SoCal Drive and Ride

This was a little different ride. We trailered the bike down to San Francisco because at this time of year there might be rain either going or coming, and I did not want to ride Interstate 5 in the rain.

During our brief visit in SF, I went on a ride with Jenny's son Jonas.

He plans to learn to do stunts on his bike, so he has installed crash bars and an extra rear caliper with hand operated braking......why, I haven't a clue.

When we left SF, Carolyn drove to visit a unique underground garden in Fresno, while I rode Skyline Drive down to Santa Cruz and over to Visalia where I met Carolyn at the motel. It was while suiting up to ride in SF that I discovered the mistake that was to plague me most of the ride; I forgot my leather jacket and only had my summer mesh jacket. Much of the riding time was too cool for that jacket as even in the mid to upper 60's the jacket flows so much air I would get cold after awhile. To help block the airflow through the jacket I sometimes wore my non-motorcycle rain jacket over the mesh jacket and in the extreme case when we were over in Morro Bay, I wore my cooling vest (without soaking it) over my long sleeve jersey and then the rain jacket over the mesh jacket. I really missed the leather jacket. It is like a well broken in pair of shoes in terms of comfort and it also makes me feel safer (and warmer) than the mesh jacket. The next day I rode some really good roads around the southern end of the Sierras past Lake Isabella and over to Kennedy Medows where many fun times were had camping and riding dirt bikes back in the 70's and 80's. Below is a photo of my GPS while riding one of those roads up to Lake Isabella:

There was no traffic and nice scenery with lots of green grass:

I met Carolyn that night in Bakersfield and the next day we rode/drove together to Riverside. I had found a Sena intercom like the one I use, but with a headset and not a helmet mount, so Carolyn could wear that and we could talk while traveling together. It really made the travel nicer, like when we used to be on the same bike together. I had planned to ride from Riverside over to the Phoenix area to visit my oldest friend Jimmy Ingersoll, but I decided not to becuse it was really windy in the desert and it was all boring freeway to get there. So I took the car. Having to put up with strong head winds or side winds while doing 75-80 miles an hour on a freeway is not my idea of a fun ride. After a couple of days visiting friends around SoCal we headed over to the coast to ride highways 1 and 101 back to San Francisco. To get from Riverside to Morro Bay we had to go through north LA on freeways. We didn't leave Riverside until after 9 am, so we should have been passed the rush hours, but L.A. has stop and go traffic no matter what time of day. This was when being on the bike was nice. I couldn't stand to be in the stop and go traffic so I left Carolyn and got in the car pool lane. When that came to a stop, I started splitting lanes and at one point I was nine miles ahead of Carolyn. Lane splitting is such a wonderful thing when done properly among drivers who are used to it. I split lanes again just outside of San Francisco when there was a crash on a section of freeway that we were on. Traffic was restricted to one lane out of four or five and about completely stopped. I split to the front and the cops let me by the emergency vehicles. Drivers are very accomodating and I would often see them move over slightly in their lane to give me more room. Luckily I don't have to comute in Washington or I would be very frustrated with no being allowed to lane split. I rode a total of 1815 miles and found a few good roads but generally there was too much traffic and I'm done with riding in Southern California.

Same Bike, Different Rider

My friend Ray had been looking for a Triumph Tiger adventure bike for quite some time. Since Brian had one of them, and was not riding it much, I had been trying to get the two of them together for awhile. Brian kept waffleing about selling it because he wasn't really ready to give up the idea of riding. Finally, Ray made him an offer he couldn't refuse. He offered to buy the bike for a bit less then Brian was asking, with the agreement that Brian could borrow it back whenever he wanted. Kind of a win-win situation for both sides. So last week Ray and I went on a two-day 665 mile ride over to John Day, Oregon where he got to spend some quality time on the Triumph to see how well he liked it. We did the usual great roads of Central Oregon that I have ridden quite a few times, but never get tired of....smooth, curvy roads, awsesome scenery, and almost no other vehicles. A plus this time was good weather, as it often gets pretty hot over there in the summer. Here is a pic of Ray with his new ride:

You can see the same bike when Brian owned it in the post before the last one. Of note is the fact that it has about the same mileage as my year- old Z650RS (11,700 miles), even though it is a 2008 model. That shows how little Brian rode it. (Kind of also shows how much I ride!) And here is a pic of me with said Z650RS and my home-made matching helmet paint job.

