Trip to Delta

On Tuesday, I went with a good friend to pick up his Ural from Mickey's shop down in Delta. He had taken it down after hydro-locking the engine when testing the underwater capability of the rig in a pothole. A very large pothole. On the way back, we stopped at a turnout to check the tie down straps holding the rig on the trailer and the air in one of the trailer tires. A good photo opportunity as it was right around sunset. The timestamp on the photo is 2:47pm and sunset was listed as 2:59pm. It was a warm (+37°F) afternoon and there was a lot of open water and overflow on the Tanana River. And this is January 2nd. Almost unheard of...

I deleted the Facebook app from my phone today. After checking battery consumption, it said that Facebook had used 57% of my battery and had almost nine hours of run time while in background. I had looked at the app this morning for about five minutes. After a brief online search, it seems that this has been a “known problem” for a while. The site runs just fine in either Chrome or Mobile Safari and you eliminate its ability to do anything in background.

Friday Update - After running for half a day of “normal use”, The battery is still 95% instead of the usual 65%. Sounds like a reasonable change to me. 

Up the Elliot Hwy to Globe Creek

On Friday afternoon, I went to Globe Creek Camp which is located on the Elliot Highway north of Fairbanks. It was 33°F and sleeting when going over Wickersham Dome but otherwise, a nice ride. I did opt to dig out the heated liner and gloves for the first time. I'm still using the old First Gear riding gear but have received a tracking number from Aerostich. I'm looking forward to getting the Roadcrafter Light back. This is the first snow of the year for me.

I did attach the GoPro to the sidecar and filmed a time-lapse. I couldn't figure out any good places to stop for a picture on the way out as the weather was overcast and foggy. The lens ended up getting covered with snow on the trip out so here is the footage from the return trip. I left when the temperature started to drop again. The Ural started easily and I even used the kick starter partly to make sure I reassembled it properly a few weeks back.

Day Trip to Denali

After meeting of coffee with the regulars on Wednesday, I headed towards Denali National Park with the truck. I opted to not take the Ural since rain was in the forecast and the Roadcrafter still hasn't come back from Aerostitch. I visited with fellow blue/white Ural owner, BruceW, in Nenana. His rig is still in Delta with Mickey getting the engine worked on after his engine hydrolocked last Spring. Mickey mentioned that it was so locked up that it was almost impossible to get it out of gear. That sounded pretty serious. After a short visit, I continued on towards "Glitter Gulch", which is what the very touristy section of the Parks Hwy north of the park entrance is called.

I met up with Lynn, the author of motoblog Curvyroads.Info, and Jerry at the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge. They are on the land portion of a cruise and the park was as far north as the tour went. After talking at the hotel coffee place, we went to the 49th State Brewing Company which is about 10 miles north in Healy, AK. I had not been there before but my son, Tim, really recommended it. The food and company were wonderful. On the way back to the hotel, we saw three moose in a pond. Unfortunately, I didn't think about stopping for a picture.

There was a pretty strong wind in the canyon blowing north giving me a nice tailwind but it died down by the time I was halfway to Nenana. The remainder of the drive to Fairbanks had beautiful light shining on the trees. There was hardly any traffic and I arrived home shortly after sunset. It was a nice way to spend the day.

Thursday was clear and mostly sunny but it was in the 30s (°F) in the morning. I thought that it may be a good idea to winterize the water system in the RV. I brought about 1½ gallons of RV antifreeze for the pump and the traps and used the small motorcycle air compressor to blow out the hot and cold water lines. I already drained the water heater and switched the bypass. After blowing out the lines, I opened the low point drains. I pumped anitfreeze through the pump but not into any of the water lines. The manager of the RV repair facility said that they were targeting it to be done next week even though they haven't started any work at all.

Day 91 - Tok, AK

Today was a long 386 miles (according to Google) but we had a time change in our favor. We stopped at Kluane Lake (photo below) for a late lunch before heading for Beaver Creek, the last gas station in Canada. We used the last of our Canadian Currency to get some diesel. No need to fill up since diesel would be (hopefully) cheaper in Tok. 

Day 69 - BMW MOA Rally, SLC, UT

This was one of the "destinations" of our road trip. The BMW MOA annual rally. I believe that this is the fourth one that I've attended and all of them have been very hot. This one is no exception except I will say that it isn't anywhere near as miserable as Bloomsburg, PA. That was humid and hot.

