I'm Back!

 

It's been seven days since I stopped using the crutches and I felt strong enough to go for a ride.  I definitely lost some strength and fitness during the six weeks of non-weight bearing on my left leg, but it's coming back.  I'm doing some workouts at home with our weight machine, and I just got a stationary trainer that I can mount my bicycle in to ride at home.  Normally at this time of the year I would be starting to go back to the fitness center that I belong to in a nearby town, but even though it is open again, I'm a little reluctant to go due to the virus.  Carolyn and I checked it out yesterday and saw that they have some protocol to limit the number of people in the place and they supply each person with disinfecting spray bottles, but still.......

My ride today was only 50 miles, and I felt quite tentative.  I know that is normal after an accident and I have experienced it before, but still it felt good to be back on the bike.  

Still sticking to my motto: 

Another Bump in the Road

I was going to title this post "A Bump in the Road", but then I saw that I had already used that title for a bump in the road I had three years ago:  https://thegoodroads.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-bump-in-road.html.  

This time the Good Roads are going to be without me for awhile because of another leg issue......a broken left femur.  

The way this happened is so stupid I've been reluctant to make a post about it, but most accidents are a result of somebody doing something stupid.  I just hate when it's me.  

It was a typical nooby mistake where I killed the engine when starting out from a stop and while making a turn.  The stopped rear wheel instantly makes the bike fall in the direction it is already leaning and down you go.  I had just been thinking within an hour before this happened about how I had over 63,000 miles without dropping the bike.  If that isn't bad karma I don't know what is.  One other time  in the past 10 years or so I had a drop in an almost identical situation on my Ninja 650, but in that case I got my leg out but just couldn't hold the bike up.  This time the bike fell on me with my left leg pinned under it.  

I actually continued on for about another 150 miles on the ride with my buddies and didn't feel too bad as long as I was sitting on the bike, but walking into and out of the restaurant at lunch was pretty painful. 

 The next three days I seemed to be getting better and I quit using a cane and even used my backpack leaf blower to blow the driveway and then went for about a 50 mile ride.

 The day after that I couldn't walk.  We went to urgent care where an x-ray showed a "non displacement" fracture high up on the femur.  That kind of fracture and the location of it meant I didn't need a cast, but I still needed to be non weight bearing on my left leg for four to six weeks.  So I've been on crutches for about ten days and dealing with all the hassle that entails.  Without Carolyn to help me I would be in a real world of difficulty.  

2020 is developing into a year to just get over it.  The pandemic has caused me to miss my Spring ride with Jenny in addition to all the depressing news and things you have to do to stay safe from the virus.  Now this broken leg is going to make me miss some good riding weather and also a planned ride with Brian for three days this coming weekend.  But wait, it gets worse.  Three days ago I had to get a root canal (not joking), and for the last week forest fires up and down the West Coast have made the air quality the worst in the world.

There is still a lot to be positive about, though.  I will recover from the broken leg, we are not adversely affected financially by the virus, and it is right now raining and beginning to clear up the air and damp down the fires.  Oh, and the root canal is halfway completed.  

  

Mary's Peak

This Spring I saw a discussion on a website raving about a ride to a place called Mary's Peak.  I looked it up and saw that it was pretty far south near Corvallis, Oregon.  Looking closer at the road on my route planning software it looked really good: 

However, it was a long way there for a one-day ride.  I put it aside as one I wanted to do some day.  My chance came this week because Big Mike was back in town and brought his bike.  Mike has no problem riding big daily miles, and since he had not ridden for awhile he was hot to go.  He was actually in town for three days of riding, and the first two days we rode some of the familiar local routes.  In fact, the whole crew was along on the first day: 

 After that day it was just Mike and I and Mary's Peak was the climax of the three days with the ride to the top giving us views of the Willamette Valley during our lunch break: 

 

The ride turned out to be even longer than I expected due to some navigation problems we had in the beginning, and I ended up with 392 miles for the day.  It was definitely worth it, though, and I will be back.  

Due to the pandemic I have not been able to do any out-of-the-area rides this year, but this three day ride that included a new area did a pretty good job of satisfying my need to tour, and it was actually nice to be able to come back home each night.  

