The Lonely Roadeo

Instead of a complete and total ride report from start to finish, I'll jump around a little a let the pics do most of the talking. This last trip of the year I have dubbed....The Lonely Roadeo. I left KC on Monday before 7:30am, headed for Mountain View. But first a quick stop off at the bank to take out a little cash. Tightwad Bank. Priceless.

The next two pics are of Noblett Lake and Dam in Missouri. Joe, Jody and I passed this little lake back in the spring but didn't actually stop. I stopped this time and took a few pics. The dam was built back in 1938 to 1940 - part of the Public Works program. The sign talked about how long it took them with THREE whole mixers working full time. It's a nice, quiet spot WELL off the beaten path.


This next pic was taken along HWY341 - Push Mountain Road. I was almost to Mt.View, making good time, when I spotted this little gem sitting off on the side of the road. Not sure if you guys are familiar with this bike, but it's a full-time two-wheel drive. The wheels are hollow for storing fuel or water. Very cool. The Rokon Trail Breaker.

This next pic was taken at Bayou Bluff campground on the lower leg of HWY27 in Arkansas. A very pretty spot as well.

This pic of the ZRX on a bridge was taken on the upper part of HWY27, just south of Marshall. I was a wee bit hesitant parking the bike on the bridge considering all the missing boards and the rotting wood. The first time I put the kickstand down, the steel dug right through the wood. I pulled up and planted the kickstand on a knot and took some pics. If you go to the Photobucket location where are the other pics are hosted, you'll see a pic of where my kickstand dug into the wood.

These next two pics were at a place called "Sam's Loop Trail - Chicken Head Wall access." Believe it or not, this incredible spot is located on HWY123, just south of the crazy switchbacks coming out of Mount Judea. There isn't even a sign. I just saw a pull-off and drove back on gravel about 200 yards and there is this place that we've all passed at least a dozen times over the years. It's maybe a 5-minute walk and you're treated to some of the most amazing vistas in the area. I think I stumbled upon it because - with no leaves on the trees - I figured there had to be some way to get out onto this rock outcropping. Take a look at the Photobucket pics.


This last pic is in Missouri. I saw all these bikes and saw a guy working on a bike out in the back, so I had to stop. Just another of the many road-side attractions that I encountered.

Other things slightly worthy of note:
- Here's the ALL the pics:
http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm288/douglaskivett/Lonely%20Roadeo/
Best if you view the pics in Slideshow Mode.
- 1168 miles covered in three days. Two night spent in Mountain View.
- On Monday, I saw a homeless guy pulling a wagon just north of Mountain Home. On Wednesday, I saw him in Yellville pulling the wagon, so I stopped and chatted with him.
- Saw a load of lumber fall from the bed of a pick-up truck in front of me on Push Mountain Road. Luckily missed all of it.
- One kamikaze pass that scared me, the car I was passing, and the car I almost hit head on.
- On Tuesday, after a long day of riding, a guy approached me as I pulled into Subway there in Mountain View. He was from the OA...wanted to know if I was on the board. Board name is "Tattoo13" and he lives in Melbourne on HWY9. Works there in Mountain View.

The Last Emperor

Dick and Douglas are well aware of my man-crush on Fedor Emelianenko and my passion for watching Mixed Martial Arts(MMA)matches of all kind whether it be UFC, Affliction, Strikeforce or the now defunct Pride and K1 highlights. MMA has come a long way from its early days of glorified "human cock-fighting" and has transformed itself into the highest form of combat sports available today combining all the combat skills whether it be Greco-Roman wresting, Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, Karate, Muay Thai, etc. Without going into too much detail, Fedor is a heavyweight fighter out of Russia who is considered by many to be "The Baddest Man on the Planet" having an MMA record of 31-1-1 with the only loss beeing a doctor stoppage early in his career due to a cut. Plenty of info on him available on the internet if you care to learn more so I won't bore you with it here. To me, Fedor epitomizes how I wish all elite athletes would carry themselves but that is a conversation for another time. Enjoy the fight below before it gets taken down from YouTube.

Halloween 2009

So I work with a friend, his name is Chuck. He's the guy who's Yamaha XS we have diligently been working on and he comes up to me a few weeks ago and asks me if I want to go in on a costume idea with him for the Halloween Costume Contest at work. I said sure, not really having any idea of what he had in mind. Chuck's idea and he even bought the costumes. A couple of "Nun-Chucks"!

