Thursday

Woke up this morning at six and it was not raining, but when I looked at the radar on my phone I saw it was not far away.  Got a quick breakfast and put on the rain gear.  This took about half an hour.  I have rain jacket and pants, of course, but also boot covers and glove covers and then rain covers for my tank bag and tail bag.  All of it worked through a couple of hours of steady rain.   Between Susanville and Oroville there are some really good roads.   Most notable of these are highway 89 and highway 70.  I think Big Mike and I rode these a couple of years ago on our ride to the Reno area.  Hwy 70, in particular, has some stunning scenery and lots of curves.  Unfortunately, it was raining the first rain in a long  time and I could actually see the oil/water mix on the pavement alot of the time.  I was riding a bit tense.  There were also rocks falling off the cliffs so there were some bowling-ball size rocks in the road.

Eventually I got past the front.  I checked the radar app on my phone to be sure.  This is a great app for a motorcyclist.  Here is a picture of it that I took after I had been past the rain band for awhile.

Later on when I was near Clear Lake, CA I ran into a little bit of rain and used the app to reassure myself it was just a minor shower, so I didn't stop to put on any rain gear.

We hear a lot about the drought in California, but I obviously was not experiencing any of it.  However, I did pass over a reservoir just outside of Oroville that shows an example of how bad it is:

I got to Jenny's house around 4:30 and found cold PBRs waiting for me in the fridg.  I rode just over 1000 miles in the three days to get here and managed to miss most of the rain, which I understand from talking to Carolyn is still falling at times at home.  My original route down the coast would have been about 830 miles.

2014 Long Ride

Tuesday, Sept. 23

Every year, usually in the late summer/early Fall, I like to do a multi-day long ride to somewhere.  These are all reported earlier in this blog.  This year I decided to head south to my old haunts in Southern California and on the way there meet up with Jenny for a ride down the coast from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo.  Since she only has certain weekends that she can get away for a ride, we chose the weekend of 27-28 September.  My plan, then, was to leave home on the 25th and make a two-day ride down the coast to San Francisco and arrive at her house on Friday evening.

As the date of departure approached, the weather predictions called for a drastic change from the long dry spell we had been experiencing into days and days of rain.  After keeping track of the predictions for a week before, it looked like I might be able to head east instead of south and maybe stay ahead of the rain before turning south and around the edge of the front.  So I left this morning (Tuesday) with rain predicted to arrive within hours and headed easti for John Day, Oregon.  I made it the whole day and 330 miles with maybe 10 drops of rain hitting my visor.  

I've done this ride to John Day quite a few times and it is one of my favorites.  It has many miles of Good Roads and lots of great scenery.  I think I posted this picture before, but I just love this section from Shaniko to Antelope:  

There was a lot of nostalgia in this ride, remembering rides with friends.  I stopped at the Service Creek stage stop where we had stayed several times.  Once after a blazing hot day which ended up with rain, we arrived at the lodge and nobody was there.  The place was open, so we  got inside, but we were getting hungry and the nearby restaurant was unmanned.  Desperate, I rode 20 miles to the town of Fossil and back to pick up a frozen pizza and a six pack of beer.  Neither fit in my saddlebags very well, so they were sticking out when I arrived.  There are still pictures of the "Pizza bike" posted on some walls.  Another time I remember late in the evening watching the International Space Station with the space shuttle following it pass overhead in the evening sky.  And then there was the time we watched a bull elk with an impressive rack walk past the lodge and then be silhouetted against the sky on the ridge behind the lodge.  Good times.  

Much of the route follows the John Day river through some beautiful country.  I was stopped at this road construction for awhile

And just turned around to snap this picture:

Tonight I am staying at the same motel that three of us stayed in once in the same room.  I think it has changed names, and the attached restaraunt is closed but it's atill the same relative bargan.  There are a whole bunch of Brit motorcyclists staying here.  I chatted some of them up and found that they are nearing the end of their ride that went from Santa Rosa, up the West Coast and then into the Canadian Rockies, returning through Glacier Park and Yellowstone.  Tomorrow they are heading west to Bend and then down to Crater Lake.  I think they are going to get rained on.  There must be a dozen of them and they are all on heir own BMWs that they shipped over here.  

