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| The Adventures of Those Guys |
The Birth of Those Guys
A
few of the members of Rice on the Rocks were able to return to South Dakota last July for
the BlackHills Cruiser Classic. Just like the year before , The Dakota Territory Cruisers put on a wonderful
event. It was good to see a lot of old friends there, and to make a few new ones. Make
sure you stop by their website to see their full online report. I will just add a few
tidbits of our experience there.
We arrived the Sunday before the
event expecting to see Chris Fryman already there. Not only was he there, but he had
already hit the trails and was broken. He broke a front buggy spring somewhere on the
IceMan trail, but was able to strap it to the frame and drive back to camp under his own
power. A special thanks to Charlie and Greg for hooking him up with a replacement spring.
The next day Chris spent
the day fixing his truck, while Luke, Eric, and I went on a trail they called BIKINI with
Hodgie and Randle as copilots. If you ever get a chance, run this trail! It zigzags up and
down the face of a mountain. On the way into the trail you can see Mt Rushmore in the
distance. Once this trail starts its non stop action- and the view is great. The only
downfall this trail has is there are so many obstacles, you can't keep up with all the
action.
After the event, Some of us took an extra week
to see some of Colorado. We were looking for a place to camp outside of Boulder, camping
has been banned in the canyons leading out of town. So we kept driving up the mountain
till we came to a little town of Ward. We decided to stop at the Glacier Gateway General
Store of Ward to get some info on the area.
The locals were very informative about the area- from a history
lesson about how many cattle we can walk down the street, to where the best spot to camp
would be. And what a spot it was! Just below the tree line on the resivour we had a great
view of the glaciers. There was just enough tree coverage to keep the wind down, unless
your sleeping in my camper. But that just added to the excitement.
Before we were to head to the trails we gave our trucks a look
over. That is where we discovered the cracked bellhousing on my 4Runner. I remembered
seeing a 4Runner on the way through Ward, that was only good for parts, so we headed back
to town. It took us longer to locate the owner than it did to get the parts off. The owner
of the vehicle needed the transmission for his daughter's truck, but was willing to part
with the part I needed for $20. While I had him on the phone I asked if he would part with
the power steering. I thought it was worth the $20 he asked for that too.
After we fixed my truck, we decided to just see the sights to
save our trucks for the drive home. For the next few days we checked out the area, but
always stopped to see our new friends in Ward. When we left the area we stopped in one
last time at the general store of Ward. While visiting and taking some pictures of the
town, Chris came across a roof rack that was about to get recycled, so he decided to buy
it. That's when we found out that everything in Ward is $20.
The trip home was another adventure, and a
learning experience. First delay was when my "Y" pipe came apart, but I was able
to patch it together. On the highway we passed the Highway Patrol, and Chris was pulled
over because the spare tire blocked his license plates. We waited on the side of the road
at the top of the hill for the word to go. Luckily, he got off with a warning. However,
when I tried to start my 4Runner, I found that the starter was hanging by the wires. The
ears must have been cracked from the bellhousing trouble, because they had broken
completely off now.
No problem a tow strap won't fix. After a tug
to get started, we were on our way again. A few miles down the road the exhaust came back
apart. I should have known better than to make the joke "that will make it to the
next Wal-Mart". This time it was broken beyond our backwoods capabilities. The torch
we had was unable to get the flange hot enough to weld the pipe back to it. So we had to
spend the night in the parking lot until the muffler shop opened. We did get a visit from
the local police, but he was the one who told us where the muffler shop was. The next
morning we got it fixed and we were on our way. I was still needing to have it towed to
get started, but that wasn't a real problem.
About halfway across Kansas, Luke’s catalytic converter
clogged up. The plan was to empty it out and be on our way. But when we stopped for
gaskets, we discovered it was a special 2 into 1, welded in place. I don't know how we get
so lucky, but someone who works at the local muffler shop was there at the parts store
when we were trying to decide what to do. He overheard us and was willing to open the shop
and fix us up to get us on our way.
It may have taken us 24 hours to get across the state of Kansas,
but we made it under our own power. We decided to drive as long as we could in case we ran
across any other delays. Somewhere in Illinois we stopped and camped out in another
Wal-Mart. It worked so well last time, how could we resist!
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