Fizzying along Route 66
Travelling the length of Route 66 is perhaps the ultimate road trip for many people, and certainly one that features on bucket lists. But what would you choose to travel the Mother Road – a convertible Mustang? A Harley-Davidson? Or how about a Yamaha FS1-E? Peter Shand and his son hit the road on Fizzies, and this is their story.
It’s the first day of our big adventure, it’s 3am and the taxi is waiting. When we get to the airport, I am very nervous – I am doing a live interview on the BBC Radio Sussex breakfast show. It isn’t the first time I’ve done one and it seems easier than the first time, probably due to my excitement at the start of our epic road trip. Our bikes have been transported to Chicago by the wonderful team at James Cargo. We are travelling light, although the younger members (that’s my son Darrel and daughterin-law Sam) stretch the meaning of this a little. The aim of this trip is to raise money for Alzheimer’s Research UK and so we have chosen to travel budget, which means we go to Chicago via Brussels! When we get to Chicago we have to collect the support truck that Sam will be driving as back up, and Darrel and me are on our Fizzys. So while Darrel and I will have a magnificent 50 cee-cees of raw power underneath us, Sam’s first drive in the USA will be in a 5.7-litre Ram Big Horn truck. First of a few problems is that the driver of the truck has to pay with their credit card but Sam hasn’t got her card with her. The manager’s simple solution is for me to drive the truck but when I explain that I will be riding a Fizzy, he accepts that this is impractical and lets Sam use a debit card to secure the Ram. We have a support truck. Now we are off to the American Airlines cargo depot to collect the bikes. It takes 15 minutes to get there, and then another 15 to border control to stamp the paperwork. There is confusion there, as they feel that we have too much paperwork! Fortunately James Cargo had pointed out that we needed the correct forms signed to export the Fizzys from Los Angeles to the UK at the end of the trip. We explain why we have “too much paperwork” and the problem goes away. Then it’s another 15 minutes to get back to the cargo depot with everything signed, stamped and sealed to enable us to collect the bikes. After all this, it feels like Christmas, opening the crates and seeing our Fizzys there. Finally we have to get to Riches Yamaha for the oil which we couldn’t transport with the bikes. It’s the busiest bike shop I have ever seen but, as always, the Fizzys cause a stir in the parking lot. Then it’s off to Chicago for the end of the first day and to find somewhere to sleep. We start the following morning at 4am. Sam christens the two stroke mixture as ‘magic potion’ and we fuel the bikes for the journey. Excitement is high as we find the sign for the start of Route 66. I can laugh about it now but I don’t laugh when Darrel’s bike breaks down after 100 yards as he tries to pull away from the traffic lights. All hell breaks loose – don’t you just love car drivers? Sam does a great job with the truck, protecting us from being run down by irate drivers. Fuel is pouring out of the carburettor like I have never seen before and I am not impressed. It looks like it might be hard work and could even delay the trip, but I try releasing the float. It must have got stuck somewhere in transit, because that’s another problem solved and now we are really off. The weather isn’t great, so we get into our waterproofs. One of our first stop for pictures is at the Launching Pad in Wilmington, Illinois, and then we push onto Springfield, where Abraham Lincoln lived before he became the sixteenth President of the United States, although Darrel is more concerned about the clutch problems he is having with his Fizzy than with history.
Meeting a movie star
The third day starts with rain but once we are into Missouri and across the Mississippi, the sun comes out. The countryside, with its rolling hills, is just like home but with a much bigger sky, and we have a beautiful day’s riding. Day four starts with breakfast for us and magic potion for the bikes. After we leave Missouri, we have all of 13 miles in Kansas – Route 66 just clips the corner of the Sunflower State. In Galena, we stop for lots of photos with one of my favourites, the star of Disney’s film Cars, Sir Tow Mater KBE. We will see many Cars-themed vehicles along the route but this is the real deal. When the Cars research team was touring Route 66 looking for locations, they spotted this old 1951 Harvester International tow truck and that was inspiration for the film’s Tow Mater. These days it’s parked up at Cars on the route, an old Kan-O-Tex service station in this mining town. As we enter Oklahoma we are stopped for the first time by the police, although it’s just a general check. Two Englishmen on tiny little motorcycles manage to confuse the officer and he has to seek advice from his colleague! We have to be careful riding today in order to dodge the many tortoises (or turtles, as the Americans call them) crossing the road. Sadly, not all of them make it. We finish the day at 8.15pm in Tulsa. We only get to stop overnight in Tulsa and we are a little concerned as we leave because western Oklahoma has been having its worst tornadoes in 100 years. As we ride through El Reno, the devastation is sad to see and we are very grateful that we hadn’t been travelling through 12 hours earlier, when we might have been swept back into Kansas! The wind is still an issue and at times we can only ride at 15mph. Along the route we see a variety of roadkill including possum, tortoises, skunks, raccoons, armadillos, elk, snakes and coyotes. We had had a feeling this would happen, and it does. The county police pull us over. Our British licence plates confuse the officer, as he feels they look wooden. He wants to see our driving licences and asks who said that we could ride the Fizzys in the US. He’s surprised when we tell him all our paperwork is in the truck behind us. They have problems with people using false numberplates, and he goes off to check us out. Five minutes later he is back with a big smile. Believe it or not, he had actually contacted the DVLA in the UK to confirm our story! A handshake and we are on our way.