Jenny Got Her Bike

This past weekend Carolyn and I bit the bullet and drove down to San Francisco to deliver the Ninja 400 to Jenny and bring her Honda back for correcting a few problems and selling.  We stayed in a motel in Yreka CA on the way there and that was no fun, what with all the Corona virus restrictions plus ordering a pizza to eat in our room.  Here we are loaded up and ready to go:

On Sunday, Jenny and I went for a ride up to Alice's Restaurant and then down the appropriately named La Honda road to San Gregorio.  Alice's was still busy as usual, with exotic cars and motorcycles, including this Ferrari we parked next to.  You don't see any of these in my neck of the woods:

It was my idea that the Ninja would be the perfect bike for Jen, especially after I had lowered it, but I told her if she didn't like it there was no obligation to keep it and I would take it back.  She immediately like the fact that she could flat foot both feet while sitting on the bike, and after a few miles of getting used to it, by the time we got to Alice's she was happy with the power and handling: 

The restaurant operation was changed with no indoor dining and portable toilets, but still a gathering place: 

Sunday evening I loaded up the trailer with her CBR and the next day we headed home.  We decided to skip the hassle of staying in a motel and drove the whole way in one day.......a long day, but with the long daylight hours, not too bad a drive.  

We also brought jenny's son Jonas with us to help around the house and give him something to do during the virus lockdown.  The very next day I had him doing some rough terrain mowing of our weeds: 

Are we having fun yet?

Last January I spent a fair amount of computer time planning the route for my Spring ride with Jenny and I was looking forward to it.  That's all gone by the wayside now with the shutdown of Washington and California due to the Corona virus.  I'm still doing day rides with my buddies, because we stay at least six feet apart, wear masks (full face helmets) and gloves, but with restaurants closed and motels risky, it's not possible to make a multi-day ride.  When I ride with my friends we bring a lunch along and keep our distance when we eat.

Despite the disappointment of not making the ride, life for Carolyn and I has been good.  In fact, being retired, it's not that much different, and this time of the year is pretty busy, with Carolyn getting the gardens into shape and me making my standard 4.5 cords of firewood.  I also have been doing a woodworking project for Brian, which has kept me occupied on rainy days.  It is a counter for his patio dining area.  He sent me the following plans:

With it being over nine feet long I told him it could not be built as one piece as we have no vehicle that can transport it and it would be too heavy and fragile to load it if we did.  So we decided to make it in two main sections connected by the middle part after it was put in place.  I started first on the left side shelves:

Notice I'm using my motorcycle lift as an assembly table.  This has turned out to be the handyest tool for furniture making as it allows me to adjust the height of the piece and avoid a lot of bend over working.

Then I built the right hand section with a full extension drawer included:

Finally I put it all together with the center section that can be disassembled and reassembled at Brian's house:

Building this cabinet made me appreciate even more all the great tools that I have gathered over the years, and I think I used a majority of them, at least the woodworking ones.  Here are a couple of pictures of my shop in action:

Last Saturday Carolyn and I delivered the cabinet while maintaining social distance from the Tacoma Urbans.  Here is a picture Brian took after he installed a TV above the cabinet.  He plans to have a top made of the same material they used in a recent kitchen renovation.  I had put a coat of Thompson's Water Seal on the cabinet, and Brian intends to let the wood grey-out naturally.

So, with regards to the title of this blog.......yes, we are having fun!

Here is a picture of the final product:

Lowering the Ninja 400

There is an internet forum for owners of the Kawasaki Ninja 400 that I have been lurking on since the bike came out, and it just so happened that there was a recent thread on mods for short riders.  One of the posters referenced a lowering link kit sold by a company called "Roaring Toys".  I looked them up and saw that the kit consisted of a couple of multi-adjustable pieces that replace the "dog bones" in the rear shock linkage plus an adjustable side stand to make up for the loss of lean in the bike when significantly lowered.  The problem was, this kit cost $273!  I figured I could make the dog bones myself and, if I lowered the bike only an inch, I could maybe still use the stock side stand.  I had two problems I had to solve; one was to find out how to safely remove the dog bones, and the other was to determine the length of the ones I was going to make that would result in the desired one inch of lowering.  I found a video on YouTube that showed how to remove the dog bones, and it had some really helpful information.  Then, while searching Ebay for possible cheaper options, I found a guy who was selling some that he made.  He still wanted too much money, but he made the mistake of giving the dimensions for lowering the bike an inch.  I had what I needed. 

It used to be that one of the first purchases I made whenever I bought a new car or motorcycle was to buy the service manual for the vehicle.  I quit doing that for cars quite a few years ago when the service manual became a couple of inch-thick volumes that became so technical and required so much specialized equipment, plus cost close to $100.  I did buy a service manual for my cbr500, but I'm not buying one for the Kawasaki.  I think you can find out just about all you need to know from YouTube videos.  Some are not so good, but some are excellent. 

