Lost Creek Road.

I have been lurking on ADVRider.com for awhile and I've seen Lost Creek Road mentioned a few times on the Missouri Thread. Here is a quote from one of the post's about Lost Creek Road "..you should probably take someone familiar for your first ride down there.." - ThumperDRZ

I found out a couple of days ago I would have Saturday morning to my self, so a plan was hatched...

The Plan: Head west from home to Washington, MO and cross over to the north side of the Missouri River. Then start a series of north then south gravel roads inter-connected with tarmac. Once (if) the gravel roads have been completed I would cross to the south side of the Missouri river at Herman, MO and work my east to home.

The first gravel road was Charette Creek Rd. Lots of thick lose gravel was the theme of the day. Charette Creek Rd. had several low water crossings and if memory serves me a couple of small rocky crossings.

Charette Creek Rd.

Next was Dry Fork Rd, Howards Branch Rd, and Sellen Schutter Rd, all pretty mild.

Lost Creek Rd. the road the above quote referes to was next.

Lost Creek looks pretty tame on the GPS.

Lost Creek looks OK from this view also.

The Creek is no longer Lost. The Road is really over there somewhere.
Should I or shouldn't I?

I did it.

After I conquered Lost Creek it was a breeze down Massas Creek Rd.

Massas Creek Rd.

At the end of the day I made it home unscathed, but very tired. I don't believe I have ever worked so hard riding a motorcycle before. I did learn a few things though.

1. The road on the other side of the creek will never be the same. Hard packed gravel on one side and 12 inch's of sand the other.
2. If it's hunting season there will be hunters on 4-wheelers using both sides of the road.
3. The narrower the road the more likely you will meet someone in the largest possible truck.
4. Knobbie's are in my future.
5. I need a stronger skid plate. I didn't bottom out, but did have plenty of large rocks strike my plastic skid plate.

See You on the road.
GAW

Another weekend...

Another weekend, another sausage festival. Mostly paved, but lightly sprinkled with a couple of gravel roads.

North Klondike Rd in Randolph County, IL.

County Rd 950 in Perry County, MO

See you on the road.
GAW

Slowly getting it dirty.

This morning I went on the Club ride to St John's "Gildehaus" for the 48th Annual Sausage Festival. I was but one of the 3,877 diners served. They will have the 49th Annual Sausage Festival on Sunday October, 24 2010, so plan ahead.

After I was stuffed like a sausage I went my seperate way and explored some road's in the area that I had yet to ride, plus a few that I have.

The first and last photos were taken on Melrose Rd. The other two were taken on Grand Army Rd. Grand Army Rd. started out paved but quickly turned to gravel.



See you on the road.

GAW

Two weeks and 600 miles...

Two weeks and 600 miles finds the motorcycle incapacitated and on the lift. It was just a flat rear tire, but I didn't find the flat until late Saturday afternoon as I was leaving for a Club event. Luckily I'm 2 deep with motorcycles at the moment, so I parked the new bike and took the old bike.

I had an appointment set up for Tuesday to get the 600 mile service done so at the Club event I asked around if any body had a tube that would fit my bike. It was suggested to call Dave Clark at Forever Endeavor Cycles, The shop was just a couple of minutes down the road and was still open. He didn't have a new tube, but did have a used one with plenty of life life in it and it was free for the taking. Dave left it outside the shop so I could pick it up when ever I got there. Art had a set of tire irons and volunterred time sunday to help me change it.

Saturday night my job was to remove the offending wheel, so out comes the tool kit and owners manual. Owners manual passed, it had the proper procedure for removal and installation of the offending wheel. The tool kit on the other had FAILED miserably, it was missing a wrench in the correct size to fit the axle nut. It turned out that the axel nut was a 26mm, not a size most people have laying around. I have a very nice selection of tool's in metric and standard, but it seems that most socket sets go from 24mm to 27mm, skipping the needed 26mm. My local Sears Hardware Store doesn't keep 26mm sockets in-stock, special order only. I got the wheel off using my adjustable metric wrench.

The tire had a 1 1/2 inch fine thread drywall screw in it. I probably have a few of those laying around someplace, so it could have been introduced to the tire in my very own garage. I was a little bit suspicious of the old bike, the past two weeks was the longest time period that it had not been started since early march of this year. I suspected it had gotten jealous of the new bike, and set it up for a flat tire. I do hope they learn to get along. I don't recall ever getting a flat on the old bike in my 13+ years of ownership.

On Sunday morning there was a handful of tire irons, plenty of grunting and some baby powder involved getting the tube changed out. A big thanks to Art for the time and tools on a Sunday morning.

I will be purchasing a 26mm socket in the very near future, as I'm sure this won't be the last time I will need the wheel off. It also looks like I will be cutting a $25 wrench in half so that I can get the wheels off the bike while traveling.

See you on the road.

GAW

Buell Motorcycles, a thing of the past? Say it ain't so.

The motor company has apparently tanked in the third quarter, and has decided to ax Buell Motorcycles and sell off MV Agusta. Click on the title link to see an message from Erik Buell, in the short message you can see just how much Erik put into the motorcycles that carry his name. It's truly a sad day for American made motorcycles.

