The First Sip and the Second Tip: Proper Center Stand Use

This last Friday we finally moved to our new home in out new city and after a three day flurry of activity Anne and I (and baby de-facto as she is still in utero) are settling in nicely.

The Tuesday before we moved I took the opportunity to transport my motorcycle to the new place as the previous owners had already moved out and it would help things run more smoothly on the day of the move. Anne was already going to be in town teaching Violin lessons but would not be done for a few hours after I got done with work, so I left work on the motorcycle and decided to sample the one of the many local coffee shops: Barista Brew Cafe.

I must say Vacaville is NOT the city to be in if you enjoy local coffee shops, you've got Peet's, Starbucks and Pure Grain Cafe... at least the latter is not a chain, and when it comes to the chains the people who frequent them would sometimes really make me pause and wonder if we should just call off this whole human race thing. After a year plus in a caffeine desert and even at one point skewing too far to the ritzy on a trip to San Francisco; I have finally had a good cup of coffee in a place that was not pretentious, was locally owned, and had what appeared to be a good customer base of a caliber that I enjoyed being around. If that makes me an elitist, so be it.  I walked in the door and it was like I was home it was the perfect balance and the cup the house blend that I ordered... Outstanding. It was definitely a good first time experience in our soon to be new city!

But this update can't just be coffee related, I do have a motorcycle related top tip that I'd like to share with you if you have a motorcycle with a center-stand.  I have been riding my 2001 Yamaha FZ1 for a little over two years and for the most part have been using the center stand exclusively, and and apparently the wrong way!  Even though out of the hundreds probably thousands of times I have executed my incorrect procedure properly twice now I it has ended with the bike laying on it's side.  The most recent of which was this last Tuesday after my coffee shop experience.  Before I would stand next to the bike and with the bike in neutral put pressure on the center stand lever and rock the bike rearwards to pop it up on the stand.  This works most of the time except for when you forget to put the bike in neutral.  I have forgotten this a few times in parking lots and for the most part it does not make it onto the rear stand and the bike kind of springs forward and down off of the stand as the engine compression resists the motion.  I did this exact thing when I was parking the bike in our covered parking. While I don't have a good excuse having made this mistake in the past, I am going to blame it on being a little paranoid about the tighter confines; a parked car on one side and a wall on the other.  When the bike rolled forward I lost my the balance of the bike and it tipped over into the wall away from the side I was standing on and I was unable to counter the momentum as it started to tip.

Nothing too major happened but I did crack my windshield which I mended yesterday using some snazzy blue zip ties.  I may eventually replace it with a new taller one but I will see how it performs before hitting up the online cycle vendors.  The other time I tipped my bike over when trying to put it on the center stand was when it was raining and I had my waterproof boots on which have a pretty smooth sole. I leveraged my foot on the stand and as I was rocking the bike back my foot slipped off the lever and I fell to my knee and the bike fell over once again away from me but that time there was no wall so the soft bags and the handlebars cushioned the fall and no damage was sustained in that event.  But here's the thing after having this happen the second time I did a little searching on the internet and found out that I had been doing it wrong all along:

   

 So there's my little PSA on motorcycle center stand safety.

The Death of Solo-moto

Everyone who has been to this site in the past knows that the purpose of this blog was to document my attempt at conducting day-to-day life, "with only a motorcycle." The last 6 moths I haven't done a very good job of documenting my efforts.  I cruised past the year mark (April 26th) without even  post to mark the anniversary.  In past posts I've lamented the fact that I haven't been able to go out for "real rides" as much once the fact that my motorcycle is my only means for transportation really hit home.  I think that in the last year that was the one thing that I really missed, for getting around efficiently, especially in California (love the lane splitting) a moto can't be beat and I love that utter efficiency of the commute.  However one thing that was hanging over my consciousness like the sword of Damacles was the memory of the hottest days in the valley and how much that sucked.  I don't mind riding the motorcycle in the cold or in the wet but as a safety-minded rider it is near impossible to dress safely and ride in triple digit heat and be comfortable and that was the one thing that I wasn’t looking forward to doing again this coming summer.

So in my head I started to make my peace with the idea that after a year of not having a car I would buy one to drive when it was too damn hot and if was too cold or rainy.  In my head I rationalize this by   the fact that I will have completed a whole year of riding just the moto.  These ideas were still marinating in my mind when the last considerations of remaining solo-moto were wiped from the realm of possibility when my Wife told me that she was pregnant (we now know that we're having a little girl)!  I was definitely going to need something to shuttle the little one around once she arrived so I in the end the decision was an easy one to make.  I still plan on riding the motorcycle most of the time, if it's just me because it really is the best way to get around most of the time.

