Thinking about my last big motorcycle trip, I went into the garage about an hour ago and looked at my two bikes with big ideas in mind. I think this next year instead of doing long-distance travel, I'd like to stay closer to home and do some improvements on my bikes. Here's a quick list of what needs to be done.
CX500
Fit/modify new tank (Deluxe tank! gives me twice the capacity!)
Fit new HD pipes to bike (Had the pipes for a year already)
If time allows, find a new seat cover & replace.
Titan
Rent/Buddy out a trailer and haul it over to the car wash and wash the hell out of it
Take off cover and inspect kickstarter- probably needs new gears
Test bike to see if it kicks over and starts and see how well it runs (maybe a test ride?)
Clean the metal (exhaust, forks, etc)
Air filters
Check oil filter and tank
Needs new/used
Rear fender
Tires
Grips
Kick lever
Rear brake lever
Cables
Battery (or alternate source of power for lights, the bike has no electric start)
Bulbs (probably)
Engine case hardware
Customize (pretty unnecessary stuff, but whatev)
Clubman handlebars
Paint (candy apple red or candy green)
Emblems
I think I can get the bike running and in good shape (if the kickstarter is all I need to replace) for about $400-500. The tires will suck up a lot of the budget at around 120 for both (if I'm lucky). A new kickstarter shaft + lever will run me about $80. Cables will cost around $35 for both, hardware is $20, brake lever is $30, chain is $40, battery is $40, fender is $80, grips are $10.
This leaves me at $455, but it could be more expensive or cheaper. The goal is to keep this bike a budget bike and get it running and looking decent to either keep or sell. Thankfully, it's easier to work on than the Honda.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Canada ride- Part II
Southern Canada is a lot like West Virginia.
If you've ever been to West Virginia and drove around, you know what I'm talking about.
I could say more and be pretty descriptive, but I'd be an asshole at the same time, so I'll leave it at that.
Trans-Canadian Hwy 17 cuts through the most deserted land I had ever been on. I've been to the Badlands and I thought that was pretty deserted, but this was worse. There's no gas stations for miles and miles and my bike had a range limited to about 120 miles at 60mph (including reserve). That day, I stretched it to 150 miles at 43mph. As soon as I hit 90 miles on the odo (where I u
sually expect to go on reserve) I turned on my left turn signal to let him know I hit reserve. Dad hit reserve soon after that and we rode about 10 more miles without any luck for gas stations, so we pulled over and looked at the map. The map showed a few towns, but we had already passed them and didn't see anything advertising a gas station, convenience store, etc. We decided to push on at 40mph to stretch our gas, and would go slower if we had to. The road was pretty deserted anyway, so nobody would really care if we were going that slow. After riding for about an hour at 40mph (panicking the entire way) we finally pulled over to some sort of rest stop and asked someone if there was a gas station nearby. He directed us to the nearest one (about 3 miles away) but it was one that we totally would have missed if we hadn't asked. It was a tiny ESSO establishment on the side of the road with two pumps and a small convenience store.
While my dad was gassing up the bikes, I went into the convienence store to use the washroom and get something to drink. I couldn't find the bathroom in there, so I asked the lady behind the counter, who was wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off with a picture of a teddy bear holding a flower on it. I was very polite to her when asking, but all I got out of her was "CAN'T YOU READ!? ITS OVER THERE...dumb f'ing Yankee..." I went back and still couldn't find it but a young girl (probably her daughter) led me to the bathroom, embarrassed at her mom's lack of manners. After that I grabbed a drink and realized I didn't know how to pay in Canadian money and forgot the difference between a "toonie" and a "loonie". I just slapped a bunch of cash on the counter and hoped for the best. The crabby lady gave me a look and shook her head and gave me my change and we were back on our way.
So that was my first real encounter with a Canadian in their own territory, and it supported my theory that this area was a lot like West Virginia. Although, if you said "dumb f'ing Yankee" in WV, you'd probably get tar and feathered or shot. Probably the latter.
The rest of Canada 17 was pretty much the same. My next Canadian encounter was with the Canadian DOT...