Harley-Davidson press release.
Buell press release.

I have always been intrigued by the (XB12) Lightning series of bikes, and finely got around to taking one for a test ride this spring. It was quite fun. If only my garage and wallet could go 3-4 deep in motorcycles I would have one.

See you on the road.
GAW

The Itch, has been scratched.

I have had an itch for quite some time, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't scratch it. The more I talked about it the worse it got. It would keep me up all night doing internet research on the best way to sooth it. It would cause me to day dream at work for hours on end. My wife would never even discuss it. I had come to the conclusion that I would suffer this itch for all eternity.

A few weeks ago I decided to try and get my wife to help me one more time. I double checked all of my research, consulted friends and I practiced in front of a mirror. In the end I gave a passionate speech. I layed out all of the positive points. I made it clear that if my itch got scratched, that I wold be more than willing to return the favor when the time came. I probably gave the best sales pitch of my life.

I guess I should remind the readers this is a blog about MOTORCYCLES. Get your minds out of the gutter.

About a week after my sales pitch I started to get that feeling I would be living with itch for a long time, when my Loving wife asked me If WE were going to the motorcycle shop that weekend? I think I passed out. When I awoke I checked to make sure I had heard correctly and then didn't ask again for fear something would change.

As it turned out we couldn't make it to the shop that weekend, so I called Gateway BMW Motorcycles on Friday afternoon and asked them to put a sold sign on the bike a 2009 BMW G650X Country, and that I would be in on Wednesday to sign all the papers and take delivery. It turned out to be a good idea to call them as Saturday some came in to buy MY motorcycle.

My itch got scratched at about 2:30pm on Wednesday September 30th, 2009 when I left the Dealer on my new bike, taking the long way home of course.

Look for more about G650X in future post.

See you on the Road.
GAW

DynaBeads - How to balance without balancing or how I cured my neurotic psycho-somatic feelings.

I recently purchased and installed new tires on my motorcycle for the first time. Just to clarify, I installed the tires myself for the first time (on a street bike anyway). I have used up 5 or 6 sets of tire's over the years, but I always had them installed by a dealer.

A friend of mine has a No-Mar tire changer and a static balancer. I made arrangements to visit him with my old tires still mounted on the wheels (left the bike at home) and the new tires. In a matter of about 30 minutes we had the old tire's in the back of my truck and the new tires installed. Then it was time to balance the tires and wheels. I'm no expert on balanceing tires, this being my first time, but the idea when static balancing is to find the heaviest part of the tire/wheel and add weight to the opisit side of the wheel using stick on weights. We went through the process with both wheels, adding another 15-20 minutes to the whole job, not to bad less than an hour to mount and balance for my first time.

Later that day I installed the wheels back on the motorcycle and took it for a test ride. During the ride I thought I could feel the slightest vibration, more so at certain speeds.

At this point my neurotic behavior kicks in and I start down a dangerous path of "what if's" and "should I's". What if I did the balancing wrong, should I re-mount and re-balance? What if it's a defect in the tire, should I... If I was sitting in a chair while this was going on and you observed me, you might notice my eye's vacant or a small string of drool. No big deal sitting in a chair in a padded room, but I'm traveling in excess of the posted speed, on a road that doesn't have 1 inch of straight and level pavement. This prosses continues at lightning speed until I have a really wet brain fart. After the brain fart I conclude that the balance must be off slightly and that I must revisit it.

Re-mounting and balancing is not a simply process as I would need to contact my friend with the equipment and set up a date and time, also I ride to work everyday and my weekends are usually full of family time. So there had to be an alternative, some place between Google and ADVRider I found DynaBeads, small ceramic beads that you pour down the valve stem and they dynamically (Magically) balance your tires as you ride. Using the DynaBeads web-site (click on title link) I found a dealer near me and the proper amount of beads for my bike 2 oz front and rear. After leaving the dealer with $26 less money, I had two 2 oz bags of DynaBeads and a installation kit (plastic bottle and tube). Installation is a breeze,

1. Let the air out of your tires.
2. Remove the valve stem.
   
3. Put the proper amount of beads in bottle.
4. Connect tube to bottle and valve stem.
5. Squeeze bottle (pump?) until all beads have entered tire.
6. Replace valve stem.
7. Inflate tire to proper pressure.
8. Repeat until all tires have been done.

Not to bad, I had both tires done in a matter of minutes and was ready for a test ride.

My first impressions during the test ride was that things had noticeably smoothed out, but I could still feel a vague vibration at certain speeds/RPM's. At that point my neurotic behavior kicked in and I started down the dangerous path of "what if's" and "should I's"...

I have now convinced my self that during my most recent oil change I overfilled the oil (my bike takes exactly 3.7987779 quarts of oil) and spun a bearing or broke a piston skirt. At the moment I'm reserching if DynaBeads poured into the crank case will help, I'll let you know how it turns out.

The big question, DynaBeads, did they work? I think so. I read many accounts from people who said they will use nothing else, but I still think it wise to balance your tires in a conventional way before pouring $25 down your valve stems.

See you on the road.

GAW

P.S. I have found a soultion to my balance / vibration problem, but you will have to check back later to see what it is.