Bike update

Times change, bikes change.
In February I sold the CBR to some squid that would appreciate it more, IE ride the hell out of it and then wreck it. Then I rode the Bolt north on the worst rainy day of March and traded it in for a 2014 VFR Interceptor Deluxe.

Meanwhile I helped my special lady friend Anna to buy a used 2012 CBR250r from a nice Gentleman in Beaverton.

Its incredibly infuriating having to "ride conservatively" during the breakin period on the VFR, but I'll manage. Next week I have an appointment for the first service and to pick up my hard bags, and then I'll really open it up on the way home. I took a coast run with a bunch of crotch rocketeers and had to keep my pace down because of the breakin, difficult.

Speaking of opening it up, Anna's 250 is fun as hell. Like they say, its more fun to ride a slow bike fast than a fast bike slow.

In N Out Run, Miscellaneous Shennanigans

It used to be that if someone in Oregon wanted In N Out that they'd have to go to Redding. For us riders it was the thing to do to stop there on the way down to ThunderHill Raceway or to stop there on our tours of Northern California.

Then someone got the bright idea and opened one in Medford. It was the carpocalypse around it for a month as all of Medford and surrounding states wanted to sample the simple magic that is the Double Double.

Now dear reader you know just how much I despise crowds, but let me enlighten you as to how much I love In N Out. I love In N Out enough to tolerate crowds.

When I got it into my head to take a road trip there was no question that it would be via motorcycle. The only question was whether to take The Bolt or to take the CBR. Having recently gotten the CBR more or less road worthy I opted to really give it a shakedown and take it on a trip where it would be at freeway speeds for a prolonged time.

As it happened my good friend Travis(Suzuki) was going to be laid off from Motorcycle Superstore the day before my run. I made arrangements with our other friend Brian (Ducati) to throw him a lay-off party the evening of my run.

The last detail was to get some brats to ride with me.

Pictured: my bags are packed.

First meet up, get Marv on his new R1.

Second meet up, Trav on his FZ1000R and Bobby on his VFR1200F

The fun really started once we hit Marcola road. It was damp but that didn't stop us from enjoying the hell out of the curves. My confidence was starting to return and I led the way. Regretably for time sake we took slab from Springfield south. We refueled in Roseburg and said hi to Marv's mom, then continued on.

More fun happened after Canyonville where we hopped onto Tiller International Raceway. Tiller highway is one of those places where you just have to dig into the corners and throttle out. Down low it has 100mph sweepers then climbs into the hills where you get 25mph corners, a hairpin, and some unexpected sunken grades in the apex of corners.

I learned on Tiller highway that I had lost much more confidence from my crash than I thought. My survival reactions went absolutely nuts on some blind corners. I dialed my speed way back and decided I'd rather be slow getting there than dead.

Nothing to report on Highway 62. Its still there, and boring. But it lead us to this.

Double double with Animal Style fries. OMG.

Travis, Ashleigh (Honda VFR), Brian, and other Ashley arrived while were were eating. Bike appreciating and bench racing commenced.

Notice the Batman shirt that I crashed in. Gotta redeem that bad luck.

Eventually the Brats headed back north, and the rest of us went to T&A's house to commence the lay-off party. Just as an aside, Travis' layoff sucks even more than a regular layoff because it means I can no longer take advantage of his employee discount. Sad Face.

Years ago in college we all went to this party where Travis brought a bottle of rather expensive (for a college student) liquor called "Yukon Jack". Think of it as high class FireBall. Anyways the party went fairly well up until Travis' consort at the time had an emotional breakdown and he spent the latter half of the party trying to keep her from cutting herself. This left the bottle of Yukon Jack undefended, which I valiantly tried to defend with my liver against a group of Marines on leave. Long story short Travis was really bummed out that he didn't get any of the expensive liquor that he had brought.

At another party he made the same mistake of bringing something good to a party of leeches who bring cheap light beer (or nothing) and was appropriately bummed about the outcome. Years later I decided to make good on it and brought a bottle of Yukon Jack (also Vodka and Rum) to the layoff party. Brian (being from Portland) brought a few Growlers of various microbrews.

