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.

Adding Horespower By Shedding Pounds

Well my friends, I have to be honest, there have been no epic rides to pop up since my last posting all those months ago.  As of late I've been working on a different project all together.  A few days after my last post I took a health assessment which was part of the new Health Account Plan that PG&E has migrated our healthcare to.  The results weren't surprising but they did renew a motivation for physical fitness in my life, it seems that maybe I need to do these more often because if I go too long without one I always start to slack off.  I had pretty much been "phoning it in" since I moved here and while the weight wasn't too much out of spec, even before I took the assessment I knew that I weighed in at 215lbs and while I've been a healthy 215 before, this time I knew it wasn't that sort of weight.  The results echoed that feeling my % body fat was too high and my blood pressure wasn't out of the good spectrum but it was dancing on the line of concern so I decided that it was time to right the ship before it got too far off course.  At one point in my life (more than 9 years ago) I tipped the scales at 264 pounds and I definitely do not want to go back there.


So back in mid-November I set a goal to drop down to 190lbs.  I don't think I have been that weight since before high school even at my most fit I have always been comfortable at around 205lbs but I want to see how hard it would be to reach and maintain the 190lbs.  It's not that it would be odd for someone my height to weigh 190lbs technically... If you give the Body Mass Index any credence (which I don't) I should be at 180lbs to be fully "in-spec."  According to my scale that measures the % body fat, % hydration and BMI when I weighed in at 200.6 lbs this week (yay almost 15 pounds gone) I was at 19.6% body fat that would meant that I'm carrying around 39.3 pounds of body fat that.  So losing the next 10 pounds (of all body fat) would put me at 15% body fat which I think would be sustainable with the level of activity I am at.  In the back of my mind I am am setting a stretch goal of hitting the 180lbs and 10% body fat, we'll see how that goes that level of fitness may require too much time and effort to be sustainable I don't want to live in the gym and I don't want to have to say no to every sweet, glass of wine, pint of beer that crosses my path either.


I will say that I am feeling the effects of being on the better side of the fitness spectrum.  Last week I did four strength training days three of which I ran 2 miles in the process of and one of which I ran three miles in the process of.  On top of that I ran a 6.5 mile run one day and my first 10 miler since I have started this process on another day!

The real challenge is going to be keeping up a similar level of activity once I delve into our 12-hour shift rotations that my co-workers voted into place last year.  I start my first set of 12-hour shifts this week with a run of four night shifts.  I'm pragmatic about the switch... I definitely felt like I was always at work while working the rotating 8-hour shifts but it was much easier to find the motivation to do other things on a work day with that extra four hours of free time to yourself.  It just takes a different level of focus to force yourself to work out on those days when you'd rather lay around after working for 12 hours.  For myself "work" means being sedentary, sitting in a chair and thinking really hard so it's not a physical tiredness it's more that you're mentally drained and you're body is entrenched in that lethargic static state that you really need to harness your mental motivation to bust yourself out of not the easiest task when you're brain-tired.

I have experience with this before, my previous job was 12-hour rotating shifts and I was able to complete the P90X program and that takes a lot more time and intensity than the routine I am on right now and getting results with.  So I know that I am capable it's just a matter of the execution now.  I am confident I can reach the 190 and we'll see about the 180.

So that's the non-moto Juan update...


In solo-moto Juan terms things have been going pretty well.  There are times where I do really miss having a car, but they don't hang around too long.  When I am on the bike it always puts a smile on my face and I did add a little extra comfort to the FZ this last Saturday.  I installed heated handgrips on the bike.  Truthfully it's not necessary for the short ride to and from work but I can tell that if I was to go on a longer ride in the sub 40s that I my gloves would not be enough protection from the cold.

I actually bought the Trackside Grip Heater kit back on Dec 6th at the Cycle-gear store in Fairfield as an impulse buy of sorts.  I've written about my experiences at this store in the past and suffice to say I don't hate the place but I don't like it either, I nothing the place.  But the day before we dipped into the mid 20s overnight and that morning the FZ's battery did not have enough juice to turn the engine over.  No big deal I was able to push-start the bike relatively easily that day.  It's just like any older battery they start to show their age when the temperatures drop.  I had hoped that when I rode the bike that it would get enough charge back into it to limp her along until it got warmer and when I left work that day the bike did start with a little effort.  I figured by the time I got home it would be good to go the next morning.

