Couple of Dual Sport Videos

A couple of days ago while on the KLX I came upon a road that looked like just the sort of road I like to ride......more like a jeep trail.  Unfortunately, after a mile or so I came upon this:

Someone was nice enough to explain why the barrier was there:

I turned around and headed back out to where I had come upon a logging operation and took this video of part of the road:

Here is a video of a more typical forest road.  Speed is much higher and I have to keep to the right in case of oncoming traffic, but I didn't encounter anyone in the whole time I was off pavement.  The higher speed causes a lot of wind noise in the microphone built into the camera and I can't figure a way to prevent it.

The lighting contrast between the bright sunlight and the deep shade is just about as bad in real life as it is in these videos, and can make it difficult to spot rocks, sticks, dips, potholes, washouts and water bars.  But, that's all part of the fun.

Too Busy Riding to Blog About It

I seem to have lost my inspiration for blogging lately, but I have been riding.  Last week I took a 217 mile dual sport ride over the mountains to Trout Lake.  The route was basically the first part of the WBDR with some modifications I have invented.  The only picture I took was this panorama with Mt. Rainier barely visible in the background, and Mt Adams in the near distance.  As usual, I started from my house.  There is a whole lot of forest in my "backyard".

I have made several other day rides on my street bike, but nothing that hasn't been seen or written about on this blog.  Today, Orv, Ross, and I finally got together for a first ride up to Windy Ridge on Mt St. Helens.  This is an epic ride and I often read about it on other people's blogs from all over the country.  The only problem is the roads are falling apart in spots and with the Forest Service apparently having no money for maintenance, they will just get worse and worse.  There are parts already that used to be great, but now you have to go slow or you might get kicked in the ass and bucked over the handlebars.  I did manage to get a few pictures at Windy Ridge viewpoint.

The Loyal Ninja; approaching 95,000 miles

Mt. St. Helens Crater

Telephoto

Spirit Lake. Still full of logs from 33 years ago.  

Ross arriving on his modern Triumph Bonneville

We went on to Randle for lunch and then rather than go back the way we came over the busted up pavement, we headed west and then paralleled Hwy 5 on back roads towards home.  I took my Ipod and helmet intercom along to listen to music and a cool thing was I figured out how to make and receive  phone calls from my new smart phone while riding along.  The intercom has a phone button that interrupts the music and makes a bluetooth connection to the phone.  Then you voice dial the contact you want.  When receiving a call, the music is interrupted and a series of beeps lets you know to press the phone button.   I practiced with a call to and from Carolyn.  All in all, a fun day and 240 miles.

Edit:  I forgot to add this picture I took at a gas station in Castle Rock.  There is a gunsmith in the same building and he had this display of machine guns.....two .30 cal and one .50 cal M2 ("Ma Duce").  I assume they were for sale, but I didn't check.  Just a little touch of Americana......gotta love it!

More Bling

Brian and the boys were down for the weekend and Brian brought a few parts he had bought from his local Mustang shop in Auburn.  Then we took the car off the jack stands and rolled it over to the equipment shed for summer storage.

Brian was goosey about installing the rocker panel molding as he was afraid it would be too much bling, but we all decided it looked good.

The final little touch was a new gas cap.

Now she's covered up in the shed for the summer.  It's nice to have my shop empty and I have several jobs lined up on motorcycles and my pickup truck where the shop space will be handy.

Can't Leave It Alone

My plan was to put the Mustang away for the summer, but after getting back from Ireland we have had a period of rainy weather, so I thought it would be a good time to install a new steering wheel.  Having the instrument cluster in, and needing a steering wheel to steer the car over to the tool shed was the logic behind that plan.  However, parts supplier and Mustang expert advised me that it would be best to install the dash pad first.  There are some chrome trip pieces that fit closely around the instrument cluster and the steering wheel would just get in the way of doing that job.  The dash pad cost about the same as a new steering wheel, so I have spent my parts allowance for the next couple of months.  Here is how the new dash looks; I like it.

The arrow points to the trim piece that would have been hard to install with the steering wheel in place.  There is one like it over the glove box.  They hold the bottom of the pad in place.

Wrapping Up

It has again been a busy few days and the internet has been a hassle.  If there has been anything disappointing about Ireland, it has been the inaccessibility and slow speed of the internet.  I had been led to believe that Europe was ahead of us in terms of both availability and speed, but that has not been the case.  It may just be the places we have been staying.  At any rate we are not here for the internet connections, so "no problem"  (one of the favorite saying here).  Which leads me to thinking about the Irish accent of English.  We had a tour bus driver who ended most sentences with "itself", as in "There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing, itself"  Sort of like the Canadians put an "eh?" at the end of a sentence.  Then there was the tour of the Isle Of Man by Phillip McCallen.  He kept referring to "Air Pacs" as reference points for the riders on the roads.  I thought he was talking about the crash cushions that are put against the walls, trees and telephone poles along the route.  He would talk about "looking for the air pacs".  It wasn't until the end of the tour that I realized he was talking about the "apex" of a turn.

