The cau­tion­ary tag on the label for the new tires sug­gest­ed that one should ride 100 miles care­ful­ly before start­ing to ride nor­mal­ly (uncar­e­ful­ly??). So, to get in some miles I decid­ed to ride up to Jala­ma Beach for a turkey burg­er lunch. While eat­ing lunch the idea came to return home by way of Refu­gio Beach, Refu­gio Road, and West Camino Cielo. In days of old I have rid­den West Camino Cielo sev­er­al times on my bicy­cle so I kind of knew what to expect but it would be new ter­ri­to­ry on the motor­cy­cle and cer­tain­ly a chal­lenge for me with the off-road part.

Here’s the view as I was eat­ing the deli­cious turkey burg­er at Jala­ma with a few locals mean­der­ing about hop­ing for a piece of the pie. The right image is an autum­nal shot I liked as I returned along Jala­ma Road.

Up on West Camino Cielo now. The left image shows the nice 4 miles of sin­gle lane paved road pre­ced­ing the 10 miles sans pave­ment shown in the right image. After those 10 the road returns to pave­ment near the Gun Club.

A panora­ma shot I took a lit­tle fur­ther up the road. Pret­ty day, no?

Alas, after I took the three images for the nice panora­ma I returned to the bike to notice the low fuel alert blink­ing at me. I was only 2.8 miles along the dirt sec­tion and had no idea how much there was to cov­er. Oh well, I decid­ed to push on rather than turn around (heck, I’d already seen that part). I had last looked at the gauge leav­ing Jala­ma and it seemed like lots was left to use and to go explor­ing with then 🙂

Twen­ty five min­utes lat­er I came to the most inter­est­ing part of the ride. I was mov­ing around a gen­tle right hand turn when Whoa Nel­lie! there’s water all across the road, con­tin­u­ing on around a slight left turn and up the road for about 35 yards. The water seemed too silty to see the road­way so I just head­ed in and tried to stay along the right side while hop­ing for no big rocks or dips under me.

About a quar­ter of the way through the water fea­ture I rode too high into the right side of the sub­merged road­way and spun the rear wheel to a stop. For­tu­nate­ly, I was able to hold the bike upright while stand­ing in four or five inch­es of water.

Once stopped and try­ing to fig­ure out what to do next I noticed that I could see the road­way through the water and that it was all smooth and not more than six or eight inch­es deep in the cen­ter, although quite slip­pery under foot and tire. It took me five or six starts and restarts before I got the bike mov­ing and under con­trol. I head­ed to the cen­ter of the road/pond for a ways then over to the left side as that was the first land­fall. You can see some of this here but the over­all length of the pond appears much reduced in this image than when one is stand­ing at the far end of it.

From the point I saw the low fuel alert I remained anx­ious about run­ning out as I was not cer­tain how long it had been with me when I saw it. In the end I got to the bot­tom of the pass and into the near­by gas sta­tion for a top­ping up of the tank. Run­ning the num­bers it seemed I still had about a quart left in the tank.

The skid plate I pur­chased and installed last year paid for itself today. At least four times I came down heav­i­ly on it and it was a com­fort to know it was not the Suzuk­i’s crankcase tak­ing such abuse.

Friend Steve rode motocross bikes in his younger days and was of a mind that my new TKC80s might per­form the same way at high­way speeds as his old knob­bies, i.e. be all bumpy and vibrat­ing. For­tu­nate­ly, the TKC80s only exhib­it a small bumpy feel­ing at very slow speeds and seem as smooth as the Suzu­ki orig­i­nals at any rea­son­able speed.

It was anoth­er 145 miles of fun, chal­lenge, and explo­ration in the local environs.

Drain­ing into pan #2, who woul­da thunk it??

On my Ore­gon bike jour­ney I checked the oil lev­el on the bike for the first time in Bend. Alas, the cir­cu­lar 3/4″ win­dow in the crankcase to mon­i­tor the “H“igh and “L“ow lev­els was com­plete­ly emp­ty. So I found and rode to a cycle shop and added a quart of oil. Right up to the “H“igh mark, great. I lat­er added 12 more ounces in Ashland.

Upon arriv­ing home I put the bike on its cen­ter stand for the first time since leav­ing. YIKES! The mon­i­tor­ing win­dow was com­plete­ly full, way above the “H“igh mark. How far above? I could not tell. I emailed this obser­va­tion to friend Jeff and he respond­ed thus: “When you are check­ing the oil lev­el, are you sure the bike is lev­el? I don’t think you can check it on the side-stand. It needs to be checked on the cen­ter stand. Anoth­er thing: I’ve heard, for small engines, too much oil is way more dan­ger­ous than not enough oil. You might want to con­sid­er drain­ing it to the right level.”

