You've got to have an adventure, right? We did, but more on that later.
Brian, Mike and I had planned on a ride to eastern Oregon and Washington a couple of weeks ago, but we ran into a hot spell with temps predicted to be near 100 degrees in that area, so we postponed the ride to this past weekend. Unfortunately, another hot spell was predicted. This time we had a secret weapon to combat the heat.......cooling vests. These are garments containing some kind of gel material that holds water, so that when they are soaked they provide evaporative cooling provided by the air stream from the moving motorcycle. It's really a high-tech form of the old wet t-shirt that riders have used for years. The advantage over the wet t-shirt is that the effect lasts a lot longer. The vest is worn under your jacket, so the more vents the jacket has the better. In fact, my mesh summer jacket was perfect. Here is what my cooling vest looks like:
It really works, too. It's not exactly air conditioning, but makes the difference between unbearable and bearable.
Brian rode down from his home in Tacoma on Saturday morning, arriving about 0815. So by the time we got started he had already ridden 135 miles, and we had about 350 ahead for the day. He was riding his new (to him) Triumph Tiger 800 xcx adventure bike fully kitted out with all the off road stuff including semi knobby tires, which didn't look like they would work so well in the curves.
Our first day's destination was Unity, Oregon, and we got there by the oft-traveled route through Maupin, Shaniko, Fossil, and John Day. After Shaniko, the route was identical to the one Jenny and I rode last year, at least for the first day-and-a-half, as reported in my blog back then.
When we got to Fossil, it was time to put on the cooling vests, and a couple of hours later we took and break and Mike was recharging his in the parking lot of a mini-mart gas station:
We stayed at the same motel in Unity and ate at the same bar/restaurant that I had been to before. It is beginning to seem harder for me to find new roads and places, but Good Roads are worth revisiting. Here is the only motel in Unity:
And here is the bar/restaurant:
It was quite a wait to get our food, but we didn't care.....we weren't going anywhere. After the hustle and bustle of the Portland/Vancouver area, it is quite a contrast to be in a town where you can stand out in the middle of the road and take a picture in either direction without fear of being run over:
The next day we headed for Dooley Mountain Road. I first rode this road several years ago and it was fantastic. I was anxious to show it to Jenny last year but it was a bust. There had been a huge fire in the area and the pavement was destroyed in a lot of places and there was road construction that caused us long delays. This year, however, it was perfect. Except for a bit of gravel in some of the turns, the pavement had been fixed, and one advantage of the fire was that there were improved sight-lines around corners because the vegetation was gone. It was on this road that Brian got impatient with the rate of Mike and I and charged on up the road ahead of us. I guess the knobbies worked after all. It kills me to think that I taught him to ride motorcycles and to ski, and in no time at all he was better than me at both. Makes me a bit proud, actually.
Next Good Road on the agenda was Rattlesnake Grade, and here is where the adventure began. We had pretty much completed the best parts of the road when Brian's bike went into survival mode and would only let him go about 10 mph. It looked like a flat tire was to blame. There was a state park just a little way up the road that we got to for an inspection. Both Mike and I carry items necessary to plug a hole in our tubeless tires, but here was the problem: first there was no hole or nail visible, and second, Brian's bike does not use tubeless tires. Because it is a more off-road capable bike, it uses spoked wheels which require tubed tires. Because we could find no hole in the tire, I thought that maybe the tire had spun on the rim and pulled the valve stem out of the tube. It happens on dirt bikes when there is no rim lock or the rim lock is too loose. We took the wheel off to see if we could break the bead and get to the tube:
But it was impossible to break the bead. Because the tire is actually a tubeless tire with a tube in it, it fits the rim like a tubeless tire, which is to say, very tightly. Even with Big Mike standing on the tire it would not budge off the rim. This is a major problem that Brian is going to have to find a solution for. Flats happen, and you need to be able to fix them on the road since bikes don't carry a spare.
This is where good fortune and some very nice people came into our lives. There was a Forest Service maintenance station at the park, and since this was Sunday there was only one person working there, but he was a young high-school grad who was working there for the summer. His shift was ending and he offered to take Brian and the wheel down to Clarkston, WA. We put the wheel back on the bike, rode it to their garage and then took the wheel back off again. Brian got the clothes he needed to spend the night and took the wheel with him while Mike and I rode down the hill into Clarkston.
So, we had a place to stay for the night, but we had serious problems with no obvious solutions. There were some motorcycle shops in Clarkston, but the next day was Monday and, typical of bike shops, they were closed on Mondays. The closest shop open on Monday, which also happened to be a Triumph dealer, was in Kennewick, which was 130 miles away and opened at 0900. Even if we could get the wheel there somehow, by the time we got it fixed and back up to where the bike was it would be a late start for a long day's ride and Brian needed to get to work on Tuesday. Things were looking bleak.
Then Brian or Mike, I don't remember which, was surfing the web a discovered a 24-hour emergency motorcycle service IN Clarkston! We called the guy and he came to the motel in 10 minutes, picked up the wheel, and he and Brian went back to his shop where he dismounted the tire and discovered the tube was torn in half. He had only 16 inch tubes because he mainly provided service for Harleys (because they need it more?), but that was good enough. For this emergency service late at night and providing a tube, he charged Brian $50. That's only abut $10 more than it would cost to change a tubeless tire in a shop during normal working hours. I took a picture of he and Brian when they got back to the motel, but I was in a hurry and didn't get the settings right, so it is blurry. Nevertheless, I think it worth posting:
You can't really see what is on his t-shirt, but it is a picture of an m-16 rifle with the logo "Black Rifles Matter". I think it best that I make no further comment.
Brian texted the kid who drove him down to the motel and offered to pay him $60 to take him back up to the motorcycle the next morning. I rode up to help him put the wheel back on the bike, but by the time I suited up and rode up there they had already got it mounted. So by 0900 on Monday we were on our way, except we were about 85 miles further from where we planned to start the day. Still, we were feeling VERY good about how it turned out.
However, the adventure wasn't quite over yet. We stopped for lunch in Walla Walla and discovered the tire was going flat again! This time we found a shop open just 3.5 miles away, so we shot some CO2 in the tire and quickly put the valve cap back on and rode over to the shop. There they put the bike up on the rack for an inspection:
Turns out the valve stem core was defective, so they replaced it and also provided a valve cap that was metal with a sealing washer. Total charge for that job? Zero.
On our way again, I told Brian we had had enough adventures. We split up south of the Tri Cities where Brian headed up to the 90 freeway to Tacoma, while Mike and I took hwy 14 to Vancouver. We had no more "adventures", but it was a long, hot day. Mike and I took a break near Bonneville dam and re-hydrated our cooling vests.
We missed riding the Old Spiral Highway out of Lewiston, but we'll get it another day. I ended up riding 1100 miles, and they were all good. There is still the mystery of why that tube broke apart. I have no clue.
