Fields Oregon Trip

My dad was reading a travel post on some forum or blog or whatever, and said "Hey Tim, lets go to Fields, Oregon". So we went.

Editorial note: this was in August but I've been too busy having fun to bother writing about it...

Our plan was to meet out there in Southeast Oregon for lunch on Saturday, then stay the night in Lakeview. I would start a day earlier and go by way of John Day. The first half of my Friday was mostly playing stuck in traffic out over the mountain (Central Oregon is the playground of Western Oregon and basically all routes are crowded as heck around weekends) and on to Prineville. The last time I'd been to Prineville was more than ten years ago, back then it was a small town like any other, now it looks like its been Portlandified like Bend, Sisters, and Madras. Organic vegan bicycle shops and the like along with Portland traffic everywhere. Too bad.

Past Prineville the riding opened up. Road 380 meanders out east past ranches, ranches, and more ranches. Traffic is minimal and you can easily find yourself (at least on my bike) going license remover speed without really planning to. Without the frame of reference of traffic, you just go as fast as you can. I like Eastern Oregon for that.

It was fair weekend in John Day and I was lucky to get one of the last rooms in town. The Dreamers Lodge is a nicely refurbished motel run by a polite and hospitable Indian fellow. As I was the last one to check in, when I walked into the office he greeted me by name! Nice fellow. John Day was a nice change from Sisters and Prineville. It still seems like a real small town. I wandered around and saw the sights, had pizza and beer, and turned in.

Saturday morning I grabbed some breakfast and hit the road. Highway 395 also has the opportunity for going entirely too fast, the problem is there are speed traps. One such trap near Seneca Oregon I saw coming and slowed down to the posted speed, and gave a friendly wave to the OSP officer waiting just behind the 25mph sign.

A few miles later I was cooking with gas again and made fantastic time down to Burns. The road south from Burns gets less twisty and fun and is more long straight stretches where its difficult NOT to go a million miles an hour. Since I was making too good of time I stopped at FrenchGlen and bummed around for a few minutes.

Hops growing all over an old covered wagon.

A few minutes (or was it hours? I can't remember) past FrenchGlen I got to Fields Station. There's really not much more there than a few houses, a few hotel rooms, the Station itself, and a Forest Service outhouse. I set about waiting and drinking Gatorade while Dad caught up. The burgers at Fields station are pretty good, and so is the milkshake. If you go, do yourself a favor and share the shake with a friend because its HUGE. In case you're worried about gas, they have clear premium as well as 87/e10. I noticed one of the guys working there was wearing a coyote brown beanie, in 90 degree heat. I commented "You must have deployed to Iraq. Only Iraq war vets wear a beanie in this weather". He laughed and said  "yeah, don't underestimate the tactical significance of the beanie".

We seriously didn't plan wearing the same MotoQuest shirt and Honda hat.

Just south past Fields I was fighting the urge to go 90+ when oncoming was an OSP truck. Hah, dodged another one. We crossed into Nevada at Denio Junction (pretty much just some run down houses in the middle of nowhere and a Gas Station) and headed west on Highway 140. I can't overemphasize how easy it is to go too fast out there.

We stayed at another Indian owned motel in Lakeview and chatted with the owner, other riders at the motel, and explored Lakeview on foot. The next day working our way Northwest through more ranches and grass land we saw of all weird things a tree next to the road that was filled with bras. I parted ways with Dad when we hit the traffic cluster-fuck known as highway 97 on a weekend. I got stuck in the worst of it for most of highway 58 until I spotted just enough clean pavement to leapfrog past the endless RVs and heavy haulers into open air for the last leg home.

Wet and Wild

I had this strange feeling when I stepped out of my car at the grocery store. It was about 65 degrees out and raining pretty steadily. But unlike the kind of rain that makes me want to curl up on the couch with a bad movie and a strong drink, this made me think about riding. Weird huh? Not just any kind of riding, but the kind where I put on my waterproof textiles, mount my hard bags, and disappear for a few days to somewhere else.

Of course I badly need new tires for the Interceptor to pull that off. I'm pleased to say that my Pilot Road 4 rear is at 7 thousand miles and has just reached "bald" in the center. The front is kind of chewed up too and reached the wear bars. I've been agonizing (like I do) about what to put on next, but when I looked at the mileage today and realized how far the PR4 had gone, that kind of made up my mind. Now I just get to agonize about whether I take it to a shop to mount or do it myself (which was a frustrating pain in the ass last time I did it but is marginally cheaper).

If only I could bargain with the weather. Oh dear weather, please rain all you want now and don't rain during the September OMRRA race weekend.

Speaking of racing, I got some help from OMRRA racer #404 rebuilding my forks. As we thought, the shop had overfilled the hell out of the forks and they were locking up. Now they move like they should and I have a better understanding of the inner workings of BPF forks. I also added more paint to give the ZX6R a more even rattle can look.

