observations

447 miles today, a lit­tle longer than I usu­ally like, but there were Issues. It appears that rain is headed for the north­ern cal­i­for­nia coast tomor­row. In con­sid­er­a­tion, today’s plan was to get far enough south that cut­ting inland could be done fairly early tomor­row, in an attempt to stay dry. Look­ing at the weather for­cast for north­ern cal­i­for­nia tomor­row, it appears that it was futile.

any­way, today’s ride went from port­land to eugene on I5, the south to ore­gon 38, on which I found the drain:

well, day 1 went pretty well. I sit here in the pala­cial liv­ing room of my friends Joce­lyn and Steve, after a nice din­ner, steal­ing their inter-tubes.

two tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties reared their ugly head: the GPS antenna can­not live on top of the radar detec­tor: the radios inter­fere with each other. so, att the first stop, i moved the GPS antenna. prob­lem 1 solved.

sec­ond tech­ni­cal issue was that my fancy 12volt/120volt usb-charges-everything wid­get doesn’t. specif­i­cally, it won’t charge the cell phone. appar­ently, not enough cojones to charge this new-fangled moto cliq xt. for­tu­nately, i have awe­some friends, they took me to radio shack, and i now have a charger that works.

tomor­row, the ore­gon coast to see Michael and Judy, then shoot­ing for the oregon/california bor­der or there­abouts. let’s hope for good weather.

more later, folks

black­dog

The bear is on the road.

The Turbo Giraffe prepped and wait­ing in the sunshine.

The man him­self, suit­ing up.

Every­thing is good to go.

And away he goes…

Departed home slightly after sched­uled time, sit­u­a­tion nor­mal, right? Stopped in mon­roe for fuel and to meet any­one who might have decided to come along and not told me. There is no one there, so about 12:40, I headed east towards stevens pass. light driz­zle, but noth­ing bad. As I get closer to the pass, how­ever, it’s com­ing down harder and harder. pretty soon I’ve folded: out with the glove cov­ers, put the shower caps on the tank and tail bags, and I’ve got the suit liner cranked up to about ‘7’. I stop at the top long enough to shoot a pic­ture, and then boo­gie. About 10–15 miles down the other side, the road is dry,

and I’m start­ing to think I need to dump the heavy gloves and the neck tri­an­gle. By the time I get to wenatchee, it’s about 65 and humid, I ditch the heated liner in a star­bucks park­ing lot and the long johns in their mens room. ah, much bet­ter. Along the way, my brain has been cat­a­loging the things I’ve for­got­ten: so far I’m up to a cup, a spoon, cof­fee, and my flask full of good scotch. the first three are eas­ily remi­died with the help of a safe­way and an ACE hard­ware in chelan. A quick ride out to Lake Chelan State Park, and I find a nice camp­site, right on the lake. I pitch camp, and con­struct my exper­i­men­tal din­ner; one of these freeze dried back­packer meals. I don’t intend to sur­vive on these on my trip, but know­ing if they are edi­ble seems like a good bit of knowl­edge. boil­ing water, a lit­tle packet of oil, and 13 min­utes later: viola, black bean chili pie (there were a few tor­tilla chips, too). not too bad, a lit­tle ‘thin’, but good spice. From this I con­clude: in a pinch, they will do. How­ever, now that I’ve had din­ner, i think of another thing that has been for­got­ten: I could use a cup of tea. oh well, not out here.

well, off for a bit of a walk and some pic­tures before it gets dark.

return­ing to camp, I tidy up, and pre­pare to hit the rack. Next up on the test list, a lit­tle inflat­able pil­low. It comes un a pack­age the size of a juice can, but it works really well. What doesn’t work so well any more is the old Ther­marest sleep­ing pad. Admit­tedly, it’s about 15 years old, but I sup­sect that it’s the age of the back, not the pad! I toss and turn most of the night. finally drop off about 4am, wake up at 7 with both arms numb and trapped under­neath my torso. yukko. OK, that’s some­thing that will need fix­ing.

Get up and about, and try to fig­ure out how to make cof­fee with my new-fangled stove/french press. Mechan­i­cally, this is easy, its a french press right? but it’s been dogs years since I’ve used one. How much cof­fee goes in? how long do I let it sit for. Oh My God, I’ve for­got­ten the recipe for cof­fee! But I mud­dle through, get some­thing mostly drink­able, if a bit weak, out of it, and set about pack­ing my stuff up. Sur­pris­ingly, it all goes back pretty much where it came from, and I head into town to score some break­fast. The Apple Cup cafe in Chelan gets a pass­ing grade: good food and fast, friendly ser­vice.

As I’m gear­ing up to head out, I can’t find the exten­sion con­nec­tion for my heated jacket liner. I paw through all the lug­gage, no lit­tle coiled cord. Oh well, I throw on another shirt and head up the pass. I have a beau­ti­ful ride back over the pass, includ­ing the moment just as I approached the top, a group of rid­ers passed going the other way, giv­ing me the uni­ver­sal ‘law enforce­ment ahead’ sign. Sure enough, the state patrol is at the top, giv­ing our tick­ets to those who can’t read speed limit signs. Not me, today.

