth. After their first set my eye lids were getting heavy so Leo and I went back to the tent and hit the sack. I tried my best to get to sleep. While the band played on --- and on --- and on. I finally fell into a restless sleep and upon waking in the morning started to break camp. We finally hit the road around noon, but I was hardly rested. We made it about half way to Milwaukee when we got a room for the night. I unloaded the bike and collapsed into a heap being totally spent.

Being reasonably rested we launched off the next morning. Everything went well until Dubuque IA. I'm thoroughly convinced that you can't get anywhere from Dubuque. Coming in to town from the south west you go under the bridge that crosses the Mississippi to Illinois. But they don't tell you how to get onto the bridge. So I usually find myself wandering aimlessly around town until I stumble onto it. Arriving in Milwaukee around 6:30 PM I was greeted by my son in law and 5 of their 6 dogs, which reacted to me as either a long lost friend or an invader needing to be dispatched post haste.

Leo's eye wasn't getting any better so I took him to my daughters vet and he prescribed an antibiotic that started to help quite well. By the end of the week his eye was about 50% healed. On the down side my miniature pincer Chloe took sick while I was gone and passed away from meningitis.
So with vet bills my finances took a pretty good hit on this trip.

Time was getting short for my daughters pet rescue poker run. She was running around feverishly with a phone surgically attached to her ear to tie up loose ends and get the final ducks in a row. The run attracted about 60 bikes and covered about 100 miles. She got a BBQ place to donate food and the band donated they're show. Weather was great and the party after the ride was enjoyed by all. All in all it was a resounding success for her first ride.

After a one day weather delay we set out for home. Staying overnight in Newton IA we pressed on the next day. Following my GPS we got to the intersection of 136 and 81 the GPS switched to the last leg to home. I looked at the distance and my heart dropped to the road. It said the distance to home was 229 miles. In disbelief I drew a course direct to HOME and came up with the same distance. I was just about to resign myself to another 5 hours on the road when I crossed the state line into Kansas. Shortly I saw a sign saying Salina 72 miles. That sounded a lot more realistic, so I called up a course direct to Salina and the GPS agreed with the sign. It appears that I had miss entered the lat long of home placing it about 130 miles south of Salina. We arrived in Salina 8:30PM on Thursday, to find a phone full of missed calls. It seems Shorty was a little concerned about my welfare. He was a hairs breadth from calling out the National Guard to look for me. I contacted him and let him know all was well.






Tanned rested and ready to go Leo and I mounted our steed for the trip to Timken. A good group gathered at Spangles and we set off fashionably late and settled in for the 100 mile ride. It was a little cool and several people marveled that I wasn't wearing a jacket. What ever will these folks do when it gets cold. However, I do think the bears have the right idea. Just wake me when its over. To say Timken is small in an understatement. But that doesn't subtract from it's charm. It had rained before we arrived but the only evidence of that was the few damp spots on the road and the soft muddy parking lot. Knowing this the owner of the restaurant supplied us with plywood squares to use as kick stand coasters. Once inside there was plenty of seating and I heard they are usually closed on Wednesday but opened for us. I find that very gracious of them and I hope our visit helped them out. The menu was somewhat limited. Mostly burger variations which most of us had. Their special was a chopped steak with mashed potatos and mushroom gravy, which I opted for. I ordered a little late so many were served before me. The burgers were huge and looked especially good, and the sides were generous. My order was just as generous and very tasty. There was even enough left for Leo. He really loved the mushroom gravy.
For the trip back I decided to follow Terry Powell and Randy Clark and a few others to get me to some more familiar territory. We gassed up in Hoisington and I parted company with them there and headed for Salina. Some apparently encountered some sprinkles on the way home, but all I hit was some very light mist for about 10 miles. By then it was getting warmer and the only thing that made this less than a perfect day was the lack of sunshine.