Month: May 2007

Back feels much better today (barring waking up unmedicated) than it has since last week. I was starting to get worried about the trip back out, but looks okay. I do, however, have the trip to Duluth this upcoming week, which will neatly keep me out of the chiropractor’s office until Monday June 4th. Sure hope it continues to improve!

Don’t need any more outfitting, no more preps. I’m 100% good to go bikewise, minor repairs notwithstanding. I did make some minor changes to th packing system… one strap now removes the whole bag assemblage, and I also moved my pillow/backrest out of the way so I can make full use of the Bill Mayer saddle….

Can’t wait to get back to riding!

I saw some ride reports on Hell’s Canyon on ADVRider today. Looks like I have some fun ahead of me. Although I see one obvious thing… slow and safe will be best, as I am going solo. We’ll do our best to keep me out of trouble! Kind of disturbing to see snow still in the forecasts for the Rockies, Going to the Sun road still closed, and snow coverring some of the roads in Hell’s. I don’t know if I will be able to get a set of TKC’s on or not before I head into the Canyon. If so, great… if not, tough cookies, I’ll just have to be more careful…. and pray for “No Mud!” harder than I would ordinarily.

Well, I’ve been extraordinarily lucky/blessed so far with riding weather and conditions, so… I’ll just take it on faith and roll on schedule.

Cheers,

Mark

Well, back seemed to be doing a bit better so I thought I’d see if riding the K75 could help out a bit with limberness. So I ran down to Morton’s, grabbed a battery, and installed it this afternoon, then went for a ride to shake the cobwebs off.

Sad discovery #1: My back’s not ready for it yet…

Sad discovery #2: The K75 is like riding a moped after 22k miles on the GS.

Bummer…

Well, all is good and I’m back home. Well, mostly good. I dumped the bike over again by Grampa’s memorial…

…while trying to get a good shot of the bike and the memorial.

Since it was on the hillside, the kickstand was too high, and as soon as I got off the bike, the bike got off the vertical. Since noone was around to help, I had to right her myself. Fortunately, she was almost empty except for a quick Raley’s run (Where I managed to see both Gina and Mary, as well as get a chance to say “Hi!” and such… and Gina hasn’t heard squat about a 20-yr reunion) for sodas an near-beer for Logan’s dad whch was in the right side case. Well, my back didn’t survive that lift. So back to Doc Berman’s after work today.

Anyhow, after righting the bike, I got my picture and paid my respects. Oddly, there has been no signs of them doing anything to the field for Off. Jeff Mitchell, so I have no idea what is going with that.

As for the bike, crash bars yet again did their job, as did the Jesse bags. However, this time I got to sacrifice the hand guard bracket and right side mirror to the mysterious forces surrounding motorcyclism.

Logan’s place is looking awesome. Definite match of life to living.

The run up the coast from Malibu was awesome. I can’t believe I have never been on that stretch of road before, for all my living in California.

Santa Cruz was.. strained. I don’t think that place can hold on in its form for very long. There is an underlying tension there that is unmistakable…. the tension of the college crowd mixed with the remnants of the hippy/alternative crowd with the dowright street/barrio crowd that is half beach flats, half San Jose. Seems like all the mellower people have gone out to the hills. But downtown is… well, frankly, I think it looked better after the Quake.

Great to be back home, great to see Kirsten, and great to see Kitty. Can’t wait to get back on the road though… with a good back, of course.. and get on with the next part of the trip…. north coast to Glacier!

Well, I’m up way too early for work. Felt like I slept 9 hours, only slept 3… guess I’m up for the duration. Can’t seem to find my back brace, may have to go buy a new one… and keep it on the bike in case I need it.

PS… as a last note, I had a great time talking to Rocky Mayer,

and the new seat is AWESOME….

All pictures of above all subject to a bit of post-trip laziness :=)

Needless to say, though… after lots of this:

There was and remains lots of this:

Now if I could just keep my latest cool motorcycle accessory!

Best,

Belg

A big HELLO from the road! And what cool places the road took me. Some nice gentleman was willing to take a shot with me AND my bike…

At this very, very cool place… where they try and prove that one-in-a-billion odds is a pretty good chance for other life in the universe…

Then after a dark canyon run… “Why do they have the speed limit at 20? That’s stupid..” “Oh, THAT’s why”… I woke up to this view when I was coming down from my morning coffee…

which reminds me, I need to sneak up for another cup before the breakfast closes…

All is good.

Belg

As I said, this leg has pictures. What I did not expect is that I would be so thoroughly wiped out afterwards to even consider dragging the camera out and downloading them.

Let me start by saying “I’m safe and sound, in a nice hotel room, after having a nice medium-long soak in a hot tub and a nice hot shower afterwards..”

Let me repeat.. I’m fine.

Now for the fun part. Bike now has a battle scar. Maybe I should rename it the BattleScar Galactica. Didn’t (I know, I know) take pictures while she was on her side, but I was too embarassed to think of the camera. I had just gotten out of New Mexico (and it’s absolute lack of cell phone coverage north of Las Cruces/west of Socorro) after having a nice fast run with seeral cars. I was tired, had pretty much only had dried fruit for lunch, and needing gas. I stopped at the first gas station I saw.. as did everyone else, apparently. I got impatient, decided to leave. First, I stalled the bike…. then got it restarted, and was heading to the curb. As I was pulling out into the street… a combination of fatigue, loose raingloves, impatience, hunger, and a fractured gutter… well, the bike didn’t go when I twisted a little, and it happend too fast to twist a lot, and when she stopped, she tipped, and all I could do was break her fall.