Proud Pappa

I know I don't talk too much about my job with you guys but I do get to do some pretty nifty projects at times, the below building being one of my tops. This is a Lowe's project across the freeway from the San Jose, CA International Airport from which we were required to take design cues. We were given a general elevation approved by San Jose Planning and Zoning and it was up to me to turn that idea into a set of construction documents. Design cues included the corrugated metal paneling, glass feature framing the entry and the rectilinear awnings at the Garden Center and Customer Loading Canopy. Seeing something like this constructed from details that I physically put on paper is one of the most rewarding parts of my job. I'm not particularly fond of the colors used but those were dictated to us by the developer.

Finally!

After much anticipation, my family pack of Windows7 arrived today. My plan is to install the first copy on my Home Theater PC to see how things go. Although I have been running Vista with zero issues for over a year now on two different machines, given all the positive press W7 has been receiving from pundits on both sides of the aisle, I thought I'd give it a shot. Microsoft is offering, while supplies last, a 3-pack of upgrades for $150 which is very hard to beat for people with multiple machines. In-depth report upcoming.

Don't try this at home.

11:48pm on a Friday night...
36 degress in my neck of the woods...
and I just got back from a 30 mile ride on the interstate.
That's why you shouldn't try this at home...unless you have sweet-ass heated riding gear like John and I have. See below:

I've probably told most of you how John made heated riding gear for himself using an old electric blanket. I doted on it quite a bit and probably dropped more hints than my momma would consider polite. So when I mentioned it to him a couple of weeks ago, he had me a "loom" already made up. Basically, he had everything from the battery all the way through the switch to the resistance wires in the blanket. All I had to do was the monotonous task of sewing the resistance wires into the removable liner of my MotoGP jacket. And so that's what I did this week whilst I was recuperating from surgery. Nothing better than sewing with one eye swollen shut. As for more of the details, there's an 8amp fuse in-line just off the positive wire that comes off the battery. And observe some of the other kick ass features in the pic below. For example, there's the male to female audio jack "quick disconnect" feature. Basically, if you forget you're plugged in and start to walk away from the bike, you just come unplugged instead of ripping the loom out of the jacket. And also notice the craftsmanship on the on / off switch. It's encased in JB Weld. Turns out John knew JB Weld personally. They were best buds growing up. I'm just saying that's a fine job done with the JB Weld.

And so is the proof in the pudding? Indeed. I went out for a 30-mile ride, mostly all interstate, at around 11:30pm tonight. Got back around midnight. It was in the low 40's today and was spitting rain off and on. Roads were dry when I went out tonight, but it was cold as snot. I was wearing thermal long john pants (under my brown pants of course), similar long sleeve shirt, a t-shirt and the MotoGP jacket with the liner in it. Heavy gloves and a neck gator. Honestly, at 36 degrees, it wasn't toasty, but it was warm enough to counteract the bitter ass cold. There was no heat from sunshine either, mind you. So I'll typically never ride in the dark and probably never ride in 36 degree temps, and if I do I would wear my rain gear as additional wind break. That helps, by the way. But in these conditions, sustaining 70 to 80mph indicated, I was able to maintain a decently comfortable core temperature. It kept me warm enough that when the ride was done, I was feeling good enough to clean my chain in my UNHEATED garage. There's a lot to be said for that. I think if the air temps were 10 degrees warmer, say in the mid 40's and if riding in daylight, I would be quite comfortable. This is a victory in my book, and a nice addition to my bag of tricks.

Bike Contest

Hey guys. As most of you know, I don't go on the OA too very much anymore, but I do frequent the SR500 board. It's quaint there. Six hundred members, but plenty in Europe and tons of Aussies. Not an overwhelming number of daily posters, so it seems like a very small forum. Anywho, someone had the idea to do a bike contest. I wanted to participate just for the sake if having a good turnout, so I entered the ZRX in the "Non SR section" of the contest. There's voting and everything.
Here's a link to the thread with all my pics:
http://www.sr500forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=1737
Here's a link to the sub-forum with all the non-SR bikes, so you can see the competition:
http://www.sr500forum.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=51

Ralph Wayne's Backyard Nationals

Today was the 17th Annual Ralph Wayne's Backyard Nationals. It's a Kansas City event held at a local guy's house each fall. It's literally a bike show in the guy's back yard. Miraculously his neighbors have put up with this for nearly two decades. The really nice bikes get waved on up into the back yard. And then all others line the adjacent streets. It's a really cool event. I spent a few hours there today.

This year was particularly interesting because my friend Dave, who I've told you guys about before, debuted his recently completed board tracker replica bike. Dave has spent the last few years building this bike from the ground up. He literally started with drawings of the frame and then welded it up from there. The power plant is a lawn mower engine. The craftsmanship is top notch. Very cool bike. He chronicled the entire build on his dedicated blog: Board Tracker Blog

Rough and Tumble Tour 2009

Most of you know that Chuck and I had originally planned this Arkansas romp for Labor Day weekend. We postponed three weekends in a row due to rain in the Mountain View area. But we caught our break last week and made it happen….finally. Our plan was to meet up in West Mineral, KS, the home of Big Brutus, the 16-story decommissioned shovel crane. We planned to make Mountain View by Saturday night, ride the Bixby Ball Buster on Sunday and return home Monday. What follows is how it all unfolded.