Yes­ter­day I decid­ed to fol­low Jef­f’s advice and remove the extra oil. It turns out that the nice skid plate I added under the engine goes not allow for a grace­ful reduc­tion of oil quan­ti­ty. So I elect­ed to try and siphon out the extra oil and went off to an auto parts store and pur­chased three feet of 1/4″ fuel hose. Return­ing home I got a nice quart pan (the yel­low one above) and went at it. Start­ing a siphon with 10–40 oil is some­what dif­fer­ent than with gaso­line or water 🙂

It took me about five tries to get it flow­ing to the yel­low pan along with the usu­al treat of some flu­id in my mouth. 10–40 oil also flows MUCH slow­er than gas or water, at first I did not think it was flow­ing at all. But 25 or 30 min­utes lat­er the yel­low pan was full, yet there was no change in the mon­i­tor­ing win­dow so I employed pan #2. After anoth­er 15 min­utes the lev­el in the win­dow was between the “H“igh and “L“ow lev­els so I stopped the siphon and poured oil care­ful­ly back into the bike until the lev­el was right at the “H“igh mark.

After fin­ish­ing up I took the bike off the cen­ter stand and put it on the side stand. The mon­i­tor­ing oil win­dow was com­plete­ly emp­ty, just like in Bend. And how much oil did I end up remov­ing from the bike? As near as I could tell the total of the amounts I put in in Bend and Ash­land. Kudos and thanks to friend Jeff.

More amaz­ing ter­ri­to­ry today, Reno to Kla­math Falls — which is in Ore­gon and sig­ni­fies rid­ing in three states in one day for those of us not­ing such. Leav­ing Reno this morn­ing looked like rain so I got some­what rain-ready and head­ed out. Forty five miles north of Reno I thought I had got­ten clear of the threat. HA! Not Even!

Two hours lat­er I road along in mild rain for 50 miles or so. My HiViz out­fit worked as adver­tised, dry as a bone while con­tin­u­ing it’s main func­tion of glow­ing in the dark. But the tem­per­a­ture was in the high to mid 40’s and, while think­ing of stop­ping and putting on a sweater I fought that impulse, remained in char­ac­ter, and did not.

Arriv­ing in Kla­math Falls around 3:00 and stop­ping for a late lunch I final­ly under­stood my con­di­tion when I start­ed shiv­er­ing in the restau­rant and could not stop. It was dur­ing this shiv­er­fest that a dis­tant shot of san­i­ty sug­gest­ed to me that I sh/could get a motel room ASAP to get inside and out of the then cur­rent 57 degree day. But return­ing to the Suzu­ki the Coutts geneal­o­gy sec­tion of my brain sud­den­ly took con­trol and, see­ing there was plen­ty of time to ride on to Bend, had one of my fin­gers plug Bend into the GPS. Off we went for many blocks until Dar­win reassert­ed the mod­ern lay­er and had the GPS repoint­ed to the Kla­math Falls EconoLodge.

Once in the room I lay under the cov­ers for an hour and a half while my trusty (???) brain kept sug­gest­ing I get up and go for a walk around the town. My body negat­ed all those cor­ti­cal mis­fires by con­tin­u­ing to lux­u­ri­ate under the cov­ers. I did not leave the room again until morning.

For the record 1001.3 miles on the trip odome­ter with Sis­ters now with­in easy reach for Fri­day afternoon.

At the Winnedumah hotel break­fast this morn­ing I was chat­ting with a cou­ple from San Diego. Inter­est­ing­ly enough the man of the cou­ple turned out to be best friends with Scott Allen when they were at Poway High School togeth­er. I made a small record­ing of Paul with my iPhone so I could pass it along to Scott, which I did lat­er in the week, it was all very fun.

After break­fast and load­ing up of the Suzu­ki I rode up the due west road to Onion Val­ley (that’s me in the upper left start­ing up). I have only been to there a cou­ple of oth­er times, both in the 70s. The first one was when I walked out from the trip up the John Muir Trail to pick up a food par­cel Car­ol and I had mailed our­selves to the Onion Val­ley Ranger Sta­tion. The oth­er was a few years lat­er when best friend Dave and I parked in Onion Val­ley and hiked up over Kearsarge Pass and into the Rae Lakes basin in late Octo­ber. It was a beau­ti­ful ride up to the val­ley and back down to Inde­pen­dence before head­ing north on 395.

It was up to Bish­op for a late break­fast then by the Millpond Recre­ation Area where we all used to attend the annu­al Sep­tem­ber music fes­ti­val (which is still hap­pen­ing in two weeks). Favorite bicy­cling coun­try all around this area from those years. Up the road along the low­er rock creek to Tom’s Place for a stop and shop then UP the Rock Creek Road to the end for a won­der­ful six mile hike.

After the hike I rode over and reserved camp­site #17 in the camp­ground adjoin­ing Rock Creek Lake then found out that the clos­est din­ner was at Tom’s Place, The “Pie in the Sky” restau­rant across the lake was not open for din­ner. Oh well, too hun­gry to do much inner brain bar­gain­ing so it was down the 13 miles to Tom’s. As I was eat­ing I debat­ed whether to for­go the $10 deposit I’d paid for #17 and stay in the low­er (and poten­tial­ly much warmer) camp­ground 1/4 mile from Tom’s. But I decid­ed I had not been camp­ing in the high coun­try for a long time so, well fed and con­tent, I enjoyed the 13 miles back up the moun­tain, set up my camp and wan­dered around the lake for awhile as the day was ending.

A very won­der­ful day in my favorite ter­rain. Click on the mon­tage above for some shots of the day. Click­ing in the cen­ter of the screen dur­ing the slideshow will cre­ate and pro­vide full screen images to you if you wish to see the images enlarged a bit.