So hopefully you see where this is going. Alcohol goes in, shirts come off, compromising pictures are taken.

Travis' expensive high performance foreign import Ashleigh (pictured below) valiantly tried to keep us hydrated by taking away our drinks and replacing them with bottles of water.

Sometime between the above pictures while the song "But first let me take a selfie" was playing and the picture below I puked and then passed out. Helluva party.

I woke up on an air mattress with a bottle of water and a puke bucket next to me. My friends freaking rock. Also the above picture was on my cell phone. By morning I was fully hung over and miserable. I repeated the drink water, go puke, cycle until mid morning when Ashleigh made hangover casserole for us (a greasy awesome confection of eggs, cheese, sausage, and tater tots) and we watched some really stupid movie while slowly eating and recovering. By noon we were recovered enough to depart. I geared up and headed north.

Whereas my ride down had been chilly until Hwy 62, my ride north was much warmer and I was sweating my hungover butt off in my cool weather gear, even with the liners out and vents open.

All in all an excellent Shakedown run, In N Out run, college reunion, and layoff party. Its weekends like this that leave me with the feeling that a motorcycle is really the best vehicle to get out and experience life. Riding with great friends, travelling through beautiful areas, eating good food somewhere different, all these things are what I look forward to all day while I'm stuck in an office yearning for the weekend.

Gear Review: Giant Loop Coyote

As you may have figured out from my experiment of putting adventure bike tires onto the CBR-600RR I have no qualms against mixing motorcycle gear genres to get the outcome I want. I decided to apply the same principle when looking for luggage for The Bolt. The problem as I pointed out in an earlier post is that the "tail" on The Bolt is too short for most generic "Cruiser" style luggage unless one relocates the turn signals. Most of those saddlebags are day tripper type things and not really up to going the distance anyways.

My existing Cortech Super luggage that I use on the CBR is just too big for The Bolt and looks to interfere with the shocks, turn signals, rear brake, and sprocket.

Enter Giant Loop. I stumbled across this brand while scrolling through an unfiltered by riding genre list of all luggage MCSUSA had on their website. The basic principle is that it "rides" your rear seat like a passenger would. The "Coyote" is the smaller (39-Liter) variant of this style, which I found on Amazon for a very reasonable price.

Giant Loop designs their luggage for dirt riders and is based in Bend, Oregon just over the hill from me. Bend is a mecca of outdoor enthusiasts from every season and discipline. Its no wonder that the GL Coyote is designed and built a lot like rafting luggage from the placement of the heavy duty main zipper under a flap, the material selection, to the inclusion of aquatic sports style dry bags.

The Coyote "sits" on the back of your bike like the pelvis and thighs of another rider. Approximately where the calves would be are tie down straps to attach to the frame or passenger pegs of your machine. Underneath the "crotch" of your Coyote bag is a set of metal clips on adjustable straps to attach to the plastics or frame of your dirt bike; fortunately these are removable since there's no way to attach them to anything on The Bolt. The rear compression straps of the Coyote conveniently looped around the turn signal stalks to stabilize the bag further. The last feature worth mentioning is the incredibly bright retro-reflective stripe all the way around the bag.

I took the bag on a thousand mile trip this month. Half of the time the weather was wet. One day the skies dumped on me for 260 miles without letup. In the Coyote I had packed all of my stuff expect a sweatshirt into the dry bags. At the end of the day everything in the dry bags was dry, while the sweatshirt was marginally damp. After the third day on the trip I was already kind of tired of having to undo the straps every night and re-attach them in the morning; a quick disconnect feature would be a nice improvement. Visually the Coyote is ugly, obviously made for a dirtbike, and looks like a giant gray sausage slung across the back of my bike. I suppose the aesthetics don't matter as much because I'm dressed in my goofy high-vis gear not my urban bobber cool-guy gear.

