The Long Way Around

I still don't know quite what to do with myself at home and at work.  Funny.

Meanwhile I ride my MP3 500 everywhere now.  it's a good deal faster than the GT, from all perspectives.  I also notice that I have no concept of how fast I'm going in city.  That's unfortunate, and something I need to keep an eye out for.  Quite a hassle.

Jess came in to town after trucking the GT back from Maryland.  We loaded it off, and I took a moment to inspect the GT's rear wheel situation.  It's bad.  Oh lord is it bad.  I'm surprised.  At the very least I think the hub's shot.  There may also be an issue with the brake.  I know I'm going to be taking the thing apart soon, and it'll be probably a solid month before I can get it rideable, assuming that the variator is just fine and there's nothing wrong with the crank shaft splines on either the clutch or the variator.  Gah.

I've got some more pictures I'm going to upload, along with some videos.  I just don't have the time at present to do these things.  Hopefully should get to it some time this weekend.

More later, of course.

We go to this crappy pizza joint here in Ocean City due to some resourcing SNAFU (it's NASCAR weekend), and they serve a frickin' cheese steak called a 'coast to coast'.

Funny.

Especially when you literally ride from one half of it to the other.

I'm done. Standings and tale later. Let's just say. Leg 4 involved a field repair.

We're in Oakland. Not that Oakland, the one in Maryland.

So that's strike one.

Strike two is that there's a power sports shop here just down the street from the hotel. Only, it sells cheap Chinese piece of crap bikes that will invariably have problems after the first 300 miles or so. Sadness.

At least they look 'cute'. They're a typical style, often referred to as Honda Joker clones. The only real legit Joker clone out there is made by Aprilia, and it's called the Mojito. I love that bike.

Not these. These depress me. Thy never would have made it past day 2 on this run.

Turns out Mark and Wayne's lock failed on their hotel room. The hotel couldn't open it at all, so by 11:30 pm, Mark had management break the window so they could get their stuff out. Lame.

Not sure. Signs would have led me to believe otherwise. Survived the short day.

42 is my new favorite highway ever. Seriously. It's amazing. Fast and fun. Now if only I was not caught behind a funeral percession for 5 miles at 10 mph.

A possum played dead in front of me (well it might have just been a rat) and then 'woke up', and jumped right in front of my front wheel. Not cool. It survived.

It'll be a late start today. Something got in my eye at the gas station and my hands were covered in gas and my spare contacts were in the support truck. It took like 5 minutes to get them and my eye freaked out.

Need to spend some time letting it cool off. Oh well.

Sometimes it's logging serious hours just sitting there trying to ride in a reasonably straight line.

And that was today. Gone were the majestic sweeping mountain roads of Colorado, replaced by the endless corn fields of both Colorado and Kansas. Highway 50, as a direct route, truly does become the loneliest highway. It becomes a blur of slow, short hills and alternating passing / no passing lanes. Its flat, and there are no real turns save switching from one highway to another.

Imagine a map of Kansas. Now take that map and lay it on the table. Now you also happen to have a reasonably accurate topographical map as well. Sigh.

The checkpoint towns were near or quaint. The rest was almost actually throw-away and could have been ignored completely. I spent more time frantically checking my mirrors for troopers than concentrating on the difficulty of the road.

Oh well. Tomorrow will actually be more of the same.

Nonetheless, not all of the country can be majestic and serene. Some of it has to be hum-drum. We're just at that point now.

Dropped from 3rd to 5th. Almost everyone ahead of me has extended range fuel cells. That's my fatal flaw, were I actually gunning for #1. Pulling over to get gas or to pee or whatever.

Oh well. The competition aspect of it is more for the fun surrounding it than seriousness. It will be nice if I place somewhere decent, but not necessary.

Mostly still caught in awe and wonderment about the variation of lifestyles in the US, even wihin the same few hundred miles. Can't stop focusing on that.

So day 3 has been the hardest so far. It was a short day with the exception of the ridiculous 40 miles of dirt.

Maroy so kindly referred to the day as 'Cannonfall' as more people hit the ground than didn't. The dirt claimed a lot of victims.

Both the Ruckus riders (e.g, Jim T, who I believe will be trucking it to the next most convenient spot then flying home). Both Jess and Rich went down. Rocket went down. Basically, if you went on the dirt road, you crashed.

I didn't crash. But I did lay the bike down. I had a scare where I lost my rear on some washboards, and almost bit it in a ditch.

When I came to a complete stop, I put my foot down and basically didn't have good footing on the Dirt and I tipped over towards the ditch. Thankfully, he says with a hint of sarcasm, I caught the bike with my knee, an kept it from going down hard. Instead I just let it down gently. So no crash, just bad and stupid footing.

Sigh.

Anyway, more plug drama. It popped off again, same problem with stripping the threads on the aluminum head on the plug. Cap popped right off in front of the marina at the Bullfrog ferry.

Thankfully a kind security guard came by and asked me why the problem was. I mentioned the problem and be off-handedly mentioned that he restores VW's. He mentions that, on a VW, the plug cap doesn't fit over the aluminum head on the plug, but actually clips on to the threads on the plug itself. He had one in his on-site motor home, so he drove me to his place and hooked me up with the newcap, gratis. We fixed it on, and it bit and the bike started right up. Rode the rest of the ride with the new cap, no incident.

Hopefully this will keep working and I can continue to ride this route as expected.

We've rolled past the thousand mile mark at this point. Only 2.3k more to go.

My carpal tunnel is killing me, and my eating has not gotten better.

Basically, I might be at the end point of this run, but it's not clear.

The short of it is that my plug had a significant failure today. That's right, a stupid spark plug. But the thing is, now my plug might be galled in the head.

It started because the head of my plug in the bike actually had it's threads melted. So the cap basically popped off the plug. Couldn't actually fit the cap back on the plug because the head got stuck in the cap and wouldn't come out. So basically I was hosed.

This is obviously hard to describe but it really comes down to my plug cap would not stay on my bike.

At one point in the afternoon, I took the plug out and I tried to see if I could thread it into the cap, but the answer was a resounding no. And apparently the process of putting it back in may have either cross threaded it or the threads got galled somehow. This means I ant pull the plug out because I could hork up the threads on the head worse than they already may be. If that's the case, then I'm done with the ride. So I obviously can't do that.

I got another head for the plug that's in there an tightened it on the plug that's still in the engine. Took some needle nose pliers and tightened it and hopefully it's on for good and I'll have no other similar problems. Otherwise I have a few other plugs with caps that I can cannibalize.

That is my only hope.

Oh, and the last reason why this day sucked, which if I let out think about it a minute I'm sure you'd figure out on your own: since the plug cap was loose, it would come off regularly.

I had over 200 miles left for the day when the cap first came off. I had apparently got smog the top times (if not the top) for the first leg, an this happened literally at the start of the third.

For the last 50 miles, the cap popped off the plug once every 1.5 miles on average. Guess how many times I pulled over, took my gloves off, opened up my seat, took my under seat storage out, burned my hand on the head refitting the plug cap on, put the storage back in and put my gloves on then rode off again only to do the whole thing again in a few short minutes.

I'll give you a hint - so many times I got to the point where I could do it in under 20 seconds.

Suck.

Now you know why I say today was horrible.

By the way, I'm utterly amused that my post about eating actually caused discussion. Hah. Today I started the day with beef jerky and a cliff bar, then didn't eat till twelve hours later and of a steak.

I am a bit shocked that the bastard started.

Let's rewind a bit - since I bought the Elite 250 (Starbuck), and post death-defying ride from Concord to SF, shes' been sitting in my grandmother's basement with absolutely no starting, no battery tending, and almost no gas (plus, the gas that was in there was going bad).

Yesterday was an early day from work, seeing as how it was the start of the 3 day weekend for Memorial Day, so I went and picked up the Elite since its headset bearings will be replaced next week (Tuesday). The bike has some play in the headset that needs to be addressed, new headset bearings will be needed, and the throttle tube is cracked. Those are the most obvious issues. There are other things that will be dealt with, mostly under the guidance of Battlescooter, but in order to get the Elite running enough to be even a daily rider those things need to be addressed.

I digress though. The point was, I needed to pick up the bike because the bike was going to get some service on Tuesday. I took the GT to the garage, then set it outside for a minute to get the Elite, whose space it would occupy for the next few days. Rolling Starbuck out, I parked her and took a look at the paint for the first time outside in good lighting - it's actually remarkably well intact but it's clear that the bike has been repainted (and fairly well might I add). Paint job or not though, I need to get the thing started, and it wasn't altogether clear that it would.

With a mild bit of reticence, I shoved the GT in the garage and closed the garage doors, and decided that I would make the bastard start by hook or by crook. Problem, though - I had 2 keys for the Elite (one for the trunk, one for the bike), and it was unclear which was which or did what, because aside from the shape there's very little in the way of distinguishing features on the keys. At least with the Vespa, they're both color coded. I tried to open the topcase and magically picked the right key, so I used the other key in the ignition. Lo, it seemed to work.

I was able to get the ignition in the "on" position, and I held the front brake, hit the starter, and... nothing. I flipped the kill, just in case I misread which direction the kill needed to be in, and this time - the bike grunted a few times, but nothing actually fired. Several times of trying that I decided, I must be doing this wrong, and then flipped the kill again and once again got nothing for my troubles.

A random thought crossed my mind - what about the rear brake? Is this bike that finnicky? I pressed the rear instead of the front and gave the starter another go and the bike very hesitantly sputtered to life, drunk on old gas and a dying battery.

I let her idle for a minute or two to get her land legs, and then she was off. Ran surprisingly well, up to the gas station, where I had to figure out how to close the seat latch after filling her up.

This bike will be an adventure on its own, Cannonball Run or not.

...now, I knew this was of concern before I bought it, but I have to say I'm a bit frustrated:

My new jacket, the Coaster series II by Tourmaster, is made of leather, which is not exactly the best to wear in wet conditions (and San Francisco has a habit of being relatively wet). I thought ot myself, "oh, my rain shell will fit just fine over this, no problem."

Er, no. Problem. The jacket doesn't play well with my gloves as is, and apparently the sleeves don't really play well with the rain shell either, and to make a long story short, it can take some 8-10 minutes to manage to half-assedly get the shell over the jacket, and then the gloves on. To make the situation more ironic and/or frustrating - the shell is made by Tourmaster as well, so you'd assume it'd just fit with the rest of their other gear.

Not so much with the fitting.

I was originally thinking of scrapping my fairly mediocre Speedrag jacket as well but it might actually need to stick around for wet weather. Quite disappointing.

Anyway, if anyone has experience with either jacket or any Tourmaster rain shell and knows of any magic tricks to getting the damned thing on without looking like a jackass or being a contortionist, feel free to let me know. In the mean time, grr.

The order of the pictures has actually been restored to chronological.  The interface on LJ is pretty cumbersome.  I happen to know a product manager who could help that...  ;)