So, all in all, a suc­cess­ful shake­down. The bike is comfy and very capa­ble, nearly all of my lug­gage and camp­ing gear works great, and the elec­tri­cal stuff on the bike (heated vest con­nec­tion, and charg­ing port) all work great. If I can fill in the few gaps in my check­list and fix the sleep­ing pad prob­lem, I’m per­fectly set.

See ya on the road!

black­dog on board the Great Pump­klin (aka the Turbo Giraffe)…
shiny side up, y’all!

As some you already know, your obe­di­ent scribe is plan­ning a trip, what my wife and I refer to as ‘going walk­a­bout’ after the aus­tralian tra­di­tion of ‘see­ing what’s out there’. In this case, I’ll be using a KTM 950 adven­ture for trans­porta­tion, and ‘out there’ is shap­ing up to mean­ing most states west of the Mis­souri river; cur­rent the roughly plot­ted course doesn’t include kansas, okla­homa, nevada, north dakota or montana.

Grand plan is a rough rec­tan­gle, with seat­tle, san diego, austin, and des moines form­ing the cor­ners. I have friends and/or fam­ily in all those places. The only hard date in the 4 week adven­ture is that I and 3 bud­dies have tick­ets to the World Super­bike races at Miller Motor­sports Park in Utah on memo­r­ial day weekend.

So with this in mind, I sold my BMW F650 (a nice sin­gle, but cross­ing texas on a 650 sin­gle didn’t appeal) and acquired a low-mileage KTM 950 adven­ture and set about set­ting it up for trav­el­ling like I like. This meant replac­ing the bald back tire, chang­ing the oil, adding con­trols for the heated grips (instead of the sim­ple switch) and for con­trol­ling a heated jacket liner Warm-n-Safe makes these great con­trollers . It also includes a GPS mounted some­where easy to reach and easy for 50-year-old eyes to read. Pics in the next installment.

All of this is pow­ered from a ded­i­cated, fused cir­cuit that is run from the bat­tery in the skid plate, up to the under-seat tray, and then dis­trib­uted to the var­i­ous acces­sories from there. also included is a relay to insure that I can’t walk away from the bike with the grips turned on.

The bike already had a lot of what I think I’ll need: fac­tory pan­niers, tank bag, rear bag, hand pro­tec­tors, crash bars, after­mar­ket seat from Renazco Rac­ing, and the fac­tory ‘tour­ing wind­screen’. What it didn’t have was decent lights. A lit­tle read­ing turned up the answer: the USA head­light is but a pale imi­ta­tion of it’s euro­pean coun­ter­part. Soon, a box arrived at the house with a euro head­light and switch, and an H7 low-beam HID con­ver­sion. Install hap­pen­ing soon. Read about it in the next install­ment of ‘prepar­ing to go walkabout’.

Right now, I have to get ready for the April Fool’s Trial! see ya there!

black­dog

So I decided to take a gam­ble and go to Cal­i­for­nia to retrieve the KTM I pur­chased 3 weeks ago. It is a 2006 KTM 950 Adven­ture with 4000 miles on the clock. The weather reports looked OK, if not stel­lar, but I have good gear, and I warned my boss that i might not get back into the office first thing mon­day morn­ing. Fri­day flight to SFO and cab ride to Mark’s place, where the beast was being stored went with only the usual amount of drama asso­ci­ated with air travel these days. I had expected to receive extra atten­tion dur­ing the “Secu­rity The­atre” as I was fly­ing on a one-way ticket, but it was the nor­mal rou­tine.
Upon arriv­ing at Chez Mark, Joe escorts me to the garage and there’s the beast. it’s even orange-er in per­son, if that’s pos­si­ble. And it’s metal­lic orange, with green met­alflake in it! the bike looks exactly as described, only bet­ter: this thing is basi­cally brand new! if it had a new back tire on it, you’d swear it was right off the show­room. I’m very pleased, and set about get­ting my GPS and heated gear hooked up, with the help of Joe and his awe­somely stocked tool­box. first trick: where do they hide the bat­tery on a KTM 950 Adven­ture? Remove the seat, no not there. peer around next to the air­box, not there. hmm, there seems to be a lot of wiring headed towards the front of the skid plate. And the bat­tery ten­der pig­tail is in front of the rear brake lever. remove a cou­ple of bolts, the skid plat piv­ots down and viola, the bat­tery. some jig­gery pok­ery to get wires routed (with­out remov­ing the fuel tanks, which looks like a task), some zip-tie mas­tery, and every­thing lights up the way it should. I stuck a piece of dual-lock on the side of the GPS and stuck the heat-troller to it, and we’re good. A quick run to the ship­ping place to send the stock seat and stock wind­screen home, then it’s off on the shake­down cruise, down to Los Altos and back, stop­ping to have din­ner with an old friend I haven’t seen in 20 years. What a cool bike: feels a lot like my old F650, except it han­dles bet­ter and has twice the HP. wheee!

