BB's World Revisited
By: BB_DASLER

Ahhh, another Summer season comes to a close.

The Power rangers have hung up their gay colored leathers for winter, and at last the roads are clearer and quieter, and now returned to the state they were in before the spring influx of the latest suicide jocks that happened around late may. From here on in, at least until the back end of april, our only adversaries are going to be in-attentive 4x4 drivers, farm hands hauling machinery between fields, black ice, hidden police entrapment units and of course the inevitable un-bird eaten road kill that seems to be more in abundance at this time of year, and ready to slip you into a road side ditch just as sure as the loose shale or slime tracks from that "couldn't-give-a-fook" tractor operator. I never really came to a satisfactory conclusion about why the road-kill seems to hang around longer in these cooler temperatures.

But, on reflection, I would imagine that the urgency to eat it is lessened by the lower prevalent ambience providing a sort of natural refrigeration effect, hence the predatory birds and animals that actually eat these gourmet morsels, are more interested in the 1/4 eaten big macs that have been tossed out of passing car windows and tend to fester a little faster than frozen fox, rabbit or badger corpses.... But I wandered off track a little there. This is actually a tale of winter riding, and if you are a fan of mini-epic motorcycling adventures and happenings, please get your self a drink, then settle back in your warm and comfortable chair as I relate this seasonal story. I had been a regular winter Dragon Rally entrant for three consecutive years from 1970 with my good friend Pedro... ( You may remember him from the " Remarkable Updraft Norton " story in the November edition of the cf.com monthly newsletter ? ) The Dragon Rally was held in the Mountains of Snowdonia (aptly named as it turned out) up in North Wales and was the highlight of the UK's winter season bashes that always drew a good crowd with some attendance from Germany and the rest of mainland europe, and having gotten into the scene, we realized that were were into something good. So we decided to test the limits of our newly tempered winter riding "endurance envelope" by now attending the Daddy of them all, the German Elefantentreffen as the crowning achievement of our winter riding experiences! It was to be our first visit to the Elephant Rally. Held near a small village called Loh which is near Thurmansburg and Solla in the Bayerischer national park in Bavaria. This winter gathering of hard-bitten riders, the Elefantentreffen, was started by some ex-WWII Wehrmacht dispatch riders, and attracted motorcyclists from all over Europe. It also had a reputation for some wild partying, so for me and the Pedro, this was a serious "must do" event not to be missed. After crossing by  ferry into France and taking the first leg of the trip at a cautious pace, we booked into a small family run hotel for a warm nights R 'n R before heading into Germany the next day. Somehow, during a night of wine sampling and much joviality, we had agreed to do the full 600 kms we were planning to take all the next day to do, by traveling part of the route by autobahn, that would allow a pretty good speed considering the conditions. That was until I get lost crossing over Nuremberg and completely screw up our schedule.  Damnit, it seems that the tiredness and cold fatigue is evidently setting in. Not a good sign. We're stopping more and more frequently as we're both feeling so knackered. It's possibly not a clever decision to try and go all the way to Deggendorf, but we have some mates there from the Dragon who have gone ahead of us and promised to fix us up with some overnight shelter and entertainment. I had lost sight of Pedro in my mirrors some time earlier after pressing on to pull back the delay I had caused around Nuremberg.

This didn't worry me unduly as he was surely a seasoned vet at this sort of stuff after our Welsh Dragon experiences, so I knew he would turn up, just like he always did, but many countless kilometers later, after waiting on the Deggendorf  approach road, he hadn't shown up after around 20 minutes and I decided to head back they way I had come to get hold of the crazy farquar. It had been a mind numbingly cold ride. My body temperature had dropped  following the wait and darkness had now set in. The snow was swirling in the bright beam of the headlight, creating patterns that trick your eyes into seeing shapes and moving shadows that don't really exist. The steady beat of the motor, interrupted by sudden surges in revs as the back wheel sliced through the virgin snow and slipped wildly on the underlying ice patches. The staccato bark of the exhaust reverberating off the high walls of dirty white that had been swept aside by the last snow plough's valiant attempt to keep this route open, were becoming like an hypnotic beat as the fleeting shapes danced before my tired and straining eyes. As I rounded a bend in a heavily wooded area, I spotted some lights way down in the distance. A single beam of light pointing skywards at a crazy angle and a pair of smaller ones that appeared to be at right angles to the road ahead. I pressed on towards them with a slewing rear end and feet down dabs and much paddling to maintain a reasonable forward progress. I reached the scene about five minutes later, to see a prone shape sprawled in the road and another figure kneeling beside it.

There was Pedro's bike lay on it's side and a beat up old VW pick-up fitted out with snow chains and parked across the snow track like a protective barrier. In the diffusion off all the headlight beams I saw the kneeling figure turn a pallid white face toward me in the darkness. I killed the motor and coasted to a stop. I could hear laughter!  As my eyes focused, I saw the sprawling shape on the road was shaking, not with cold but with great big belly laughs, the german guy was also slapping his thigh with great gusts of ho ho ho's emitted as he  joined in with Pedro while beginning to pull him to his feet.

In my first stride, my legs went from under me and I landed flat on my back. I tried to get some purchase with my hands to get up but I was slipping and sliding like a freaking break dancer, down I went again. The road was covered with a sheet of ice, and it transpired that these two had gone the same way only seconds before I arrived and that's why they were laughing their asses off! Ped had run out of fuel! Duhhh Ped  will you ever learn ! The Bavarian guy had stopped to see if he was ok, and because of the conditions, instead of a offering tow into town, they were man-handling the bike into the back of the pick up when they lost their footing and threw the bike overboard as they hit the deck! Now as minor miracles go, the bike survived the heavy drop onto the road with only minor cosmetic damage, and it  turned out that our new found friend  (Klaus) ...Nah, not the santa one...  was the brother in law of  the owner of the gasthof we had to get to, and with Pedro installed in the cab and the bike lashed down in the back of the Vee Dub I followed them all the way in to Deggendorf, and he led the way right to the front door, with me alternately muttering then laughing into my lid all the way. With only around 50Km to the camp site the next day, and having joined up with the guys that came via Amsterdam, we were set for a sweet little reunion party that night.

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