When Canada repairs a road, they don't do it one lane at-a-time. They rip up the whole freaking road (sometimes 5-10 miles long) and make you follow a pilot truck and ride over loose grav
el and mud to get past the construction. If you don't ride, let me remind you that it's not easy to ride a motorcycle through gravel at any speed. It's best to ride through it at 10-25mph, but doing that and trying to balance your bike loaded with luggage and keep it going straight at the same time while there's a line of honking cars behind you isn't fun. I experienced something like this at least four times on my trip through Canada and this was the smoothest construction I had encountered.We eventually made it up to Thunder Bay (which has great views, similar to Duluth's scenery), but we found out it wasn't that great of a town. We stopped in a hotel and walked about 5 blocks past tons of strip clubs (we couldn't tell if we were in the wrong side of town or not) to a Canadian Applebee's, where I was introduced to Canadian beer and gravy. Molson Canadian isn't too bad, and the famous gravy wasn't bad either. Its basically a heavily spiced brown gravy that Canadians treat like ketchup. It goes on anything ketchup goes on, but I preferred to just use it for my fries.
After that, in the morning we departed for White River, ON.
Continued in Part III.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Canada ride- Part I
Okay, so I feel pretty guilty about not posting anything in the last six or so months.
The Canada trip was bittersweet. I saw a lot of cool things and actually rode my bike to a foreign country, but 70% of it was ridden in really cold rain. It rained the entire way to Minneapolis, it rained on the way to Duluth, it rained (a little) on the way to Thunder Bay, it rained (a little) on the way to White River, it rained the entire way from White River to the US border, it did not rain from St. Ignace to Flint, but did rain halfway from Flint to Chicago. And then it rained the entire way from Chicago back to Iowa.
So we started off heading up towards Dubuque. We crossed the border into Wisconsin and followed the border a bit and then crossed back into Iowa because my dad got lost. As soon as we crossed back into Iowa it started pouring, but it was okay because we had our rain gear on for warmth earlier anyway. At about 3pm 60 miles south of Rochester, MN the CX had a major meltdown.
During the hardest rainfall I had ever ridden in, I experienced a feeling that was similar to running out of gas when I forget to put it on reserve. The bike loses power, falls behind and sputters as I move into the slow lane to turn on the reserve and speed up. It takes about 30 seconds to kick in and bring me back up to speed, but this time doing so didn't help. I had ridden about 70 miles already, which (dependi
ng on the conditions) is when I should usually switch over to reserve anyway. It was still sputtering and revving and demanded that I quickly downshift and turn it off. I did that and sat there for a minute, and then I started the bike back up again. It hesitated but eventually started and idled fine. My dad was about 7 miles ahead of me before he realized I had pulled over (despite my honking and light flickering) and had no remedy for the situation so I got back on and rode it for another 20 miles until it did it again. The rain was coming down in sheets now and was starting to collect on roads in every small town we pulled into, but as soon as the heavy rain subsided, the bike ran fine. When we got to Rochester we pulled the fuel line and put an entire new tank of gas in it (thinking water got into the fuel and fouled it) and then it ran like usual all the way through the busy Minneapolis traffic to our destination.
The next day we departed Minneapolis and headed towards Duluth in partly cloudy skies. It eventually started to rain 100 miles out but after a really boring ride up north we arrived in Duluth where it was nice and sunny. Duluth is pretty scenic and seems like a fun town, but there's a lot of homeless people and nomads with backpacks running around because its pretty much the end of the line for Minnesota. After visiting the cool locomotive station there, we headed up to Hibbing, MN where my next problem arose.
The Duluth area has some of the crappiest roads I've ever ridden on. Super bumpy with tons of potholes. We took a really bad side road to get to Hibbing, where I lost my luggage.
Losing something that's been sitting behind you and providing you with a back rest for the last 400 miles is a surreal feeling. It was a brand new expensive waterproof duffel bag that had all of my clothes and electronics accessories stuffed in it. It had been wrapped down nicely with about 4 bungee cords so I thought it would have been fine, but as soon as I heard the bungees banging against the side of the bike and scratching my sidecovers (and potentially getting into the spokes of my rear wheel) I freaked out and cautiously pulled over immediately. After meeting back up with my dad, we combed a 30 mile stretch of road for an hour and a half, burning daylight and looking for my missing bag. In that hour and a half about 5 cars went down that road coming from Hibbing like us, and I'm sure one of those cars stole my bag. I went back looking for it right away and still couldn't find it. I called the local Sheriffs office (where they didn't do anything about it, of course) and went to Wal Mart (ugh) and blew $100 replacing everything I lost.
Lessons learned: Be more obsessive-compulsive about your bungee cords. Pull over when you rode through a bumpy road and re-tighten everything. Put a card in your luggage with your name and address on it. Make your luggage visible in case it gets thrown into a ditch.
After that and spending a night creeping the NE MN "lost and found" section on CraigsList and talking to local authorities, we left for International Falls for the monumental border crossing.