Joe writes down some route sug­ges­tions for me, and Mark primes the cof­fee maker. I’m the only one mov­ing at 6:30 Sat­ur­day morn­ing as I pack up and get loaded. I leave a scrawled ‘Thank You’ on the din­ing room table, go out­side and start the bike. It’s only as I’m deploy­ing the sky-crane to get my right boot over the seat that the front door opens and Mark appears, wish­ing me safe trav­els and a thumbs-up. And I’m off. First stop: a lit­tle town called Kent­field to meet a friend for Break­fast. It’s about 45 miles of mixed free­way and city dri­ving, and the bike is pretty pleas­ant, it runs well, han­dles pretty good, if a lit­tle slow to respond to the tiller, but i put that down to the 21″ front wheel. It does seem a tad-lean on the pilot/needle tran­si­tion in the carbs, hunt­ing a bit at 35mph or so in 2nd/3rd gear.
Break­fast han­dled, I gas up (twin fuel tanks, and both will gush gas back at you if you’re not care­ful how you have the noz­zle pointed when you pull the trig­ger). I real­ize I have no idea how much fuel it holds, make a note that it’s at least the 4 gal­lons I just put in, and hit the road in earnest, motor­ing up 101 under gray skies. In about 25 miles, my heat-troller is loose, flop­ping around in the wind, and my right earplug is killing me. OK, I can take a hint. I stop in Santa Rosa, remount the HT (black and white dual lock doesn’t play well together), repo­si­tion the earplug and motor on. 350 miles of awe­some roads later, with only about 10 min­utes of rain the whole way, I see the sign that says “wel­come to Ore­gon, Michael and Judy, next left”. I motor up to the Giant Road Bur­rito and greet Michael and Judy. I think i see a smidgen of bike lust in Michael’s eyes.

Michael and Judy took great care of me, pro­vid­ing a hot shower, hot chicken enchi­ladas, and a nice port to round out the evening. A per­fect way to end a great day of riding.

Sun­day broke grey and damp, but not actu­ally rain­ing. A check of the weather fore­cast was incon­clu­sive; change of rain most of the way up the Ore­gon coast. A check of the var­i­ous passes over the coast range showed no antic­i­pated prob­lems cross­ing over to I-5 where ever I decided to. I get my stuff packed and while I’m doing that Michael makes me a ‘bronze’ mocha (in honor of a fallen friend: it’s a 20 oz. quad shot mocha); I thanked him and told him that if the bike didn’t start I’d just push it to Gold Beach. “One handed” sez Michael! I “Mocha up” and get ready to go. I get a rec­om­men­da­tion for a restau­rant to check out for break­fast (appar­ently run by an ADV rider) and hit the road. It’s about 7:15 AM.
A short ride to Gold Beach, search out the “Bar­na­cle Bistro” only to find it closed. Oh well, back-track to The Cape Café and set­tle in with a cof­fee and the 2-egg break­fast. As I chow down, the sun breaks out and the sky turns a lovely blue. I gear up to head out, mak­ing sure to change to the tinted shield, and I’m on my way. For the next 3–4 hours, I work my way up the coast, from small town to pic­turesque bridge to small town. My GPS says Hwy 18 is the ‘short­est’ route home, and it leads through some of my old stomp­ing grounds, so I go that way. Shortly after depart­ing the coast, I have my only near-brush with Offi­cer Friendly. We are climb­ing up the hills out of New­port, and there’s a ditz in a mini­van doing 53.5MPH in a 55 zone, with 7–8 cars backed up behind her. We get to a pass­ing lane, and she camps out in the left lane, so those of us behind (myself and about 6 cars) pro­ceed to go around on the right. As soon as I’m clear, I shift left and get on it, hop­ing to get out of the clot of cages for the run to the sum­mit. As we round a sweep­ing right-hander, with me pulling out in front the pack, at about 80 per, I spot Mr. friendly parked in the turn-out, with his testicle-toaster hang­ing out the win­dow. I gen­tly roll off the gas, as does every­one around me. Whew, no way he’s going to be able to pick me out of that pack. We gen­tly motor past and my heart rate returns to normal.

The rest of the trip was unevent­ful, with two notable events; while stopped for my final gas stop in Chehalis, I put the hel­met on the mir­ror (yes, I know bet­ter; I was get­ting tired) so I could move the bike away from the pump, and while push­ing it, the hel­met bails and lands face-shield down on the tar­mac. ARRRGGG! Oh well, that shield was ready for replac­ing any­way. And the sun’s almost down, so I swapped it out for the clear one that I took off over 350 miles ago. Upon arriv­ing home, I dis­cover that I also cracked the side cover on the hel­met, so I’ll have to fix or replace that. The other note­wor­thy event, even though wholly pre­dictable, was the speed at which the tem­per­a­ture dropped after the sun went down; with no cloud cover to hold heat in, the mer­cury plum­mets! And I dis­cov­ered that the heated grips on this bike are ‘cal­i­for­nia’ heated grips: Ok for tak­ing the morn­ing chill off, but not up to the job of keep­ing your hands warm in the north­west in febu­rary. I arrived home about 7:23 PM, feel­ing a bit tired but not beat up in any way and very pleased with my purchase.

keep those feet up, and the rub­ber side down.
black­dog