Wednesday

Today was pretty much a "make mileage" day  to get to where I am staying tonight (Susanville, Ca).  It was a long day with  a lot of very straight roads and some high winds.  The wind was almost always a headwind and cut my gas mileage from high 50s to high 40s.  I stopped to get gas and saw this Harley   rider giving up and loading his bike into a trailer.  He said the wind was beating him to death.  

Along with the high wind was blowing dust.  At first I thought it was smoke from a forest fire east of Sacramento, but then I passed a dry lake where I could see the dust blowing off the lake.  It was pretty thick and coated my windscreen and visor.  

The bike is running good.  There were some times when passing where I felt it was down on power, but I think (hope) it was a combination of the headwinds and the fact that once I left John Day until I got to Susanville, I was never below 4000 ft.  It's strange that the country can be so high and yet be pretty treeless and flat.

All this wind is a harbinger of a weather front that is approaching and which is supposed to make for a rainy day for me tomorrow......at least in the morning.

Building the Good Roads

Trails, actually.  The local dirt bike and quad club that I used to be active in is working with the state Department of Natural Resources to build some trails in the Yacolt Burn State Forest.  I had a day free and volunteered to  help out.

I rode the KLX up to the start of the new trail and got to work.  The club has purchaced a machine designed to build single-track trails and my job was to go along behind the machine and smooth out the "hump" that is formed in the midle of the trails by the tracks of the machine.  Here I am with a McCloud, a sort of rake/hoe that is a common tool of trailworkers and forest fire fighters: 

This is the trail building maching.  It has a blade in the front as well as a backhoe type digger:

The guy in the front is brushing out the route in advance of the trail machine.  

This give you an idea of the condition of the trail after the machine has done it's work.  It does take a skilled operator, though.  

We were making pretty good progress when the hydraulic pump sprung a leak.  Since everything operates via hydraulics, this pretty much brought work to a hault until the pump could be replaced and the hydraulic fluid tank topped up.  Big Mike is the club president and also the guy who does all the maintenance on the club equipment, so he took off to get a replacement pump, and I took off for home.  

Big Mike, before the pump failure:

The WBDR Through Fire and Brimstone

Last summer I reported on riding the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route (WBDR), a four-day dual sport ride from my house to the Canadian border http://thegoodroads.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_archive.html.  This past winter one of my fellow motorcycle club members and old friend from Southern California called and said he had heard I had done the ride and he and a friend wanted to try it.  Would I be interested in doing it again?  What made it appealing for a second shot was that they would have a chase vehicle.  This meant I would not have to carry my clothes for four days and therefore not need to wear a backpack.  I had really come to hate that backpack last year because it closed up the vents in my jacket and made it extra hot, besides the hassle of putting it on and taking it off all the time.  So the plan was on.  The two guys from SoCal who were doing the ride were still working, so they had to plan their vacation ahead of time, and we chose the 14th through the 17th of July.  In a normal year, this would allow for the snow to have melted at the higher elevations, but should have been too early for forest fires to be a problem.  But this turned out to not be a normal year.  By July 14th there were already fires along the route, and we were entering a multi-day heat wave.  I spent the week before their arrival keeping close tabs on the fire that was most likely to impact our planned route, and working on an alternate way around it. 

After a day and a half of driving, Mike, John, and Harold arrived at my house.  Sunday evening we had a BBQ featuring Tri-tip steaks and then a lot of catching up with the past.  Monday morning we were ready to ride:

John in the center and Mike on the right. 

Harold, who is retired like me, is driving the chase van.  