No "th" in the language either, so eight thirty becomes "eight dirty". 

At any rate, tomorrow we head for home.  It has been a fabulous trip.  I don't look forward to the flight back, or the amount of work it will take to catch up with things around the house, but we will get through it, and I have done the visit to the TT, a trip of a lifetime.  I do look forward to getting back on my own bikes.......all of them, both motorized and not. 

I will try to summarize the highlights of the past three days with some pics:

Thatched roof cottages in the village of Adair

Desmond Castle outside Adair

Our very modern apartment in Galway

There has to be thousands of miles of rock walls in Ireland.  This is a type of "dry stone" wall made without mortar.  This one has vertically stacked rocks, but many are horizontal or even a mix.

We took an all day bus tour to the cliffs of Moher.  Spectacular scenery: 



A motorized two-wheeler of a different kind.  There was evidently an organized tour of  these things. 

The Irish used to heat and cook with peat, or what they call "turf".  They cut the peat out of bogs and dry it. 

It becomes quite light and waterproof after it has dried.  They still use it, but it is a non-renewable resource so there is some effort to preserve some of the bogs.  Also, we were told that the last few years have been so rainy that it is hard to get it to dry.  There still seemed many miles of bogs. 

After we left Galway we headed for Kylemore Abby and walled gardens.  At last Carolyn got to visit one of the gardens that were on her list of 'must see' items.  There had been another one, but it was closed due to labor problems.  Here is a pic from the Kylemore garden:

And here is the Abby itself:

On our way to our next two nights lodging we passed many sheep, some of them on the road itself.  Most were obviously relatives of Shawn:

The roads are really narrow and curvy and usually lined on both side with rock wall.  Karen is often startled when it looks like Jon is getting too close to a wall or parked vehicle on the left, but Jon says he feels he is hanging over the center line on his right.  These roads often have a speed limit of  100 kph (62 mph), and it seems almost impossible to go that fast. 





Monday night we arrived at Ballynahinch castle, where we are now.  It is first rate:

Kicking back in the lounge

Today we took a three hour guided walk around the 300 acres of the grounds of the "castle":



And had a final fish and chips with a Guiness at a small village nearby:



Right now we are waiting for dinner after which it will be time to pack and get ready to end this "trip of a lifetime".  I have nothing left on my bucket list except riding the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route, which I hope to do this summer.  













Real Irish Weather

Rained all day until about 7:30 pm, but much of the day was driving from Waterford to Adair, so not much problem.  We did stop in the seaside city of Ardmore where I took this pic:

Then we stopped at Blarney Castle:

While we were there Carolyn kissed the Blarney Stone, which was a bunch of malarkey.  Then we got to Adair where we checked into this B&B:

And in the evening watched these guys play Irish music.

Waterford

We drove from Kilkenny to Waterford, which is the oldest city in Ireland.  It was founded by Vikings in 914.  We visited a bunch of historic places, but I suspect one of the main reasons we were there was to see the Waterford crystal factory.  Jon and I thought this might be a real snoozer but it turned out to be really interesting.  They started making crystal here in 1783.  We got a tour of the factory and saw that the process of making a production vase starts with making a wooden mold:

Wooden molds are used for low volume production or prototypes.  Actual production molds are cast iron. 

Here is the motorcycle connection.  The above mold was made for the Honda Classic trophy, whatever that was. 

Here is the wood shop where they make the wood molds.  A woodworkers dream shop.

 

Next we saw them making some vases.  A worker takes a rough form and forces it into a mold and then blows through the pipe to force the glass out into the mold. 

 



After it comes out of the mold, another worker inspects it and then disconnects it from the pipe and cools it down.

Then edges are ground and polished

After many more steps the final product looks like this:

Some of those steps consist of cutting designs into the piece.  We saw men doing this on other pieces.  First the layout lines are drawn:

Then cutting wheels are used to cut the glass:

Each piece in a production run is cut like this by hand.  You might think it could be done by a machine, and in fact it can.  They have a couple of computer aided machines that are used on very heavy pieces or for prototypes, and we saw one in action:

There is another way to make crystal, and that is by carving from a solid block.  We saw a man making this Viking ship:

He sculpts individual pieces like the oars:

And  the shields:

And then glues them onto the ship using an ultraviolet activated glue made by Loctite.

We saw a copy of a piece given to the New York Fire Department in honor of the priest and other first responders who died there on 9/11.