When we went to dinner in John Day, we chose one of the few places within walking distance, which was turned out to be a bar populated by the locals. It was pretty noisy inside, so we went out to the patio in back for a post-ride beer before we ordered something to eat. One of the local guys and his dog followed us out and proceeded to entertain us with his life history and philosophy. His name was Jerimiah and I forget the name of his dog:

The patio was enclosed by a fence and I suppose it was the outdoor smoking area, but there was a sign on the fence that said "no marijuana smoking". The locals had a way to get around this restriction and still participate in the party going on in the patio. This pic shows how it was done:

Yep, the woman went outside and got a ladder to peek over the fence while she smoked. She had a lot to say, and about half of it was f-bombs. It was quite the entertaining dinner hour, and when we eventually ordered somne hamburgers they turned out to be really good and reasonably priced. Here is Ray and I in a selfy with our after-ride beers:

So the bottom line is that Ray dicided he liked the bike and I had another fine ride on the good roads.

Not Quite The Ride We Planned

I found out about a ride that a group of friends from the PNWmoto forum put on every year around the first weekend in May and decided to join them. They head for Kamiah, Idaho where they all stay at the same motel and gather at some bar in the evening after riding local roads. I made a reservation and invited all my riding buddies to come along. Only Big Mike took me up on the offer. Came the weekend of the ride and there was rain predicted all along the route for all four days of our planned ride. Both Mike and I postponed to the next week when better weather was predicted and we could choose to only ride on week days. One reason I was especially interested in the route was that I could include a road that Carolyn's nephew, who lives in Idaho, had said was super curvy. It is highway 14 to Elk City, and is a dead-end paved road at Elk City. It would take us two days to get to Kamiah because we chose to include some good roads in Eastern Oregon that we had ridden before. One of these roads was a paved forest service road between Heppner and Ukiah. There was a sign just outside of Heppner that said the road was not maintained, but we didn't think much about it. Not too long afterward we came upon a slight bit of snow on the road and stopped to take a picture of what we assumed was a unique opportunity to see snow on a road in mid May.

Then we went a little further and there was even more snow:

And finally it got really bad. There was a single car track that had got down to bare pavement and that allowed us to get through. During the process, though, I went over a small patch of snow and came as close to crashing without actually crashing as I have ever done. The front wheel was sliding and I was going down, but I think I got back to clean pavement and caught enough traction to be able to force it back upright.

The rest of the day was uneventful, but the next morning Mike was not feeling well at all and reluctantly decided not to continue. He ended up staying in the motel another night and had his wife come a get him with a U-Haul trailer for the bike. He had not eaten for two days and was weak and slightly feverish and in no condition to ride. I continued on, being a bit more cautious riding alone. Just shortly after I started out I came upon a herd of Buffalo that must have belonged to some rancher. There were quite a few of them and not what you expect to see in Oregon:

They were heading towards me so I waited and this fellow got pretty close:

When I got over into Idaho I was impressed with how green everything was and all the creeks and rivers were raging with Spring snowmelt. There was some beautiful scenery:

I did ride to Elk City, and the road was pretty curvy, but what Carolyn's nephew didn't mention was that the pavement was pretty broken up, so that much of the ride I was searching for smooth routes rather than blitzing the curves. On the way home, I planned to spend one night in Walla Walla, but on my way there I went through Lewiston Idaho and decided to take a little detour and ride the Old Spiral Highway again. I think this is my favorite road of them all, and I have ridden it and written about it before in this blog. I had ridden it uphill on my way to Kamiah and this time I was going to do it downhill. At the top I met a couple of Canadians who had trailered their sport bikes down and were riding many of the same roads that I had just covered in the past three days, including the road to Elk City. They were brothers-in-law and friendly types and we had a nice conversation, during which they asked me my age (being an obvious old guy). When I told them I was about to turn 82 they were impressed that, being in their 50's, they might have another 30 years of riding ahead.

I choose a place to stay in Wall Wall using Booking.com from my phone on the way there. I was looking for a place close to downtown so I could walk to a place to eat dinner. When I navigated to the address, I saw nothing that looked like a motel, or had a sign. I went by the address again and still no clue, so I called the number and got a guy who said he would stand out on the curb and flag me in. Turns out the place was an old converted mansion that is in a neighborhood that probably will not allow them to identify as commercial lodging. It was a real cutsey place with a wine tasting theme and lots of outdoor spaces with a hot tub and lounging area. Being an old mansion, it had very high ceilings, which meant there were lots of steep stairs to get to my second floor room, and lugging my gear up there after a full day of riding was no picnic.

