Exploring Outside Denver

On Saturday morning, we headed south through Colorado Springs on Dom's two Ural rigs. You can read his post here. The BMW powered rig was not quite through the break in mileage on the transmission so speed was limited. Since Pikes Peak looked pretty socked in, we stopped at the Garden of the Gods just west of Colorado Springs.

It was pretty crowded but probably not as crowded as during the summer tourist season. This is Balanced Rock near the Manitou Springs exit. At this point, Dom checked the Pikes Peak road status and learned that the road was partly open but snow was reported at 12,000'.

This was the end of the road for today. We really couldn't see much as we were in the clouds. By the time we got up there, it felt pretty cold at 31°F (0°C) and damp. Fortunately, the road wasn't slippery. There were a number of cars in a line on the road. I'm told that they were hoping that the rangers would open up the road to the summit. At this point we headed back down the road.

After several switchbacks we stopped along the side of the road for some photos. Not a lot of detail but it does look like we are stopped on the edge of a cliff. This road is steep. We were in first gear all the way down. A couple of switchbacks later, we found a good view of the valley but there were several other cars parked in a very small space. Only a few hundred yards further down the road, Dom spotted a dirt road leading to a nice parking space.

By this time, the temperature had warmed up to about 45°F (+7°C) and we were out of the clouds. It was a little challenging to get back up on the road as it was really steep where the dirt road met the pavement and you couldn't see if there was any traffic until you get there.

This was the view when we almost reached the entrance gate. When we called during lunch, the status of the road  hadn't changed so we headed back north. By the time we arrived at his home, the BMW powered Ural was 1 km past the break-in mileage. No longer limited to 45 mph!

Running Around Denver

I arrived in Denver on Tuesday evening and Dom, aka Charlie6 on the Internet, picked me up at the airport. He had generously offered the use of one of the rigs. This is the one named Fiona with the BMW engine. It was quite a hit at the meeting especially since it is parked right in front of the door of the Polar Field Services office. There are quite a few other riders though this was the only bike there. Something about rain makes them not want to ride. And these are guys who spend months of a time at remote locations such as Greenland supporting research. A very interesting group.  

On Wednesday, I rode back to Dom and Martha's home and we went to an all-the-schnitzel-you-can-eat place. This was something new as I've never had schnitzel before. It was very good as were the side dishes and the company was great. Dom generously offered his newer rig to take to the meeting the next day. Nothing like shaking things up by showing up with something different. On Thursday, quite a few noticed the slight change and many recognized this one as a Ural. Many just assumed that the other rig was an old BMW. Interesting.
 

Dinner on Thursday was at a Vietnamese place in the mini mall next to the hotel. Pretty tasty and since the same broth is used for all of the pho dishes, it came out of the kitchen in literally minutes. True fast food. You add in the fresh vegetables yourself choosing how many jalapeño slices and chili paste you think that you want and dig in. It was very good.

To finish off dinner, they brought out Vietnamese coffee and a glass of ice. I haven't had this for a while. Actually, since the last time I was in Denver for an Internet2 meeting. The very strong coffee slowly drips into sweet, condensed milk. It takes quite a while for the coffee to make it through the thick pad of coffee. You then mix and pour over ice for a nice strong iced coffee. 

Heading North Again

One last photo from Seward. This was taken on Tuesday after the reunion was over. Much of the extended family met at a coffee place right on the water next to the Sea Life Center for breakfast. We sort of took the place over. The skies were clearing up for the first time since we arrived so this may be remembered as the damp reunion. On Tuesday, I just rode back to my brother's home in Anchorage where they hosted a cookout with moose burgers and caribou hot dogs. As you may guess, they were a hit with the family. Yesterday, I rode back to Fairbanks in wonderful weather. Mostly 55°F to 70°F for most of the trip. No heated anything needed. No pictures on the return trip. Denali was almost cloud free but the scenic turnouts were tourist clogged including multiple tour busses at every stop.

The Ural ran great on the trip. I had adjusted the clutch which got rid of most of the tendency to creep when stopped in gear. The creeping seems to return a little when the engine is hot. The battery monitor I installed showed no green lights while running down the road. There has always been one green light showing and it is that way until the engine really heats up. This suggests either a failing battery, voltage regulator or alternator. Something to dink with when I get back.

I brought my radiant thermometer to measure the head temperature after some of the long grades as the CHT seems really inaccurate. Left was usually about 400°F and right was about 380°F. The gauge showed left of 320°F and the right 440°F. So both sides are inaccurate but still usable to measure changes. Oil consumption was 200 ml which seems about right for the 1000 mile round trip. Gas mileage averaged 31.2 mpg based on the stock speedometer. Performance and economy have both improved since the engine rebuild.

