The Ride Report

As promised, I’ve recorded some more video, this time with a better camera and at higher resolution. I fabbed a camera mount out of PVC pipe and a galvanized steel corner brace and used this to mount my miniDV camcorder on the bike. The mount came out really well; I even managed to set it up so I can look down along the fork through my fairing and see the camera’s LCD screen to confirm that it’s on and recording (or that I forgot to turn it on in the first place). I’ll post pix of the mount later.

I took it out for a trial run last Thursday. I met up with a couple guys from my club and we rode that favorite route I keep talking about — Bouquet Canyon. It was a beautiful day for riding and I recorded the whole run and posted it to YouTube. It’s posted below, split into five parts due to YouTube’s 10 minute video length.

I also included music in the video. In parts one and two I tried to approximate the music I was actually listening to as I rode, but then I felt guilty about copyright infringement, so in the last parts I used music from the Podsafe Music Network (which features music shared by the artists via a Creative Commons license). I leaned pretty heavily on a band I really like called Point22.

Enjoy:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

I made my first foray into Youtube-land today with the below video. It’s only about about two minutes long. I leave my back driveway and ride a few blocks up the road, then for some reason I thought I should stop the recording before the filesize got too large, so I leave you hanging with me sitting in the left turn lane. Don’t worry, the story had a happy ending: I completed the turn successfully.

I don’t think it’s too bad for a first effort. Next time around I’ll record at a higher resolution — and for longer, but this’ll do for a start.

High art, it isn’t.

The phone rang at 12:15 this afternoon. It was a friend, saying some of the guys were “getting together to go ride motorcycles.” Did I want to come?

At that moment I was busy ripping out the disgusting, wet carpet from our guest bathroom. The toilet in there tends to back up from time to time, and it had backed up on my 11-year old daughter earlier this week. Unfortunately, it backed up while I was gone and my wife was taking a nap. My daughter, the considerate little darling that she is, didn’t want to wake Mom up. Instead, she quickly made up a little sign saying “Out of Order” and taped it on the closed toilet seat, and then left the room. While the overflowing toilet continued to run … and run … and run for god knows how long before my wife finally woke up and turned the water off. Let me tell you, that sodden, drippy, yellow-brown, squishy, piss and shit-stained carpet was disgusting. And there I was, pulling it out by hand. Blech.

So that voice on the phone was that of an angel and I didn’t hesitate a moment before saying “Hell yes!” I was out the door before the cholera bacterium in the carpet knew what hit them.

I hooked up with one of the guys on the way up to our meeting point. He caught up to me on the freeway on the way up and we rode in together. I thought it was pretty cool that we had happened to meet up on the road like that, but he told me later that he’d been waiting for me at the freeway on-ramp and I had blown right past him. I never even saw him there. He said he had to ride like a bat out of hell to catch me. Oops.

Once we got up to Canyon Country where we were meeting the other guys it turned out that we were smack in the middle of a high wind advisory. It was blowing like crazy and gusting up to 50 mph. It was blowing so hard that it was hard to stand still without getting blown around. Wind like that made riding the canyons questionable.

But we’re rough, tough bikers and it takes more than a little wind to keep us off the road. So we all talked about it and discovered that one guy needed to get home to watch the USC game, another wanted to get home to spend time with his wife, the third guy wanted to drink beers at the first guy’s house, and me and everyone else wanted to go eat tacos at a little Mexican mercado just up the road. So while we really wanted to go riding and the wind was only going to make it more fun, unfortunately we all had other things that needed doing instead and we’d have to do the riding part another day.

So we scattered to (with) the wind and went our separate ways. And I used my new heated vest on my way home and it was great.

And thus began a new year of riding for me — 50 miles round trip to get to a ride that never happened. At least I was warm…

Today, the last day of the year, is deep in the heart of winter, which for much of the country means snow and ice and cold and no more riding. Not so here in Southern California; here it’s always riding season. So I closed out the year with a couple of rides.

Yesterday I rode up to the Rock Inn for lunch again, this time with my friend Greg, who keeps his Heritage Softail in my garage, and two club brothers. We retraced my favorite route that I followed last time, with the difference being that this time around our club’s road captain was leading and he got us lost at
the end — as usual. I’m still trying to figure out why he’s a road captain — that guy gets lost every single time he leads us anywhere. But like I said at the stoplight when he turned and asked us, “Did I fuck up?” — there are no wrong turns when you’re just going for a ride.