The next question I needed to answer was what kind of car would I get.  California is an expensive state for insurance so the leading criteria  was going to be that that it was inexpensive enough that I could just buy it outright to avoid the cost of full coverage as well as a car payment being added onto our expenses.  I had no idea what I wanted but I knew that chronological age didn’t really matter that much to me, I did want it to have low miles (but did not want a car that had been idle for a bunch of years either), and it needed documentation to prove that it had been well taken care of.  Before the baby news I was thinking that it would be a rear wheel drive possibly two seat sporty car from the early 1970s to the early 1990s.  I wasn’t too concerned about steadfast reliability because I was planning on it being my second mode of transportation after the motorcycle so it could afford to be something that needed to be tinkered with from time to time.  Now, knowing there was a baby on the way the criteria changed a bit.  I knew that I would need whatever car I chose to be dependable now in case I needed to pick the baby up from day care, take it to the doctor, to school or out for a day at the park without leaving us stranded and it needed to be able to do those things safely.  That immediately pushed me towards a newer car the top end of my model year became the bottom end of the range.  I wasn’t particularly convinced that I needed to get a four door car because I am a strong guy but there was no arguing that a four door would be easier.  These little changes threw off my search a little bit but I still thought I could find something that fit those criteria and interested me, until  I realized something.

I would be choosing the car that my daughter may potentially have it's first memories of me driving you around in.  That got me thinking about what I remember about my mom and dad and my first memories of the cars.  For my mom I remember being driven around in the back of a Ford Maverick that had stick shift, I could always see the shift knob vibrating as we drove along in a higher gear and I remember thinking that it was a person peeking around the seat at me.  For my dad, I don’t remember a particular driving experience as my first car memory so much as it was a memory of him under the hood working on the cars to keep them running.  A few years later I would start collecting memories of sitting out in the driveway with him handing him tools, asking him a million questions about what he was doing and why, and depending on his mood… sometimes ignoring a choice word or two if he hit his hand on something or touched something hot. My dad had to work on his cars out of necessity.  We were poor when I was growing up and we couldn’t afford new, reliable cars or even to take the unreliable cars that we had to get fixed at a shop.  He didn’t have any formal education on how to fix cars, all he knew was that the car is broken and if he was going to be able drive to work instead of walking.

Barring unforeseen misfortune our daughter won’t know what it’s like to be poor growing up, but thinking back on those days I believe that the those experiences growing up had a big effect on the person I grew up to be.  Seeing my dad take something that wasn’t working and fix it gave me a great admiration for him.  It also instilled in me a belief that just because something was broken or didn’t work, that didn’t mean that it was useless or didn’t have value.  It gave me the interest I have in all mechanical things and I hope that I will be able to instill some of that understanding and interest in my own daughter.  I want her to remember me  having a car that I cared for/about, that was more than just a conveyance that took me from point to point, something that I looked forward to driving.

It turns out that it wasn’t as easy to find a car that would fit these criteria as I had thought it would been Anne suggested Saab at one point.  My initial reactions to this suggestion were to laugh it off.  Four years earlier the brand had received it's final death-blow it appeared and while there are rumblings of a resurrection as a maker of electric vehicles and they have started to make some of the last generation 9-5 at the factory in Sweden the marque for the most part considered a dead brand.  So my Wife gets the credit/blame for planting the Saab “seed” in my mind.  The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea.  Saabs were made in Sweden and from the outset they did things their own way.  They thought outside the box they were known for their high quality/longevity when properly maintained and like their Swedish counterpart Volvo, were legendary for safety.  So after a few months of searching I found the Saab I wanted.  A 1996 Saab 900 SE 2.0 Turbo Sedan.  It is slightly worn, but I know it’s history, I know that the previous owner cared for it and saw value in proper maintenance.  I like that in a day and age where it is becoming harder and harder to find cars with proper manual transmissions that my child could possible imagine that there is a little “person” peeking between the seats at you just like I did.  I like that when she sees me open the hood to check the fluids that she’ll be able to see the at least some of the inner workings of the car instead of just a big plastic cover.

