Monthly Archives: July 2009
July 31, 2009
WFO-8 Day 5
R&R day in Moscow, ID.
July 30, 2009
WFO-8 Day 4
Tumwater, WA to Moscow, ID. Mud Mountain Dam; Rock Island Dam; Wapato Dam; North Scootenay Dike Dam. 488 miles.
Click on map for larger view.
Mud Mountain Dam. My bike really wasn't supposed to be on this observation platform, so I had to be ready to scram on short notice…
Rock Island Dam
Wapato Dam
North Scootenay Dike Dam (take 2)
SPOT map - full size
July 29, 2009
WFO-8 Day 3
Redmond, OR to Tumwater, WA. Rock Creek Dam; Fishhawk Lake Dam; Deschutes Dam. 364 miles.
It took me a couple of tries to find the turn-out for Rock Creek Dam — here's the STV map with the GPS track in pink:
Rock Creek Dam
Fishhawk Lake Dam
Deschutes Dam
Click on photo for a larger image.
SPOT map - full size
July 28, 2009
WFO-8 Day 2
I left Red Bluff around 9am, heading up I-5 into the mountains by Mount Shasta. The bike turned over to 50,000 miles near Lakehead - I took a couple of pictures.
I stopped for gas and a couple of t-shirts in Weed, and headed up US-97. I should have stopped for lunch in Klamath Falls, but kept going. Just north of town, on a section of US-97 with one lane in each direction, I was forced to the shoulder by a woman in a minivan making a pass. Luckily the shoulder was wide and smooth.
Carole called me just as I turned off on Silver Lake Road. I found a turn-out a mile or two down the road, and stopped to stretch and return her call (which was good news on a medical check-up). The rest of the run to the Thompson cut-off was quick, if you know what I mean.
Just after I hit OR-31, I cut south onto Silver Creek Marsh Road, and 14 miles later did some off-roading to a ridge overlooking the dam from the west. The new tripod worked perfectly.
I backtracked to OR-31 and got gas, then did a bunch of miles over 7k rpm in fifth, reaching Lapine at US-97. The highway was under construction, and I had a 15 minute hard stop at a flag man. I chatted up a couple of ladies on sport bikes heading to a rally somewhere in Washington state.
Traffic was slow through Bend, but picked up afterwards. The Motel 6 in Redmond is one of the nice, three-story ones, with interior corridors and smoke-free floors. I ate at the adjacent Subway and read for a while; later I walked down to the Albertsons for water, granola bars, and some popcorn. I watched about half of a Star Trek with bad audio sync.
Red Bluff to Redmond, OR. Thompson Reservoir Dam. 391 miles.
Click on each photo for larger image.
SPOT map - full size
July 27, 2009
WFO-8 Day 1
I had packed up last night, checked the tire pressure, and filled the gas tank, so all I had to do was put on my gear, hop on the bike and hit the road. I left the driveway at 6:25am, to beat as much of the heat as possible.
After I cleared the Grapevine I was feeling a little queasy, so I stopped for a small breakfast. I needed gas before Harris Ranch.
Somewhere along the way I realized that I hadn't packed my mini-tripod, which is necessary for Dam Tour pics. My fantastic sister had given me a Target gift card for my birthday, so I stopped in Sacramento to check out their selection. There was a great little tripod, on sale no less, that looked ideal for the task. It folds up to less than a foot, but it extends to almost four feet, and has a lockable tilt/pan head. Since it was on sale, I also grabbed a new neck lanyard.
I grabbed a sandwich at the Quizno's across the street, and read my latest Anne Perry novel for a while.
The heat up to now had been manageable, but it was still hot as I headed north from Sacto. About the time I passed Willows, it was like someone had opened the oven door, and it got brutally hot - over 111°. Thankfully the A/C in room 226 at the Motel 6 in Red Bluff was up to the job. Grilled chicken at the KFC next door for dinner.
Home to Red Bluff. 523 miles.
SPOT map - full size
July 25, 2009
Oil change
I did my first ever FJR oil change today, before heading out to WFO. Hal's tips were even better in practice than in theory.
I had a problem with the drain pan. I thought the central plug on the top was open, but it really wasn't. When I pulled the drain plug, the oil did not drain into the reservoir, but mostly got all over the driveway. About half-way along, I yanked on the plug enough to get it open, but the damage was done. I started with cat sand, and got some oil-dry at Pep Boys.
Mileage was 49,409.
