Been Too Long ...

Wow ... it's been over 4 months since my last post, with the trip report out to California after Thanksgiving still hanging in limbo.

What can I say ... so far this year things have been hectic. I've had 3 different motorcycle trips scheduled, but have had to cancel each of them for one reason or another. This year's ride schedule has been turned on it's ear, but hopefully things will all come together for next year ... that's the plan at least.

This gives me some time to do a couple of things ... update the website, update the blog, and get things back to where I can post easily. Should be good things to come ... more to come.

Trip to California - Day 5

Today, Thursday, was the day of my Russell Day-Long saddle ride-in appointment.

It was up at 4:00am, quick cup of coffee, then on the road by 4:45 to make the ~200 mile trip from Benicia up to Shasta Lake (just north of Redding). I needed to be up there at 8:00am, so figured a little over 3 hours to make the trip would be enough. It would also help that I was leaving before traffic could get to be too bad.

There had been some confusion on the Russell end of things, so there ended up being two of us doing ride-in's that Thursday, so things took a little longer than they normally would. Add to that the extra complexity of the fuel cell set-up I have on the back seat, and it's easy to understand why it took until almost 6:30pm to have everything complete. These guys are a class act. Completely hand made and hand stitched, the attention to detail is incredible. My front seat and backrest were ready not long after 4, the rest of the time was taken up getting all the stitching and grommets around the fuel cell on the back seat worked out.

With all that worked out, it was time to head back to Benicia for the night ... since that's where I had left my luggage before heading up to Redding. All said, I would ride just over 400 miles today, with almost none of it being in daylight.

Once back in Benicia, the three of us (Richard, Jacqueline, and myself), headed out for dinner ... a good little burger joint not far away, with a really good chocolate shake and even better chocolate cream pie. After being on a road food diet for the past 5 days, this was a bit overload for me, and it wasn't long before I was passed out on the floor for the night.

Trip to California - Day 4

What a day!

Many more pictures on my gallery than I can post here and do it justice, but ...wow!

I was up and out of Westley by 8:00am ... I just couldn't take the flies any longer than that. For some reason the GPS routed me up via some backroads rather than the Interstate, which ended up being a pretty nice route on some good 2-laners, and I don't think I lost any more time than had I stuck to the slab.

I ended up getting to Richard's house right around 10:00. After catching up with Richard, being introduced to Torrey, and getting a couple cups of coffee, we were ready to get in some riding. Jacqueline came over to join us, and around noon we headed off to Sausalito. The plan was to meet up with another GT rider and head out, but after a bit of hit and miss with the cell phone, we decided to grab a quick lunch and head off for Highway 1 on our own.



With food out of the way, we headed off.





Coincidentally, we ended up running into the other GT rider about half way through our ride, and continued on as a larger group.



From there, we headed up to Point Reyes for another coffee stop. Since the sun was starting to drop, we decided to run just a little further north, then catch a route across over to the 101 to return back down to Benicia. Not having my GPS track in front of me, I believe we headed up to Tomales, then over to Petaluna where we picked up the 101 and headed south.

Trip to California - Day 3

Tuesday morning would start early, as I headed out of Phoenix with Tom during morning rush hour on his way in to work. We were on the road by roughly 8:30am. Tom pulled off by the airport, and I continued on I-10 around the city, stopping for fuel on the western edge of town, then headed for the desert.

Today would be an easy day, with all Interstate planned with the goal being to get within easy reach of the Bay area. Chatting with Tom and Richard about routes, I decided to stick with Interstate, taking I-10 towards Los Angeles, taking the I-210 loop around LA without actually getting wrapped up in that traffic, and then running the I-5 up north. There was a possibility for a side trip up to Joshua Tree National Park depending on my timing.

No pictures from today, I ended up just sticking to the route and made it up to Westley, CA just after sunset. Not one of the best Days Inn's I've ever stayed in, but the whole town seemed to have a bit of a problem with flies ... possibly something to do with all the farm land and irrigation right next to highway.

Temps today where very nice, getting slightly chilly as I headed up I-5, but no where near the freezing temps I had the past two days.

Trip to California - Day 2, Part 2

Now that my pictures have been posted, some shots from day 2.


Morning frost on the bike cover.


Snow on the roof of the hotel in Santa Rosa, NM.


For all my trips to California, I've not once stopped for a picture at the Continental Divide. I rectified that this time around. :)

Trip to California - Day 2

Only three days into this ride, and already I'm behind. :) Catching up on Monday's events....