Of course with everything, timing is important and when I found the Saab I wanted it was at a time where My wife wasn't going to be able to drive me down to the small dealership in Redwood City where the car was located for at least a week.  The reality was that a one owner low mileage 1996 Saab with a full history, a clean Carfax report and a fresh smog certificate in hand would probably not remain unsold by the time I could get a ride down there to see it.  I could find similar cars from private parties for the same price maybe less almost any day but they all seemed to have interiors in much worse shape than this one and they all seemed to be 2nd or third owner and in the end I would end up hoping that the car would pass smog and that the proper maintenance had been done to it.  This seemed like the best opportunity.

 

 

So I decided to ride the FZ down to Redwood City to take a look at the car.  The route was about 90 miles via Interstate 80 west, to 680 south, to 580 west, to 880 south to Hwy 84 across the Dumbarton Bridge and north a bit on 101 into Redwood City to a tiny dealership called "Caspian Hi Line Cars" in talking to the owner "Nas" he struck me as a shrewd salesman who had been around the block a time or two but he was non intrusive and opened up the car and left me to go through the pile of documents that were in the folder.

The picture the records painted were of a car that had been maintained at a dealer through the extent of the warranty and then went to one private shop after the warranty was up.  The maintenance was kept up in normal intervals and there were some high dollar repairs done recently (steering rack, direct injection cassette) and in most of the receipts in the last 15,000 miles mentioned the noisy throw-out bearing which really doesn't affect the daily driving of the car and I could see why the previous owner hadn't replaced it yet as the clutch still has life in it and basically if you were going to replace the throw-out bearing it's as big of a job as replacing the clutch so you might as well wait made sense to me.

I would characterize my first impressions of the Saab as a slight reality check the photos lead you to believe that the car is in near new condition but I would cay that it is an honest 18 year old car. It's a 20/20 car it looks good at 20 feet or 20 miles an hour.  Closer inspection finds minor dents and dings with a few spots of touch-up paint, the windshield has a couple of chips in it.  The engine bay was very clean in my opinion and leather seats while slightly cracked only had one worn through spot in the drivers seat side bolster.  Things seemed to be in good enough nick that I had Nas come out to take the car for a test drive.  Everything worked as is should though there was a little stickiness in the rear window switches that were in the center console.

On the test drive I asked Nas about his business and it turns out that he has been selling cars in Redwood City for over twenty years.  I mentioned to him that for having Hi Line Cars in the business name it didn't really seem like he had very many expensive cars.  In fact he only had a couple of other European cars on the lot and none were near $10k.  He said that in the early days he exclusively sold second owner expensive European cars and had built up a reputation for being able to get cars that looked near-new for a good price.  Then the recession hit and his business hasn't been the same since.  He now mostly sells service vehicles, box trucks and vans and once in a while the odd car here and there.  The Saab came to him from one of his former Hi Line days customers.

He told me that the car, if measured by the fact that it he was asking $1995 for it was about as good of a car that you could find for safe reliable A to B transportation and I agreed with him.  Which didn't put me in the best negotiating point and I paid the price he was asking for the car.  The next issue was that I now had a motorcycle and a car in Redwood City.

He said that I could keep the cycle in his fenced in area for the night if I wanted to take the car home and come back for the bike.  So I elected to drive The Saab home.  Upon stopping to top off the tank it turned out that it only needed 2 gallons (its an 18 gallon tank) of gas to fill it up and I found out that the 6-disc CD changer in the trunk still had CD's in it and it also came with a tape!  Double bonus!!  I got 30 miles per  gallon home driving the speed limit with the cruise on which was a good sign.

The issue that we still had to deal with was that my wife still had a full weekend planned and I still needed to get back to Redwood City to get the FZ.  That evening we took The Saab to Davis, CA for dinner and a movie and while we were eating dinner I heard a train go by and a light bulb went off in my head.  I could take the train!  The initial plan was to take the Amtrak from Davis south to the bottom of the peninsula and then take the CalTrain north to Redwood City.  The problem then would be that The Saab would have been left in Davis and I would still have to wait a number of days to get both vehicles back home.

As it turned out part of Anne's plans had her in Oakland that day so I realized that I could drive The Saab to Oakland...

Take the Bart from there to the Caltrain station on the peninsula...

And take the Caltrain south along the Peninsula to Redwood City...

After that I could then ride my motorcycle home and then catch a ride back to Oakland with Anne to get my car so that became the plan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,  I had plenty of time while driving The Saab, then riding on those trains and then riding the motorcycle and then back to Oakland in my Wife's car and then back to Vacaville in the Saab again to kick myself for not just taking the trains down to Redwood City in the first place.  This was a seat of the pants operation by all means.  But I was able to watch the MotoGP race on my phone on the train which was kind of cool.