So it was a bummer that Mike caught the flue or something and we didn't do the ride together as planned, it still turned out to be a good ride for me on some of my favorite Good Roads.

Ride with Brian

 I finally got Brian to come down from Tacoma to ride some of our local curvy roads.  He rode down from his house on Saturday and stayed overnight.  Sunday we had a long day, and even longer for him as he rode home after we had already done about 250 miles.  The weather was great and the traffic was less than I expected for a weekend.  One of the roads I planned to include on the ride was Portland's "racer road", the Wind River highway from Carson to the McClelland overlook.  I was worried about meeting out of control sport bike riders or a bunch of slow moving campers and Sunday drivers that would get in our way.  It turned out that we didn't have to pass a single vehicle through the curvy part, which is unusual even during the week.  I went part way with Brian towards his home by going with him up forest road 25 to the Windy Ridge turnoff where we parted ways.  It was a 312 mile ride for me and probably more for Brian.  I think he enjoyed the ride and it was his first long ride for him since we went looking at property last summer.  The only fly in the ointment was that he was somewhat uncomfortable because he is due for a hip replacement in December and his hip was bothering him.  Here are a few pics from the ride: 

We went up the Columbia River gorge and took all the side roads off hwy 14 to one of my favorite roads, Canyon road to Appleton and on to Glenwood.  Brian was pretty impressed with this view the town of Hood River and may look into it as a retirement option. 

It was great to ride with Brian again and have some time to chatter over the intercoms.  He has a busy life and doesn't get many chances to ride.  

Two day ride with a new partner

I met Ty several weeks ago and we have been texting and planning on some kind of longer ride. He said he had always wanted to do a ride around and through Mt Ranier so earlier this week our schedules finally aligned and we went for it. Unfortuneately it was right at the start of a heat wave, but I figured it shouldn't be too bad as we would be at altitude much of the time. We met up at my house rather late because Ty lives over east of Portland and had a bit of a freeway ride to get here. Here we are ready to go and leaving:

I was leading the way and Ty asked me to stop when we had a good view of Mt St. Helens, so I did and got this pic of him taking a pic.

That got me to thinking maybe Ty had not been up to the Windy Ridge viewpoint, so when we got to the turn off I asked him if he wanted to take the 20 mile round trip to see it. He was game, and the road was pretty vacant and fun to ride. I took these pictures of Spirit Lake and the Toutle river canyon:

It seems to me that Spirit Lake has more water in it than it used to. I remember reading in the local news that there is a tunnel that was constructed after the blast to keep the lake at a certain level and that the tunnel was clogged and needed to be cleared out. Perhaps this is what is happening and why the lake appears to be higher.

The rest of the day was not so great as we got into a lot of traffic as we got further north around the east side of Mt Rainer. Worst part was 30 miles of fresh chip sealed two-lane road with piles of loose gravel in the center of the lane and between the lanes. Eventually we got to Enumclaw and after dinner at a Mexican resturant close to the motel we had a long chat session about our respective life and motorcycle experiences. When we went to get underway the next morning, Ty's bike came to a sudden halt. He had secured his bike overnight by putting a padlock through his chain and in the morning he forgot about it. We had a little delay while he took the cover off his front sprocket so he could get to the padlock.

Ty had planned to go down the west side of Ranier and then through the park back to where we had been the day before. I guess I sort of talked him out of it, though, when I said that since we were at the height of summer vacation we would probably find ourselves stuck behind motor homes going 35 miles and hour with no way to pass. So we kept going down hwy 7 to Morton and then back to Randal and the way we had come. By the time we got out of the mountains it was getting really hot, so when we stopped for a bite at the Eagle Cliffs store I got out my cooling vest and soaked it with water. This really helped on the rest of the ride home. It wasn't one of my best rides, but as the saying goes (sort of); "A bad day of riding is better than a good day at work".

First Long Ride on New Bike

First off, I sold the Honda.  Here is the new owner hauling it away: 

It's kind of a sad ending for the bike.  After all the great care I took, and which would have made it good for many more miles, he plans to chop it up and make a super mini bike out of it.  He has a Honda Grom, which is kind of a cult mini bike, and he want to take all the fairings off the cbr and put the Grom forks and wheels on it.  It's going to be a difficult job as the Grom forks and steering head are not going to transfer over without major cutting and welding.  Plus, the small wheels are going to make a ground clearance problem.  Oh well, it's his bike to do with as he pleases.  

