Route 66, Day 5, Slight change of plans.....

Well, after 4 riding days, we got a look at the weather and the condition of the riders and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. Between Vern's bum knee, my trick elbow, and Glenn's sensitivity to heat, we decided that trying to cross the panhandle and then New Mexico in 30 to 40 mph crosswinds would just be stupid. Today we burned a day in Yukon, OK to get the new routing down. We have decided to turn East and go to the Barber Motorsports Museum. The miles will be a little easier on the joints, and the weather will be better.

Spending the day in Yukon has been interesting. We went to the BMW dealership over in OKC to pickup a new pair of gloves to replace the ones that Vern blew the seams on. While we were there, we ran into a couple guys, one from Florida, and one from Toronto. They were going down Route 66. Kel spent about an hour going over maps with them.

Random thought from too many miles on the road...."My butt is asleep, that wasn't a fart.....it is snoring.

We also had our "Wild Hogs" moment....we went into the little restaurant in the lobby of our hotel. The name of the place is Big Dick's Roadhouse. It took us about 5 minutes to realize that we were not in our element there. This is not a restaurant, this is a bar that serves food. It had a very nice bar feel, but we felt a bit.....out of place, especially when most of the other customers sang along with the chorus of "Jack and Dianne". I also got to explain to the rest of the crew that "Biker Friendly" does not always necessarily include the touring crowd..... The service was excellent, the food was awesome.

Ok, tomorrow is the leg to Ft Smith, AR. Kind of a short leg. Most of them will be due to the fact that we only have about 800 miles to cover to get to the museum and 4 days to do it.

Here are a few shots of the Canadian River Bridge here in Yukon.




TTFN

Dave

Weekend Trip to Scarborough Faire

This was an interesting little trip. It was kind of a spur of the moment attempt, that turned into a pretty normal little road trip. When I say pretty normal, I mean there were a lot of little things that all went kind of funky, but we all made it back alive, and it was fun.

The idea for this trip came from the fact that Diz got herself a new bike, and wanted to try it out on the highway. Here is a pic of the new bike:



This was our first long ride as a full line. 6 bikes. It was definately a challenge keeping the whole thing together. The trip up to Waxahachie went fairly smooth. We formed up in temple and followed I35 all the way up. The only real excitement, other than getting split up by traffic fairly often, was when my right side carb float stuck open. It wasn't that bad on the highway, but when we hit the first stoplight in town, it started dumping gas on my right boot. I had to pull the bowl and clean it out to get it to stop leaking. After that, it was all gravy....and a boot that stunk of gasoline.

Here is a shot of the line in front of Logan's on the trip back:



This was the funniest looking line I have ever seen. We ended up with a Yamaha, a Honda, a Harley, a Kawasaki, and 2 vintage BMWs. It was actually kind of humorous.

Faire was fun, we each got to do pretty much what we set out to do. I got to ride, Slap got his turkey leg, Diz got to try out her new bike, Glenn got a Steak on a Stake, Kel got to see Queen Anne's Lace on opening weekend. Here is a shot of the girls:



Not a great shot, but you get the idea. If you happen to get out there, go see them. They are great.

The trip back was where the real excitement was. It was decided to come back the long way through Stephenville so we could get BBQ at Hard Eights. To do this we were headed out 287 to 67, then have BBQ. Then we would just follow 281 back south to Austin. The only hitch in this plan was that once we got onto 67 headed for Stephenville, we discovered the 40mph crosswind. All it took was a couple of the bridges to convince us that we should turn south and head for Waco. Once we got to Waco, we had lunch at logans road house and sat around for a while just happy to be alive.

As far as the shakedown run on the new setup for the R90 goes, it was pretty good. One stuck float, but that is actually fairly normal right now. I still need to do some work on that thing. I have a few rattles on the tins that I need to sort out, but other than that, it is looking good.

Here is the route we took for this little trip:


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TTFN

Dave

Why not run.....Day 4

The run out of Alpine was kind of nice this morning. It was real damn cold though. When I left this morning, it was about 30 and it did not warm up until I got into San Angelo at 1:30. I had every piece of thermal gear on that I brought. AND I WAS STILL COLD! I managed to make the whole run in 2 stops, Ft. Stockton and Big Lake.

I don't know exactly what the problem is, but my starter has stopped working. It looks like I will be on the kick-starter for a while, at least until I get home and figure out what is going on. I have a feeling it is the cold jamming up the starter relay, or the switch got dirty. When I hit the button, there is no draw on the lights. That makes me think it is not the battery.

As far as the ride goes, the scenery is pretty, there is a very pretty desolation out here with the mountains and the mesas in the background. The loop that I made up through the davis mountains kind of rocked. The elevation is only about 6000ft, but it started making the bike run funny and use more gas than I am used to. Had a bit of a thought I was gonna run out of gas scare up in the mountains. Now I know that I can go right at 160 miles before hitting my reserve. I also discovered that I have right at 1.5 gallons of reserve. I ended up putting about 4 gallons of gas in my 5.8 gallon tank. All things considered, I really was not in danger of running out of gas. That is just the first time I have hit reserve in the middle of the desrt. about a mile after I hit reserve, I saw a sign that said I had 10 miles to go to Ft Davis. That was the most desolate 10 miles I have ever ridden in my life. When you hit reserve, you become very aware of how barren the landscape is........

On the whole, I have to say that this run has been work. Lots of work. Between the cold and the long stretches of straight empty highways, it has been eating my brain away very slowly. I am having a great deal of fun, but it has been an exercise in endurance. The days have not been very long, but they have not been easy miles, especially on the Ural. I am glad I am on it due to the whole kick starter availability, but the speed limit is around 75 to 80 the whole way. That beast is a beating at those speeds. In the summer or spring, I really want to do this run again with the R90. That will be a whole bucket of go-fast.

