End of April Meanderings

By now I should have a race weekend and a few trackdays under my belt to talk about. Alas everything's getting cancelled and June might be the first track weekend I get, hopefully. During the last OMRRA board meeting the likelihood of the June 12-14 race weekend happening sounded low. Unless the state/city/hospitals/ambulances start going back to normal early enough for the club to prepare for the round, it just won't happen.

Being that I already have that Friday off from work I've started planning a contingency, if the race weekend doesn't happen I'll go to Central/Eastern Oregon with my moto-friends. The problem with that is that my VFR is in bad need of an overhaul and I've put it off to the last minute when shops are busy. It badly needs refreshed suspension, brakes, and some engine bits. I guess that's what happens when you ride it like a sport bike for four years and 38,000 miles.

Pictured: Once in a while I clean off all the bugs and mud

In 2018 I did two trips (Fossil and NorCal) on the Ninja because the VFR was down for fork seals and it was last minute, and none of the shops could get to it. Riding 300-400 mile days on a ZX6R is painful. One day in NorCal after a hundred miles of barely paved single lane suck I was ready to abandon the trip and just blaze home. I digress. I'd rather take my sport touring bike on a sport touring trip.

When you have two street legal bikes you can usually ride one when the other is down. But sometimes they're both down due to bad timing/luck or bad planning. On a ride last weekend my ZX took a rock to the radiator and I had to limp it home. I swapped bikes for the VFR and hauled ass back to intercept the group still on route. Big groups take a long time to get going again after stops, so I was able to pull that intercept off successfully. On that trip it was really apparent of the maintenance items I'd neglected, so even though it goes, it doesn't go well enough to be considered ride able.

Well I fixed the ZX radiator with my friend JB Weld (don't judge me) and I'm waiting for a radiator guard. But I miss having a bike I can cruise around on and not need to go a hundred miles an hour to have fun on. Tomorrow I need to get in touch with the only shop to seem to be willing to do work on a V4 and get my bike into their queue.

Pictured: Test ride to see if the leak is fixed

Instead of agonizing about stuff I can't change or won't make a decision about I suppose I need to think about stuff to look forward to that hasn't been scrubbed due to C19.

-Central/Eastern Oregon trip in June or whenever it ends up

-MotoAmerica at the Ridge in August

-Highway 20/Cascades Highway in Washington (probably before or after the MotoAmerica round)

-OMRRA/Track season whenever it starts

-Maybe a fall ride into NorCal after Labor Day. I've been kicking around the idea of hitting some of the sierras on the east side

Consolation Prize

Have you ever ridden through a state park and thought: "you know these roads are great, asphalt is smooth, corners fantastic, I just wish I wasn't parked behind a minivan through all of them going 15mph. I wish a global plague would happen to reduce traffic in this park so I could enjoy the road the way the Motorcycle Gods intended".

You see where this is going, right?

After work I hopped on the ZX6R and ran off to meet another cornering enthusiast. We worked our way through the farmlands  and up towards a certain state park. At the last major interchange (last chance to turn back) there was a road sign advising the park was closed. That's where the fun started.

Admittedly since the stay at home order went into effect the traffic in a lot of places has been lessened. This road however is usually always busy, so seeing it this dead is weird. I was able to get into my rhythm, unaffected by coming around a corner and having a stopped minivan in the road, and worked the edges of the tires.

There were a handful of other bikes out and on the way back we ran across a buddy who was riding two up with a special lady.

I rarely call a ride perfect, but this was pretty damn close. A fair consolation prize for my track and race season slipping away.

Blowing off Some Steam

Today should have been the Austin MotoGP. It should have been the premier of MotoAmerica Superbike at Austin. I should have spent all day in front of the TV eating pizza, drinking beer, and swearing every time the announcer says "Marc Marquez".

But alas those events were scrubbed due to C19.

As an avid reader of my musings you are aware that in an effort to combat the frustration of lockdown and my own track/race season getting... delayed I converted my ZX6R back to street trim, so I could enjoy it. All I needed was a nice day to do so.

The motorcycle gods must have made a deal with the weather gods as they made today turn nice. One of the Salem guys said "Ride at 1, meet at xxxx" and that was it. Everyone else must have been just as itchy because about 20 lads and lasses showed up for the ride.

