Vintage Ride and Bike Show

Orv and I decided to take our old crocks down to Corvallis for a ride and show put on by the Oregon Vintage Motorcyclists.  There would be a ride starting at noon on Saturday, and then a show and judging on Sunday.  Since Corvallis is about 100 miles from our neck of the woods, we would not be riding the Triumphs down there, but Orv has a trailer so we hauled them down.  This was going to be a family affair with the wives along for an overnight stay.

A couple of days before the event, I decided to ride the Triumph to a nearby gas station to gas up, so I would be ready to ride on Saturday.  However, the bike started running really crappy and I barely made it to the gas station, and it quit completely on the way back.  Since Carolyn wasn't home I couldn't call her for help, so I pushed the bike to a nearby house.  I was only about a mile and a half from home, so I was just wanting a safe place to leave the bike while I walked home to get my truck.  The nice old couple who lived there insisted on driving me to my house, and then helped me load the bike when we got back.

With only a couple of days to get the bike sorted, I asked Orv to help me diagnose the problem.  We checked for spark and there was a good spark at the plugs. so we thought maybe the timing was off.  After resetting  the ignition timing and checking for loose wires in the electronic ignition set up we tried again, but no joy.  We pulled a plug and checked for spark and now had none......an intermittent electrical problem, the worse kind.  Orv's intuition, or some miracle led him to check the ignition switch, where he found a loose wire.

Friday afternoon I rode the bike down to Orv's house and he had it loaded by Saturday morning when Carolyn and I arrived.  We got to Corvallis early and got the bikes unloaded:

The event was at the Benton County fairgrounds, and there was also a vintage tractor pull going on at the same time.  Lots of excitement!

Getting ready to ride

As you can see from the photos above, it was a sunny day, so I put my tinted shield on my helmet.  But, by the time the ride started it was cloudy and threatening to rain (it's Oregon!).  The next problem was that my mirrors had gotten knocked loose in the loading or unloading process and I had to remove the right one and put it in my tank bag that I had bungied onto the seat.  Nevertheless, the ride was going well and we were seeing some beautiful country and going over some covered bridges, which were the theme of the ride.  Orv was following me because his speedometer had quit, but about halfway through the ride I saw that he was not behind me any longer.  Turning around, I found him stopped alongside the road......no spark.  Fortunately, the club provided a sag wagon, and so they loaded him up: 

I would have ended my ride too, but the sag wagon was going back to the fairgrounds via the I-5 freeway, which I didn't want to ride on, and I had no idea how to get back to the fairgrounds by myself, so I continued on with the ride group.

We went thorough several more covered bridges and stopped at a park near one of them, where I took these pictures:

I really was there

This pic gives an idea of the number of bikes that were on the ride: 

When I finally got back to the fairgrounds I had ridden over 100 miles and was about as tired as I used to get after a 100 mile desert enduro.  That old bike is not easy to ride, plus there were periodic showers.  

I put the right mirror back on at the halfway gas stop.  While I was riding, Orv and the ladies were at the vintage tractor pull and Orv is worried they are going to want to do that every weekend (not).

We loaded the bikes back into the trailer to be stored overnight at the fairgrounds campground.  One gets a thumbs up for finishing, and the other a thumbs down for a dnf.

Saturday evening we had a nice dinner and I was hungry since I had had nothing to eat since an early breakfast.  Then a stroll around downtown Corvallis and a good night's sleep in a motel of Carolyn's choice (above my standards).

At the bike show the next day I found I would have to join the club if I wanted to show my bike, so I am again a member of a motorcycle club, the Oregon Vintage Motorcyclists.

We cleaned up the bikes from the road grime caused by the wet roads:

And then moved them to the display area:

As far as the contest was concerned, we were up against some pretty stiff competition.  There were professionally restored bikes and some pretty rare and valuable ones like that Vincent in the background.  The bikes were divided into categories of British, European, American, Asian, and the featured mark Honda.  Here are some pics of what I found to be the more interesting ones;

BMW sidehack rig for Ray 

Honda turbo.  Didn't sell well when new, very valuable now

Early Hodaka.  My old riding buddy Jim rode one of these when we first started riding enduros.

The crowd at the show

Neither one of us won anything, nor did we expect to, but it was a fun weekend.  After we got home, Orv quickly found the problem with his bike and guess what it was...........a loose wire in the ignition switch.  The same problem my bike had just a few days earlier.  

A Brace of Bonnies

Orv came by today on his Triumph and we decided to go for a "reliability run" on our Bonnevilles.  We are planning to go to a vintage bike meet and ride down in Corvalis, Oregon on the 21st and 22nd of this month, and even though we are going to trailer the bikes down there, they need to go the distance on the vintage bike ride.  So we decided to go to lunch in Cougar, which is about 20 miles from my house.  Everything was going well, and I was pleasantly surprised again by how well the Triumph handles in the curves.  Then, a problem.........my headlight fell out of the headlight shell.  Not a big problem since the wires kept the light attached to the bike and it did not destroy itself on the road.  All I needed was a screwdriver to put the headlight back in the shell, but I didn't have a single tool.  Fortunately, Orv did, and here he is after the repair putting his tool kit back on his bike:

Pretty dumb of me to ride an old Brit bike and not carry a tool kit.  It doesn't take many to do most work on the bike, but they will be needed.

Here are the bike in the restaurant parking lot; my bike in the foreground:

After lunch we decided to ride the long way back through Woodland, and had no further problems.  After Woodland, and on the way back to my house, we switched bikes to see just how similar they are.....and they are.  I felt that his was a little smoother and he felt that mine was a little "tighter" and stiffer, like a newer bike.  Power was essentially the same for both of them.

We took a break at the Cedar Creek gristmill and then parted ways.  Total ride distance was about 50 miles, the longest ride I have made on the Bonneville.