For some reason (tolls maybe?) Siri, who I take directions from via headphones took me over the San Mateo Hayward Bridge which was an epic/chilly experience to say the least.  I think that this may be bridge at the widest point of the bay (it's seven miles long!) and it is not very far above the water save for one point where it is raised in order to allow ships through.  I only had my mesh jacket and the wind and being in the middle of the bay was darn cold!  but being on two wheels in the middle of the San Francisco Bay so close to the water was awe inspiring!  The rest of the ride went smoothly but for some reason (like the ride back from Laguna Seca) once I was traveling from south to north the wind kicked my butt and by the time I got home I felt like I had been in another boxing match!

Now as I am writing this now very long, now two month old story I still do not know what I should do with this blog.  Surely it's at the least hypocritical to be running a blog called "With Only A Motorcycle" when I am no longer solo-moto.  I am kicking around the idea of tracking the mileage of both the car and the bike and adding a percent usage report to each update as a way to keep myself on a moto-bias.  We'll see what happens, but thanks for reading my updates and please come back to see what the future holds for this space.

The 6-month Report

October 26 was the six month marker from when my motorcycle arrived in California and I commenced my solo-moto experience.  I don’t know why the first half a year of anything is an event to be marked, when I had ticked off significantly less minutes on my clock there was a point where six months seemed like an eternity, but after having been with my wife for more than seven years, owning the same motorcycle for more than ten years and working at the same place for 12 years, six months seems pretty insignificant now.  Still, when that day ticked past and I realized that I had reached six month mark since the start of life without a car I knew that inevitably I would have to sit down and take stock of how how things have gone thus far.  Am I where I thought I would be in six months?  Is it all that I hoped it would be and more?  Am I regretting the decision?  Am I having second thoughts?

Maybe that is why the first six months of anything can be such a significant event, especially in important undertakings.  In reality you are still in the middle of great upheaval but you desperately need to seek self assurance that you made the right call, that you are on track to great things.  Even through the self-professed insignificance of the moment for some reason there is still a desire to make it known that I have hit the six month milestone.  Part of that is because I am sure that there are some that feel that this is some sort of lark and that once I get it out of my system I'll be back in the "cage."  The six month mark is definitely my first real opportunity to wave the fact that I am still solo-moto and doing fine in their face.  It also provides the opportunity to solicit acknowledgement from people that do get the what living without a car which is more valuable to me than the opportunity to throw it in the face any detractors.

So what has it really been like thus far?  Frankly, I thought I would have been going on more long rides and and having more adventures than I have been.  A glance back on what I have written thus far shows that I have spent a healthy bit of my free time wrenching and not riding.  Part of that I am sure has to do with facing the reality of being stranded out in the middle of nowhere quite early on.  I think that gave me a laser focus on maintenance and impressed a real desire for everything to be right with the bike before going off and riding just for kicks.  Consequently most of the miles I have put on thus far have been commuting to and from work with the exceptions of a ride to Sterling Winery, my Clear Lake Ride, a couple of rides to SanFrancisco and my adventure to the Laguna Seca MotoGP Race.  I do feel that the FZ1 is now at a place where I have all the major mechanical issues addressed and hopefully that will mean more trips.

The truth is that there are still a number of things that I I would like to address when time permits that aren't keeping me for going on a long ride.  There are tell-tale cracks on exterior of the carb boots, I know that they are not leaking because I know what a bike with actual leaky carb boots runs like.  I'd like to have a project where I replace those and install some remote vacuum lines for easier carb syncing.  I need to get some brake pads to have on hand for the inevitable moment where the current ones wear out and truthfully the rear disc could stand to be replaced too.  I have ordered a new seat cover when I discovered that even more seams are starting to pull apart.  Eventually the rear tire will need to be replaced.  After servicing the front forks the thought that the rear shock probably needs a service or replacement with an acceptable spec low mileage rear shock off of a different model bike (which would probably the cheaper option) is in the back of my head all the time as well as the thought of replacing the swing arm bearings.  And then there is the never-ending cycle of drive chain maintenance (more on that later).