I woke up Monday morning to find frost across the bike cover. According to the bike, it was 34 degrees in Santa Rosa, although with the sun shining already, snow was melting off the roof of the motel and dripping down into the parking lot. I got the bike loaded back up, and was on the road just after 9am.

Once one the highway, temps rose from 34 to upper 30's, then dropped quickly as I got to the eastern edge of Albuquerque ... down to 32/33 degrees. Still, the roadway was free of any kind of moisture, with only some of the bridge shoulders having old snow and slush piled up on the sides. After passing through Albuquerque, temps gradually started to rise ... first into the 40's, and then jumping up into the 50's once I hit the Arizona border. I had a brief panic in Gallup NM when I went to dump my aux fuel tank into the main tank, but the fuel gauge didn't react for almost 20 miles. I eventually pulled off the highway to check on the tank status, and just when I got off the bike, the gauge corrected. The joys of not testing the tank before I got out on the road.

Monday's route was to take I-40 over to Holbrook Arizona, and from there take some local Arizona state highways to work my way into Phoenix. I'm glad Tom convinced me to not use my original plan for going through Flagstaff and down ... the bike really liked being off the super-slab for ~200 miles. If I go back through Phoenix on the way home, I'm going to have to try and hit that route again ... this time taking some pictures.

I got into Phoenix to find Tom already at home (I was ahead of schedule, getting in around 6:00pm instead of the planned 7pm). After some catching up, we decided to grab dinner at a nice little Mexican place just around the corner from his house. Man those margaritas were good. :) After dinner was done, we headed back to the house to catch the end of the Suns game, some general chatter, and then plotting through route options for Tuesday. With all that done, it was 11pm and time to hit the hay.

Trip to California - Day 1

Plus side, weather was not the concern I had expected it to be.

I ended up on the road by 10:00am. Not quite as early as I had originally planned, but then I had no hard plans for today anyway. Quick stop to fill the gas tanks, and I was on my way. Temps weren't too bad, about 41 degrees when I pulled out of the garage ... no rain, just some pretty dense cloud cover.

The first little "event" happened less than 5 miles from the house. I had the original seat foam from before the second fuel tank was added strapped to the back seat. We were going to re-use that foam when recovering the rear seat pan. Somewhere between when I got on the tollway and when I got off, it flew off the bike. I didn't notice it was gone until I was at the end of the tollway.

The next little event was less than 100 miles from home. There was a wreck on 380 just east of Decatur that had the highway closed. They had us detouring around the wreck on a nice soggy mud trail. That was fun. Just follow the car tracks from in front of me and all was good, but the bike did get a bit dirty ... at least on the left hand side.

As I got closer to Wichita Falls, the temps dropped. As I cranked up the heated gear, I suddenly had NO HEAT! Pulled over at a rest stop, the Heat Troller (thermostat) wasn't getting any juice. This would be fun. At this point, the fuel cell was still completely full, so I figured I'd mess with it at my next stop. The closer I got to Wichita Falls, the colder the temps dropped. Low point was 36 and rain. Just north of Wichita Falls it started snowing, but that was short lived. About 120 miles southeast of Amarillo the clouds parted and the sun came out to play. Temps jumped to a pleasant 45. I stopped for lunch in Claude TX ... at a Dairy Queen no less, and warmed up. After eating, I pulled the seats to get to the fuse block, and sure enough the fuse had blown. When we added the heated seat to the bike, we had to relocate one of the fuse blocks. When the fuse block was moved, the lead for the Heat Troller wasn't reconnected to the post with the 15A fuse, rather it was on a 7A like everything else (there are 5 fuses, in my case I run 4x7A and 1x15A). Since all the posts aren't in use, I swapped fuses around until I had the 15A in the right place, and the blown fuse was installed in an unused circuit. From there on, I had a good ride.

Fuel cell works good. Once I hit reserve, I opened the valve, and it brought me back up to half tank showing on the gauge. It seemed to level out there, and stayed at half tank until the fuel cell emptied, and then it lowered on the gauge as it normally would.

I'm in Santa Rosa NM tonight. Streets are dry here, but there's still some snow on the ground in the areas with less direct sunlight. I should be about half way, with 550-600 miles to go tomorrow. Temps should get better as I go, as the weather in Arizona was looking pretty dang good.