Like every other rally, a lot of interesting bikes or in the case of he Isetta, not a bike but still very interesting. There are a lot of sidecars here as well. Maybe an sign that the BMW owner population is aging. This was very evident at the Airhead tent. Lots of grey hair around there.

The Alaska Air Marshal had sent the Alaska flag down to Helena for Kevin to bring to the rally. Supposedly, they are supposed to show which states are in attendance. This rally doesn't seem as organized as some of the other rallies that I've attended but there seems to be a lot of vendor representation. I was originally hoping that they would have some of the 310cc models available but not this year I guess.

I did get a chance to have lunch with Edward Kilner from https://triumphantsblog.blogspot.com  and, like every other blogger meetup, it was a very enjoyable time. I did run into some others that I've "met" on FB who I knew were coming to the rally. The feed was kind of interesting seeing all of these people travelling and converging on SLC.

I'm not sure what the overall attendance is but it looks like more people are not choosing to camp out. But then again, this is just the first day. I am planning on attending tomorrow as well before we start heading northwest on Saturday.

10 Years on Blogger

On May 1, 2007, I moved my blog to the Blogger platform. Initially, it was hosted on different university servers. The first two in Fairbanks run by the UA Public Relations office and the third on a server operated by the IT department on the Juneau campus. After that, someone must have decided that personal blogs shouldn't be on university servers. Up until that point, the only purpose of the blog was to encourage university staff and faculty to participate in a walking program which was part of a wellness initiative. I was one of several that were asked to start "blogging" about my participation and later started placing plastic bottles filled with poker chips with the "Start Walking" and university logos on them. Kind of like geocaching but with clues instead of coordinates. Back then, phones didn't have GPS capability and not everyone had a handheld unit. Other participants would collect chips from each cache and claim a prize.

The program ended that summer and I continued to post including a short post on the MSF class I took in August, 2007. Once it was on the Blogger platform, I was able to set up the blog.machida.us CNAME. Way back then I was also running a Wordpress instance on my home server (an old Digital Equipment Corp. 80386SX desktop). I thought about just moving the blog onto that machine but I preferred to rely on Google for authentication and not have anonymous comments. The Wordpress install was shut down a couple months later after I was able to move email and the web server for the machida.us domain elsewhere. Eventually, the web site was deleted and email was moved to the gmail platform.

Initially, the posts were very short and rarely had pictures as I didn't have much to say. 1530 posts later, I still don't have much to say...

PBC #6 and Cold Weather Fun

How about this, a non-RV post! It actually has a little bit of moto content.

This was somewhere between a "just because" and "why not" video. Only a couple of km around the subdivision. It was just a pretty afternoon, I felt like I had to get out for a short ride. 2WD got a lot of use as there were still some really slick areas with loose snow. Anyway, it made for some nice scenery. Once on the main road, you can see the ice fog. It was pretty heavy in town. Ice fog is crystals of ice forming on smoke particles so it is really unhealthy to breath in. But there are some in town who believe that they have the "right" to burn wood.

The first video is Bridget throwing a cup of hot water into the air when it's this cold.

Polar Bear Challenge Video

Cold Weather! (Updated)

The -32°F (-35°C) is considered cold by just about anyone. But take a look at the forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday. I guess that winter has finally arrived. After we get that over with then we can get on to Spring. Today we got a little more snow. Maybe 4-5". Enough to make it worthwhile to run the plow again.

I'm starting to run out of places to push snow. This is the down hill area next to our house and the pile is starting to get pretty high. While it was snowing, it got relatively warm -13°F (-25°C) so it seemed like an opportune time. Mechanical things tend to break when it's really cold. After being plugged in for only an hour, the truck fired right up now that it's nice and warm...

The plowing is done. I must admit that the plow is kinda overkill for just our driveway but I also use it on the road in front of our house and I do the church parking lot when needed. I was originally thinking about plowing as a small business but haven't been able to find definitive answers about plowing as a business. Just about everyone I've asked just sort of shrugged their shoulders and said "well I've never gotten a ticket". I guess I'm looking for better info than that.

Right after I finished plowing, the mail carrier showed up and dropped off my Amazon order. These stainless steel, cushioned wire clamps were ridiculously expensive locally. I was originally just going to use wire ties but I thought that these would work better in the long run. Plus, I could easily remove and reuse them when needed.