Fortunately, I did so without using any parts of my body… like bones… as a cushion. I love my bike, but not THAT much. A couple nice individuals helped by put the rubber back where it belonged, an I scootched on down (after thanking them profusely, of course) to the locla McD’s for a burger, a cup of coffee, some salty fries (yay, electrolytes!) and a few good shakes of “Man, you knew better, you coulda really screwed up!”

So, bike now has a scuff on the right handguard, and the highway peg got a bit out of whack, another ding on the Jesse bag, but nothing broken on it or me. Yay.

Rolling back, it was a mini-BMW convention at VLA…. met a few nice riders, it’s too bad I am so horrible with names. Good pictures taken, just can’t put forth the effort tonight.

The other motorcycle drama was a REALLY slushy clutch heading up into Cloudcroft. I stopped at 8600 feet… the crest… and started trying to figure out what went wrong. It -felt- like a bleed issue.. air in the line. After a thorough inspection, the set/adjust screw on the clutch lever had vibrated lose and therefore the clutch was never fully disengaging.

White Sands was cool, and there’s an interesting story there… I found the perfect place to pull over for a mountain picture. So I look down at the ground where I am putting the kickstand down… and there.. of all things… is a brand-new, plastic wrapped quick-release foot for a camera… I was NOT the first photographer to stop there. I laughed… smugly… and took the shot 🙂 No great shakes really, there was a lot of haze…

Cleanest bathroom I have ever seen… pump&gas in Artesia, NM.

Allright.. I’m wiped out, and heading to sleep after I find the weather report…

Belg

Bike rolled over 20k miles around Abilene, TX. Running strong, rode through a brief shower before Big Spring. Other than that, made leg 2 intact… buns sore but rideable. I think I’m getting the hang of this….

More later… next leg has pictures….

Well, leg 1 ended up being longer than I had anticipated. I didn’t calculate from work. 838 miles. Counting the drive into work last night, trip clock is at 900.5 miles. Around 500 miles, my tusch and I declared a truce. It wouldn’t hurt any worse, as long as I acknowledged it hurt. Can;t wait for that new seat. Glad I have a day off tomorrow. I’ll be good to go friday, though. It’s not painful, it’s just… uncomfortable, like your hands feel after weedeating the yard for 2 hours or using a chain saw all day.

Bike pulled nice and strong, all day long. Was supple, handled well, and I spent much of the day with the throttle lock set, feet on the bars, leaning back against the soft bags, steering with 3 fingers.

The ride itself.. well,I thought it was going to be wet… it wasn’t. It was at first, but it openned up on the 81 corridor to a glorious sun-drenched display of cloud topped beauty.

No pics… had too much ground to cover, and..well.. I was enjoying it 🙂

More later…

The day has come, The time is here,
To far-off shores I will draw near.
Throughout this many splendoured land,
I ride with twisted throttlehand.

No longer do I have to wait,
To ride around from state to state,
The bike is packed and I’ll be found
On road and highway westward bound.

—–

Or, the theme song for today’s departure ride… which I am absolutely convinced should have been not about corvettes… though classic vettes rock, he says takin a ride on, not a drive in..:

—–

Drive it on up and let’s cruise a while
Leave ’em very far behind
You can hedge your bet on a clean corvette
To get you there right on time
Now if you’re ready to dive into overdrive
Baby the green lights are on
It’s like you’re runnin away on some high octane
Every time she reached the boulevard

Won’t you take a ride, ride, ride
On heavy metal
It’s the only way that you can travel
Down that road
Satisfied, fied, fied
On heavy metal
Baby won’t you ride
Ride it until it explodes
Heavy Metal

My oh my how this lady can fly
Once she starts rollin’ to leave you
You know you just can’t lose the way she moves
You wait for her to finally release you
It’s not a big surprise to feel your temperature rise
You’ve gotta get your redline fever
‘Cause there is just on cure that they know for sure
You just become a heavy metal believer

Won’t you take a ride, ride, ride
On heavy metal
It’s the only way that you can travel
Down that road
Satisfied, fied, fied
On heavy metal
Baby won’t you ride
Ride it until it explodes
Heavy Metal

You know, sometimes things just seem to work out perfectly. And sometimes, things really do.

It’s 36 hours now until I leave…. well, in 36 hours, I’ll be having breakfast and leaving 30 minutes later. I spent this afternoon packing the bike. I had a lot of the pre-packing done yesterday… getting things out of hard containers and dumping them in baggies. I hd weights on everything but the two main side bags which have the bulk of my riding and cooking gear and food.

After I got them packed, I pulled them out and weighed them. Here’s a happy little sketch I made of the weights and locations of the bags… damn, I’m gonna break my arm patting myself on the back… 1/2 pound difference right and left.

I couldn’t have planned it better… that’s all eyeballed… I wieghed it on the scale AFTER I packed them! :=)

Guess that means I’m READY!

Best,

Mark