In conclusion:

Pros - Keeps stuff dry

High vis piping

Holds all my stuff

Secure on the bike while riding, doesn't get in the way

Cons - needs quick disconnects

Can be tedious to pack

Looks like dirt bike gear

Beer Run '15

Oh boy, its that time of the year again. That magical time of the year when the cool/dark weather starts encroaching on my sanity and I suddenly feel the urge to ride south to where its warmer. Due to my brother's new found freedom I got to include him in the planning too. The basic plan was the same (why mess with something that works?), head south to Happy Camp, down to Eureka, eat at Lost Coast Brewery, come back.

First I had to address some equipment problems. The most important piece of equipment, my body, isn't quite up to riding for four days on my second most important piece of equipment, the CBR. That lead to my decision to take The Bolt. All the better for keeping back with my brother (Sportster ultra low girl bike) and my dad (Vulcan pig on wheels).

With the second most important piece of equipment selected I had to figure out how to carry all the stuff that I might want to wear while not on the bike, extra tools, and of course any souvenirs I decided to get. You may recall that I decried the lack of good luggage available for The Bolt. Well I found a piece of dirt bike luggage from Giant Loop that looked like it'd work and purchased it. It looked like a giant gray sausage slung across the back of my bike, but it worked.

My equipment was all ready, I just had to wait until my scheduled PTO to get the eff out of Corvallis. At work I'm in the middle of a high priority project and can't really be gone for long, so I was only going to take off a Friday/Monday.

Murphy's law kicked in and an executive that I support had a major catastrophe the day before I was supposed to leave. Naturally he wanted someone from my department (me) to work with him on a Saturday in between business trips. I was able to slip the noose and get a co-worker to handle that job, and I was off.

I Bolted south down I-5 as fast as reasonably possible. The ride down was uneventful. I must say that at freeway speeds the little tiny windshield/cowl for The Bolt makes a nice difference in turbulence on my chest and arms, and reduces unwanted rider input from that. One other small thing that makes a huge difference is a Crampbuster.

Arriving in the Rogue Valley long before my brother would be home from work I elected to go bug Ralph (from 2-Wheel Podcast) at Oregon Motorcycle Adventures. That KTM 1190 Adventure bike sure is sweet, but thats a toy for another lifetime.

Leaving Medford I made haste for Grants Pass to hang out at the Dutch Bros downtown and talk to the old bikers. Grants Pass seems to have even more street kids than it used to. I guess when there is no more room in Portland, the unemployed will walk the earth.

The family had dinner at my brother's house and we discussed routes. We cancelled the Grayback Mt and Scott Mt./Hwy 3 options because of possible snow and debris from a recent storm. That left Hwy 101 and Hwy 96 as the remaining options.

^My bike in GP at sunset, sans luggage

^Cold morning in GP

The next morning we made breakfast and ate hardy, for tonight we dine in Hell! Or Eureka, whatever. The boys loaded up and slabbed south to meet Dad in Ashland where we gassed up and peed, before slabbing south. Never ever miss an opportunity to take a leak.

We cut west on Hwy 96 along the Klamath River. Its odd to say that this was literally the first time that I took Hwy 96 at legal speeds. Cruisers are weird like that. It was a beautiful sunny but chilly day and I kept my heated gear going the whole time. The scenery is beautiful out there but its sad every time you come across a small town that is slowly dying out, with signs everywhere blaming the State of California or Federal government for choking away their livelihoods. 

As is our tradition we stopped for greasy pizza at the only pizza place in Happy Camp. They're slow but their pizza is pretty tasty. Our other tradition is to take a picture with Bigfoot. All the tourists probably do it, and the locals probably laugh at them.

I've previously extolled the awesomeness that is Hwy 96 and this year was no different. My caveat this year is no different as well that it is falling apart in a lot of places. The ground is shifting and there's some weird sunken grades all over. I suppose it was good that this year I was riding my slow bike.

Of note is the town of Hoopa. It isn't of note because its a particular nice place (although the highway just north of it is really cool), quite the opposite. Its an Indian Reservation town. There are stripped cars on cinder blocks next to the highway. Buildings are boarded up and rusting. Dogs are running around without any humans with them; this is particularly of note because I've never seen that anywhere besides the ghetto and third world countries.