I let the club guys take the lead and I rode behind them with Greg, and as usual we set a pretty brisk pace on the way up to the restaurant. Greg’s other bike is a Hayabusa, so I was expecting him to be right there with us, but he surprised me by riding really conservatively. The other guys left us far behind, and I eventually tired of holding back to stick with Greg and I ended up leaving him behind too. I held back enough to keep him in my mirrors, but I just couldn’t make myself ride as slowly as he was going. I don’t know if it was because his bike couldn’t keep up (unlikely) or because he was riding his own ride and didn’t want to get sucked into going fast (as he claimed, but I don’t buy it) or if he really couldn’t ride that fast (doubtful — I hope), whatever it was I ended up being a little disappointed in him. This was his unofficial introduction to the club and the guys were not impressed.

But what the hell. We had a good lunch, had a great ride, and I got to hang out with three of my buddies. How can any of that be bad? That day put 113 miles on the clock.

Today, New Year’s Eve, I decided to go the other way and head down to the beach. It was a beautiful Southern California day: sunny and clear at 68 degrees with nary a snowflake in sight. In short: perfect riding weather. And look, I know it sounds like I’m gloating about how great it is to have year-round riding, but… well… Okay, I am gloating, but you would be too. At least you snowbound riders don’t have to pay for gas to ride year-round. When you think about it that way, I’m actually paying a penalty to be able to ride whenever I feel like it, so cut me some slack already.

Anyway… I rode down along Pacific Coast Highway up to Malibu Seafood, where I stopped and had a shrimp and crab cocktail and a Buckler non-alcoholic beer. I’m not that big a fan of Malibu Seafood, but it fit my mood for a seafood snack and it was in the right place. Greg’s a big fan, but I prefer Neptune’s Net further up the coast. I think their food is better and it’s one of my favorite beach rides — but I didn’t feel like going that far today. So I made do with my good but overpriced shrimp cocktail and then I hit the road again.

A few miles up I decided to pull over and try to get a Happy New Year picture to post here. (Yes, it’s more SoCal weather gloating in action.) Here’s the results:

After that, I mounted up again and rolled for home and pulled into the driveway just as the sun was setting. 58 miles on the odometer closed out the year.

Happy New Year, everyone. Keep the shiny up, the rubber down, and the wind in your face.

I spent some time in the garage today, wrenching away on my bike. My wife gave me a WarmGear heated vest for Christmas and I needed to run power from the bike’s accessory plug for it, so of course I had to make the wiring job more complicated than it needed to be.

The vest came with coax connectors and a battery wiring harness, but that wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to use the accessory harness I installed a few months ago when I got my Zumo GPS device. I had “improved” it by cutting off one of the plugs and soldering on a quick-disconnect plug so I could easily take the GPS rig off the bike when necessary, and I wanted to do the same thing for the vest. Let’s ignore the fact that the plug I had replaced was already a quick-disconnect plug — it just wasn’t the type I wanted to use on the GPS rig. And let’s also ignore the fact that since I installed it, I have never taken the GPS mount off the bike and I probably never will. The point here is that the accessory wiring harness had different connectors than the vest had, just like the Zumo. Clearly, I had to do more cutting and soldering.

Fortunately, I’m lazy. As I got out the soldering iron and tin and connectors and all the other crap that goes with it, I remembered how much work (and cursing) it was wiring up the harness for the Zumo and I said Screw it, I’m using the harness that came with the vest. That right there saved me at least a day and a half and five trips to RadioShack. I just popped the seat off, connected the harness, and rigged the plug under one of the side covers where it’s easily accessible when needed. In, out, done in about 15 minutes. Nice.

With all the time I saved, I decided to knock out a few more things I’ve been putting off:

• I repositioned the Zumo on my handlebars so I can put gas in without fear of dousing it and changed the angle to eliminate the noontime glare I’ve been getting off the screen.
• I pumped up the rear shocks so my fat ass would stop bottoming them out on potholes.
• I reinstalled my left muffler again to take care of a pain-in-the-ass exhaust leak that I still haven’t been able to completely eliminate.
• And perhaps most importantly, I adjusted my Kruzer Kaddy bracket so my coffee cup sits level when I’m riding. It was tilted a bit, leading to sloshing and unfortunate waste of delicious drops of my beloved Sulawesi.

