Bike Maintenance and Off to Barrow Again

I managed to get in a couple of short motorcycle rides between getting back from Washington D.C. and Oregon and heading north. Yesterday afternoon, I knocked off a couple of items from my bike maintenance list. In order to warm up the oil, it's necessary to ride for at least an hour, right? I don't really look forward to changing the oil filter on my airhead. The lower fairing and the exhaust headers make it difficult to reach the bolts holding the oil cooler thermostat to the block. The thermostat housing doubles as the cover for the oil filter canister. It is so difficult to get the filter in/out of the block that BMW makes the filter fold in half so it could be snaked through the fairing, frame and exhaust header. I probably should just pull everything off to simplify the process whenever I change the oil. The oil looked great and after cutting open the filter, there was just barely a trace of anything. I probably could have let it go a while longer. I also checked the valve clearances since the engine was nicely warmed up and they are still spot on. (As Chris pointed out in the comments, the valve clearances should be checked when the engine is cold. I just prefer to warm it up first and check it when it has cooled to room temperature.) The top end repair work from last year was a great investment.

Alaska Airlines terminal at Deadhorse

This morning (Monday). I am on my way to Barrow for much of the week. If anyone is thinking of riding to Prudhoe Bay/Deadhorse, this snapshot from the door of the plane may convince you to wait a bit longer. I'm told that things had warmed up here a few weeks back but it's frozen again with low temperatures still hovering around 0°F along with a pretty stiff wind. It is calmer in Barrow but the temperatures are about the same. I don't think I've been to Barrow since January and it feels like it's been a long time. Tasks have been piling up on me and it has been challenging to find time to get up here. It looks like I may be spending a good percentage of my summer up here unless I can convince others from the university to spend some of their summer up north.

Tuesday Afternoon - Another beautiful, cold day up here. There is still a fair amount of snow as seen here in a shot of the old power plant on the NARL campus. After sitting staring at a computer screen all day, I went for a short walk outside. The sun is so bright that my eyes ached. The days are really long now with sunset occurring around 1:59AM with sunrise at 3:10AM. Needless to say, most of the windows in my quonset hut are covered with foil to block out the nighttime sun.