I am all signed up for an Aeros­tich Tours Mex­i­co motor­cy­cle trip in Jan­u­ary. Roger, one of the lead­er’s on the trip, com­ment­ed to me in an email this week: “you are cer­tain­ly set up well for this trip. I would only sug­gest as an addi­tion that you install more aggres­sive tires, even as far as the MKC80 Con­ti­nen­tal knob­bies that are used on BMW Adventures.”

So Wednes­day I called friend Ian’s much men­tioned Pre­ci­sion Motor­cy­cles in Gole­ta and ordered the Con­ti­nen­tals. Today’s task was to get the wheels off the Suzu­ki and out to Pre­ci­sion to have the new tires mount­ed, then home and replace the wheels on the bike. The time to the first shot, tak­en at 12:45 when the rear wheel was off, was about 50 min­utes. Then it was on to the front wheel. The first task was to get the front wheel off the ground. Grab­bing an eight foot 2x4 from friend & neigh­bor Jil­l’s yard, a con­crete block from my back­yard, and neigh­bor Greg as a push­er, I lever­aged the 2x4 under the bike and tilt­ed it up while Greg shoved the block under the bike. Low­er­ing the bike onto the block I was then set to remove the front wheel.

But what’s this? The front axle is tight­ened (and removed) with a 12mm allen. Bum­mer alert! Off to Sears to buy a 1/2″–12mm allen end­ed tool. No luck, but at lease they had a 12mm allen wrench that I am think­ing I’ll use to get the wheel off then get a 1/2″ — 12mm allen at Spe­cial­ty in Gole­ta while the wheels are being retired near by so I will be able to tight­en the axle to the spec­i­fied torque at reassem­bly. An hour after image one we now have image two, i.e. both wheels are off (you can also see the con­crete block sup­port­ing the front of the bike).

At around 2:20 I’ve just dropped the wheels at Pre­ci­sion and turned to find­ing a 1/2″ — 12mm sock­et giz­mo. Spe­cial­ty had all sizes but 12 and after a third strike at a third place I got the sug­ges­tion to call the local Snap-On guy. He was at Per­ry Lin­coln-Mer­cury and said he had the part so I drove there and end­ed up with a 3/8″ — 12mm allen tool for $32! Yikes!

After a very nice and serendip­i­tous lunch at Fres­co with old friend Bev King, Pre­ci­sion called to say all was ready so I drove out and grabbed the new­ly mount­ed Con­ti­nen­tals as well as my old tires and returned home (image #3 around 5:40). The front wheel went on pret­ty sim­ply. I walked next door and recruit­ed Jill to be the con­crete block remover as I again lever­aged the bike up with her 2x4 and low­ered it down onto the front wheel. Thanks to Jill and she returned home to resume her dinner.

On to the back wheel. After much strug­gling with try­ing to fig­ure out how to put it all togeth­er with the chain I am final­ly at the point of think­ing I am done and am tight­en­ing the axle to its 72.5 ft-lbs of torque when I real­ize that the brake caliper does not sim­ply bolt on after the fact like the ones on the front wheel but is inte­grat­ed with the axle instal­la­tion. Back out comes the axle, fol­lowed by more frus­tra­tion and strug­gles attempt­ing to get it all cor­rect­ly assem­bled. I was about to give up for the night as I was feel­ing the need of anoth­er pair of hands to fin­ish the assem­bly and was rem­i­nisc­ing about days gone by when I had bud­dies to help and hang with me in such endeav­ors as this evenings when who reap­pears but Jill with an offer of assistance.

Too won­der­ful. We went at it togeth­er for about half an hour and then it real­ly was done; image four tak­en at 7:35.

I awoke rest­ed to anoth­er great day. After a leisure­ly walk around Kla­math Falls and a nice break­fast I loaded up and decid­ed to go up to Crater Lake even though it was look­ing stormy.

It was a beau­ti­ful ride up with sec­tions of rain now and then. After I entered the park the tem­per­a­ture start­ed drop­ping, first into the mid 40s, then low 40s, then into the 30s. I had aug­ment­ed yes­ter­day’s out­fit with a wool ski sweater and wool long johns so I was doing OK. Arriv­ing at the park entrance kiosk it was maybe 34 and I was feel­ing ner­vous about hit­ting an ice patch on the road. The kiosk woman sug­gest­ed I stop at the vis­i­tor cen­ter sev­er­al miles fur­ther up the road for a more accu­rate assessment.

Arriv­ing at the vis­i­tor cen­ter dur­ing a brief time of light snow­ing (32 degrees now) I noticed a BMW GS type bike with an Aus­tralian plate! Going in I chat­ted with the cou­ple rid­ing it who seemed to me about my age. They are going all the way into West­ern Cana­da, then over to Yel­low­stone, some of the Utah parks, etc. Very cool. I asked them the cost to have the bike shipped over and back and was told that it cost $3,000 US.

Opin­ions from vis­i­tor cen­ter folks were for no ice wor­ries so I road on up to the rim. It got increas­ing­ly cloudy approach­ing the top, so much so that look­ing over the rim pro­duced no sense of lak­e­ness. It was then 30 degrees and the ends of my fin­gers were get­ting numb. I start­ed the ride around the west­ern rim road then, real­iz­ing that the 21 miles to the north exit would just take too long for my dete­ri­o­rat­ing fin­gers I turned around and back­tracked the wis­er and short­er 10 miles down to the mid 40 degree thresh­old where I knew I’d feel better.