I told my buddy Dave about all these mods — heated vest, mp3-playing GPS, drink-holder, adjustable shocks… He laughed at me. He said I ought to just trade the bike in on a GoldWing. He called me yuppie scum. He said I’m not a real biker.

I have to admit, that GoldWing comment hurt.

I keep planning these grand, eloquent entries that are deep with meaning and rich with imagery — and then I keep not writing them. Which is, I think, negatively impacting the readability of this here blog. So I think I’ll switch it up a bit. Instead of dazzling you with my wordsmithing (which really is quite dazzling when I actually get around to smithing the words), instead I’ll just keep it simple and post up a quick entry when I go out for a putt or have something interesting (and writeable) to say.

I went out riding today with one of the guys from my club and his wife. We decided to have lunch at a local biker-friendly hangout, the Harley’s Rock Inn (now under new management and just called the Rock Inn, I think), and since we live pretty far from each other we met in the middle in Castaic and rode up through the twisties together. I took the lead and we hot-footed it up the mountain at a brisk pace, scraping floorboards all the way. (At least I was — he laid back a little in deference to his wife.) The route we took up — Lake Hughes Road — is my 2nd favorite local ride. We had lunch and hung out for a while, then split up and headed to our respective homes. I took Bouquet Canyon down, which is my favorite local ride.

I clocked roughly 110 miles today, and it was a beautiful day for a ride. Sunny and clear, cool and crisp, right in the middle of December — a perfect example of why Southern California was made for riding.

View Larger Map

I took my daughter out for a ride with my club this weekend. One of the guys has a connection with the organizers of A Day in the Dirt and could get us in for free (which is exactly how much I think everything should cost), so he was speaking my language. We met up at Bob’s Big Boy in Toluca Lake and then rode the twisties through Angeles National Forest to get to the racetrack in Palmdale.

My club as a group tends to ride pretty fast, especially in the twisties. One guy said once, on one of his first rides with us over this same route, “Jesus Christ, are we riding or racing?” We were just riding, but he’s from Texas where I guess you mostly go straight, so I suppose his confusion was understandable. Another guy earned the road name Slider when he, uh, slid on a ride through the twisties with us. He couldn’t hold his line through a tight right-hander and slid off the road and across a driveway until he finally hit a mailbox that stopped him. Amazingly enough, he walked away unscathed and his bike’s $3,000 paint job didn’t get a scratch — he just bent back his crashbar.

Anyway, my point is that we go fast. But I had my little girl with me, so I took it easy. I told the guys I’d ride sweep because I didn’t want anyone in my mirrors breathing down my neck, and I rode “safe and sane” for a change. I kept up pretty well at first, but the group slowly started pulling away as they hammered through turns that I eased into after them, and after awhile they were far ahead of us. At one point we were able to look across the canyon and see them flying along on the other side. I took it so easy that a friend who was following us in a car caught up to me.

We finally caught up to the group when they stopped to wait for us, and I asked my daughter how she was doing. I thought she might be a little nervous with the speed or the windy conditions that were making the ride a little squirrely. I wanted to make sure she was having a good time.

She was not having a good time: I was going too slow. She didn’t like that everyone had to wait for us. She especially didn’t like the part when we looked across the canyon and saw the rest of the group far ahead of us. She was very emphatic about what we needed to do:

“Go faster, Dad.”

So for the rest of the day, I did.

It’s pretty sad when your own daughter calls you out in front of your friends. I’m just sayin’…

I went on the Love Ride last Sunday, as I’ve done almost every year since 2001. I had my doubts about the different format this year, with the ride going to the Pomona Fairplex rather than Castaic Lake, and rolling the ride in with California Bike week, but I think it worked. The ride seemed much more organized this year — they actually blocked off a freeway lane for us for a mile or so — and the Pomona Fairplex is a much more concert and crowd-friendly environment than is Castaic. I didn’t get a chance to see the racing or any of the other Bike Week events, but judging it on the variety of vendors there and the way their booths were laid out, plus how easy it was to navigate the Fairplex itself, I have to give it a big thumbs-up.