WRONG!  Once again we had a mid 20's night and once again the bike did not want to start this time the relays just clicked there wasn't even enough juice for the starter to even attempt to turn the engine over.  So for those who ride all year 'round it goes without saying that if you are riding your super-standard motorcycle in the sub 30s you are wearing pretty much all you gear.  I bring that up because while that is fine and dandy when you hop on your bike thumb the starter button and go.  But after the fifth failed attempt at push-starting your bike you are sweating your ass off under all of those layers.  Add to that the frustration of trying to throw your leg over the moving bike without kicking the bags and ending up under the bike it's not the best way to start your day.  Thanks to my poor Wife (who had to deal with a tirade of profanity directed at my bike) and my obvious agitation I was able to jump start the thing and get to work on-time but that was enough.  At this point in my life there's no reason to try and "limp along" a dying battery until it gets warm again  I decided that after my shift I would be heading directly to the nearest cycle shop (Cycle-gear) and buying a new battery.  Of course that day was the day it decides to rain and rain hard.  Undaunted, after my shift I got on my drenched bike with all my gear and headed to Fairfield.  The gear did it's job and I stayed perfectly dry so that is a good thing.  It was about 40 degrees which with the rain and wind was enough to remind me that I should look and see about heated handgrips while I was there.

Seeing that the grip heater kit was only $29.99 I grabbed one while I was buying my $112 battery.  By the time I got back on the road it was dark and still rainy and the traffic was stop-and-go heading from Fairfield to Vacaville so I got my first taste of lane splitting on a 4-5 line highway, in the dark, in the pouring rain. Truthfully I felt much safer splitting than I would have in an actual lane stopping and going with the cars.  I kept my pace to roughly 10mph faster than the cars and kept my head on a swivel and made it through none-the-worse for wear. The next day I installed the new battery but didn't find the motivation to attack the hand-grips.


I did make one attempt a few weeks later but had no luck at getting the stock handgrips off and I gave up that day.  I feared that if I did manage to get them off that were the odds that I would be able to get them back on with they slight increase in diameter that the heaters would add?  Plus I was worried that I would need a compressor to get them off which I didn't have so they sat and waited for an increase in motivation.  So this last weekend I did a little research and found a youtube video of a guy with a Gen II FZ who was able to get the handgrips off with just a heat gun (which I did have) that was the inspiration I needed.




I went back to the cycle gear and bought a set of Pro-grip handgrips in case I couldn't get the old ones off (I'd just cut them off) or I did get them off and they wouldn't go back on I'd have a new softer set to try and put on.

I was able to heat up the grips enough to soften the glue and pull the grips off the bars with a lot of effort in the twisting and pulling department.  I did the same as the guy in the video I applied heat directly to the grips until I could see a little bit of shine on them from the heating then I switched to blowing the heat into the bar itself alternating between these two for a couple of minutes taking extra care when pulling the throttle side off so as not to damage the throttle tube.

You want to be mindful with this kit of the fact that the wire leads are just soldered to the heating elements so you don't want to have too much of a bend in the wires lest over time the soldered connection breaks.  You can see that the clutch-side I have mounted it pretty close but since this one is stationary (no twisting) I figured it would be okay.

The throttle side I mounted the heater a little more outboard so there wasn't such an extreme angle at the soldered connection.

Wiring up the kit wasn't very clear with the instructions provided.  I wired mine into the positive and the negative wires going to and from the right side-marker light in the headlight cluster the same strategy I used when wiring up the accessory socket to the left side-marker.

I placed the switch fore of the accessory socket on the left-hand side inner fairing.  You are able to tell what side of the three-position switch is the high and low by placing the hi-lo plate on the switch there is a key/slot on the threaded portion so you can tell which way to wire the switch. My kit did not come with an extra female spade connector to connect the two of the terminals to the shared middle male terminal so I just soldered them to the terminal but you may want to check your kit if you decide to buy one of these to see if yours comes with one and perhaps buy one if you don't want to solder the ends onto the switch. The kit also made a point to mention that you shouldn't place the ceramic resistor on anywhere that would be heat sensitive so I used some zip ties on the wires entering and exiting the resistor and attached it to the metal portion of the fairing stay that in my mind would get enough air flow to dissipate the heat and keep it away from any other heat sensitive wiring.  Other than that it was just a matter of making sure your wire routing does not conflict with the moving of the steering components and cutting away some of the sheathing on the positive and negative wires going to the side markers and soldering the other wires together.  All of the wires are black in the kit so make sure that you have the right ends going to the right places.