Last week Big Mike and I did a three-day ride over to central Oregon and I rode the new bike 936 miles.  Carolyn took this pic as I was leaving.  I have my summer mesh gear on, but wore my rain pants over the mesh pants to stay warm on a cool morning: 

 It was great to be back on those super motorcycle roads over in Central Oregon as I haven't done that for quite awhile.  That's some beautiful country, too, and it was surprisingly green for late July.  I'm pretty shy on pictures for the blog.  I've taken quite a few that I've already posted and we were having so much fun neither one of us wanted to stop and take pictures.  I did go for a walk the evening we stayed in Prineville and found this old court house that makes me think Prineville must be the county seat:

 

The second night we stayed in Spray, which is about as small a town as there is what still had a motel. 

 However the only restaurant closed at 4pm.  We got there before that but didn't feel like eating that early, so we took another ride over to a road I had not been on yet and added about 60 miles to our day.  We ended up eating at Service Creek, which is a place I have stayed at several times.  

These three days got pretty warm in the afternoon but the mesh gear made it bearable.  I took my cooling vest that gets soaked with water along but never felt the need to use it.  

The bike and I are really starting to bond.  It's comfortable, handles well, and has all the power I could ask for.  I hope we have a lot of years together.  

 

Oh Oh, I did it again

 I BOUGHT ANOTHER BIKE.  This one will probably be my last (my son says he has heard that before).  My Honda cbr500r got up to 80,000 miles and was still running strong and I was pretty happy with it, but a new model came along and stole my heart.  Here it is: 

It's a new model this year.......a Kawasaki Z650RS.  I ordered it in February and I didn't get it until June 7.  I guess it was due to the supply chain problems that we have been hearing so much about.  The dealer said they had 400 units on order, mostly water craft and side-by-sides, and didn't know when they would be arriving. The new bike has pretty much the same engine as the Ninja 650 that I owned before my cbr, and I put 115,000 miles on that bike, so I know the engine is pretty reliable.  

I had been thinking about getting another bike for awhile.  Although I liked the cbr, it was just a bit down on power.  I'm definitely not a power junkie, but I still felt the need for a little more.  The cbr is rated at 47 horse  power, while the new Kawi is supposed to be 67 horsepower.  

I had criteria for a new bike that just wasn't showing up anywhere.  I wanted at least 50 horsepower, a weight of 425 pounds or less, and a seat height of less than 32 inches.  It also couldn't be ugly, which put many modern bikes in the no-go category.  There has been a style developing over the past 10 years that is getting worse, and that is the trend towards smaller and smaller rear fenders and passenger seats, along with "terminator" treatment of the front end.  Kawasaki calls it Sugomi-inspired, and most manufacturers have adopted the same style.  For example, my new bike is essentially a retro style of an existing model, and this is what it looks like: 

In the extreme case of minimizing the rear fender, several manufacturers are mounting the license plate and brake and turn signal lights on the swingarm, like this Triumph: 

 

This is a really dumb idea.  The swingarm and the wheel move a lot more than the chassis, so when following a bike with this set-up, the license plate is jiggling constantly.  Besides which, there is not much protection from spray coming up your back on wet roads.  I guess people don't ride much in the rain, but living in the Pacific Northwet, I do.  I'm probably showing my age in these preferences.  

I have my cbr up for sale, but no buyers yet.  The fact that it has 80,000 miles is a turn off I'm sure.  Most people crash or sell their bikes long before that and don't realize a modern motorcycle with proper care can easily do 100,000 miles.  I must admit, though, that the Honda has been the most trouble-free bike I have ever owned.......sort of like our Honda van and car.  

After taking possession of the new bike I immediately started making it fit me the way I wanted.  I adjusted the shift lever and transferred the GPS and heated jacket wiring from the Honda to the Kawai and installed a windscreen.  I also softened the rear shock and raised the fork legs in the triple clamps to lower the seat a little.  It was about a half-inch higher than the Honda, and I could feel the difference.  

So far, after over 700 miles, I am loving the extra power, the great mirrors, and the more upright riding position.  I'm a little disappointed in the lack of storage space under the seat, so in order to carry some tools I have started keeping the soft side cases that I had bought earlier on the bike all the time.