As the title suggests, I'm sitting in the Fairbanks airport again waiting for my flight north. This time I'm flying from Fairbanks to Deadhorse then continuing on to Barrow after a several hour layover.

Update - Now I'm waiting in the Deadhorse airport. Here is the world famous Prudhoe Bay hotel that all of the motorcyclists seem to be longing to get to. It's right across the parking lot from the airport. I have a 4 ½ hour layover here before my flight to Barrow. Getting on the plane were a couple of motorcycle passengers. They didn't see any reason to ride back to Fairbanks on the back of a bike. Below is a pano of Deadhorse. Pretty scenic, eh?

Seward Reunion (Part II)

The Seward reunion continues. This is the view from the picnic area on Saturday evening. I don't remember it raining much but it wasn't sunny either. In fact, it has looked like this the entire time we've been in Seward. The cookout turned out to be pretty good with some food items completely gone but there were some leftovers. After the picnic, most of the family adjourned to a large house that one of the families had rented overlooking the bay. But not until about eight or ten people got their Ural rides. Some folks in town must have wondered why I kept riding around as I sort of kept the the same route.

On Sunday morning, I went to the Alaska Sealife Center for a short visit with my son. We ran into quite a few relatives there as admission was part of the reunion registration fee. (Yes, there was a registration form, fee, etc.) After the Sealife Center, I headed out to the Seavey dog sled attraction. It was pretty busy and our reunion group alone needed to be divided into six groups of eight. This snapshot was taken from the cart as we were taken on a two mile route. There were fourteen dogs pulling each cart and ours had several members of the Iditarod champion team. The attraction is part of the training for the dogs. At a couple of times when the trail split, just a one word command changed their direction almost instantly.

Today (Monday), I opted not to go on the boat excursion due to the high probability of getting motion sick. I got the conference room ready for everyone's return for dessert (cheesecake and pies) and the "business" meeting of the reunion. I.e. Who was in charge of the next one and where will it be. I have a few more photos on the camera SD card so I'll post one more later. Plus there is a bunch of GoPro footage taken on a zip line by my son...

First Day of Spring

On Saturday afternoon, we headed back to Baltimore due to forecasted storm warnings. It did snow, visibility was less than optimal but not too many issues though there were still a number of drivers who thought that 80+ mph was just fine. After all, they had AWD or 4WD what can possibly happen. But, they were in the minority. I'd say that most of the vehicles on the road felt that 5 under the limit was just fine. The slickest roads were as we were leaving Pennsylvania and heading into Maryland.

There was some thoughts of exploring Baltimore last night and this morning but the weather, both precipitation and temperature, put a damper on that. No rain this morning but the temperature was in the mid-30s. Cold enough to take the fun out of exploring. But at least is isn't snowing anymore. This is just the view out of the hotel window this morning. We didn't see much of a view last night as it was getting dark when we arrived at the hotel.

At noon on Sunday, we met Kathy aka Toadmama and Mike at a Mexican restaurant near the Baltimore airport. It was another wonderful moto-blogger visit and it was great to meet Mike and get to know him a little better. No Victory at the meetup but then again it was snowing yesterday. Lots of topics ranging from other blogger meet ups, Ural reliability, long distance touring, kids, grandkids, dogs. You name it.

One last photo thanks to a willing stranger. I was messing around with the iPhone and trying to use the AppleWatch as a remote though I didn't realize that the camera was zoomed in. More messing around is needed.

Thank you both for being willing to drive out to meet us.

BTW, it's snowing again…

 

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Scooter in the Sticks

On Friday afternoon, we drove from Elizabethtown, PA, to State College, PA. It was less than 100 miles and a fairly pleasant drive on a multilane highway following the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers for a good part of the trip. The only thing I can say about PA roads and drivers is that tractor trailer rigs like to cruise in the left lane and too many cars drive at 1.000000 mph under the speed limit or 25 mph over. And more than a few at speeds well above that. But I did not spot a single deer along the highway. Something that is always a concern on roads with trees and brush running almost up to the shoulder. After arriving in State College, we were given a brief walking tour of the more historic part of campus. Penn State is much larger than I ever knew and they have this eclectic mixture of building architectures. This is the administration building.

I thought that the sundial looked pretty cool especially since it was located within sight of the clock tower on top of the admin building. I like all of the old stonework on some of the buildings then just to throw you off, there is the ultra modern IT building. I think I prefer the older to the swooping curves of the new building.

Here is Steve of Scooter in the Sticks in his photographer pose. Note the lack of riding gear as he came to meet us with the minivan due to other commitments that day. He had considered swinging by the house to pick up the Vespa but thought that idea kind of silly. I can see why the scooter is the preferred mode of transportation. Lots of traffic in town with people everywhere. Free parking for two wheeled transport such as where Steve is currently standing.