July 18, 2009
New front tire
Back in September of last year, I bought a set of Michelin Pilot Road 2 tires from Derby Cycles in Kentucky. At the time, the front tire was doing okay, so I took the rear tire out to a place in Rancho Cucamonga for mounting and balancing.
Even after I had to replace that rear tire, the front was still in pretty good shape. After last weekend's ride to Big Bear Lake, I knew it was done. Like usual, there's still more than enough tread left, but the cupping is intense, and it rides like crap.
On a fluke I called up Kel, the owner at Pasadena Yamaha and asked if he'd mount the new front tire I had in a box in my garage, and he said sure, and for the bargain basement price of only $20 otd. The guy in Rancho charged me $25 for the rear mount, plus I had to drive it out there, so this was a deal I couldn't pass up.
I had never taken off the front wheel before, so I was maybe overly meticulous, but by following the instructions on the FJRTech.com site, everything worked out. I dabbled with a couple of methods for keeping the front end up, but wound up using my floor jack with a piece of wood under the front headers.
I drove the wheel and the new tire up to Kel, who got it mounted and balanced while I ran to Sears.
Reassembly got a little exciting. While I was wrangling the axle back in, the bike slipped a little on the jack. I got Justin to help stabilize it while I realigned everything, and there were no further incidents.
Since I had mistakenly pulled in the brake lever after the wheel was off, I made sure to pump the lever a few times to get the pads set (per HMarc's posted directions). The short test ride was uneventful.
Mileage at the tire change is 49,407. I should hit 50,000 on the way to WFO-8.
Front stand
After putting on a new front tire by jacking the bike up on the headers, I'd really like to get this front fork lift stand from NewEnough.
July 14, 2009
WFO-8
This year's WFO is being held in Moscow, ID, site of the very first WFO. WFO is a rally held for owners of Yamaha FJR1300 motorcycles who live in the Western United States.
I've got a route planned out that will get me there and back, and let me visit 12 of the 13 dams I have remaining on this year's Dam Tour. I'm going to revisit the North Scootenay Dike Dam, since I missed it by half a mile on the way back from CFR.
The Dam Tour is put on by a group in Portland every year, where you visit 20 dams in the Oregon/Washington area. At each dam, you take a picture of your motorcycle, a special id placard provided by the Tour organizers, with the dam in the background. I'm trying to visit all 20 dams on the list.
Carole and her friend Mandy are driving up in the 'Vette to visit our friend Cindy in Spokane, and Jeremy is flying up to meet them for a belated Mother's Day visit. Carole was in Spokane over Mother's Day weekend, and Jeremy planned to fly up to meet her then, but had to cancel when the other courier at his work got ill. I'll meet up with everyone over the weekend.
If all goes according to plan, the only dam I'll have left is O'Shaugnessy, which makes the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park. The current plan is to do a one-day ride in late August as a BBG training ride.
Overnights are in Red Bluff, CA; Redmond, OR; Tumwater, WA; Moscow for three nights; Clarkston, WA (after a ride up to Spokane); and Winnemucca, NV.
Here's the full route plan, which just fits in Google Maps's 26 stop limit:
July 13, 2009
SPOT maps, and now wider...
I have a couple of changes to the site to report.
First, there's an updated SPOT page. Originally, I used rewrites to redirect tcfjr.goption.com/spot to my findmespot.com page — which isn't the best idea, privacy-wise. Next, I redirected to my current trip page on Jason Jonas' site. Better, but it still meant I had to ssh into my shell account to update the redirect url whenever I started a new trip.
Here's the new setup: all trips get an entry in the main blog, with a small iframe of that trip's STM map. But, the latest trip gets its own page with a larger map. Whenever I add a blog entry for a new trip, the tcfjr.goption.com/spot page gets rebuilt to show that trip.
I played with a few different ways of doing this, and this came out the best, by quite a margin. (I really didn't want to start a separate MT blog to hold the SPOT info.) One side-effect of this change is that an entry's keyword field is no longer embedded in the URL/filename of that entry; I use the keyword field to store the iframe reference for the larger map size, and it just didn't work to embed all that junk into a file name or URL.
I also added a SPOT entry to the banner, for easy access to the larger map page.
Secondly: the width of the main content section on each page is now 100 pixels wider. The old width was great back in the day when lots of people ran at 800x600, but thankfully those days are gone for good. The new width should make it easier to post photos and east-west-style maps.
I tried making it even wider, but it became too wide to read comfortably. I hope the new width is a good compromise — wide enough, but not too wide.