Tuesday Evening Update - Look at the low for Wednesday...

 

PBC #3

Here is the third Polar Bear Challenge video that I need to "qualify" as a participant. I'm still on campus in a small dirt lot between student housing and married student housing in the beginning. A nice open space to do some donuts (not on the video). I then headed from campus out onto University Ave and Farmers Loop Rd.

Shortly after this video was made, we got another 8" of snow. It took me over half an hour to get the plow hooked back onto the truck. Probably more time and effort that it would've been to just use the snow blower to clear the driveway. There was enough snow built up on the driveway that the truck and the plow no longer lined up. Maybe I need to find somewhere else to store the plow...

Anyway, here is the third PBC video.

PBC #2

The second video for the Polar Bear Challenge. If you are interested in some of the other submitted videos, they can be found at http://polarbearchallenge.tk/. The mild inversion can really be seen in the temperature. At the house, it was +12°F and at the university, it was +6°F. A difference that you can really feel.

I opted for a liesurely ride around the university due to the extremely slick roads and no studded tires. The roads are always really slick when it warms up after being really cold. I think that the road surface is still really cold and it gets a layer of frost.

Anyway, here is video number two.

1st Last Ride

Today was the "real" solstice for this area. Equal day and night according to Weather Underground. So it seemed like a good day for the BMW riding group here in Fairbanks to schedule a "1st last ride of the year". There have been some years when they've made it to the 5th last ride but somehow we don't expect that to be the case this year. Note, I thought about taking the BMW but the Ural was the easier option.

We left College Coffeehouse heading out the Parks Highway towards Nenana. The goal was the Monderosa Bar & Grill just this side of Nenana. Once you climbed into the hills, the temperature warmed up to about 45°F (7°C) but once we dropped down towards Nenana, the temperature dropped to 34°F (1°C). These temperatures are according to my OAT installed in the windshield. This is the view from the Parks Highway Monument looking south towards the Tanana River and the Alaska Range.

Originally, I was just planning to stop and take a photo but the group decided to stop and try and troubleshoot an electrical problem on a R100GS/PD. The fuse for the tail lights/dash lights keeps blowing while riding. I suspect multiple broken wires in the bundle from the headlight to the handlebars. I offered to take the troublesome bike off his hands for $20 but he didn't take me up on it. BTW, the bike with the electrical problem is the red/white one in the foreground not the other red/white R100GS/PD that most seem to be looking at. 

Seward Zip-Line

One of the reunion activities that I opted not to participate in was the zip-line. I think a large percentage of the attendees did participate including my mom to celebrate her 90th birthday. My son took the GoPro and attached it to his helmet and captured some footage including one the longest run. There was a lot of other video captured on the SD cad but most of it was standing around on the platform. Since it was a large group I suspect that there was quite a bit of that. The person taking off from the platform initially was my cousin's daughter, Moe, visiting from Japan. BTW, she's also the first one who asked for a sidecar ride.

I will assume that Bridget will add more photos to this post.

Alaskaland

Wednesday was a beautiful day and the local credit union had a free picnic for members who are 55 and older. My mom rode over to Pioneer Park, aka Alaskaland, on the sidecar and there were comments that I needed to take a picture of her without the helmet.

This is the first time I've been here this year. There was some sort of children's event going on so it was pretty crowded. When checking into the CU picnic, we were given tickets to play a round of mini golf and ride the train. We opted for the mini golf and since I knew that Bridget enjoyed the game, I called and let her know that we had some free passes.

There are two courses and the original one is looking pretty run down. It's been here a long time and none of the motorized parts were functioning. But that didn't really change the game. The more recent addition was looking to be in better condition and since the course is a little more challenging, it doesn't see the same use as kids aren't supposed to be on it.

We opted for the original course. The line for the train around the park was too long to wait for especially in the blistering heat. It must've been almost 75°F.

Things went a little down hill after that for me as there seems to be a problem with the metro wireless network in Barrow. I think I'm going to need to head up there again...

4th Annual Alaska USCA "Rally"

Not really a "rally" in the traditional sense. No one makes money, no organized events, no vendors, no admission. The initial mailing list came from the United Side Car Association and this will be the fourth time we are meeting at the city campground in Talkeetna, AK.