So there's a lot on the maintenance to-do list and I guess that brings me to the major overall conclusion that if I had it to do all over again I would have though long and hard about getting a brand new motorcycle or one just a few years old with very few miles on it.  I think about how much better it would be to be know the bikes entire history and have a clean slate to start with maintenance wise.  It would have been a much more fun first six months had I been able to just walk out to a brand new bike and just thumb the starter and be ready to go with the confidence that I know everything about this bike and not wonder what unknown issue might pop up.  Lets be honest; most motorcycles are garage queens that get taken out for weekend rides and trips to the local bike night.  When that is a bikes main use it's easier to ignore the little maintenance issues that pop up over time and start to pile up.  Now my bike was a 2001 with 30,000 miles on it.  Imagine if I had bought that same year bike with even less miles it probably would have been in much worse shape!  Now as far as the 2001-05 FZ1 as an all-around do-it-all bike I couldn't ask for more.  Obviously there are more refined versions available now; the 2014 Kawasaki Ninja 1000 ABS comes to mind but the design thesis is pretty much the same between the two bikes.

As far as the actual act of riding goes I have now ridden in 112 degree temperatures and am currently riding in low 50s - high 40s at night time now.  Riding in high heat sucks there's no way around it and my riding motivation pretty much shrank to heading out only for the essentials on those days.  Cold weather is another set of challenges I have the proper gear to be comfortable riding in cool weather but with it still getting up into the 70's mid-day you end up trying to find the right spot of the fence to sit on.  Right now I am working swing shifts so I only wear jeans and the heavier riding jacket (vents open) with the non gauntlet gloves.  I still get a little warm in traffic and if I have to stop off in a store it can get pretty hot in the jacket and then when I am heading home at 10pm (jacket vents closed) it's quite nippy but that is the best balance.  When I was working nights last week I actually busted out the insulated over-pants, full gauntlet gloves and riding boots because the sun is gone and the temps are pretty consistent.  But then you get into the deal where it's taking me almost as long to get ready to ride to work as it does riding there.  The one thing that I haven't had to contend with yet is rain, so far I think we are still at 4 days with noticeable rainfall since moving to California with the rainiest (of course) being the day I decided to rebuild the forks for the FZ1 on the porch.  If I can make it through the winter which I am told will be much wetter I will be able to safely say that I can stand to live the solo-moto lifestyle, yes the biggest challenge is yet to come.

 

 

There are other little idiosyncrasies that I have picked up on since I started riding in here in California maybe they exist everywhere and the awareness comes from commuting full time on a motorcycle.  Probably the most frequent annoyance is at intersections with stop signs; I can roll up on one and the car will already be sitting there stopped and they will wait until they see me stop and actually put my foot down before they go.  When I was learning to ride back in Wisconsin one of the skills they taught us was called (literally) the "California Stop." Where you basically stop and balance without putting your foot down on the ground.  Well I've gotten pretty good at it now that I am in California but it would seem that no matter how good I am at balancing the person at the intersection is not going to go until they see that foot on the ground.  If they would just go after their car had stopped and they saw me stopping they would be through the intersection and I would be on my way without needing to put my foot down, it's petty but it's really annoying.

Another thing that is definitely a California thing, possibly a product of the higher volume of cars and the 4-5 lane highways (the HOV lane doesn't make it any easier either) is that basically any lane can be the "fast" lane at any given time or at all times.  In the Midwest there was a general rule that the faster traffic stays to the left and then the speeds get progressively slower as you move further right.  I can't figure out if I like this or not; at times it's maddening and I feel like I am inhabiting the same space with a bunch of self-entitled pricks who think their time is more important than others, other times I revel in the mêlée that is the California Highway System.  There haven't been too many times that I haven't felt 100% safe while riding on the Highways mainly because at any given them there is a good chance that I am the quickest, most agile thing that is in the general vicinity.

When I have gotten out onto the b-roads it is quite a different story there.  There are so many great roads that it's hard to pick which ones you want to try.  I have from time to time run into the problem of finding myself at the start of a road that looked really great on Google maps but then it turns out that it's unpaved.  But that has happened to me in Wisconsin to and that is all part of the adventure as far as I'm concerned.  But for as many times as that happens there are at least 10X more time you find yourself gnawing away at the last remains of your chicken strips tempted to put a knee down if only you hadn't traded in your leathers for more serviceable textile kit.  You see a lot more motorcycles and if there are cars a lot of them are out for a thrash too.  For some reason I haven't been too keen on checking hitting up the motorcycling must-sees maybe it's because of their proximity now but bing that it's cooler now it might be a good time to hit some up, there will probably be less Ricky road-racer types out there and more die-hard riders to meet.  The next weekend a moto-mecca may need to be checked off.

Have I mentioned how much Lucas Oil Products Inc. Chain Lube sucks?

