Hard To Stay Focused

It has been a challenging week after being on the road for 26 days. Sitting in my office, my mind keeps drifting to sights, sounds and smells along the road from the trip. My commute seems way too short and even the longer "scenic route" has lost some of its appeal. I think I have become addicted to motorcycle trips. Or maybe just traveling in general but riding does seem to add a lot to the experience. I was surprised to see that I've put on almost 2000 miles since Williams Lake, BC, when the bike turned over to 70k miles.

I posted on one of the BMW forums asking about my weird "shimmy" on fast sweeping turns such as you find on Interstate highways and one of the first responses asked if I had any load up high and behind the rear wheel. Such as a top box. I think that I will spend some time this winter trying to get my Reynolds rear rack installed as that would put the top box about 4" further forward and all of the weight would be supported directly by the rear subframe instead of the seat pan. To use the Reynolds rear rack, I would either need to find their rear bag mounts or modify the stock ones.

Yesterday evening, I finished unpacking the bike and removed the passenger backrest and top box and re-installed the factory rack. The bike looks smaller without the top box though I don't expect much, if any, change in handling. Plus we have no high speed highways up here. I also, believe it or not, washed some of the dirt and bugs off. Still can't see much through the windshield but the painted parts almost look shiny. They really don't design motorcycles to be easy to clean. I don't know how some people keep their bikes so spotless.

I just ordered another Heidenau K60 rear tire from Adventure Cycleworks here in town since they were willing to order the tire and not charge me extra for shipping. I'm not in a hurry to get the new tire. Next Spring would be fine. The Shinko that I picked up in Corvallis is fine for the wonderful roads in the lower 48 but every time I've hit dirt or gravel, the rear end wants to misbehave and go its own way. On the way down, I didn't have to do much when I hit gravel sections on the road including an unexpected section in the middle of a curve.

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