Twen­ty five miles lat­er I saw again a very scenic pho­to op of a pic­turesque barn I had noticed on my way up. After stop­ping I decid­ed the best shot was about 80′ back. I had rolled the Suzu­ki back about 65 of those 80 when I lost bal­ance and the bike fell over (moto night­mare #2). I took off all the stuff I could in prepa­ra­tion for a lift attempt when a friend­ly and help­ful guy in a pick­up stopped to see if I was OK, as one inter­pre­ta­tion could eas­i­ly have been that I had gone down at speed. I said I was fine and asked if he’d help me lift up the bike. He quick­ly helped me lift the bike thus my learn­ing expe­ri­ence, i.e. do not back­up the cycle for more than 10′ unless no oth­er options exist, end­ed quick­ly and easily.

The rest of the day was spec­tac­u­lar, espe­cial­ly the 66 miles along the “The Cas­cade Lakes Nation­al Scenic Byway”. After 50 of those miles being in the mid 40s and some­what high­er things start­ed to be a replay of the morn­ing’s down­ward trend. It got to a low of 32 and I was won­der­ing WTF about the time I rode by the entrance to the Mt. Bach­e­lor ski area, checked the alti­tude and real­ized it all made sense.

Anoth­er won­der­ful day of adven­ture end­ing in the very inter­est­ing city of Bend, one of the best out­door recre­ation areas in the country.

Get­ting out of the tent this brisk and beau­ti­ful morn­ing I walked the 200 yards over to Rock Creek Lake and poked around a bit enjoy­ing being in the High Sier­ras. I then packed up and rode over to the near­by Pie in the Sky Restau­rant only to dis­cov­er that I was one hour too early. 

So I road off and down Rock Creek to High­way 395 and north to the scenic June Lakes Loop (all the hype is well placed) then con­tin­ued up 395 to Lee Vin­ing for lunch and a stop at Mono Lake. On north anoth­er 60 miles to high­way 89 where I turned west then north again to cov­er about 40 miles of friend Tom’s 113 mile 2009 Death Ride course, a good and beau­ti­ful choice. I stopped around 4:30 in a restau­rant in Tahoe City for a deli­cious and MUCH over­due turkey burger. 

Rid­ing around the west shore of Lake Tahoe to arrive at the burg­er was stun­ning. After the burg­er I planned on head­ing on up 89 to 49 then look for a place to camp. I went into three ade­quate camp­grounds but I would have been the only one in any of the three so rode out of each. I was just enough fright­ened to not wish to stay, oh well.

It was a spec­tac­u­lar evening so I road to the end of 49 then on to the end of 70 again rejoin­ing high­way 395. This 65 miles was through amaz­ing long and beau­ti­ful val­leys of cat­tle ranches.

It seemed about 35 min­utes to dark as I arrived at the junc­ture with high­way 395 and look­ing on the map north saw few choic­es for accom­mo­da­tion so I rode south 23 miles to Reno and grate­ful­ly found and stayed the night in a Super 8 Motel.

Jour­ney­ing forth unchart­ed on a motor­cy­cle has lots of sim­i­lar­i­ties to bicy­cle tour­ing, e.g. eas­i­ly start­ing up con­ver­sa­tions with folks or as with my lunch stop today in Lee Vin­ing some­one com­ing over to my table and ask­ing me to join him. Also, there is the sim­i­lar feel­ing of just being out there in the envi­ron­ment rather than mov­ing along in an iso­lat­ing glass and steel bubble.

All in all I am lov­ing doing this. As usu­al, almost the only time I am not enjoy­ing it is when I’ve rid­den too long with­out stop­ping OR have gone TOO long with­out eat­ing. Noth­ing new there.

This road has to be one of the great scenic high­ways of the world, cer­tain­ly one of my favorites. I am so grate­ful I thought to come this way and cer­tain­ly to be able to cruise through it on my Suzu­ki mag­ic car­pet, I’ve nev­er enjoyed it more than today.

Tonight I am stay­ing in Inde­pen­dence in the his­toric, i.e. 1927, Win­ndumah Hotel. I am just back in my room after sit­ting on the front porch for a cou­ple of hours watch­ing the 395 traf­fic roll by and vis­it­ing with a cou­ple on their way home from Burn­ing Man. Many inter­est­ing sto­ries accom­pa­nied by 200 images on their camera.

Friend Car­ol Born­stein’s sug­gest­ed I stop on the way here at Fos­sil Falls. I rode in the .4 miles of dirt, parked the moto with my trusty, patent­ed String-O-Board then walked in the 1/4 mile to the Fos­sil Falls. Very worth­while side trip and good to test the waters a bit beyond the tarmac.

I also stopped for a bit at Man­za­nar, as I usu­al­ly do. What a sad part of our his­to­ry. Kind of erodes the “can’t hap­pen here myth”.

Great first day out. Tomor­row it’s into the East­ern Sierra.

Here is a map of the day’s ride, cour­tesy of my Garmin Zumo 660

When I left San­ta Bar­bara at 1:15 p.m. the tem­per­a­ture was around 70 degrees. It climbed up to 80 as I crest­ed San Mar­cos Pass and on to 90 when I stopped in Los Olivos for a chilled Sobe Cit­rus. It con­tin­ued hot on up Fox­en Canyon then dropped into the 60s as I went through Los Alam­os and head­ed west on High­way 135. Drop­ping down Har­ris Grade into Lom­poc brought the low for the day, 62 degress. Inter­est­ing to me it climbed back up 20 degrees, to 82, by the time I tran­si­tioned onto High­way 101 from High­way 1 and rode down through the Gavio­ta Gorge. Then bin­go, again back into the 60s at the coast.

An inter­est­ing day in many ways but the day’s 28 degree spread obvi­ous­ly caught my attention.