Talkeetna is a very touristy town that is some ways seems to be a leftover from the 60's. Lots of arts and craft shops, tie dye items, and over priced dust catchers catering to the tourists shuttled here from the cruise ships by bus and train. The Alaska contact for the USCA is an avid soft ball player and there is a large tournament here with games being played well into the night under the light of the midnight sun.

We are headed down on Friday morning sometime. Bridget was originally going to ride in the sidecar but she needs to bring her two dogs along. So they will be driving down instead. First road trip for the dogs. JedR will be riding down with me on his 2015 Patrol as he did last year except this time it's well broken in. Last year, it was brand new and on it's first road trip.

I've been using my homemade air box ever since I came back from my trip last summer. So I think that it has proven itself and I have the carburetor jets dialed in pretty well. This will be the first real trip with the plastic fence post air cleaner housing. AKA Leftka-3, named after the SovietSteeds individual who came up with the design.

Probably no posts during the weekend as last year there was very poor AT&T signal and no Verizon at all. I will be taking down a GCI phone this time. Maybe it'll actually work...

(Late) April Fools!

This was the view from the garage this morning. I'm glad that I hadn't removed the studs from the Ural tires yet. Not that studs were really needed but they do give you a shade better grip when the temperature is right around freezing. By noon, it had warmed up to 33°F so it should be nice and clear later this afternoon.

Yesterday, there were two bikes at College Coffeehouse plus I saw Lee H. riding his airhead on Farmers Loop. Today, not very many (i.e. none). One of the bikes at morning coffee was a very nice R1200GSA on it's first ride of the year.

I'm in my office today for a meeting and to find things that need to go back up to Barrow for the upcoming field season. One of the items going up is my Lenovo Helix tablet/PC. It is currently on Windows 8.1 but I'm going ahead and upgrading it to Windows 10 while it's still "free". I heard that it is a 10 GB download. Much better here at the university than at home.

And, for a change, no issues with the Ural all week. No oil leaks, no oil consumption, no weird noises. Just a nice sounding engine.

Friday Afternoon Update - I'm not sure why there was so much anti-Windows 10 on the Internet about Windows 10. Just don't let it pick all of the defaults. There were a lot of preferences automatically checked that you probably shouldn't choose. Such as automatically send your wi-fi network passwords to Microsoft so they can be shared with all of your friends. I think I unchecked all of the Microsoft recommended sharing options. It seems to work just fine on this tablet including the touch screen.

Air Temperature and Head Temperature

Another beautiful day in interior Alaska. I stopped at Creamer's Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge to see how many birds were there. A few weeks ago, they had cleared away much of the snow exposing the grass. There were a few birds though not as many as there are a little later in the Spring. Both of these pictures are HDR using the built in iPhone camera app.

I had a lot of errands to run this morning so this was a nice place to stop and enjoy the quiet. It's predicted to be over 50°F by mid-week so I may as while enjoy the cool weather while I can.

I have been curious about the accuracy of the CHT (cylinder head temperature) gauge. The one I have is not temperature compensated so it only reads "right" at +70°F. Today the outside air temperature was about 40°F so the CHT will be reading about 30°F high. Right after pulling into the garage, the left cylinder read 355°F (or 325°F after adjusting for ambient temperature) and the right was 375°F (or 345°F).

I picked up a relatively cheap IR thermometer on Amazon and it read; left 277°F, right 298°F. So both sides of the CHT are reading about 50°F too high. Like any IR thermometer, the surface temperature is estimated by measuring the thermal radiation received by the sensor.

At a distance of a foot, the spot size is a little over an inch in diameter. The temperature reading is affected by the emissivity of the surface which is a quantitative measure of the efficiency in radiating thermal radiation. The device assumed an emissivity of 0.95. A dark, non-reflective surface would have an emissivity near 1.0 and a reflective mirror would be 0. To get an accurate reading, the emissivity needs to be near 1. I'm guessing that the cylinder head isn't a perfect 1.0 but it's not far off. Not having access to a portable IR spectrometer, I could simply paint a section of the head with flat black paint and that would raise the emissivity to get a more accurate reading. But I'm thinking that this is close enough. And I can probably just assume that the temperature compensated temperature from the CHT thermocouples is a bit high.

Monday evening was the monthly Airhead.org get together at the Silver Gulch microbrewery in Fox, AK. Today was the first time that there was another bike there since October. There was a pretty good turnout and there was even a donated t-shirt for a give away. The roads were is great shape and I took the Ural over the hilly road with a lot of running in 2nd and 3rd to avoid lugging the engine. Even with the hills, CHT were around 280°F by the time I got home.

