It Was a Perfect Ride Until.........

Recall from earlier posts that I had fixed up a motorcycle for our daughter Jenny and we took it to her home in San Francisco.  After we left her, I hatched a plan for Carolyn and I to do a ride with her down the famous California Highway 1, along the coast north of San Francisco.  The plan was for us to meet Jen in Garberville, which is about 210 miles north of SF on highway 101.  We would spend the night in Garberville and then ride south together down highway 1 back to her house.  The only weekend available for Jenny to do this was Memorial Day weekend.  This had me nervous, since I make it a rule to not ride at all on weekends, and certainly not on a holiday weekend.  However, since we would be meeting on Saturday and riding back to SF on Sunday, I thought we would at least avoid the mad rush back into the city at the end of the holiday weekend. 

Carolyn and I had a pretty long ride just to get to Garberville, and riding two-up, we don't like to do a lot of miles each day.  So we started on Thursday, and took a route which took us over the Cascades to Central Oregon and then back over the mountains near Crater Lake and over to highway 101 at Crescent City, California.  On the first day, riding over Mt Hood, we took a little detour to Trillium Lake for the classic photo of Mt Hood reflected in the lake:

The Cascades are beautiful this time of the year (actually, any time of the year), with lush new growth and lots of water in the rivers from snowmelt. 

After our second night out, which we spent in Crescent City, we detoured again to the city of Ferndale, California.  This is one of our favorite little towns.  It has lots of restored grand old homes and nice gardens.  This is a typical house:

 

 



We got to the motel in Garberville just minutes before Jenny arrived.  Since it was too early to check in, Jen and I went for a little ride back up 101 to the Humbolt Redwoods state park while Carolyn watched the luggage and waited for the rooms to become available.  Here is a shot of a bubble-headed alien checking its cell phone:

After we got back to the motel and the riding was done, it was time to kick back and relax by the pool:

The next morning we headed down the coast highway.  Highway 1 is always an iffy proposition, since it can be very foggy and cold at any time of the year.  But we lucked out and the weather was perfect.  There was a pretty strong wind, but generally, it was at our backs, which helps reduce wind noise in our helmets.  Before this trip I had bought some upgraded intercoms that allowed for up to four-way open conversation.  We could talk to each other just as if we were riding in a car together.  It helped immensely to make us all feel connected and be able to discuss what we were seeing. 

We stopped at Fort Ross, which is a fort established by Russians in the early 19th century when the unexplored west coast of North America was pretty much up for grabs by any country.  Here are some pics of the group at the fort:

We had absolutely cloudless skies the whole way down the coast:

 

BUT, as we were approaching the end of highway 1 in Mill Valley, we got into heavy traffic and I was not paying much attention to the gauges and lights on my bike.  We got stopped in a shady part of the highway and the voltmeter light caught my eye as it was BLINKING RED!  I had never seen it do that before.  It meant the battery was getting seriously discharged.  I tried reving the engine, but it made no difference.  Obviously, the alternator was not sending current to the battery.  There wasn't much I could do except hope the indicator was faulty, but it was not to be, and shortly afterwards the bike quit with a dead battery.  We were 15 miles from Jen's house, but no way to get there.  Time to call a tow truck:

 

We got to Jen's house late Sunday night.  Since Monday was a holiday, no shops or even online sources for parts were open.  I spent the day researching the problem and found that there had been stator failures reported on my make and model.  The stator and the rotor are two parts that make up the alternator, but the rotor is basically just a spinning magnet and not much can go wrong with it.  I got real lucky in that Jen's next door neighbor had a fairly extensive set of tools and he and I set to taking the bike apart to get to the stator.  This is what we found:

 

Note the crispy looking coils......not good. 

In addition to not having my own tools, I really missed my motorcycle lift.  It would have allowed me to stand alongside the bike while working on it, instead of doing it like this:

By Monday afternoon I had the old stator out and the gasket surfaces cleaned.  I managed to save the old gasket. 

 

Note the garden trowel used as a wheel chock.  The garage floor was sloping slightly towards the front of the bike. 

Tuesday morning I started calling around for a stator that I could get ASAP.  It wasn't easy, but eventually I found a shop in downtown San Francisco that said they could order one and get it the next day.  As a side benefit, it was made in the USA and cost less than half what a dealer part would have cost. 

They called me Wednesday around noon, so I borrowed Jen's bike and headed downtown to get it.  The shop was a funky little place called Tokio Moto:

 

But the parts manager, Michelle, obviously knew her stuff:

 

The new stator looked a lot better than the old one:

 

I got back to Jen's, had a little lunch, and then her neighbor Joe and I started the reconstruction.  By dinner time we had it back together, including an oil and filter change which Cathy recommended was a good idea after a stator burn-out. 

Not knowing how long it would take me to get the bike running again, Carolyn bailed on Tuesday and took a plane back home as her sister Lynda was coming down on Friday for her birthday celebration with lunch reservations. 

Thursday morning I took off on the solo ride home.  I managed to get in some twisty roads that I knew of around Weaverville, CA, where I stayed the first night.  The next day I jumped on Interstate 5 and got home after 12 hours and 520 miles. 

So, it was a bit of an adventure, but a lot of things worked out well......being close to jen's house when the bike quit, having a garage to work in and tools to work with, getting the new stator so quickly, and having great weather for riding the whole time.