A posed shot of the well known moto blogger at Duffy's Tavern in Boalsburg. He said that Dom should recognize the place. The food was excellent as well as the company. Their sign claims that it's been around since 1819. And they claim that it is the best restaurant in town. A lot of topics were discussed and we both agree that this whole "working thing" is overrated. I liked his comment about starting to wear white pants and shoes were in the same category as getting a Ural. A sure sign that he has lost his mind...

I couldn't resist a food pic as I have never had fries on top of my salad. It was tasty, kind of like the steak and potato salad at the Silver Gulch in Fox, AK. I had this with a wonderful French onion soup and some hot tea. We did try the homemade pretzels with honey maple butter. More honey maple than butter.

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Spring Break (cont.)

After seeing the temperature back in Fairbanks, PA is starting to feel a lot more Spring Break worthy. Even with the drizzle, low clouds and cooler temperatures, it still isn't "Winter". At least not yet. The forecast is for 3-5" of snow on Saturday night so we are heading back to Baltimore on Saturday afternoon. Why risk dealing with snow with the rental car. Later this afternoon, we will be heading for State College to visit Steve of Scooter in the Sticks. It looks like it'll be a nice drive.

Today was a good day for a walk outdoors. T-shirt temperatures, a few gentle, rolling hills and a lot of walking paths. Behind the flowering trees that I posted about yesterday, I noticed a field of solar panels on a south facing hillside. Quite a large array but probably only a small percentage of what the facility needs.

I must admit that the walk was motivated more by the Apple Watch nagging me to get moving than any sort of real desire to exercise more. As you can see, the only one that I actually complete on a daily basis is the blue inner circle. You get credit for simply standing up at least one minute per hour. The red outer circle is activity. The green one in the middle is for exercise. And by "exercise", your heart rate has to be elevated to above some threshold. This afternoons walk was 35 minutes but only 17 minutes qualified as "exercise". The goal is to get a screenful of full circles. I really need to get out more.

 

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Spring Break

We are spending the week in Elizabethtown, PA, aka E-Town visiting with Bridget's dad. Last week it was over 70°F. This week, it's been drizzling. But there are still a few traces of Spring hanging around. I'm not sure what kind of tree this is but it is one of the few bits of color in the somewhat dreary landscape. Most of the buildings at this facility are made of stone with slate roofs. The newer buildings use brick that's about the same color but it's not quite the same.

These (I think they are daffodils) were growing on the hillside behind the hospital offering a bit more color to the grey background. I just heard that Fairbanks is enjoying a new round of winter with -11°F and snow. So this is starting to look pretty nice.

WeatherUnderground is forecasting snow here starting on Sunday evening so we are thinking about heading towards BWI, our exit point, on Saturday late afternoon just to avoid the weather. 

BTW, the pictures in this post aren't "clickable". That is a limitation of BlogTouch Pro on the iPhone.

Where, When, What and How

I was looking through my photos today on my phone looking for something that sort of represented 2015 and this sort of stood out to me. This was one of the BC freshwater ferries that I enjoyed running into during my road trip. What stood out is not that I like riding on ferries but that they were completely unexpected. Discovery of them was due to random traveling without a real destination besides "south". After discovering them, I started to look through paper maps for more of them. There is no GPS setting for "prefer free ferries".

After some thought today, I guess I do have some rides "planned". There is D2D on June 16th and 17th. The family reunion in Seward is the following weekend. And there is another reunion in the PNW in 2017. But that may not be a 4-wheeled trip. I still would like to go out to McCarthy again and ride the Denali Hwy sometime. I'm told that there are plans for a "real" road between Yellowknife and Inuvik instead of just an ice road. That could be fun just because it's new.

So that is the extent of my planning. I do put in some time and effort deciding what to bring and how to carry it but less on where and when besides general guidelines. 

Happy New Year!

On last Wednesday's #MotoChat on Twitter, the topic was riding plans for the coming year. Upon reading the topic, I was sort of dumbstruck that I hadn't even given it a moments thought. Maybe because the current riding season hasn't really ended. This picture was taken only one day away from home at the end of my trip last summer. I posted that I had no real plans except riding around Alaska and the Yukon Territory.

Do others have riding plans already?

BTW, if you have a Twitter account, please join #MotoChat at 1:00pm Pacific time on Wednesday.

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Day 40 - Corbett to Corvallis

Here is the waterfall that we had walked to on Saturday morning. I believe that it is called Upper Horsetail Falls and also referred to as Ponytail Falls. It was only a ½ mile or so from the parking lot but was far enough for some in the group as the trail was steep and rocky. To give some idea of the size of the cave, you can see several people inside of the cave.