Well it does, its sloppy and messy, I knew it was a bad purchase after the first 20 miles but I had it and I thought I would just grit my teeth and bear it until I ran through the can but enough was enough.  The product itself is messy and runs all over the place and then once it gets onto your swing-arm sprocket and wheels it acts like a magnet for dust dirt and grime.  The product that I am used to and have been using for years before this is Maxima Racing Oils Chain Wax and that was what I went back to but there was the issue of the shitty mess that they Lucas Oil Chain Lube had left behind.  I also picked up some MaximaRacing Oils Clean Up: Chain Cleaner.  

Getting the whole mess cleaned up meant taking off the counter-shaft sprocket cover and the rear wheel to clean both it and the swing arm.  You can see the gummy sticky globules of build up in there.

It took a lot of elbow grease and my hands and fingernails were dirty for about a week but the end result was worth it.  And a week later the swing-arm chain and sprocket all look pretty much the same as in this picture.

That's about it for now I did receive my seat cover and put it on the seat but this is already a long-winded update so that will have to wait till later.

Thank you to all who stop and read.

Mix Canyon Road Mount Vaca and Accessory Outlet Install

In a previous post I showed my roadside emergency kit which included a small 12v powered air compressor I figured that I would just clip the ends of the plug and put some spade connectors on the wires and just connect it directly to the battery when I needed it.  I was met with mixed opinions on the efficacy of this solution.  There were a lot of suggestions that I wire in a accessory socket with people expressing the valid point that I would add a lot more capability to the bike such as powering a heated vest or charging a phone or powering a GPS.  Some said that it would work just fine others bemoaned the amount of space it took up and suggested that I go for a CO2 inflation option for the space/weight savings.  Not too long after purchasing the components of my kit I had a chance to test out its usefulness when I got a second flat tire.  I was not at all impressed with the small pump it hardly seemed effective and being that I was close to a gas station I limped the bike over to their air pump after plugging the tire and filled it quickly.

After that incident I decided that I may start carrying the CO2 inflater that I have on my road bicycle with the bike and carry enough cartridges to quickly fill the rear tire.  After posing the question: How many of these bad boys do you think it would take to fill my FZ1's rear tire (180/55-ZR17) in road-side flat tire type situation," on the forums I frequent (listed at the bottom of my blog) once again I was met with mixed response.  It would appear that the people who prefer a pump stayed quiet when I posted about the Air Pump but became vocal once I showed interest in the CO2.  Arguments ranged from you would never be able to fill that size tire with CO2 to pointing out that once you use up you're cartridges and you flat again you're stranded.  Both were good points!

After doing a little research on my air compressor (a cheap jobber from harbor freight) the reviews all reflected my sentiments about how slow it fills a tire but they did also point out that it can and does fill a tire to full pressure given enough time.  Though you need to give the pump a change to cool down every 10-15 minutes and then proceed again once it has cooled.  It realistically could take me 30+ minutes to fill up the rear tire with that pump.  Being that I already had the pump and I already had the CO2 inflater and I'm not super strapped for space on my bike I decided that for now I will carry both with the plan being to use the CO2 cartridges on the first flat which should take 5-12 gram cartridges to fill my rear tire to 32 psi according to the chart a member on FZ1OA shared with me...

...and then top off with the pump if necessary and then deal with the pump on the off chance I have a really shitty day and end up with two flats on the same trip.

After deciding this I also decided that I would install the accessory outlet after all to simplify any road-side repair situations and also add some more flexibility to my motorcycle.  I found a basic accessory socket at the NAPA store and picked up a in line fuse holder some fuses while I was there.

I have seen others buying kits that come with longer wires or "waterproof" caps but where I was going to install it I don't think that much water ill be getting to it and I have a ton of automotive wiring at home so I knew I could just splice, solder, and shrink tube the connections I needed to make.

I chose a spot on flat area to the left of the tank near the dash to as a location for the install.  I had a speed bit that was the correct size for the hole which made quick work of the relatively thin ABS plastic.  I also found an illuminated switch in my box-o-random parts that I decided to wire in as well in the oft chance I was on the move and for whatever reason wanted to turn off whatever it was that I had plugged into the socket and didn't want to stop to stow a dangling plug.  It stretched out the install time a bit but as it has been of late with my motorcycle projects the planned task was going to end up taking much longer than I would have ever anticipated.

