Distance covered today: 50 miles
Distance covered total: 1,784 miles
Estimated mileage remaining: 2,266 miles (55% left to go)
Warning: No pictures to document this abbreviated day of scooting.
“The adventure doesn’t start until something goes wrong.”
-Yvon Chouinard
I spent a day off in Omaha, living “The Good Life” as advertised on the Nebraska welcome sign. Mostly, that entailed blogging and planning the next week of my trip. I called up Dan, the professor who ran the buffalo ranch, to tell him my story and he told me a) that I was crazy, and b) that I’d be more than welcome to stop by the ranch. And just like that, I was going to South Dakota! Except the actual going to South Dakota would not happen “just like that.” Omaha might mark the approximate half-way point of my journey, but it signals completion of the easy half. I knew that Part Two of my trip would entail a new level of difficulty, altogether (yes, that’s an Airplane reference).
Making my way across the emptiness of the Plains was just the first test in the gauntlet of obstacles remaining. After that, who knew how the Metro and its 4.5 horsepower engine would fare in the Rockies, or across hundreds of miles of desert, or if it could hurdle the 10,000-foot Sierra Nevadas in the home stretch. Clearly the Metro and I still had a lot to prove out in the Wild West.
Up until this point, my route had sounded like a concert tour, making nightly stops in cities like Boston, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, and Omaha, with other sizable towns like Syracuse, Ann Arbor and South Bend sprinkled in between. But from here on out I’d be seeing a lot fewer people, with Nebraska towns like Pierce (pop. 1,767) and Valentine (pop. 2,820) as my destinations for the night. I suspected that many people in these small Plains towns had never seen a moped before, and could only hope that they would take kindly to the city-slicker scootin’ type, like me.
With three very full days of driving separating me from the next roof I’d have over my head, some good weather would’ve been much appreciated. But true to form, the weather was its usual depressing self, sending me off in a cold and drizzly haze. I was pretty well saturated by the time I was only 20 miles outside of Omaha, and was resigning myself to endure a long, miserable three day push to the ranch.
Little did I know that this light rain was just a minor nuisance compared to the trouble lurking around the next turn in the road. Only 50 miles into my day, it happened- The Little Engine That Could finally faltered, and I broke down.
I made it just past the small collection of houses known as Herman, NE (proudly advertised as having a population of 310), when suddenly the rhythm of the Metro’s engine was interrupted by a faint sound I would characterize as something between a click, a rattle, and a vibration. With the scooter still chuggin’ along just fine, to an average driver the sound may have been imperceptible or easily dismissed. But after 2,000 miles together, my ears and the rumble of the engine had become one, and although I couldn’t isolate exactly what was wrong, I knew that something was amiss. After listening closely for a few more seconds, the half-click sound persisted and I pulled over for closer inspection.
Pretty soon it was clear that I had a big problem on my hands. When I revved the gas, the engine would purr, but the wheels wouldn’t spin. My hunch was that the belt had worn out- something my modest collection of wrenches couldn’t remedy. Time to start pushing.
In the earlier stages of the trip, I had expected that a breakdown was inevitable and depending on where it happened, the gravity of the problem, and the cost of fixing it, I would calmly and rationally decide how to proceed. Just because I had previously braced myself for a setback didn’t make it any easier to stomach now that the moment had come. And after making it to Omaha (halfway along my originally intended route) in only two weeks, I had begun to think that just maybe I’d be able to make it all the way without any major snafu. Fifty miles and one cold dose of reality later, my hubris was put in check as I walked the Metro towards the next town.
Four or five miles down the gray stretch of highway was Tekamah (pronounced tuh-kay-muh), where I hoped to find an auto garage and tow service or someone in a pickup headed back to Omaha. I was closer to Herman, but I wasn’t likely to find help in a town that size.
I hadn’t pushed very far before a friendly Nebraskan stopped to see if I needed help. He only had a small sedan though, so I politely declined his offer of help as I was holding out for something that could accommodate the Metro. It wasn’t long before a good Samaritan in a pickup truck pulled over to lend a hand. We tossed the scooter into the back and hauled it to an auto garage in (or maybe the auto garage was) downtown Tekamah.
Ideally, I was hoping to find another person in a pickup headed for Omaha whom I could persuade (along with $20) to take me back to Omaha, but on a Saturday afternoon such as this, there wasn’t the usual stream of commuters down to the Big O. It looked as though I was gonna have to have the scooter towed (and by towed I mean having it thrown in the back of a company truck for a hefty sum).
At first, I was a little nervous about prying a Nebraska man away from the Cornhusker game, but it turned out that the tow driver, Jim, was an interesting character who I got along with pretty well.
Jim was a man of the Plains. Born and raised in Tekamah, it was revealed in conversation that he’d been as far west as Chadron (a dot on the map in the western part of the state) and that he’d been to a NASCAR race in Kansas City (and it sounded as though that was roughly the extent of his travel). He was interested in hearing details of my trip, and also shared details about life in Nebraska. I was a fan of his gritty, country dialect and his expression “man, they’re thick through there” when describing places where prairie dogs and other critters were in abundance.
Jim dropped me off at a Honda motorcycle place in Omaha, where the Metro checked into rehab. Sure enough, my initial diagnosis was confirmed when the mechanic in the shop showed me the disintegrated remains of what used to be the scooter’s belt. He also showed me the wear on these circular bearing parts that spin along with the belt. Presumably they had been perfect circles to begin with, but now they were misshapen and didn’t look like something that would spin smoothly for 200 miles per day. It was going to be a pretty easy fix but they’d need to order replacements for both, so I had a few days to better acquaint myself with The Pearl of The Big Muddy (Omaha’s unofficial nickname).
I urge you not to feel sorry for me for breaking down- direct your sympathy instead to the poor soul who got stuck with me for three more nights than he bargained for. That would be my former college roommate Tim (a.k.a. “Bikelock”) who had settled in Omaha to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Bikelock came through in the clutch, making me comfortable in his new apartment and adhering to life’s cardinal rule of helping friends in need, especially those in the midst of a motor scooter odyssey.
Another reason not to feel sorry for me is that by breaking down where I did, I caught a pretty fortuitous break. Coincidentally (or perhaps by fate), before I had hit the road for South Dakota, Bikelock had bestowed upon me a laminated four-leaf clover for good luck. Though not normally the superstitious type, when you’re attempting to ride a scooter from coast-to-coast, you’ll take all the help you can get. Clover in hand (or wallet, rather), one of the first things that came to mind after I broke down was a bitterly sarcastic cry of “some lucky clover!” But really, I shouldn’t have scoffed at its mystical powers, because after getting over my initial disappointment, I realized that really, my breakdown was not so unlucky after all. Mechanically, it could’ve been a lot worse (the new parts would cost me more time than money), and logistically, it could’ve happened in a much worse location (I was lucky to be within towing range of Omaha, where I could find a certified Honda repair place and was afforded the luxury of staying with a friend, instead of being stranded in a speck of a town waiting to fall victim to Malachi and the Children of the Corn). The Metro had survived its first scare and was gonna live to see another day. Those buffalo and the Wild West would just have to wait.
Shout-outs:
-Bikelock. Sorry to have doubted the power of the four-leaf clover.
-Jim. Thanks again for the lift!
-The two people who pulled over to see if I needed a ride.
Town(s) of the Day:
-Tekamah, NE
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