The first day was from my house to Packwood and was very familiar to me.  Beside the variation in the official WBDR required by starting from my house instead of Stevenson, I had also added in some extra mileage to ride some of the more technical roads that I had found over the past three years of exploring the area.  It was a nice morning; not too warm, and the wildflowers and low clouds were keeping things scenic:

Then we came on this:

I had been by this way a couple of weeks earlier and saw they were setting up this logging operation, but they assured me they were not going to close the road.  I reminded them of this and whether or not it had anything to do with it, they said they would have the road back open if we waited 15 minutes.  So the California boys got to watch some Washington loggers in action while they moved the logs out of the way. 

Continuing on, we got some nice views of  Mt Adams on the way to lunch at Trout Lake, where Harold met us. 

By the time we got to Trout Lake, it was warming up.  The predicted temps for the whole upcoming week were not looking good.  Fortunately I had discovered an old armored shirt that I had bought years ago that I never liked because it had a lot of foam pad in it that made it really hot.  I spent a couple of hours in one evening before the ride removing all of this foam, so that I could have shoulder protection with the mesh that was left after the foam was removed.  I combined that with some elbow armor I had to make a protective suit I could wear and not need the jacket.  So this is what I wore after Trout Lake and for the rest of the ride:



I had laid out a route for Harold to drive to meet us in Packwood, but when we got there.......no Harold.  We were hot and dirty and anxious for a cold beer and a shower, but everything was in the van. 

We eventually got tired of waiting for him and rode our bikes over to the pizza place a couple of blocks away and while we were eating we saw Harold drive by in the van and called the motel to have them direct him to the pizza place.  Harold had had a long day.  The directions I gave him to get from Trout Lake to Packwood led him to a dead end on a road too narrow to turn that long van around.  he spent most of the afternoon and early evening wandering around the Gifford Pinchot until he finally figured it out.  After Harold had eaten we all headed back to the motel, but Mike didn't show for awhile and then he arrived pushing his motorcycle.  He never got it started that night and it was too dark to work on it. 

The elk herd which hangs out in Packwood that I see every time I stay there was out in force:

The next morning Mike still couldn't get the bike to run.  It had no spark, so he loaded it up in the van and John and I headed out on the route from Packwood to Ellensburg.  There is quite a bit of pavement riding hwy 12 to get east of Mt Rainier national park, but there are also some great views of the mountain, including this one from a viewpoint:

Once off of hwy 12, we started the hardest section of the whole WBDR.  Last year I made it with no problem, but this time I had a crash on a rocky uphill where my rear wheel slid into a big rut and brought me to a sudden stop, causing my chest to strike the handlebars and bruise my ribs.  (The foam I removed from my armored shirt probably would have prevented that.)   After John helped me get going again I missed a turn and ended up going up and down another bunch of rocky hills that were not part of the route.  We had to back track about 3 miles and do all the hills over again to get back on track, and after that I was wasted.  I was riding like crap after the crash and hanging on for life in the rocks rather than relaxing.  The result was blistered hands, which I haven't had since racing in the California desert on poorly suspended bikes back in the day.  The ribs bothered me the rest of the week, especially when I coughed or sneezed, or rolled over at night.  Still, I knew no ribs were broken (been there done that) because I could still breathe OK. 

By the time John and I got to Ellensburg it was over 100 degrees.  A cold shower and a colder beer never were more welcome.  That evening Mike and John went over every electrical connection on Mike's bike and finally found a bullet connector on a wire coming from the stator that was not fully seated.  It was great to hear that KTM running again.  I hated to think that Mike had driven 1000 miles to get here and spent his vacation without getting to do the ride. 

So, Wednesday morning the three amigos started out for Lake Chelan.  The route would go through the area where I knew there were road closures due to the Mill Canyon fire.  From the internet I had obtained an idea of the area of the fire and planned a route that would take us to the outskirts of Levenworth from where we could head back into the forest to get around the western edge of the fire.  However, when we got to the detour road we found:

It may look like a couple of dejected riders with their heads hanging, but we are actually looking at our GPSs trying to find some alternate route.  The first alternate was also closed:

However, my GPS, but not Mike's or John's, showed another road further along that looked like it would work.  With all three of us working together, we found a route that got us past the Mill Canyon fire to the little burg of Ardenvoir, where we got gas.  After several more hours of riding old burned out forest, we got to Lake Chelan where it was again over 100 degrees. 

