Strange Company

 On Friday I had a nice ride with some strange companions.......strange in terms of the vehicles, not the riders.  There was the huge Honda Goldwing, ridden two-up by my friend Bill and his wife Karen, and the CanAm three-wheeler ridden by Bill's friend Dave.  And then there was me on my little underpowered Honda CBR 500.   

Dave lives near Eureka California and was up here to get some work done on his CanAm.  Bill asked me to show Dave some of the good roads in the area.  

It was a pretty mellow ride due in part to the post-rain condition of the roads, which made for some damp and leafy corners in shaded areas.  It was also a long day, partly because we had no intercoms so that all conversation was during lunch or rest stops.  I have to also admit that quite a bit of time was wasted due to me getting lost in Hood River and in trying to get around Stevenson, so, it ended up being about an eight hour ride for me despite going only 270 miles.  

I had never even sat on a CanAm, much less ridden one, so I asked Dave at one of our rest stops if I could ride it around the parking lot.  A lot of older guys switch to three-wheelers when they get too old or injured to ride a two-wheeler, and this was the case with Dave.  He was a long time motorcyclist who had a bad crash that left him with an ankle that no longer worked very well.  I've often said that when I can no longer ride a two-wheeler, I'm done, and will not switch to three wheels, so I was interested in at least trying one out.  

It's a strange beast.  It has only a foot brake to operate front and rear brakes, no clutch, and shifting by buttons on the left handlebar.  There is also a park position in the trans and a reverse.  

I think I will stick to my thoughts about not transitioning to three wheels after I quit motorcycles.  The CanAm seems to have most of the disadvantages of a car........big and heavy and takes up a lot of space in the garage......with none of the advantages of a car such as heat and A/C, and protection from the rain.  If you want to be out in the wind, buy a convertible like the Miata I had, and get the wind, but also the roof and heater when you need it.  But the main objection with the three-wheeler is......IT DOESN'T LEAN.   On the other hand, it doesn't fall down.  Those damp and leafy corners didn't bother Dave at all.  

Even Dave admitted when I asked him, that it wasn't as much fun as a motorcycle, but it still felt like he was riding, and he fit in pretty well with Bill and I on our bikes.  

All in all, it was a really nice ride.  It was good to see Bill get a ride in with Karen, who was in the midst of Chemo therapy.  It was perfect autumn weather with some spectacular colors up in the mountains near Mt Hood. And I got a chance to meet a new rider and try out the three wheeled option.  

Saved by the internet......again!

 There have been a couple of occasions lately where a YouTube video has allowed me to do some work on our van and car that I would not have been able to do without the video.  On the van, the fan controls quit working and the YouTube video showed me how to remove the panel which looked like there was no way to do it, but which turned out to be really simple.  Then I bought a used part from Ebay that was way cheaper then a new Honda part. 

Then I got a low tire pressure warning on the car and when I took it in to my local tire dealer they discovered the tire was worn almost to the treads on the inside due to mis-alignment (driver's side rear).  And they said there was no adjustability in the rear wheel alignment.  The tire guy said there were adjustable control arms available but the parts alone cost about $400.  I found a YouTube video with good instructions for how to change the control arms, and where to buy them.  The set for both rear wheels was about $250.  For now I only put a set on the left rear as the right rear seems to be OK as far as tire wear.  

Now the internet has saved me on motorcycle work.  I found out after a ride with my friends that my headlights were out.  I assumed it was probably a blown fuse, but replacing the fuse with a new one made no difference.  I have two headlights, so it didn't seem likely that both bulbs would burn out at the same time, but I checked them anyway and they were OK.  Now I had to start disassembly of the bike to get to wiring and connectors.  This is the way things got to looking: 

 

By hooking the headlight harness up to a battery I saw that the lights worked, so the problem had to be behind the headlights.  I checked the headlight solenoid, and found that it was good, so I started inspecting the wiring diagram.  What a nightmare!

The CBR 500 that I have is not a feature-loaded motorcycle (no abs, no ride modes, no traction control), but you can see how complex it still is.   I went to the CBR 500 forum, which is pretty dead due to everybody moving over to facebook, but there are still some knowledgeable guys who post on it, so I described my tale of woe and asked for help.  A guy answered back and told me how to verify I had power to the solenoid, which I did.  He then determined by looking at the wiring diagram that the only remaining "gate" that power had to go through to get to the headlights was the starter switch on the right handlebar, of all things.  When you turn the key on, the headlights come on, but when you push the starter button, the headlights temporarily go out so that the full power of the battery goes to the starter motor.  So the headlight power has to pass through the starter switch.  He told me the two wires I had to check for continuity in the starter switch, and sure enough, the power wasn't passing through their connection.   I made a jumper wire to bypass the connector and I HAD HEADLIGHTS!  I could have kissed the guy (actually, I don't know for sure it is a guy).  So I ordered a new starter switch and will have to wait a few days for it to arrive, but it will probably take me that long to get the bike back together.  