So the first step was to support the bike in a way that took all load off the rear shock, like this:

And here is where the dog bones are located:

And this is why they are called dog bones:

I went to the local Ace hardware and bought a piece of 3/16 X 1.25 inch steel and made my own, which don't have the dog bone shape, but do the job.  It turns out that to lower the bike an inch, the links need to be a half inch longer than stock......I had sort of assumed they would be shorter, but it's due to the geometry of the shock linkage.  Here are the new ones, painted and installed:

It's not enough to just lower the rear suspension as that changes the steering geometry.  You need to also lower the front of the bike.  This is done by sliding the fork tubes up in the triple clamps.  This was the stock setting:

And this is after:

I only lowered the front 5/8 of an inch.  It seems like plenty, and I was getting concerned about the side stand being too long.  I will have to do some riding to see if more adjustment is needed and how well the side stand works.  It's fine on my level garage floor, but in the real world it may be a problem.  If it is, I can cut the foot off and then cut some out of the side stand and re-weld the foot back on. 

After all was done I measured the seat height and it went from a measured 30.5 inches to 29.5, so it is exactly one inch lower.  It is very noticeable when sitting on the bike and I think Jenny will love it.  For myself, maybe I can finally drag the foot peg feelers when cornering. 

I had texted Jenny before I did this and said I thought I could lower the bike.  She said it sounded like a lot of work, but this is just the kind of stuff I like to do. 

New Horse in the Stable

I've been interested in this bike since it first came out as a 2018 model.  It's a Kawasaki Ninja 400.  I've been keeping an eye on Craigslist for at least the past year, looking for a used one, but since it is a new model it took awhile for them to start showing up on the used market.  What I find most intriguing about it is its light weight.......ready to ride it is 60 pounds lighter than my Honda, but it has almost the same horsepower.  In race track contests the Ninja spanks the Honda by a large margin.  I'm not interested in racing, but it means to me that it does not lack power.  There is even a bigger difference in weight between this bike and my Honda because I have added a center stand and some other bits, plus probably 10 pounds of tools.

From the beginning I thought this would be the perfect bike for Jenny.  She has had some problems with tipovers on her CBR due to the weight of it combined with a seat height that prevents her from flat footing when stopped.   The specified seat heights of both bikes are the same at 30.9 inches, but the Kawasaki's seat feels lower to me.......perhaps the seat is narrower.  Nevertheless, after looking at how the rear suspension linkage works, I think I can lower the Ninja by an inch by fabricating some new "dog bones" and sliding the forks up in the triple clamps.   The bike also has ABS, which was a $400 option when new.  I don't consider it essential for a bike of my own, but it will be an extra margin of safety for Jenny. 

I've had the bike for a week now and today I rode about 200 miles with my riding buddies, so I have had a chance to adjust the controls to my liking and get used to how the bike handles.  The light weight is noticeable somewhat when riding, but most noticeable when pushing the bike around the shop or putting it up on my hoist.  The engine characteristics are quite different.  The Ninja is a real rever, with a redline almost 12,000 rpm versus 8,500 for the Honda, and the bike seems to accelerate like a demon if you rev it.

Although I think it's the perfect bike for Jenny, for me, the Honda is better because it is more comfortable, and because I have put a center stand on it.  It is more comfortable mainly because the foot pegs on the Honda are lower so my old bum knees are not bent so much.  I don't think this will bother Jenny since she is young and flexible, and has shorter legs than me.  The lack of a center stand means that simple maintenance like lubing the chain requires that you have a way to lift the rear wheel off the ground.  All bikes used to come with a center stand, but now only a few do.  So one of the first aftermarket purchases I made was some swing arm bobbins and a stand:

So the plan is to get this bike down to Jenny and bring her Honda up here for me to refurbish and sell.  We have been through this drill before when I traded her current bike for the proceeds from the sale of her first bike, the Ninja 250.  Since emission requirements are different in California than anywhere else in the world, you can not import and register an out of state compliant bike in California unless it has over 7500 miles on it.  Since the new bike only had 4,400 miles on it when I bought it, I figured I would be "forced" to ride it during the summer to get the required miles on it.  However, when I noticed a sticker that mentioned an evap canister, I started looking more closely and discovered the bike is a California compliant bike.  I don't know how it ended up in Portland where I bought it, but it means I could make the swap any time.  The problem is that nobody wants to go anywhere right now due to the Corona virus pandemic.  We will just have to see how it all plays out.