With the depression of Hoopa behind us we continued to Willow Creek (the junction of rasta looking street people on their way to Eureka/Humbolt) and out Highway 299. We had most of 299 to ourselves while we climbed into the coastal range. I had warned my travelling companions that there was a Vista Point at the top that we'd missed two years prior that I really wanted to take a picture at.

As we neared the Vista Point I honked my horn and waved, and honked my horn some more. Then my brother and dad pulled in at the last possible second. Once we had de-helmeted I asked if they'd heard me. Nope. They had just figured out that it was the Vista Point I wanted. This is a good time to note that my Dad and Brother both got Sena Bluetooth helmet headsets and were listening to music this whole time.

We followed 299 out to 101, 101 down to Eureka, through Eureka to our hotel. We checked in, got a primo parking spot, then hit the hot-tub.

^Our primo parking spot, right under our room.

The primo parking spot I found turned out to be my undoing. Dad was so attached to it that he wanted to leave one of the bikes at the hotel to save it. This meant I had to/got to ride on the back of Dad's pig to dinner. Oh well, its not like I had any dignity left anyways with my bright yellow jacket.

The Lost Coast Brewery pub is really popular these days and we had to kill 40 minutes at their bar before they could seat us. Darn.

Their tacos are pretty good. We went back to the room, brother and dad messed with the Senas and I passed out. The next morning it was pretty wet out. We packed up our stuff and headed out to the Black Lightning Motorcycle Cafe.

^souvenir

The BLMC has pretty darn good food, and the presentation is amazing. Seriously I think they are hiding a trained chef back there or something. They also have a bunch of custom bikes and tons of memorabilia and pictures from all over. Great place, I recommend visiting them.

We cruised up Hwy 101 in the sprinkling rain, through the redwoods, past the stormy ocean.

Earlier Dad had mentioned to me the idea of taking an alternate route home rather than my original plan of heading back up I-5 from Grants Pass. As I rode through the storm that idea started to grow on me. I'd be getting wet either way, why not get wet in a more interesting way?

After refueling at Crescent City I announced my intent to ride up the coast to get home rather than slabbing it back. My family asked me to check in when I got home and to put safety first. We said our goodbyes then headed our separate ways.

I cruised through the storm and had lunch in Brookings where I realized I was actually having a pretty good time despite that I could feel my pants and boots starting to soak through.

^poor Bolt in the rain

The rest of the ride was uneventful and beautiful. With my heated gear turned up high I was really enjoying the low traffic on the coast this stormy day. Unfortunately the wet crept through my boots and up my pants. By Coos Bay I was starting to get miserable. No amount of heated gear can keep out the cold when your pants and boots are completely soaked. I stopped at a Vista Point south of Florence and started re-evaluating things.

I realized I was losing my focus and needed to eat something. The rest of the ride into Florence I felt rather detached, like I was watching helmet-cam footage of someone riding rather than being the rider. I got a protein shake at Safeway and considered things. I was within 45 minutes of sundown, it was still storming, I was cold and wet, and home was 100 miles away.

My sense of survival urged me to stop for the night, so I did. I cruised up the road to the indian casino and got a room. The room was incredibly well appointed and the hot shower/bath was amazing. The sports bar served a decent burger and some good micro brews, then I settled in with some cartoons and got some sleep.

The next morning I was pleased to find that my gear had dried out. Except my boots which were still soaked. Ugh. I grabbed the trashcan liners and put my feet into them, and into the boots. If its stupid and it works it isn't stupid.

Up highway 126 was uneventful. I missed the turn and had to go through west Eugene before I could hop onto 99 north. I hate west Eugene. Its depressing like Hoopa. Street people everywhere, businesses and land owners complaining via sign about the eminent domain robbery of their land, and of course stop and go traffic.

99 north was boring. Just got rained on more. Then I got home.

^Dirty Bolt

A few take aways. I no longer fear riding in the rain. My bike handles it pretty well as long as I'm riding smoothly and not trying to hot dog the corners. I need better touring gear. My pants and boots soaked through quickly. My jacket is literally falling apart because the seams are sewn shoddily. The Giant Loop luggage did its job well but needs quick disconnects to make it easier to mount/unmount it.

Next I want to ride up to Vancouver Island and get some poutine.