Finally Done!

Jed arrived at 9 this morning and even with a couple of breaks for coffee and lunch, we had the Ural on the road by mid-afternoon. Initially, after it was all assembled, it wouldn't crank and it turned out that one connector to the alternator wasn't plugged in. After it started, we ran it for a bit then adjusted the idle, balanced the carbs and took it out on the subdivision road. BTW, that's Jed's 2015 rig in the background.

Jed took the photo above after the first test drive. In the middle of the first test drive, the clutch cable had so much slack that I couldn't shift into second. During the assembly, we redid the linkage from the Raceway shift levers. We reverted the 2WD linkage back to the stock setup with the lever down near the parking brake. The benefit is that there is a mechanical lock preventing the lever from moving accidentally into 2WD. And the Raceway 2WD lever is now reverse/neutral. Much more convenient than reaching under the tank.

After heat cycling the engine, I pulled off both valve covers again and torqued the heads to 35 ft-lbs and adjusted the valves to 0.003" after the engine cooled down.

A big thanks go out to Bruce White for the use of his specialized Ural tools, Mickey Sherfield the Ural dealer in Delta Junction, Jed Reagle for all of his assistance removing and assembling the rig as well as hauling it down to Delta to let Mickey listen to the engine, Van Le from Soviet Steeds for his extremely helpful videos and suggestions, and many others for their advice and moral support. And especially Bridget for putting up with all this and working three jobs to keep up with Ural repairs. ;-)

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.

Cold Morning Ride

It's been awhile since I had a picture while riding. The sunrise behind the clouds with the exhaust from the university power plant was enough of a reason to stop. The exhaust turns down since it's cold and calm enough for there to be a temperature inversion. Another reason for stopping is that one of the heat wires in my left glove was burning the back of my hand. The photo was taken from the turnout across from the natural science building and one of the few other areas on campus with a good view of the valley.

I had a 9:00am meeting this morning so I left the house about 7:40am to record my daily PBC video. Too dark to really see much but it meets the requirements for submission. Todays ride was probably my limit. I ended up riding about 70 km. The temperature ranged from -5°F to about -18°F and by the time I arrived at my office, my feet were starting to get cold. I had decided earlier that I wasn't going to ride below about -10°F but I really didn't feel like driving today...

Here is PBC #33 that I had recorded from the morning ride.

Naperville, IL

Today's activity was the DuPage Children's Museum in downtown Naperville, IL. Being the last weekend before school starts it was, quite naturally, crowded. Not Disneyland style crowded but the parking lot was completely full by mid-morning. This was just an animated sculpture outside the door with moving parts and lots of clanking sounds. After a light lunch, I opted to simply sit in the car and rest rather than battle the multiple birthday parties going on inside of the museum. It was a very nice museum with almost everything interactive.

The weather has been beautiful the last couple of days with sparkling blue skies though the light wind makes it feel colder than the thermometer says. I didn't bring any cold weather gear (coat, gloves, hat) with me on this trip so I haven't spent much time outdoors. Even though it was only in the 20s and 30s (°F), the wind and humidity made it feel really cold. After the museum, we stopped at a Trader Joe's to pick up some snacks for the flight back tomorrow. Trader Joe's and Whole Foods both accept NFC payments. I had used Google Wallet now known as Android Pay last year with my Nexus 4 and the only problem was that it needed Internet access when being used and the GCI partner is T-Mobile. Horrible coverage in San Francisco limited it's use.

On this trip I have been using either my Google Wallet card or Apple Pay with my iPhone (AT&T). Using Apple Pay is so quick and simple with the fingerprint reader. Simply double tap the home button with the correct finger and put the back of the phone near the terminal. When the payment is completed, the phone sort of "clicks". That's it. Since the Nexus 4 has no fingerprint reader you had to enter your 4 digit pin when paying. Not quite as convenient. In all cases, I get a notification on the phone very shortly after any transaction. With the Google Wallet card, it's usually within a minute. Apple Pay uses one-time card numbers for each transaction so the vendor never receives your actual card number. Android Pay may work the same way but I haven't heard very many details. I don't know anything about Samsung Pay as I don't have a Samsung phone.

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