Halfway there
We start the new day by changing Darrel’s spark plug and adjusting the clutch. Once into Texas we are on very flat and very long roads, on which we blast along at 40mph, continuously waiting to see if one of the bikes is going to blow up. The views are often unexciting and we have a couple of road closures with diversions to follow. We go to the Cadillac Ranch but unfortunately we can’t get the Fizzys across the field to take photos of them next to the cars. But we hit a big milestone in Adrian, Texas – the halfway point of Route 66! One of the must-dos is to visit the Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, New Mexico. This is one of the most famous motels on Route 66 and has been taking care of travellers since 1939. It also has the most wonderful neon signs which every tripper photographs. The only problem for us is that, just before we get there, Darrel’s bike stops working completely. I am sure I know what the problem is, but it will take a while. Given that we have not booked any rooms on route, we put the bikes into the truck for the last few miles. That turns out to be fortunate as we are only just in time to grab the last room. It comes with a garage, and Kevin and Nancy, the owners, offer me complete use of Kevin’s tools. The rooms at the Blue Swallow have been lovingly restored to how they would have looked in the heyday of Route 66, and it is just like stepping back in time. We leave Tucumcari at 6.30am and head to Albuquerque with a fun ride on an unpaved section of Route 66, and then it’s over the mountains to Santa Fe. There I have the greatest ever chicken fajita from a street trader, although my opinion might possibly be influenced by being in a great town with a lovely blue sky, great company and my Fizzy. Yes, I do love my bike! But there’s no time to stop and by late afternoon, we are avoiding tumbleweed as the wind picks up. We have to drop our speed to 15mph and finally shelter in the truck as we are caught in an awful sandstorm.
Have you slept in a wigwam lately?
When we leave Albuquerque in the morning, we are rewarded with some incredible dramatic scenery as we head into Arizona. Our destination is the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook. Someone must be looking after us because, although we haven’t booked, once again we get the last room or, in this case, the last wigwam. After we have had a clean-up, we get in the truck and drive through the Petrified Forest National Park. Here you can see trees that were alive 225 million years ago and are now huge fossils, and the Painted Desert lives up to its name, with its undulating mountains of multicoloured bentonite, a product of volcanic ash. It’s like driving on another planet. Back at the motel we finish the day with a little bike maintenance, followed by dinner and a few beers under the stars. Just wonderful. Leaving the motel at 5.30am, most of the journey is sadly freeway, Interstate 40 having rolled over the original Route 66 in eastern Arizona. But we find our own route around on an unmade road – poor little Fizzys, we are really putting them through their paces, but what fun! In Winslow, we get to see Glen Frey in the Standin’ On The Corner park in the middle of town. Jackson Browne wrote the famous Eagles song Take It Easy, with the line “I’m a-standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona”, after getting stranded there. The town has embraced its fame, putting up a statue of a dude with a guitar who looks a bit like Jackson Browne in 1998 and, in 2016, unveiling a second statue, this one of Glen Frey. It’s another beautiful day on the bikes. We see a road runner and have a laugh, hoping to see Wile E Coyote in hot pursuit. We book into a motel at 4pm and, as we’re only 90 miles from Las Vegas and Sam has never seen the place, we have a quick shower and pile into the truck to head to Sin City. We get back the following day, as one does!
The ride of a lifetime
I knew the riding through western Arizona would be good, but that was quite the understatement. The ride over Sitgreaves Pass, the mountain road to Oatman, will stay with me forever. It is simply fun – mountain climbs with hairpin after hairpin. The Fizzys exceed all expectations, with Harley-Davidsons and cars getting in our way as they were too slow! What goes up must come down and I ride with a big smile on my face, wondering if the Fizzys will hold the road as we speed around the corners and just how late I can brake. Oatman is an old gold mining town, and when the gold ran out the miners just let their donkeys loose. Now their descendants live in the hills, and during the day the burros have the run of the town. But it was the ride there that will stick with me, so we go back down and have another go at it! After a soda we are on the way to Barstow, California, for the night. We are nearing the end of the journey. After leaving Barstow in the morning we see a man at the side of the road with a big sword. Then we ride down the mountains on our way to Los Angeles, unsure if the haze in the distance is cloud or smog. When riding through Pasadena a car pulls up next to me. The driver asks if we are the Route 66 guys and offers us a cup of tea. He has been following us online and, as well as his hospitality, he makes a donation. A big thank-you to you, sir.