The next day, Thursday, I thought we were past the fires, but as we approached the little town of Carlton where we planned to get gas, we came upon more smoke.  This turned out to be the Carlton Complex fire that was not even reported yet on the official fire reporting website.  It had started two days earlier from lightening, and the fire fighters were just starting to fight it and set up operations.  We ended up getting a lot closer to a brush/forest fire than I ever had before.  The fire was burning right down to the road we were on.  In the picture below you can see Mike and I talking to a fire supervisor after John had gone ahead and turned around to take the picture.  We had just come through the area with all the smoke in the background. 

We got to Carlton, gassed up and continued on the trail, only to see of in the distance another fire that we were heading right towards:

This got to looking worse and worse as we got closer until finally we decided to turn around and stay out of danger and the possibility of interfering with fire fighting operations.  We attempted to take hwy 20 to Okanogan, but they closed hwy 20 15 minutes before we got there and we ended up having to ride all the way back to Carlton and then to hwy 97 and north to Okanogan.  The fire was by then chasing us down the highway and two of the towns we passed through, Brewster and Pateros, burned up that evening losing almost 100 homes.  Here is a pic of the smoky air we had to ride through with fires burning on the not too distant hillsides:

After a long, hot, smoky 85 mile road ride we got back on the track at Conconully and were finally out of the fire area.  We took a road with this road sign:

 

That led to this abandoned ranch:

 

Then, in one of the few times that the GPS led us astray, we got on this "road less traveled" and had to do some backtracking:

 

After one more time (the third) of Mike having difficulty starting his bike (he needed a tow start from John this time), we got to the border crossing.  It was closed since it was after 5pm, but we were not planning on crossing anyway:

 

 

Total distance from my house to the motel Thursday night was 760 miles.  Despite the heat, fires, crash, and blisters, I enjoyed the ride and spending time with a couple of old acquaintances (Mike and Harold), and one new one (John).  Mike and John put in a lot of miles even though they are still working.  Last year they did 1500 miles in 10 days on the Tour of Idaho.  Mike has over 30,000 miles on his 2004 KTM 450 (and based on the problems he had with it, I think it is time for a new one).  They are used to having some kinds of problems pop up that they have to solve, and this ride was no exception.  Because of this, they inducted me into their "club", which has as a logo a picture of a monkey doing the nasty on a football.  They promise to send me a sticker:

Black Dog Dual Sport Ride

Last winter, around January or February, my friend Ray talked me into entering this event, a two-day dual sport ride: http://www.blackdogdualsport.com/bd_events.htm.  I thought that with Ray also entered, although he would be riding the more difficult "A" course versus my less challenging "B" course, I would at least have somebody there that I could hang out with and maybe share a ride to and from the event.  Well, last weekend was the event, and Ray couldn't make it due to some eye surgery that he was recovering from.  So Carolyn and I showed up Saturday morning and tried to figure it our on our own.  Suiting up:

 

Before we even got out on the course they had us ride some little obstacles and I chose the slow route over some boards rather than ride over the tractor tires:

 

Once out on the course, the first challenge was learning to use a roll chart that the club had provided.  This gave turn-by-turn instructions for following the course, which only had rudimentary course marking.  I got lost within the first few miles.  The problem was that my motorcycle odometer was way off from the mileage on the roll chart so that I made a turn too early and then nothing matched up after that.  I went back to the start and gave it another go.  This time I relied on my Garmin Zumo GPS for mileage and it matched much closer. 