Here is the shot I got from the top of the mountain:



I managed to get the camera working on the way out of Alpine this morning. The angle really sucks due to the key cover on the headlight, but it is not as bad as it could be. The sound is horrid. Now I know why people put sound tracks on their videos. Since the road is pretty much straight, there is not much variation. The road is also kind of bumpy so there is an odd vibration. I don't know if I could sit and watch the video all the way through, but it is kind of interesting just in terms of scenery. I cut some of the interesting scenes together and put them up. Just kill the sound unless you find the sound of a riding lawnmower exciting.



I am going to try to get some more video on the way home tomorrow, and that will clear up the key cover a bit (no promises though). I only got a couple of pictures from the top of the Davis Mountains, here is a pretty good one.

Here is today's route:



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Oh well, time for sleeping.

TTFN

Dave

Why not run.....Day 3

I should actually be calling this the "Building Good Road Kharma" run. On day 2, I had lunch with a nice gentleman who is retired 1st Cav. His son is a chopper pilot with the 1st also. He was riding his Electra-Glide from El Paso to spend New Years with his son before he is deployed. He was a very nice guy, kind of made me wish I had brought Gary along with me on this one. Yesterday afternoon, I me two guys in the lobby who were trying to get a room at the hotel. They needed two beds, but all that was left was one. I went ahead and swapped with them since I had two beds. Went out for a beer with them in the evening. One was the CTO for a startup tech company in scottsdale, and the other was a partner in a capital investment company in London. Turns out that he stores a bike in LA and flies in twice a year for road trips. They were making a big loop through the Marfa area before heading back.

Today I made the big loop through the Davis mountains. I am kind of pissed that the video camera crapped out on me. I ended up getting NO VIDEO of the twisting road through the mountains. It was kind of a spooky ride I have to admit. 100 miles from nowhere, and very high stakes curves. I gotta do it again...... I saw the spot where you stop to see the Marfa lights. I was actually tempted to head back out there after dark, but we are supposed to drop to about 25 degrees tonight, and I don't want to be out in the desert in the dark for that much fun. Oh well. It looks like I am going to make the run back to San Angelo in the morning. I think I may detour through the hill country on the way back just for the hell of it. It will add about 2 hours to the ride but it will knock about 50 miles off the route.it's all about the twisty crazyness up there. I actually just want to see if I can get some video that is not just long and straight. The only part about this run that is getting on my nerves is the 120 mile stretch of long straight road that just goes on for-freakin'-ever.

Here is the map for today:


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TTFN,

Dave

Why not run.....Day 1/2

Day 1 started off late due to the rain in Austin. I got out around 11:00. Unfortunately, I still got trapped in the rain from Georgetown to Llano. I could make a list of things I would rather do than ride in the cold and rain, but I don't have that much storage space here. By the time I made it into San Angelo, there was only sleep on my mind. The first leg is actually kind of nice. There is some pretty scenery. I am going to stop on my way back through and take some pictures. The run down to Alpine was interesting. Not bad, just interesting. After you get out of San Angelo, the speed limit goes up to about 80. That got kind of interesting on the Ural. It has a documented top speed of 81MPH, and the fastest I have ever been on it is 83 with the new gears. It was actually kind of creepy running in the long straight flat with the throttle at the stop, and the bike is slowing down on slight grades.

Here is the map for the day. I will get some pictures up tomorrow. The only place that I could find wireless in town is a McDonalds. The coffee shop should be open tomorrow.....hopefully. I am also going to try to shoot some video on the ride up in the mountains.



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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

'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.



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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

Dodging Oklahoma..............Day 5, Made it home alive.

I made it back to Austin alive at around 5:30 Thursday evening. I left Lubbock at 9:30 in the morning. 400 miles in about 8 hours. My butt still hurts. I can honestly say that 400 miles in a day is the max on that bike. The riding position is not as conducive to super long rides, but the suspension and the seat are a lot more comfortable than the Ural. Here is the route back:


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I actually had quite a nice ride. The new bike is definitely a different beast than the Ural. The handling is much lighter, more acceleration, and a lot less in the way of braking. It takes a very strong hand to reel in that thing from 40 mph or more. I also need to look into decreasing the vibration from the pegs and bars. When I stopped for gas, I would also pick up 2 small bottles of water, and hold one in each hand until I could feel the bottle. That helped the swelling go down so I could get the gloves back on. The vibration plays hell with my arthritis over time. If I can kill the vibration in the feet and hands, I think I will be up to 600-800 miles a day on that bike with no problem.

The ride back was very barren, since it was in the middle of a weekday, there was very little traffic. That plus the fact that I was spending a lot of time out on back roads in the middle of nowhere, it had that very isolating feeling that I love about riding. When I am doing the long distance solo runs like this, it is very comforting to be all alone with that quiet hum of the bike. Being all wrapped up in the gear, and then being wrapped around the bike is very comforting. Then you add in how the bike moves in response to your body movements, you start to get a very connected feeling with the bike. It sounds odd, but in some of the gentle sweepers, it almost feels like the bike is just another piece of gear that you put on, and you are flying down the road lust dipping a shoulder slightly when you see a curve coming up. It is very......liberating.

I think the trip back was a good bit of brain Drain-o after the excitement of the past couple days. Once I get a bit of rest, I will throw a recap of the trip up here. There is a lot of stuff to digest.

Vern and Glenn decided to continue the adventure on their own to Hot Springs. I am proud of them for pushing on. I am looking forward to seeing the pictures and hearing the storis from the rest of the ride.

Tomorrow we drop Kel's bike off with Mikey to get the tranny done.

Ya'll have fun now, Ya'hear......

Dave