July 12, 2009
Big Bear for brunch
Pat and Harvey had been asking Carole to come up to Big Bear for a visit. The traffic up there on July 4th is crazy — in the past we've sat in traffic for over two hours getting from the Village to the Dam. Instead, Carole chose to go up yesterday and spend the night with her friend Terry.
Justin and I rode up this morning to meet everyone for brunch. (It was way too early for Justin, who's normally a night owl.) Pat wanted to sit on the deck, but once we got there Carole easily convinced her to move into the lounge.
The brunch was quite nice, but as brunches go we're terribly spoiled. Between Coeur d'Alene and Banff, we've had the best in western North America. It was great to chat with Pat and Harvey.
Afterwards, Carole and Terry left straight down the hill, and Justin and I rode back to the house to see the two new puppies. I held the little bitty one for a while, and Justin had fun with the bigger one. We only stayed a while — Justin was ready to get back home for some rest, especially since we got our central air fixed last week.
We had come up the front way, and neither of us really wanted to fight the crowds going back that way. I gave Justin the option of the back way or the 38, and he chose the back way. In spite of the heat, he said he wasn't feeling it for the twisties, and wanted to get to the straighter parts asap.
Lucerne Valley was stifling hot, and traffic was at a standstill once we got on I-15, but we shared lanes efficiently (in spite of my wide back end), and things loosened up after the summit. We made it home in good time, hot and tired, and ready for the AC.
I put 209 miles on my new bead seat. I think it's going to work out well, but I'll need more miles to know for sure.
July 11, 2009
New headlights
On the way back from CFR, I noticed that the high beam was out on the right headlight. I picked up a pair of Sylvania Silver Star 9003/HB2 headlights at Pep Boys, and installed them this afternoon. Odometer is 49197.
FJR Owners Manual in PDF
While trying to figure out how to remove the headlight bulbs, I decided I needed to rtfm. Here's the online version of the owner's manual from the Yamaha site:
Yamaha FJR1300A Owners Manual, Model Year 2005
Beadrider bead seat
My biggest problem recently on long rides has been seat soreness, especially when it gets hot, and even with my Bill Meyer seat. Doug, Iggy, and many others swear by bead seats - beaded overlays for your seat that keep air moving between you and the actual seat. Iggy's famous quote is that it turned his FJR from a 1,000 miles a day bike into a 24-hour a day bike.
I ordered a BeadRider seat last week, and it arrived today. It took a couple of minutes of fidgeting to get the straps right, but it's on now. Justin (probably) and I (definitely) are riding to Bear Bear tomorrow to meet up with Carole — who's spending the night with her mom — which will give me a nice test ride.
July 10, 2009
Parts and supplies
Since I decided to do most of my own routine maintenance, I ordered a bunch of supplies from Gary McCoy at MonDak Motorsports:
- A couple of half-liter bottles of final drive gear oil
- Six crush washers, for both the engine oil and the final drive oil
- A magnetic drain plug for the engine oil
- Three OEM oil filters
- The nut and holder for the right panel underneath the fuel tank
The drain plug in the final drive is the same size as the one for the engine oil, but is magnetized to attract metallic gunk. When I went down to Hal's house for FJR Maintenance 101, he passed on the hint to replace the engine drain plug with a magnetized one.
I've been working with my local dealer for months to get the right part to attach the panel below the fuel tank on the right side. They place an order, then I go check it out, and it's not right, so they place a new order. We've done this a few times now, so I thought I could save a little aggravation (and some coin, with Gary's forum discount). Gary's the best!
New Features section
When I get back from trips, the trip reports wind up hidden, even though they're more important than the average post.
I added a Features block to the top of the side-bar, to make it easier to find these important groups of related posts.
July 7, 2009
Challenger-M custom earphones
My Shure e2c's work really well to isolate wind noise under my helmet when I ride, but I've noticed buzzing after long rides. I ordered a set of Challenger-M custom earphones on June 28. This morning, I visited an audiologist who says my hearing is really pretty good for someone my age, but that it was important to protect it. I had him make ear mold impressions for my new earphones. I really hope they come back in time for the trip to WFO.
Mira-cool
A Mira-Cool cooling vest is on it's way. My old Joe Rocket Sahara vest only stays hydrated for about 45 minutes, making it a pain to use. The Mira-Cool comes recommended by a bunch of riders on the Forum, including Toe, and should hold it's coolness all day.