Within maybe the first 10 miles the course was routed down a god-awful rocky downhill that had me creeping along with one foot on the ground and releasing the brakes to gain a couple of feet and then do it all over again.  I wish I had taken some pictures, but I was in survival mode and not about to let go of the handlebars to grab the camera.  Back when I had a real dirt bike and the skill to ride it, I'm sure I would have been able to ride down that hill, but I still probably would not have liked it.  That was the worst of it, but the course continued to be really rocky, plus mud holes and steep climbs.  Finally, I fell over on an uphill and the bike landed with the wheels uphill and the tank and bars downhill.  I couldn't pick it up in that position and had to wait for somebody to come along and help me.  I was quickly getting exhausted and sweating like a pig. 

This was not starting out well.  I knew I wasn't going to be able to do 160 miles like that.  I decided to switch to the "C" route, which was supposed to be more for the bigger adventure-type bikes.  My bike is not very big, but then, neither am I, so it is more an adventure bike for little old men.  When the "B" route joined with the "C" route the riding got much more enjoyable and I ended up riding on the Old Barlow Road, which is part of the route the Pioneers took into Oregon.  I've been on this road once before and wanted to learn how to find it again, and this time I had my GPS to provide a track for me.  It had rained the two days before the even and it was cloudy and drizzling on Saturday, so the road was in perfect condition.  The only problem was that my sweat from the earlier exertion was now making me cold:

All was going well and I was beginning to really enjoy the ride, when I came to a place where the route chart just did not match the roads.  People were riding all over the place trying to figure it out.  I hooked up with another guy who said he thought the course went to the little town of Wamec, so we headed down that way.  It was a long way to Wamec and when we got there we still could not find the course.  About the only option by that time was to take highways back to the start at the Hood River county fairgrounds.  I did eventually cross the course and finished the last 10 miles or so on the correct route.   By the time I got to the finish, though, I had gone 212 miles instead of the 160 that was supposed to be the distance. 

Carolyn and I stayed in the town of Hood River, which was about 9 miles from the fairgrounds, and breakfast at the hotel was at 6 am and the riders meeting was at 7 am.  By the time we had breakfast and I suited up we were running late, so I was driving sort of fast to get to the rider's meeting.......and I got pulled over by a county sheriff.  I was lucky that he ended up not giving me a ticket. 

There was a guy behind me at the start and we seemed to be riding together for quite a few miles.  Eventually I stopped and we had a chat.  Imagine my surprise when I saw that he was riding a military motorcycle made by Fred Hayes, who used to belong to the same club as I (Chaparrals) when I lived in Southern California. 

 

 

 

The rider's name was Jake, and he turned out to be a really interesting guy.  He had been working his butt off in North Dakota in the oil fields and had saved up enough money to quit his job and go adventuring.  He bought the bike in Utah,  trucked it to the border below San Diego, and then rode it down to Cabo on the tip of Baja California and back.  He was next going to work his way towards Mt. Rainier which he plans to climb during the last week in this month.  He found out about the Black Dog while passing through Hood River when he stopped at a bike shop to buy a new shift lever, and decided to do the Sunday ride. 

I told him I knew quite a bit about the story of the military motorcycle he was riding and could maybe find out some details of his particular bike. 

We ended up riding the whole day together and had a good time.  The ride itself, though, couldn't have been more different than the day before.  It was basically a road ride with a lot of pavement and a few dusty gravel roads thrown in.  Jake and I kept a pretty brisk pace, which was all the more impressive because his rear shock was toast.  He had hit a ditch in Baja at high speed and blew the seals in the shock.  Consequently, it had very little oil in it and he would bounce like a pogo stick whenever he hit a bump or road dip. 