I was making good progress with the wiring and was to a point where I was going to take the body panel and the newly-mounted socket onto the bike and run the wire back to the battery.  That meant that I would need to lift the gas tank to zip tie the new wires to the outside of the wiring harness that runs to the battery.  I busted out my trusty set of long, metric, Craftsman allen wrenches.  The tank is held down by one socket-head cap screw.  When I went to loosen the the screw it with the Allen wrench either it or the screw or both at the same time decided to give up the ghost.  And for the second time in as may weekends I felt that sinking feeling you get when you know you have exceeded a part's mechanical limits.  I held in my hand a nicely rounded out Allen wrench and the socket portion of the screw matched the end perfectly.  It was time to go to bed and re-assess in the morning.  I put put things back together enough so that should I need to ride the bike before I finished I could and called it a night.

The next day I woke up knowing I had two options, neither of which I looked forward to:

1. Slot the top of the screw and hope that my impact driver would be able to loosen the screw.

2. Drill out top of the screw and try to use an EZ out to remove the remainder of the stuck screw and then possibly drilling and tapping the the hole if it would not come out.

Things were complicated again by not having a garage, while I had an extension cord it was not long enough to reach to the parking spot (that I'm "not supposed to be working on my bike in") where my bike was sitting at.  So I went for option one.  I grabbed a hammer, my impact driver and some chisels to slot the screw with.

For as as easily as the screw rounded out it did not relinquish to the chisel (which was made of some derivation of butter apparently) without a fight.  Eventually though I did have a slot in the top and I went to it with the impact driver.  The only issue was that there was a hole in the center of the crew so the flat head bit only had a small area to act on which ended up not being enough and the bit also succumbed to the screw!  By this point I was pissed and determined to get this screw out.  I was going to take great satisfaction in watching that drill bit sink into the the head of that screw.

I finally decided that I was going to push my bike through the courtyard, between the two the two condo units and around to the other side of the porch from our condo so I could just throw the extension cord over the wall and power my droll and soldering iron from there.

This also had the added benefit of being out of the sight of most of the residents not that I think any of them actually care if I work on my bike or not but there's always one legal eagle in each bunch that seems to pop up so it was nice to be able to be able to work with a little less scrutiny.

The drill did the trick I made sure to start with a bit that was just slightly larger than the hole in the center and worked my way up until the head of the screw broke free to avoid any snapped bits with the way the day was going I felt that was a real possibility!  After I got the head off the screw I lifted off the tank and found a nice surprise.  See the video below:

So at least I didn't have to use the EZ-out or tap a hole!  Obviously I didn't have an exact replacement around so I found the tiny section of metric fasteners at Home Depot and used the closest thing I could find.

Here's a shot of the final product installed and ready to go.

All that work took me the bulk of the Saturday.  At least the parts that were cool enough to want to hop on a motorcycle and go for a ride.   I was hoping to get out that day and check out a view that I was told about by our on-site maintenance guy (Clay).  He is a beekeeper as well and was telling me that he had some hives up on Mount Vaca which is the highest mountain in the area.  He had mentioned how he had hiked up to the very peak and said that the view was spectacular being that you could see down into the valley on one side and out to the bay the other direction.  I had been meaning to check it out for a couple of weeks and it looked like I had missed the chance that day.

I need to break away from the the story for a moment and go off on a side track for the rest of the story to (hopefully) make sense.  This particular weekend was the weekend before the seven year anniversary of a good friend of mine's death.  His name was Jeremy Eckerman.  I was not with him at the time of his death but he was out on a weekend river rafting trip; the kind where you party at the campground and then hop on a raft and party all say as the river carries you along.  The Wolf River has a lot of cliff areas and and people sometimes stop to climb up to the tops and jump off into the river.  Jeremy had decided to do that this particular day.  Back then we were all pretty hard charging partiers and I'm sure Jeremy was "feeling pretty good" by that point.  Accounts differ but he either lost his footing and fell or jumped from the 20' cliff and while he was on his way down he hit his head against the cliff.  When he landed in the thirteen feet of water he never came back to the surface.  Rescue divers found him later and he was pronounced dead.

As I mentioned Jeremy was a partier but in many other ways he liked to grab live by it's horns and shake the best out of it.  He was a wild-man, outspoken, funny, and sensitive when you least anticipated it.  I think most of his friends (myself included) prefer to believe that Jeremy jumped that day grasping at the highest fruit on the tree of life experiences than to to think that he was just the hapless victim of a drunken misstep.

