Might as well go for soda......

So it is time for a bit of a "get out of town". Time to blow some of the cobwebs out from between the old ears. Started out early after work, took off around 4:30, made Waco around 6:30, and Denton around 8:30.

Here is the route:


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Not a whole hell of a lot of excitement today, really pretty boring. Fortunately, that is the point of this trip. No excitement, no plan, just ride till I am tired, and see where I end up. Basic idea right now is to go to Edmond, OK to get a coke at Pop's Route 66, then maybe head up to Tulsa to get a picture at Sam Kinison's grave. Don't know yet, just have to see where I end up. Either way, my brain will be drain-o'd....


TTFN

Dave

Ok, so I am a dork

It turns out that the problems that I was having with the new transmission were just due to getting the new box broken in, and getting me used to actually having to shift the gears instead of just shuffling them randomly.

Now that I am riding the bike properly for the new gearbox, I am finding it much more responsive than the it was before. I also got ahold of one of the San Jose fork braces for the front end. It is possibly the best money ever spent on a motorcycle, other than gas of course. The purpose of the fork brace is to keep the fork legs in line during heavy braking, fast cornering, and general stupidity. I would not have believed that a simple chuck of steel between the forks would do things like......drop 10% off of my stopping distance. Now I don't get the lateral pull when I get on the front brakes as hard. It also changes the way the bike feels when I go into a corner. Before, the big corner on my way to work felt kind of mushyif I took it over about 30. It kind of had that "low tire" feel to it. Now, I have taken it up to 45 (the actual speed limit for both roads) and there is no movement at all. I am definately not inspired to engage in random acts of "squid-idity", but I certainly feel much more confident in the ability of the bike to make emergency manouvers, or sudden stops without wadding up.

Now that everything is back in working order and we are coming up on winter, it is time to start thinking about what I want to do toward the customization/frankenbiking of Athena. The original plan for this bike was to turn her into a cafe racer, with the ability to do real distance. I know the two sound mutually exclusive, but If I do it intelligently, it should not be a problem. The big things that need to be done are the clean-up of the fairing, painting the tank, getting the corbin /6 gunfighter solo seat installed, and the final touch will be upgrading the front brakes to dual disks. I don't see the brake upgrade happening in the near future, but it is worth a thought.

I will probably just break down and spray paint the fairing I have until I can get around to buying the parts and having them professionally shot.

TTFN

Dave

Well, poopie.

It looks like the transmission that got rebuilt is still having problems, so it is going back to mikey. That means another week or so without her. I will be hauling her in on saturday.....again.

well, poo.

ttfn,

Dave

Yay!!!!!!!! The R90 is back.

I just got back in from San Marcos with the R90. New transmission, and a front fork brace. Everything is running very nicely. I am so happy, I am going to take her to work tomorrow. I will probably let the Ural sit for a couple weeks while I get to know her again. All I need to do now is figure out how to get the fork brace attached. The bolt holes are set up for a /7 fender, and I am riding a /6........poop.

Oh well.....

Dave

'Bout damn time, and all that......

My life since my last post, has been what we call in the computer industry, an MPCCF. For those people not used to acronyms, Massively Parallel Cascading Cluster F(ail). That is where a bunch of things go wrong simultaneously, and cause other things to fail in a chain reaction.

It all started with the trip that I had planned to blow the cobwebs out of my brain got sidetracked due to a mess at work that had to be handled. While getting everything sorted on that front, I noticed that the gearbox on the R90 was starting to feel a bit notchy. On the way to work one evening, 3rd gear let go on me. This called for a new gearbox. Just about the time I got ready to get the new box put in, I ended up getting sent out of town for work for a week. This culminated in 6 weeks of work without a day off. When all is finally said and done, I wind up getting everything done on the thursday before labor day weekend. I get the R90 dropped off with Mikey, and Kel and I get ready for the Labor Day Weekend escape. This time we are dragging along two of our friends.

The trip starts falling apart with one of the participants running into family problems the wednesday before we leave. One bike down, three to go. We end up with a trio of airheads heading for Fredricksburg. Two R90's and a Ural. We make it almost 30 miles before we discover that the other friend's R90 is not charging the battery. This can't be good. We end up writing off Saturday getting the battery replaced. Now there is a good battery, but it is still not charging to the highest capacity. It will only charge to maintenance levels if the headlight is off. Sunday is spend tearing through the charging system with a voltmeter checking all of the outputs, cleaning all contacts, and making sure all ground connections are good. At the end of sunday, we are getting 13.8v out of the charging system and all is good.

This brings us to the ride. Finally, I get to put more than 5 consecutive miles on the bike. We end up taking Hamilton Pool Road to 281, and then to Marble Falls. Have Lunch at the Bluebonnet Cafe, and then come home down 1431. We only pushed about 125 miles, but it was better than a beating (just barely). In the end it was a nice ride. I had lots of fun.

Here is the route. Sorry, no pictures.



View Larger Map

Time to start planning a trip for sometime around my b-day.

TTFN,

Dave

Doodie calls......

No, that is not a typo. Two of my co-workers are going on vacation, I am their cover while they are out. One of them is stuck in the middle of a steaming pile of poop of an issue. I am having to work this weekend to cover for him on the issue. It was hoped that everything would be cleared up before today so I could leave on my soda run. Unfortunately, I didn't get out of work until it was too late to leave, and I have to be local for a conference call tomorrow. This means I get to re-schedule the soda run till next weekend (weather permitting).

Since I am in town for the weekend, and Kel is off on her Band Geek Weekend (tm), I am going to do the only honorable thing. I am going to take my R90 out to San Marcos, the back way, and spank the nasty right on out of her. I have taken the Ural down those roads alot, and it tends to corner unreasonably well. I am curious to see how a bike that is set up for this type of riding handles it.

Being back on the Ural after riding the R90 for a month or so has certainly highlighted the differences between then. The Ural is actually a much more nimble bike. It turns in faster than I realized, and it takes very little effort to toss around. It almost makes the R90 feel like I am piloting a brick. The R90 on the other hand, is much more definate. It takes more effort to turn the R90, but it feels more precise. The Ural feels a bit more approximate "I think I will go kind of that way-ish".

Oh well, Time to go to bed.

TTFN

Dave

Film from Brenham and Roswell came back finally

I am re-discovering the joys of film photography. With digital, you take the picture, look at it, post it, and forget it. With film, you take it, get home, get it processed, get around to scanning it, sort through the shots and then post it. With that delay, you get to enjoy the rest of your trip. When you get back you end up waiting up to a week to get the film processed. It gives the trip a bit of time to sink in, and then when you get the pictures back they are viewed in the context of the trip, not just a single day. The shots from Brenham were taken with a Ciroflex TLR. It is an old box camera from the mid 40's. It shoots 6cm x 6cm square negatives. The shots in Roswell were taken with a Speedgraphic 2x3 view camera with a 6cm x 7cm roll film back attached.

Here are the shots from the Brenham shakedown trip with Vern and Glen:




Here are some shots from downtown Roswell (the roll of the wind farms did not come out):




Here are the shots from our first day trip to Stonehenge II near Fredricksburg:



TTFN

Dave