I decided to install the new handgrips.  I ended up having to use copious amounts of grip glue to "lube up" the handlebars/grips enough to get them to slide on all the way.  I would recommend either having an air compressor to ease them on or wearing some nitrile gloves for that part of the job because all that extra glue ended up on my hands and I had to spend a lot of time at the sink with the acetone to remove the dried (basically krazy) glue.

I am happy with the end result and so far have found that the best way to use them is to get them started on the hi setting and then adjust them to the lo setting once they get to the desired temp.  I normally ride covering the brakes and clutch with two fingers though so those two fingers still get cold.  If I were on a longer highway ride I would probably just hold onto the grip with my whole hand if the traffic was clear to keep warm.  It wasn't that bad of a project, I think I spent a total of 3.5 hours to get them installed and working.


In my last update I teased that I would cover my new seat cover install.  It's been a while and I almost forgot I did it.  A member on FZ1OA suggested I try an HT-Moto Custom Seat Cover when I had mentioned the idea of buying a new stock seat.  I realized that my previous repairs to the seat, while holding did not do enough and that other parts of the same seam were starting to fail due to age and brittleness of the seat cover material.  The new seat cover only cost $80 and I figured I'd give it a shot.  The results were outstanding and I can't say enough about the quality and finish.  But you can see for yourself...

All you do to install it is stretch the new cover over the existing cover (their recommendation) and staple as you go pretty darn easy.

That's the moto-update for now.  I hope to have something more interesting to share moto-wise with you on the next update.  Thanks for checking out the update none-the-less.  Until next time...

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.

Twin Peaks And A Second Flat

It was hot in Vacaville this weekend; 104 degrees on Friday and the forecast for Saturday was predicting temps near 108 degrees.  One thing that I have noticed though as the temps have been rising is that there comes a point where it's so hot that you can wear your protective gear again and it doesn't make you feel any more hot that if you didn't have it on at all.  The air gets so hot that having a mesh jacket or no jacket to allow the air to flow over your skin offers no relief.  Logically that would be anything above body temperature (98.6 degrees) that was my experience on Friday and while I enjoyed the novelty of this new discovery I didn't feel the need/desire to investigate it in detail.  Something tells me that I'll have plenty of opportunities to take in the finer details of high temperature riding as the summer bears itself out.

I decided that rather than spend the whole day holed up in my room at the Extended Stay or the Library or a Coffee Shop that I would escape to San Francisco to beat the heat the forecast said that it was going to be near the mid-70s in the city and that sounded a lot more palatable than 108 degrees.  I left Vacaville at 1400 and it was 106 degrees.  I decided to wear my Tourmaster jacket over the Joe Rocket Reactor mesh jacket.  as I have started realizing that San Francisco's weather is anything but predictable.  With all the vents open the riding in the high temperatures was tolerable and didn't seem any less comfortable than when I was wearing the Joe Rocket mesh jacket in 105 degrees the bay before.  I took 80 to the city and I noticed my first bits of relief in the temperature once I got to the 680 interchange and by the time I made it to the Carquinez Bridge I was pretty comfortable.

As you may be able to tell from the picture at the top of this post I made a stop on Treasure Island again.   I decided to ride into San Francisco via the Bay Bridge this time since I wanted to see what it was like riding on the top deck.  Saturday afternoon had proved to bear a lot more traffic then when I took the bridge out of the city on my last visit.  This time I was lane splitting for a good 5 miles leading up to the bridge toll area.  Once I got on the bridge itself it wasn't too bad traffic was moving at posted speeds but I figured that Treasure Island makes for a nice place to stop, stretch my legs, relax and collect myself before heading the rest of the way into the city.  Above is just some footage of the Bay Bridge and the San Francisco skyline I took while I was on the island.

If you are familiar with San Francisco you can probably gather that the temperature was a little cooler than the predictions made by my Weather Channel app.  It did correct itself by the time I made it up to the summit of Christmas Tree Point and told me that I was enjoying a 66 degree temp not counting the wind which was gusting at impressive speeds.