I arrived at Big Brutus at 11am….right on time….only to find no Hickl. A phone check revealed the following text message from Chuck:
“Check your voicemail. ZRX is hosed.” Sent at 10:15am.
A follow up text sent 45 minutes later read: “Hang tight at Brutus. I’m continuing on.”
Chuck arrived on the smoke-billowing Rex at around 11:30am. The decision was quickly made that we would “Shit and git” – to quote Chuck. Without spending any time at Brutus, other than in the museum’s toilet, we took off for Tulsa to retrieve Optimus Prime, aka “the Fizzy.”

We arrived in Tulsa close to 2pm. We parked the ailing Rex, ate lunch at Subway, and headed off for Mountain View at 2:45pm. At this point, we both had about 300 miles of super slab underneath our belts. We were both dragging a little bit of ass, especially considering we knew we had almost another 300 miles to Mountain View ahead of us and would probably be arriving in the dark. We slabbed it over to Huntsville, where we picked up the Pig Trail. We stopped at the same Shell station there in Huntsville where we always gas up. Chuck scored some “EXTREME CHICKEN SHOOTERS” for a snack. We took hwy74 through Kingston and Ponca where we saw literally dozens of cars parked along the side of the road watching the Elk that roam that bottom land down there near the Boxley Corner. It was like the circus was in town. Through Jasper and by the time we hit Marshall – fifty miles away from Mountain View – it was already completely dark and a little bit chilly to boot. Jacket liners, neck gators and clear shields came out for that last push to our final destination. As we left Marshall, we passed a kid on a bicycle who greeted us with the middle finger. This got Chuck’s dander up so much that he later lamented that he didn’t stop to to punch the kid in the face for being so rude. And I quote: “While I punched him in the face, I would have said to his friend, ‘Tell his parents why I did this’.” (Just for Deekster, there’s a great line from “The Big Lebowski” here: “Do you see what happens Larry?! This is what happens, Larry, when you fuck a stranger in the ass!”) We arrived in Mountain View just before 9pm. We stopped at the Mexican joint in town before we even checked in at the motel. More than 12 hours on the bikes and 543 miles total for the day, but we made it in one piece and in good spirits.
BELOW: Saturday morning and Chuck is overjoyed by the breakfast menu at the Angler.

Saturday was the much-anticipated Bixby Ball Buster. I know of nothing to speak of in Bixby. It’s a dot on the map. I’ve just enjoyed the alliteration (Bixby Ball Buster) and the challenge of making it all the way up there and back in one day. It was fun heading up into “uncharted territory”, a sort of modern day Lewis and Clark on sport bikes. But in reality, we didn’t encounter any Lost City of Gold, no El Dorado of the twisties up north of the border. (I am getting lost in my own expeditionary metaphors here.) We did come across one unique, recently-paved, no painted lines, stretch of HIGH speed sweepers up in the Mark Twain National Forest. Route KK it was. We set it at about 100mph and maintained that for about 10 minutes. It was ridiculous. Another really nice road is HWY19, but it’s the stretch up near Eminence, MO. Jody, and Joe B and I have been on the lower leg of HWY19 in the past and only noted the continuous blind hills and complete LACK of corners. But there is some really nice stuff up near Eminence. We logged 412 miles on Saturday, a day that started with HYW9 and ended with HWY58. We scored pizza and a calzone for dinner at a little place there in Mountain View.

Monday morning we left for home via Yellville. Chuck’s rear tire was showing steel cords by the time we parted ways there. I was quite worried he might not make it back. But stupidity prevailed once again and he made it home safe and sound….I’m sure with sparks flying all along the way.
BELOW: I got the wonderful aroma of cedar whilst on the ferry ride.

I made it back at around 6:30pm Monday evening. All told, I racked up 1,360 miles for the three-day weekend. One hell of a bender.