                                                                                        Jake

At the finish, after talking to Jake, Carolyn and I realized he had no place to stay and no way to work on his bike before he was scheduled to climb Mt Rainier (he was meeting a climbing partner in Seattle).  So we decided to invite him to stay with us and we would try to either fix the shock or get a replacement.  Jake stayed that night.....and the next......and the next.  We just could not find parts for the shock, or any replacement that could be obtained in a reasonable time.  We had a great visit though.  Jake is a real gearhead and biker.  He owns three other motorcycles besides the military KLR; two dirt bikes and a GSXR 1000. He told stories of the many varied and interesting jobs he has had in his 30 years of living.   I even put him to work helping me chip branches from trees I had felled in my firewood gathering work.  We put in a pretty full afternoon at it in between rain showers on Monday. 

 I also managed to get in touch with Fred Hayes and got this email response from him about the motorcycle:

"Hi Gerry:

Great to hear from you.  Hope all is well with you and Carolyn.
The bike was manufactured 04/2000 as part of a Marine Corps contract as shown on the data plate.  There were several hundred auctioned off between 2004 and 2009 that didn't get into the diesel conversion contract.  This is one of those units.

This unit is one of the earlier units as it doesn't have the vents in the front of the gas tank.  If he ever wanted one of the new tanks, he may be able to get one from IMS Products.

I'm still building diesel bikes and you can check out what I've been doing at www.dieselmotorcycles.com

Again, great to hear from you.

Best to all,
Fred & Kay..."

By Wednesday, though, we had given up on finding a solution for the broken shock, and just put some gear oil in the old one and put it back on the bike.  We figured the gear oil might not leak out of the blown seal as fast as real shock oil.  Jake left on Wednesday morning and Carolyn and I wish him well and safe climbing on Rainier. 

 

Mustang Motor Tear-down

Brian and Colin were down this weekend and we put the Mustang away for the summer, but also got the old motor out and took it apart.  I'm pretty sure the plan is to buy a new drop-in crate motor, but I still wanted to see if the old motor was salvageable.  I also wanted to give Colin and Brian a chance to do some "wrenching" and see what the inside of a car engine looked like.  When we took the engine out of the Mustang we put it on an engine stand and it has been there in the equipment shed for the past two years.  We got it out and over to the shop and started taking it apart.  We had the intake manifold and the heads off before I thought to take some pictures, but what we found was the most caked-up engine I have ever seen.  This photo of the lifter galley was taken AFTER a lot of the gunk had been removed:

Then we turned it over and took the oil pan off:

 
Some residual coolant drained out plus more gunk:

 

Colin got to take the oil pan bolts out the old way while I used the quick and lazy way:

 

Next came the lower end con rod bolts:

 

Once we started taking the pistons out we were in for a big surprise; two of the pistons had broken skirts:

 

We found the broken pieces and they were intact and had not been ground into little bits, but it must have made a heck of a racket to have them rattling around in the crank case. 

Many of the bolts on the motor were quite a bit looser than I expected, especially the intake manifold and head bolts.  Maybe this engine had over heated and stretched them.  The crankshaft bolts were another matter, and it took Colin some extra effort to get them loose:

 

Once he popped a few of them loose, I showed him how much easier it was by using an air wrench:

 

We didn't actually take the crankshaft out as it was getting time for dinner and we still needed to get the cam chain off, which meant a bit more disassembly.  I will do that later, and also try to find a way to measure the bore diameter of the cylinders to see if the block can be bored again.  I don't think it can, as a crude measurement with my calipers showed it was already about 0.045 in. over and there are some scratches from those broken pistons that would have to be removed. 

The next day was Brian and Colin's day to help gram and gramps with some home projects.  The first was the removal of a tree that we had planted when we first moved in that was now so big it was shading other plants that Carolyn wanted to get more sun.  I made some partial cuts and then hooked the tractor up and pulled it over:

 

 

Then we chipped the branches:

 

And hauled off the big pieces.  That Colin is a strong kid; I don't think I would want to try to lift that log:

The next project was to help me with my firewood gathering.  I'm getting close to completing my yearly 4.5 cords, but any help is appreciated.  First we load up rounds I've cut from our property next door:

 

Take it to the wood shed:

 

And commence splitting and stacking:

The axe man:

 

The loggers: