BluepoofBikes Motorcycle Adventures

Pics from the Alturas ride

Ride report forthcoming, but in the meantime, here are a few pictures from this weekend's ride.

Your cast of characters:
Me
Peter
Jim (jpred)
Jim (hhhch45)
Frank (xs400)
Erik (frank's brother; no ST.n name that I know of)
Andrew (ZX11Andrew)
Terry (CBXTerry)
Gary (itsatdm)
Mitch (endo) and his wife met us for lunch on Saturday

Jim along Hwy 88 in the Sierras:

The SVS along Hwy 88 in the eastern Sierras:

Peter's first time crossing state lines on a bike trip:

Hwy 447 in Nevada:

Dinner at the Black Bear diner in Alturas, CA:

A balmy morning in Alturas (27F):

Frank along Hwy 299:

The road through Lassen National Park:

SV650S valve adjustment write-up

Yeah, yeah, I know it's been a while since I've posted a mechanical write-up. But fret no more! Here's the SV650S checking/adjusting valves write-up.

My old nemesis has returned.

So, once again, I'm having clutch issues.

After doing the valves, I took off the front sprocket cover to clean up the ten metric fucktons of crap that the chain spews there; while in the general area, I decided to readjust the clutch. It'd been doing that annoying "Wha? Neutral? Huh?" thing at stoplights again.

With Peter's (very patient) help, we got the clutch back in spec...which means, of course, I can't pull in the lever. My two options with this bike seem to be:

1) Clutch is functional but requires superhuman arm of steel to pull in lever
2) Clutch is accessible to mortals but then does not engage and, in fact, pretty damn well just doesn't work.

Well.

I should also point out that, while working on this, I idly bitched to Peter about "why was this just happening now?" and how "the clutch used to work just fine", thereby proving that I have become senile at 28. In fact, while doing a bit of websurfing just now, I found posts I'd made about this same exact problem back in 2001.

Meanwhile, the riding posture on the SVS is aggravating my shoulder. I know this, but yet I continue to ride the bike to work. I spent my entire commute today thinking "huh, I'm probably undoing all of the good that physical therapy is doing for my shoulder". Sigh. I just don't want to face the possibility of not being able to ride the SVS, whether for short or long term. "Denial" isn't just a pretty river in Egypt.

What I should be doing is riding Dora to work. So far, she hasn't given my shoulder any problems. Perhaps I can learn from my posture there.

At what point do I give up? When do I say, "OK, we've had 60,000 really terrific miles together, but I can't ride you at all without my entire left arm erupting in agony within 20 miles. I've tried everything I know how to do, and nothing helps. I've changed the handlebars and the seat and my own gear and I've been to physical therapy twice and I see a chiropractor every month and I've totally revamped my office cube and home desk for ergonomics and still my arms and shoulder hurt." How do you know when it's time to say so long and thanks for all the fish?

Shims and valves and camchains, oh my

Blah, it's 10:37am and I'm already bored with today. I've been on the phone all morning, trying to find a bike shop in town that stocks shims and valve cover gaskets, to no avail. I understand that shops keep their inventory low intentionally, but yeesh, gaskets and shims take up no room at all. Pout pout pout. Or perhaps they all know something I didn't (but do now), which is that doing a valve adjustment on an SV is a huge pain in the ass.

Derek, he of recent Bandit 400 acquisition, came over yesterday to oversee the big mess I'd made of my bike -- he owns a shop in Oklahoma City and generally Has A Clue about these sorts of things. I made a great impression right off the bat by immediately dropping one of the shims down into the bowels of the bike somewhere. Not into the engine, thank god, so thwapping around with the extendable magnetic pointer eventually found it. Can't take me anywhere.

I'd already measured the valve clearances and found that my rear cylinder's exhaust valves were too tight. I took off the camshafts, found the shim to note its measurement, blah blah. I was nervous about putting everything back together, though, so Derek walked me through doing that until the cams were back on and the timing was set, etc. Obviously, I have to take it apart again to actually fit the new shim, but now that I've done it once before, I'm not downing Xanax over it.

So, yeah. Now I just have to find a shim and some gaskets in stock. Oh, and the *&@^! Suzuki special tool for locking the cam chain tensioner adjuster thingamabob in place while I re-install it.

Yes, there'll eventually be a write-up so that this whole rigamarole is explained clearly and concisely.

My summer vacation.

33 riding days

10,300 miles

19 states

2 provinces

1 non-fatal mechanical difficulty (the broken speedo out of Kingman)

1 tip-over in a gravel parking lot in Chama, NM (0mph, naturally. Bike wasn't even on.)

Hottest temperature: 110F near Redding, CA

Coldest temperature: high 30s along Hwy 28 in Wyoming

Longest day: 585 miles (Kingman, AZ to Cupertino, CA)

Shortest day: 83 miles (Mundelein, IL to Muskego, WI)

Back in Issaquah, WA

The Hug the Curve tour is officially over -- everyone else is on their way home. I'm hanging out in a coffee shop in Issaquah, uploading photos and getting ready to head to Colleen's (DantesDame[x] on ST.n) house in Seattle.

I'm quickly running out of laptop battery power (naturally, I left the charger in the motel room...), but here are a couple of photos from the HTC trip. :) I'll do a more complete write-up once I'm home.

[...damn, this is hard to pick only a couple of photos. I'm going to just pick a few at utter random.]

Hwy 6 between Castlegar, BC and Silverton, BC

Athabasca Glacier, Columbia Icefield, AB

ATVing in Yoho National Park, BC

Glacier National Park, MT

Hwy 28 between Hot Springs and Plains, MT

Hwy 20 through North Cascades, WA

Pincher Creek, AB

250 miles of cold rain yesterday. Blecch. It was fun in that "tomorrow we'll look back on this and think it was an adventure!" sense, but the novelty wears out when everything in your tankbag is sopping wet. Pincher Creek apparently gets only 54 days of measureable rain per year -- should we feel lucky? :D

We arose this morning to a gorgeous sunrise, though, and promises of afternoon temperatures in the 70s.

Revelstoke, BC

Greetings from Revelstoke, British Columbia! We had a relatively short day today and arrived to our motel room at 2:30pm. I'm taking advantage of the lobby's wireless internet access before going on a solo walk around. I'm having a great time with the girls but needed a little bit of alone time before our group dinner tonight. :)

The riding has been spectacular (not that I expected anything less from BC!). I absolutely adore it up here. I spent most of the day in top gear, swooshing around mountain roads at 70mph while looking up at peaks and down at emerald-green lakes. Can't beat that.

Oh Best Western, how I've missed ye.

I'm back on the road now, in Grants Pass, OR on my way to the Hug the Curve tour. I'm meeting Leslie and Paula in Issaquah, WA tomorrow evening, which gave me two 430-mile days to get there. Not too bad.

So my free advice of the day: don't drink too much wine and eat a really rich meal the night before having to wake up early to do 400+ freeway miles. Holy shit, was I miserable. My stomach was finally settled enough around Redding to start drinking water and Gatorade...fortunately for me, since north-central CA was its usual hospitable July self (100+ F). Ugh.

I'm settled in the hotel room now, though (which has happily acquired free wireless internet access since Stephanie, Tony, and I stayed here last summer) and am about to walk to dinner. Hopefully food won't be a problem. Ah, the myriad joys of traveling.

WI trip report (link)

Well, I'd intended to post a few pictures from my trip over on Sport-Touring.net, but ran out of life and ended up doing a trip report. Since I'm lazy, I'll just link to it from here.

My trip report over on ST.n