Looks good in proper lighting from the right angle huh?

We found some rain during a group ride this weekend. The coastal range was properly wet, but we ripped the highways anyways.

When I got home I traded ballistic textiles for cutoffs and sandals. There'a certain visceral pleasure to washing a motorcycle clad only in cutoff shorts while drinking cold adult beverages and getting rained on by a warm summer rain.

Race Bike Build

Here's my build article. The objective was to set up my 2012 ZX6R as a race legal bike with as little done to it as possible and as little permanent modification as possible. I didn't bother throwing a lot of performance parts at it rather I focused on meeting the OMRRA requirements as simply as possible.

After my Ninja getting stolen and dropped on both sides, then crashed at RMP when someone did a bad pass and dropped anchor in front of me, it was looking kinda rough.

Starting condition, more or less complete but banged up fairings. As I started taking them off I found that they were held together more or less by friction and a lot of the connectors were broken, I guess I won't be putting them back on.

Front End all Naked

Test Fitting the front/top fairing. I went with MotoAndes due to price and construction. For $400ish shipped you get fairly tough fiberglass fairings that allow use of the kickstand.

I watched a ton of the videos from Sportbike Track Gear that show how to drill and fit race bodywork. I would have sucked at this part much worse if I hadn't. More or less the drill dots on the fairings were right on. The places where they weren't it was due to bits and pieces of additional equipment like the case savers that added extra bulk. The main thing I learned here is measure three times drill once, and use a unibit. Also don't work on a bike with low blood sugar (something I struggle with).

I was pretty sloppy getting the belly pan holes and the corresponding holes drilled right. Something to make better over the winter. Because of this my Dzus fasteners like to vibrate loose....

Quick rattle can job. I was interrupted by the rain and ran out of paint. The upper looks bad.

I relocated the regulator rectifier to where the headlight used to be.

Half done fairings. I took it to New Racer School like this.

Lever guard installed. It would later vibrate loose and I'd loose half of it.

Little things like this lock have to be removed. I don't want to permanently modify anything so it took some work.

Test fitting the tail. Actually installing the tail was easier than the rest of the fairings.

Installing the case protectors was mostly pretty easy. Pull out half the bolts, install the cover, reinstall new bolts with LocTite.

I ordered an aluminum bolt for the coolant drain by mistake, then broke it and had to remove my water pump to extract it. Dumb dumb. Bought a titanium one and installed that. This was one of those frustration moments where I really really wanted to quit.

Out with the green, in with the pink (water wetter). This took a long time to flush all the green out. It was messy and frustrating as well.

I used stencils to put my novice race number on the tail. When I go back in the winter to do the paint properly I'll paint it like a number plate or whatever.

Safety wiring. I used as many pre-drilled Pro-Bolt bolts as possible because I am awful at using power tools.

Then there was this thing. As soon as I opened it I realized that they want you to drill into the underside of the swingarm and tap the holes. Um, no. I ended up getting one from a racer that works with sheet metal that goes on with the spool.

More Safety wire.

Had to drill this one. :( Broke a drill bit on it.

After my multi piece guard failed on the Friday trackday I bought this one piece Bonamici guard which is sexy.

Nobody likes to admit how much they spent on this silly hobby, so lets do that.

Fairings - 450ish (purchased MotoAndes)

windscreen - $22 (ebay) + $10 bolts

oil drain bolt, oil fill bolt (moto-d) $46

pinch bolts, radiator drain bolt (pro bolt) $38+15

safety wire washers (pit posse) $10

safety wire/pliers - 25

drill bits - $7

unibit - $35

lever guard (gratis from DW15)

lever guard to replace the one that fell apart because I didn't loctite it (Bonamici ) $139

case protectors 105 (purchased yana Shiki)

water wetter $10

Oil filter with safety wire hole (k&n) $5

oil $30

dzus fasteners $32

Fork Seals: $26 + $195 service cost (I'm going to have to re-do this because the shop screwed it up!)

toe deflector - 60 (required drilling, didnt use)

no drill toe deflector from Jason Iverson- $40 

vinyl numbers - $20

Total so far: $1320

Things to note. This took me about 40 hours mostly working in the evenings after work. I'm not a great mechanic so these things took me a lot of time, effort, and frustration. A good mechanic that had done a race bike build before could have done this in, maybe 8 hours? This also could have been done cheaper if I was good at drilling things and drilled OEM bolts instead of buying ProBolt. I could have used one of the beat up OEM windscreens I have to save a few bucks. Its tough to find a serviceable used fairing kit for the price of the MotoAndes kits, so that'd be a hard place to cut cost corners effectively. For my first race round I used the DOT tires instead of using slicks. I'll probably stick with DOTS for the next round as well to keep the learning curve down.