I hate electrical problems because I am such a dumbass about electrical stuff, and this one sort of reminded me of the Mustang wiring problems that weighed on my mind with no known way to find a solution.  But, thanks to the internet, I found the way.  

Looking at Property with Brian

 This past weekend Brian and I rode down to Sunriver, Oregon to look at some property he was interested in.  Sunriver is about 20 miles south of Bend.  It was predicted to be about 98 degrees in Bend by the time we got there, so we wore vented gear, but since it was relatively cool when we started out, we had some wind blocking stuff under our jackets.  We took the usual curvy roads up to the Zig Zag ranger station where we shucked some of that: 

From then on it was a straight shot to Bend.  I used to drive much of this route when we were riding dirt bikes at East Fort Rock, but it is changing fast.  There is freeway replacing much of the old two-lane on hwy 97 between Madras and Bend, and a lot of development.  We even got in a traffic jam going into Bend and it was getting hot.  

Eventually we got to the property, which was pretty far out in the boonies.  It is at around 4,000 ft elevation so there are some trees.  It's about 1.5 acres with a 25 gpm well and electricity on site.  Brian is looking ahead to retirement and building a house with a detached shop.  It's behind the bikes in this picture: 

One of the nice features of the location is that it is only a couple hundred feet from public access to the Deschutes river where I took these photos: 

 

On our walk to the river we saw this guy working on an entry arch to a nice house and stopped to talk to him.  Turns out he doesn't live at that house but the one across the street, which was a complete trash pile.  It looked sort of like a high-end homeless camp, with trailers, RV's and cars up on jacks plus a lot of other junk.  He let me take this picture of him talking to Brian but he might not have been happy for me to take one of his "residence": 

He said he was planning on selling his place because his neighbor (not the house in the picture) was always trying to get him in trouble with the county for code violations.  I can understand why as he was not helping property values in the neighborhood.  We asked him the price, thinking it was valuable river front property that could have been cleared of all the junk and made a great homesite, but his price was ridiculous ($400K).

Next came a bit of frustration on my part.  While Brian was working on getting his drone ready to fly over the area, I thought I would try to get us a room for the night.  All the reasonable priced places in Bend were booked, so I thought of looking in Madras which is a much smaller town about 20 miles north of Bend.  By doing a Google search I got in touch with a booking website that actually got me in touch with a human who would search for available motels.  I told her we were looking for a motel in Madras, but when she checked a couple they were all booked, so she asked if we would be OK with a nearby place.  I said that would be fine and she found one in a place I didn't recognize called Richmond.  I asked how far that was from Madras and she said three tenths of a mile.  I figured it must be the name of a neighborhood or something.  So after the booking was made I thought I better enter the address into my GPS as they had sent me a confirmation email.  The motel was in Richmond Indiana!!  It took me a couple of frustrating hours working on it off and on to get the booking cancelled and a refund promised.  Meanwhile, Brian had somehow found a reasonable place in Bend.  By the time we checked in it was about 7pm and we were tired, hot, and hungry.  Two beers with my Carne Asada dinner tasted really good.  

I have to post this picture because after a bit of persuasion I actually got Brian to do a little maintenance on his motorcycle by lubing the chain (lube provided by me).  

The next day was just a push for both of us to get home.  We did get one small shot of twisty bits by riding from Antelope to Shaniko.  I've done enough raving about this road in earlier blogs.  I just wish it was longer.  

Brian elected to go back via hwy 97 on the east side of the mountains and cross over near Mt. Rainier to try a beat the Sunday afternoon traffic back into Tacoma and Seattle.  My total miles was 546 and his had to be quite a bit more.  Although the roads were not that thrilling, at least I got a ride with my son.  

And by the way,  he did not love the property.  

Good Weather, Bad Traffic

 Before I get started on the past two days, let me show parts of the Lick Observatory ride.  These are screen snips from my route planning program called MyRoute: 

This is the part of the ride up to the Observatory

And this is only a small part of the road past the observatory.  The first time Jenny rode it was with her neighbor who rides a big BMW road bike and he hated it and swore he would never do it again.  A smaller, agile bike is a real advantage.  