In the years following Jeremy's death we tried to commemorate his passing by getting blindingly drunk and partying to the later hours of the night.  However as time passes you just have to come to accept that while Jeremy will forever be 27 years old we have gone on living and are getting older.  I decided that this year; instead of getting hammered alone at home that I would try and commemorate Jeremy's life by attempting some other sort of "Ecker-manly" act.  As my Saturday was drawing to a close I was sitting in my living-room about to have a beer and then go to bed when it dawned on me.  If that view from Mix Canyon Rd was so spectacular during the day then it must be just as spectacular if not more at night!  It was 10pm and the temps were going down and I said "fuck-it" grabbed my gear and headed out to the bike.

Mix Canyon Rd is only about a half an hour ride from my house so it didn't take long to get there and once there, it didn't take me too long to figure that this would definitely fill my "Ecker-Manly" act quota. Mix Canyon road it turns out is as narrow as a driveway at points and except for the lights on the porches of the few homes that are sparsely scattered along the road there is absolutely no lighting along the road.  It snakes it's way up Mount Vaca with very steep inclines and tight sometimes off camber turns.  With only the FZ's headlights (which are quite bright even without the high beams on) to guide my way up the road I found that on an ascent such as this they were not the most effective.  With the bike point it's way up the incline whenever the road flattened or dipped it just looks like you are riding into blackness as the headlight is still pointing up.  Another issue is that with an unpainted single lane road with a 2-4 inch lip where the pavement ends and transitions to a ditch or a steep drop you really want to be able to judge your bikes position on the road but the headlights give you a sort of tunnel vision and while they illuminate your way forward I could not see to the sides of my bike.  Consequently the five mile trek up to where the road becomes gravel was completed at 10-15mph.

Speaking of the gravel it took me about 100 yards to realize that I was on it.  Clay had warned me about this and suggested that I hike the rest of the way up.  Being night time I did not want to try that but I was keeping an eye out for the road transition.  I reached a point where the road flattened and widened to what appeared to be a turnaround  and that was when I noticed that I was on the pavement/gravel transition.  I eased the bike to a stop and looked around I was definitely up as high as I was going to be getting that night.  I could see that the road was just as narrow as before but there was a wide gravel/sand turnaround area.  I cranked my handlebars to the left and started to back the bike up to get it perpendicular to the roads path so I could drop down off the roads 2-4" lip down to the turnaround area.  Feathering the clutch and covering the front brakes I eased the FZ's front tire off the road when it hit what I anticipated to be hard-pack sand and gravel the front site sunk another 4-5 inches into some very loose gravel having both feet on the ground for balance I only had the front brake and when I touched it to slow the bike the front end washed out and went down and just like that for the second time in as many weeks I was staring at my bike on it's side.

I shut it off and picked it up and wheeled it over to a flat spot put the kick stand down, got out my flashlight and inspected things and the bike was none the worse for wear.  I hopped back on thumbed the starter and she fired right back up and I proceeded to make my way back down the road.  As soon I made it around the first bend I realized that in my intent to not die on the way up I had not noticed the breathtaking views going on behind me.  I made it a quarter of a mile back down the road when I discovered another turnout where it looked like campers or highschoolers looking for a place to drink beer might stop and hang out and enjoy the view. I decided to do the same.

The above video shows nothing of what I saw when I was up there.  Some things I guess just aren't meant to be shared with the world.  I was high enough up and far enough away from the city lights to be treated with a bowl of a starry sky above me with a bright moon and a twinkling jewel of a city down in the valley.  It was the perfect place to take in the silence and stillness and feel a little bit closer to my friend than possible in my day-to-day existence a perfect moment so shortly after such a failing one was unanticipated.

The trek back down the mountain was just as treacherous I alternated between braking and engine braking so as not to over cook either with the most unnerving part coming when I encountered an oncoming vehicle and not being able to see the sides of the road thought I was going to fall off the edge.  When I made it home I had that beer I had been intending to earlier and went to sleep feeling much more accomplished than I would have had I just stayed home not to mention more at peace.

The next morning I realized that when the bike had tipped over on the mountain the gate opener for out Condo complex (basically a garage door opener) must have fallen out of my tank bag.  Knowing exactly where it should be I decided to take the opportunity that morning to go back up the mountain and take some daytime pictures (below) and the above video.

That's it for me for now.  I already have the content amassed for my next post (an impromptu ride to Monterey and Laguna Seca Raceway for the MotoGP race) I will try and get that put together for you ASAP.

Until then I hope you've enjoyed this post and as always; Thanks for reading!