It was possibly the easiest border crossing ever. My dad went in first and handed the officer his passport and told him I was with him on a trip and the guy waved me through and didn't even ask for my passport. I stopped at the window anyway to hand it to him just to be sure but he just shook his head and told me to have fun. I had my first taste of Vietnamese food in town (A+) in town there and then crossed a series of bridges from island-to-island to get on the main road to start going across Canada.
Continued in Part II.
The Canada trip was bittersweet. I saw a lot of cool things and actually rode my bike to a foreign country, but 70% of it was ridden in really cold rain. It rained the entire way to Minneapolis, it rained on the way to Duluth, it rained (a little) on the way to Thunder Bay, it rained (a little) on the way to White River, it rained the entire way from White River to the US border, it did not rain from St. Ignace to Flint, but did rain halfway from Flint to Chicago. And then it rained the entire way from Chicago back to Iowa.
So we started off heading up towards Dubuque. We crossed the border into Wisconsin and followed the border a bit and then crossed back into Iowa because my dad got lost. As soon as we crossed back into Iowa it started pouring, but it was okay because we had our rain gear on for warmth earlier anyway. At about 3pm 60 miles south of Rochester, MN the CX had a major meltdown.
During the hardest rainfall I had ever ridden in, I experienced a feeling that was similar to running out of gas when I forget to put it on reserve. The bike loses power, falls behind and sputters as I move into the slow lane to turn on the reserve and speed up. It takes about 30 seconds to kick in and bring me back up to speed, but this time doing so didn't help. I had ridden about 70 miles already, which (dependi
ng on the conditions) is when I should usually switch over to reserve anyway. It was still sputtering and revving and demanded that I quickly downshift and turn it off. I did that and sat there for a minute, and then I started the bike back up again. It hesitated but eventually started and idled fine. My dad was about 7 miles ahead of me before he realized I had pulled over (despite my honking and light flickering) and had no remedy for the situation so I got back on and rode it for another 20 miles until it did it again. The rain was coming down in sheets now and was starting to collect on roads in every small town we pulled into, but as soon as the heavy rain subsided, the bike ran fine. When we got to Rochester we pulled the fuel line and put an entire new tank of gas in it (thinking water got into the fuel and fouled it) and then it ran like usual all the way through the busy Minneapolis traffic to our destination.
The next day we departed Minneapolis and headed towards Duluth in partly cloudy skies. It eventually started to rain 100 miles out but after a really boring ride up north we arrived in Duluth where it was nice and sunny. Duluth is pretty scenic and seems like a fun town, but there's a lot of homeless people and nomads with backpacks running around because its pretty much the end of the line for Minnesota. After visiting the cool locomotive station there, we headed up to Hibbing, MN where my next problem arose.
The Duluth area has some of the crappiest roads I've ever ridden on. Super bumpy with tons of potholes. We took a really bad side road to get to Hibbing, where I lost my luggage.
Losing something that's been sitting behind you and providing you with a back rest for the last 400 miles is a surreal feeling. It was a brand new expensive waterproof duffel bag that had all of my clothes and electronics accessories stuffed in it. It had been wrapped down nicely with about 4 bungee cords so I thought it would have been fine, but as soon as I heard the bungees banging against the side of the bike and scratching my sidecovers (and potentially getting into the spokes of my rear wheel) I freaked out and cautiously pulled over immediately. After meeting back up with my dad, we combed a 30 mile stretch of road for an hour and a half, burning daylight and looking for my missing bag. In that hour and a half about 5 cars went down that road coming from Hibbing like us, and I'm sure one of those cars stole my bag. I went back looking for it right away and still couldn't find it. I called the local Sheriffs office (where they didn't do anything about it, of course) and went to Wal Mart (ugh) and blew $100 replacing everything I lost.
Lessons learned: Be more obsessive-compulsive about your bungee cords. Pull over when you rode through a bumpy road and re-tighten everything. Put a card in your luggage with your name and address on it. Make your luggage visible in case it gets thrown into a ditch.
After that and spending a night creeping the NE MN "lost and found" section on CraigsList and talking to local authorities, we left for International Falls for the monumental border crossing.
It was possibly the easiest border crossing ever. My dad went in first and handed the officer his passport and told him I was with him on a trip and the guy waved me through and didn't even ask for my passport. I stopped at the window anyway to hand it to him just to be sure but he just shook his head and told me to have fun. I had my first taste of Vietnamese food in town (A+) in town there and then crossed a series of bridges from island-to-island to get on the main road to start going across Canada.Continued in Part II.
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