So on to the two day ride up hwy 1:  Probably because the weather was so good, which is kind of rare on the north coast, there was a LOT of traffic in the first half of the ride.  After that it got much better.  I suspect a lot of people were doing a day drive from San Francisco, and once we got to the point where they had to turn around to get back home, traffic thinned out.  By the time we got to the super curvy part from the coast up to Leggett, it was all good.  This is the first time I rode it up and then turned around and rode it back, so it was about 44 miles of the good road.  We stayed overnight in Fort Bragg after a long day in the saddle, but only 280 miles.  The next day was back to Jenny's house and traffic again as we got close to SF.  California has some great motorcycle roads, but the price you have to pay in dealing with the traffic can make me have second thoughts about coming back.

I didn't take many pictures, but I have some of the standard ocean views: 

We took a side trip to Point Arena lighthouse. 

It was 200 miles from Ft Bragg back to Jen's, and I was pretty tired.  It was definitely the right choice to cancel the planned ride down south. I don't think I would have lasted very long in those 100+ degree temps.  In fact, the three days that we did ride was enough for me.  Maybe I'm getting old......well I know I am; I just had my 80th birthday.  But I want to Never Stop Riding. 

One last thing: We took the dog for a walk and saw this automatous car driving around the neighborhood.  It did have a person in it but I don't think he was doing any of the driving.  Sensors were spinning on the top and all kinds of other places.  A look at the future?

 

Longest stretch of Curves I have ever ridden

 Jenny and I rode 220 miles today and a lot of it was freeway and hot, but there were over 60 miles of the most unbelievable curvy road that made it all worthwhile.......even hauling the bike down from home on the trailer.  The last time we rode it, the only fly in the ointment was that the pavement going up to the observatory was pretty bumpy and getting broken up.  But this time, what a pleasant surprise.  The road had been completely repaved!  Nice fresh smooth stuff, too.  The road down the other side of the mountain had not been repaved and it was now the bumpy part, but not too bad to have a good time.  And to top it off, there was essentially no traffic........actually probably more bicycles than cars.  There were some spots that would have made a great picture, where you could look down the mountain and see the road and just how curvy it was, but there were few level spots to turn off to take a picture.  I did take some, though, and here they are: 

Ready to go.  Jenny's son Jonas' new car behind her.  He is just learning to drive and it is a stick shift, which is pretty challenging in San Francisco.  Those of you familiar with my bike my notice that the Laminar Lip windscreen extension is gone.  I took it off when I thought we would be riding in a lot of heat and I wanted to get the most airflow I could through my jacket.  It helped in the heat today and think I will leave it off for summer riding.

 

I did manage to get one good picture of Jen.  It also gives a good idea of the pavement quality.  She , was a little timid at first as she has not had a chance to ride much, but towards the end of the 60 miles of curves she was getting with the program and feeling more comfortable and faster.  

This was taken on the road down the back side of the mountain on the older pavement.  You can just get a peek of the observatory dome in the back.  We stopped to take out jacket liners because it was beginning to get hot.

Tomorrow we are going to head up highway 1 and it should be a lot cooler.  Looking forward to that.

Two years in planning, ride changed at last moment

Last year I had planned a five-day ride with Jenny where we would ride from her house to Porterville, California and then ride loops from the Air B&B there.  Covid trashed that.  So I planned to try it again this year and had reservations at the same place for June 16th to June 20th.  I figured mid June would be a time of reasonable temperatures and not much chance of fires in Southern California.......wrong!  There is a heat wave predicted for just the days we will be riding, with high temps between 99 and 110 degrees.  Even in the higher elevations that we would be riding, like Lake Isabella, the high was to be 100.  

There is no fun in riding a motorcycle in those kinds of temps, even with vented gear and evaporative cooling vests.  I reluctantly cancelled my reservation and forfeited all but the cleaning deposit on the Air B&B.  

But I have a new plan, and I'm getting pretty excited about it.  Jenny and I are going to do one of my favorite day rides around San Francisco, the Lick Observatory loop. We did this in 2017 and I reported it in this post: https://thegoodroads.blogspot.com/search?q=observatory.  This will be our day ride on Wednesday, and on Thursday we plan to ride up hwy 1 all the way to Leggett and then back to stay overnight in Fort Bragg.  Jenny has not ridden the northern portion of hwy 1, from the coast inland to Leggett, and it is absolutely one of the neatest roads I've ridden......right up there with the Tail of the Dragon.  I've done it many times, with the first being in the early 80's, and I never get tired of it.  It will be fun to show it to Jenny.  When we leave Fort Bragg, we will head back to SF and take some of the roads that cross between hwy 1 and hwy 101.  These are really good also.  And to add to the goodness, the temps are predicted to be between low 60's to mid 70's.......perfect riding weather.