In all fairness and honesty, it’s possible that my impressions may have been colored by the fact that I had backstage passes both at Glendale Harley and up at Pomona. I’ve done the Love Ride as part of the madding crowd before, and I’m here to tell you that backstage is better: better parking, better food, less crowded, a great view of the stage … it definitely has its advantages. You might even get to meet Willie G. Davidson:

Me and Willie G (and Mrs. G)

I was moving the bike around back to park it in the garage last weekend when the throttle cable broke. I climbed on, turned on the ignition, twisted the throttle– SNAP!

Crap.

I’m lazy, so I pointed the bike down the front driveway and feathered the clutch enough to get it going, then idled my way around the corner to the back of the house where the garage is. Then, because I’m cheap, I decided to fix it myself. I tackled the job tonight.

Well, I’m here to tell you that changing out the throttle cable on an ‘03 Harley Road Glide is harder than you’d think. You have to disassemble the hand control. And remove the seat. And remove the air cleaner. And remove the console on the gas tank. And then remove the friggin’ tank. (Well, okay, only partially remove the gas tank, but still.) That’s pretty out of hand for a stupid three foot long cable.

At least that’s what the service manual calls for. Now that I’ve been through it, I think you could probably skip taking off the seat and the gas tank. The hardest part of the job was actually installing the cable into the ferrule in the throttle grip — that was a bitch.

But I did it and it only took me about four hours, including a dinner break. And amazingly enough, no blood was spilled and I think I only cussed five or six times, probably only twice loud enough to be heard two or three blocks away. If I had had the dealer to do it I would have had to pay for a tow and probably at least two hours labor, not to mention turning down whatever other BS repairs the stealer came up with that I didn’t really need.

Now I have the pride and satisfaction of knowing I handled it myself — and the knowledge that it was all my fault if something goes wrong with it later.

Being the cheap bastard that I am, I’m loathe the pay the dealer to do any work that I can do myself. I install my own exhausts, I change out my own handlebars, I wired my GPS into my accessory circuit — I like to do it myself. Regular maintenance items are obviously included in that — but that’s where I get in trouble. Changing the oil is my Kryptonite.

I changed my oil yesterday in preparation for a trip to Northern California tomorrow, and as usual it’s taken me multiple passes to get it right. This time around I overfilled it and now I’ve got oil puking out of the air intake, so I spent some time this evening draining some oil out, and then adding some more back in because I drained too much out. I just can’t get it right: too much in, then too much out, and now it’s back to where I think it should be … and I could swear I’ve re-added exactly as much as I drained. But hey, the dipstick’s happy now. I hope. Cross your fingers. But I got off easy this time. The last time I changed my oil I had to do it twice, twice. Yes, that’s two twices. Let me ‘splain…

I was changing my oil, see? First I pulled the drain plug and drained it all out. Then I went to remove the filter. But it was stuck. Like, welded-on stuck. The dealer had changed the oil last when I had my cam chain tensioners replaced, and they had obviously put the filter on with an impact wrench and Loc-tite. I ultimately went through not one, not two, and not three, but four different filter wrenches and I still could not get it off. I was leaving for a trip to Hollister the next morning and didn’t have time to deal with it, so I gave up on changing the filter, filled her up with the new oil, and resolved to get it right when I got back.

On returning from Hollister I tried to change the oil again. I drained the old oil, filled up with new oil, then went to work on removing the oil filter. I started the job with the determination that I was getting it off this time no matter what. Well, I’m here to tell you that determination will only take you so far. None of my four oil filter wrenches would budge it. None of my extensive collection of curse words would budge it. That filter was not coming off. Or so it thought. I was determined, remember?

Enter daddy’s little helper: a screwdriver. I stabbed the shit out of that filter, skewering it and then using the screwdriver as a handle, cranking it off an inch at a time. It was a scene straight out of Psycho, if Janet Leigh had been an oil filter and the knife had been a screwdriver and the blood had been oil and the shower had been a Road Glide and I had been Norman Bates. Aside from those minor differences, it was exactly the same. And at the end of the movie I got the filter off and put it in the trash instead of in the trunk of a Ford Falcon.

And that’s the story of how I ended up changing my oil twice twice. It only took me 1.5 tries this time, so I’m getting better at it.