First Ride of the Year

Finally, went on my first ride of the year after doing some maintenance on the bike. Changed the oil and the filter after going on a short ride to warm up the engine. Changing the filter turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would be and it took much of the afternoon. It is buried on the lower side of the engine behind the fairing and the exhaust. I managed to get it replaced without removing all of that but it was a pain. Luckily, it is probably only a once a year job. I had to look on the Internet several times as there has been a lot of discussion on this particular oil filter. It seems that the package comes with extra small pieces and you need to have the right pieces in the right order or you can kiss your engine goodbye. Articles titled "$2000 o-ring" get my attention. I actually ended up pulling the filter cover since I had the o-ring and a shim out of sequence.

This evening, I took a long ride through Goldstream Valley then came up the ridge to Summit Drive. There was a lot of gravel in one of the corners near the very top of the hill and I ended up "low siding" the bike. I was going pretty slow in the middle of the turn and the rear wheel started to slide on the gravel (actually the front wheel felt like was sliding as well). The bike went down slowly and I ended up sitting on the road with the bike about 10 feet away. No injury to me (ATGATT) but the left valve cover shows some definite grinding and my riding pants definitely shows some scrapes. No other obvious damage and I continued riding for another 30 miles or so. Time to start looking for a valve cover on Ebay. I had been looking for some cylinder guards for quite a while but I haven't found any at a reasonable price i.e. cheap. I also need to watch for gravel on the road especially in the corners.