Today, Sunday, was the last day of the reunion and as is our tradition, we met at McMenamins-Edgefield for lunch. Bridget and I shared the hummus plate and this small pizza with artichoke hearts, spinich and hazelnuts. Pretty tasty! Afterwards, we looked for a couple of geocaches before gearing up to try and beat the rain. We only had a few sprinkles on the way to Corvallis and though it did rain shortly after we arrived back at my mom's home.

Tomorrow, we (note the "we") head for the Oregon coast.

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Day 23 - Crater Lake

Got an early start this morning and to try and get some uncrowded photos of Crater Lake. This iPhone pano is my favorite. It was a chilly 52°F this morning and by noon in Bend, it had only warmed up to 73°F. From a weather perspective, I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day.

At the rim, the elevation was over 7000' and the Ural still popped a lot as if it was running really lean. Most carbureted vehicles have the opposite problem at higher elevations. Based on this behavior, I decided to head towards Raceway Ural again as they are thinking that the timing may have slipped as they had to remove and re-install bits and pieces when they replaced the timing cover. Since I wouldn't have made it to their shop until late afternoon, I agreed to bring it by first thing in the morning. So I'm back in Corvallis this evening. For the others wanting to play along, it also "pops" when decelerating cruising down the road at 35 mph in 3rd (no load) in addition to when the engine is cold. Also, the engine needs to be revved up before engaging the clutch or it just bogs down and dies. No power. Even on flat ground, I need to leave it in 3rd up to over 50 mph before shifting to 4th or the engine bogs down. i.e. no low end torque.

This evening, I got this in a fortune cookie. Sounds ominous, eh?

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Still in Medford

Still visiting friends here. Iced cold brew Starbucks is a good option around here. Yesterday and today's forecast are both lower temperatures than Saturday when I rode in but still well into the 90s (°F). Even cooler temperatures are forecast for tomorrow and my plan is to head up to Crater Lake. I've never been there before on any of the many trips through Oregon. It was always one of those "not on the way, not enough time" places. It actually wasn't even one of places I had thought about while on this trip as I was originally planning to be in Helena, MT, at this point. But it has been a good visit as I hadn't seen these long time friends since the BMW road trip in 2012.

I did take a quick peek for an exhaust leak on the right exhaust system and couldn't find any telltale trace of carbon around any of the couplings. All still clean and shiny! Since I had picked up the vacuum port caps in BC, I may try plugging the port for the vacuum operated fuel petcock. Especially since it feels like fuel starvation at times. Kind of like I had run out of gas and needed to switch to reserve. I think I'd probably be bored with a bike that didn't need fiddling. I gotta admit that I'm half inclined to just take it back to Raceway and have them check for leaks and the timing. The "popping" is annoying especially since it didn't do it when I dropped it off. Am I just being petty?

I did the original post using BlogTouch Pro on the iPhone. I don't know why I bother as I usually end up redoing it on either the laptop or with Blogsy on the iPad as I really don't like how it inserts photos. Before the recent iOS changes, I've needed to use app called DeskConnect to send iPhone photos to the iPad. Now they sync between the almost immediately though I need to "edit" them on the iPad to move them from iCloud to local storage. Otherwise Blogsy won't allow them to be used in a post. Kind of annoying.

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Misc. Video Clips

Here are some miscellaneous video clips taken with the GoPro mounted to the Ural sidecar grab handle during this road trip. The first clip is video proof that the Ural isn't the slowest vehicle on the highway. There was a Ford Model "A" sedan and pickup that were on their way back to Washington after visiting Fairbanks. This video is from the Alaska Highway between Whitehorse and Teslin. I passed them up several more times on the Cassiar and Yellowhead Highways so in reality, they weren't going that much slower than the Ural.

The second clip is crossing the steel grate bridge in Teslin, YT. There are a lot of stories associated with this bridge as some motorcyclists hate crossing it. The next is the approach to Jasper Natl Park in British Columbia. And the last clip is a wonderful motorcycle road (Hwy 3A) in southern BC. Not as much fun with a sidecar but much better than the straight, flat, miserably hot roads in eastern Washington. There are some other time lapse videos but I don't care for the 10 sec interval between frames.

Still In Corvallis

Today, I wandered down to the local Farmers Market on 1st Ave right next to the Willamette River with my mom and niece. The street is closed to traffic and unlike the Fairbanks Farmers Market, most of what was sold were fruit and vegetables. (What a concept!) After wandering around, we went for lunch at the sushi place before heading back to the transit park and took advantage of the free local bus service.

Here is some minimal moto content. There is a toy store and they had this wooden scooter in their window. A pretty pricey toy.

No additional news from Raceway. Maybe I can get someone to run me out there on Friday to see what they're doing.

Oh yeah, the group photo taken at midnight in Dawson City are available for purchase from the photographers web site. This is just a screen grab on my iPad. I'm way in the back…

 

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