Good News/Bad News

Although I'll leave the ride report to Douglas, I will fill you guys in on something that happened at the outset of the ride. As you know from a previous blog, I had purchased a set of trackday take-offs from Ocelot on the ZRXOA and had them mounted up on the ZRX with the intent of surprising Douglas by showing up riding "mean-green". Bike has been running superb since I got the coil issue addressed and was excited to be back on the Rex with a chance to get it back in the twisties! Leaving Tulsa Saturday morning it was a little cool so the bike was running even better. I got about 100 miles north of Tulsa when I pulled over to the side of the road to check my map and to my great dismay, I was soon enveloped in a choking cloud of blue (oil) smoke emanating from my tailpipe! What to do now? First instinct was to turn around and head home so as not to get caught out on the road with a disabled bike. I called the wife to let her know I was returning and also called Dick who reinforced my decision not to push the bike any further than I needed to. Called/texted Douglas to let him know my plan and headed back to Tulsa. Once back on the road, I noticed the bike wasn't really burning oil at speed and was still running great. Since I was so close to Douglas, less than 30 miles, I stopped, texted him I was on my way, turned around and continued on to Big Brutus. Met up with Douglas at Big Brutus and was pretty bummed about what was happening. Douglas was very positive about the whole situation and suggested we ride back to Tulsa, get my Fizzy and continue on our trip which is what we ended up doing. Trip turned out wonderful but I knew rear tire on my Fizzy wasn't up to the task but had little choice other than to take it given the pickle we were in.

As for the ZRX, she starts/runs fine with no obvious noises. Bike puffs blue smoke at idle and partial throttle and throttle blips. If I idle it up to 5K, the smoke eventually clears up almost completely and there is very little noticeable smoke at speed. I initially thought it might be a valve guide/seal but when decelerating using engine braking, the smoke doesn't seem to get worse as one would expect given the vacuum this maneuver is creating. I had a valve guide/seal go on my manual transmission Z-28 and whenever I would engine brake, it would pull all the oil down the valve stem and smoke like a sum-bitch. In any case, I don't plan on messing with the ZRX before the rally and will look at it over the winter. At Dick's direction I'll start by pulling plugs to see if it's isolated to one cylinder or affecting them all. Hopefully, it's just a valve job and not a ring issue although I suppose a scored cylinder might mean it's 1224 time! Maybe this is a great thing in disguise! Any thoughts appreciated and ask any questions you might have.

Yikes!

This is what my rear tire looked like after getting home! Once again, I pushed my rear tire to the limit and almost didn't make it home. Turns out the Diablo is a steel-belted tire which is probably what allowed it to last as long as it did. After getting to the motel Sunday night, it was obvious the tire was done but there were no chords showing. By the time we got to Yellville, Monday morning, things were looking grim and I was dreading every mile home from that point on. More on the trip later.

I Wanna Park Under That!

So, you take a quick look at these pics and you might crap your pants thinking that perhaps the Corobra has met its untimely demise. Never fear, she runs strong as ever.
I took these pics this morning. I was heading in to see the doctor and low and behold, right up front in an otherwise crowded parking lot, two open spaces right there next to this behemoth truck. Big surprise! My guess is people got one look at this thing and decided they wouldn't be so lucky as to get a door ding on this day, but rather would get a side window busted out instead!
My FIRST thought was: "I wanna park UNDER that." Am I the only one who thinks this way? And I got it under there a pretty good ways. If I'd had a Come-Along in the car, I might have tried to winch it up on the Corobra's back and carried the thing away...just like I carried Chuck up that hill in the back parking lot of the Swiss Holiday. Just like that big barge that sinks and then picks stuff up from underneath.

New Mexico Trip

God I love New Mexico !! Wonder why I ever left....

John McEnroe vs. Novak Djokovic U.S Open 2009

Ran across this accidentally and thought it was pretty funny. I grew up playing racket sports and followed tennis enthusiastically in my youth. The battles between Jimmy Connors and young McEnroe still stand out in my mind as some of the best tennis ever played. Although I don't follow much now, I do try and keep up with who the current players are, Djokovic being one of them. I guess he is quite the jokester and pulled this little stunt after running through an opponent in the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open. Priceless stuff!

The Butterly Effect

Just enjoying the yard and getting pics of the dogs when this little guy showed up! He looked pretty beat up but seemd to be operating normally. Took 75 pics in about 5 minutes and these are some of the better ones. Enjoy and I'll be happy to send full-res images if you e-mail me with a request.

Happy Birthday Little Buddy!

Enjoyed it my little man!

New Shoes for the ZRX

In order to attend the Fall Rally on the ZRX, I would need new tires for the ZRX. Cash is tight so I decided to give ocelot's Track Day take-offs a shot. Tires shipped 09/02/09 and arrived yesterday at 09/09/09. I didn't actually know they had been dropped on the porch until this morning when I tracked them through UPS. In any case, the tires have beat my expectations on all levels. It honestly looks like my tires have about 20 laps on the track and I got the guy who didn't even take them to the edge. I know where I will be buying my tires in the near future and would recommend them to all of you as well! Time to get the Harbor Freight tire changer figured out!