At first everything was kind of ho hum boring, fine I'm breaking in new tires, and then it continued so. What, has the ride leader lost his rip? So of course as you know when I'm on the ZX6R I make pour decisions and I blew by them. Efff that noise, I'm gonna get my rip on, as I blew past the group and blazed my own trail.

Ironically some miles later I ran across the tail of the group who had gotten lost, so I flipped around and hung out with them for a bit until the ride leader retrieved us. Things went back to the ho-hum and as we were entering my AO and the roads I know I said "eff this" again, but this time I knew what the intended route was. Me and a 'Busa rider split off and blazed out the country road at triple digits to catch up to the rest of the group. Funny how riding the ZX6R triple digit speeds just seems so... natural. There's no fear here, just corners, just enlightenment. A truly dangerous (legally speaking) machine as its natural state is far beyond the closed mindedness of the law.

The breakaway caught up to the rest of the group at the intersection of a fun road and a hill climb which is just awesome I gotta tell you. I must concede also that its a hillclimb that I know quite well and... do not want to be in the rear of a group for. So (you see this coming don't you?) I did a little pass-on-the-left of the group and blasted up the hillclimb. Two of the faster guys on liter bikes eventually passed me but by the top there was nary a chicken strip among us.

This kind of bad (depending on your point of view) behavior continued for the rest of the miles out to the second bridge where we had our impromptu bike show and appreciation event among the fishers at the reservoir. Excuse the picture, as this many bikes in a line (this wasn't all of them) is difficult to shoot.

But don't worry, we kept our six foot distancing the whole time.

Later when I got home I made a pizza and decided to drink too much wine and blog! Fixed my depression for a few hours at least!

OMG my pizza is so good.

ZX6R street conversion

Last year I wrote a blog post or two about converting my ZX6R for track/race duty. Well due to this C19 nonsense all my trackdays and race weekends have been cancelled up to June at least. If you read my previous vent post you know that the uncertainty and lack of control was driving my insane. So I ordered the cheapest fairing kit on ebay and decided to enjoy my Ninja on the street in the meantime. At the very least this would give me a chance to be mad at something more tangible (misfitting fairings, me being bad at fitting fairings, etc) instead of C19.

I started with the tail because its the easiest. I knocked that out on Friday after work. The hardest part was remembering how the locking mechanism goes together. Here's the funny thing: I ordered a Black-Matte kit, and my tank and solo seat cowl are shiny-black. So that it wouldn't clash I rebuilt the tail with my existing parts, which weren't all that damaged from my crashes.

Saturday morning after watching old races (two races were MM93 didn't win) and talking to my dad, I started on the main body.

I started with assembling as much as I could on the living room floor. The ZX6R has the benefit of being able to put the top cowl/nose and both mid-fairings together with the headlight. This is where I started running into the problem of 1. I'm bad at doing this and 2. I bought the cheapest kit possible. The kit didn't have all the right kinds of bolts/screws/wellnuts/quick rivets to actually put it together. My morning was spent back and forth to the garage to scavenge bits from the old trashed fairings (good thing I didn't bin them) and putting them into the new. Fit was another issue. For instance one side the turn signal fit right in, the other it didn't and I broke a bit of plastic. This particular kit was probably manufactured in 2010ish and felt super brittle.

This is also where I started running into the problem of being unable to fit certain trim parts because I suck and can't get the tabs and slots to line up. They must have a special jig for doing this in the factory. Anyways by mid afternoon I was able to get it into the garage and test fit it.

Thanks to having lots of spare bolts and connectors from other bikes I was able to start making progress. I eventually just gave up on most of the trim parts. The body is going to come off in two months (hopefully) anyways, screw it. Kawasaki in their wisdom put the R/R heatsink mounted on the inside the right fairing on the turn signal, which was a pain to put back in place.

Anyways I was able to finish good enough for a picture without mirrors(rainy outside so I stayed in).

Next week is forecast for some good weather. So maybe I'll get to ride the Ninja for the first time since September. Gotta take it easy, break in the tires, make sure nothing falls off, and most important remember how to ride it!