Too Warm

Today at noon, I walked down to the Farmers Market just a little ways down College Road and it felt really hot. The forecast for tomorrow is even warmer. It must be time to head for cooler temperatures. I'll be headed north again in a couple of days so I'll be getting a reprieve from the heat.

The motorcycle parking spaces are starting to fill up again with 8 bikes here this morning so I started parking in a regular parking space. There are notices posted all over the building that the whole parking lot is going to be torn up for most of the summer with very limited parking adjacent to the building. As you can imagine, this has caused some folks all sorts of anguish. The moto spaces will be reduced from three to two and this is what brought up the question on whether I will continue to use the motorcycle spaces given that the sidecar rig takes up a lot of space.

I was looking through my photos from the weekend and I was struck by how different the four sidecars at the Alaska meet up in Talkeetna were. Their similarity being limited to having three wheels touching the ground. My airhead/Cozy combination is smallest and lightest with few, if any, frills. My goal wasn't to carry passengers but simply to be able to ride into the winter.

Here is Bob and Sharon's setup with a BMW R1200GS as the tug and a sidecar and mounts from DMC. The sidecar has a hydraulic disc brake, automotive tire and electric lean adjustment for making small changes on the fly. It is a beautiful, clean setup and should serve them well on their upcoming trip to Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska. Follow them on their new blog.

Here is Dan's rig which he refers to the sidecar as "Sophi's car" as his daughter is the usual passenger. The bike, I believe, is a 1300cc V4 Yamaha Venture and they have travelled all around the state and down to the lower 48 towing a small tent trailer. The Champion sidecar has a soft top and could be fully enclosed in case of inclement weather. With the DVD player, Nintendo games and books for the Sophi, they travelled over 8,000 miles on it's inaugural ride.

The last of the four is Dom's 2011 Ural Patrol named Valencia. The only rig with reverse, 2WD, spare tire and the steering mods to reduce the trail normally designed into a motorcycle for stability on two wheels but makes for hard steering on three. Not to mention that the Ural is the only rig designed from the ground up and sold as a sidecar rig. His adventures on his blog are what convinced me to look for a sidecar.

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