The view justified all the tourists that were up there despite the fog, despite the wind and despite the cold chilly weather.  That corner in the above picture was quite breathtaking as well; at least photographically.  The surface was not that good and the posted speed limit was 25 mph I think.  I thought to myself that it was interesting that a lot of the people visiting Twin Peaks that day fell into two major categories; people who popped up for a minute or two took one or two pictures with a camera phone and left or people with large-lensed cameras who spent much more time up there taking many photos.  A few like me fell into the middle area wanting to take in the sights with their own eyes and enjoy the moment; at least until I couldn't bear the chill anymore.

Before I headed down I stopped and took a quick video of the scenery at the summit to share.

When I had pulled into my spot I was excited to see that I had a clear shot off the moto and the city below.  I had gotten my camera out just in time for a giant Dodge Ram to pull into the spot blocking my photo op.  When he pulled out I took advantage of the opening before a waiting car pulled into the same spot.  Not the best turnout but acceptable I guess.

I was chilled so I decided that I would stop at a Starbucks; no fancy boutique shops with thimble sized coffee cups this time.  I never get anything bigger than the smallest offering at Starbucks I try to bear in mind that in most countries our smalls (or "talls" for some unknown reason in "Starbucks-ese") are actually the size of a large in most civilized societies.  But the coffee I had the last time in San Francisco was probably maybe 3/4 - 1 ounce worth of coffee and that it just too little I needed to be sure I would have something large enough to hold in my hands and warm up with.  I still do not like Starbucks but until I do some real research and find a place I like (I know exactly what I want to see in my coffee shop) the consistency across the board at their establishments is welcome even though I feel like I'm selling out a bit.  I did a little writing on the iPad while I was at the Starbucks (stereotypes are abounding here today aren't they?) and decided that I would leave the city via the Golden Gate Bridge this time.  Hoping she would be less shy than last the time even though it was obviously a foggy day.

Well the true to form the Golden Gate is a classy girl from days-gone-by and wasn't about to give it up on first date and not even the second, though she did hike her skirt up a little bit for me.  It's time as riding across I did actually get the feeling that I was crossing a bridge though I couldn't see very far out into the bay, I could see all the oncoming lanes and was about to follow the large cables as they arced towards the skies to their towers just barely visible through the mist seeing some of the structural details up close I did think to myself, "You classy girl."

Having made two already I decided I might as well take a video while I was at the observation area on the north side of the bridge.  I should apologize for the wind noise in all the videos I tried to mask the speakers with my hands but it didn't help.  The gusts by the Golden Gate were immense!  One in the video blew so hard I had to take a step back to catch my balance.  I found myself riding down the hill from the bridge dealing with some of the strongest cross gusts I have felt in my entire riding career.  Some strong enough to push me from the center of the lane to the right paint stripe.  I made note of that and moved further left after that.

I encountered some more dense traffic before heading into the Dutchman Slough area on Hy 37 by the time I had lane-split through two miles of traffic to get to the two-way traffic portion it was still pretty bad and about twenty minutes later we cruised past what looked to be the remnants of a rear-ending. The offending vehicle was nowhere to be scene but the vehicle with the rear end damage was there along with the police lights a-blazing.  After we got past them traffic picked up again and I got on with the task of returning to Vacaville.

I am definitely going to have to look into a higher profile windshield for the FZ.  The sustained high speeds of freeway travel kicked the crap out of my upper body again.  I hit the 680 interchange and the heat was back much more like someone hitting a light switch this time but it was no triple digit temperature.  By the time I made it back to Vacaville it was maybe in the mid-80s.  Things had went smoothly I thought; little did I know that I had picked up a stowaway somewhere in my journeys that day.

I woke up that Sunday morning had a nice laid back purposeful morning and decided that It would  be cool to see if I could find any records at the local Goodwill. I don't have our turntable here yet but it was something to do and would maybe give me something to look forward to.  I took the bike down off the center stand and immediately knew something was wrong.  When I tried to wheel the bike back it felt like the rear wheel was in wet cement.  I looked down at the rear tire and sure enough for the second time since I moved to California and switched to solo-moto the fuggin' thing was flat.  I decided to make lemonade out of this lemon and made a series of videos along the way showing how I repair a flat tire, you can see that content below.

It only took me an hour to fix the tire it probably would have went much faster had I not stopped to shoot the video and had I known that my newly purchased tube of rubber cement had been torn open and leaked all over my toolbox and had I purchased a different medium for inflating the rear tire.  I think I am going to look into those CO2 inflaters this time around.

Well that's about it for my weekend adventures in solo-moto I hope you enjoyed my recounting of it and thanks again for reading.  Until next time!