Rainy Weekend

Another wet weekend with cool, foggy mornings and maybe a little bit of clearing later in the day. The leaves are just starting to change but we don't get the incredible display seen in other parts of the country. Just yellow and brown. No shades of red or orange. Construction activity had this particular road closed to the public for a couple of years and I noticed that it has been reopened.

There was a ride scheduled for last week but only two of us showed up and we rescheduled it for this week. This time, I was the only one who showed up. I'm sensing a trend here. I was asked if I was going to announce a "end of the season ride" on the local BMW riders email list. I wasn't sure as it isn't the end of the riding season just yet.

It really is starting to feel like Autumn these days with morning temperatures in the high 30s to 40s (°F). There is a lot more traffic these days on my morning commute since the university is now in session. But the good thing is that, with the exception of my building, motorcycle parking is almost always empty and available so it's easy to run errands on campus. This was just a phone pic from our deck showing the remaining fog over the weekend. When it wasn't raining, it was foggy.

Saturday evening was spent at a geocaching "event" at Pioneer Park, aka Alaskaland, run by a local cacher. He set out numerous caches, scavenger hunts and kids activities. It took us a while to figure out that these stickers were the caches set out. Bridget and I teamed up with two other folks and before the last challenge, we were in first place. We ended up in third place but only because we "bet" half of our points on the last question. There was a good turnout with maybe 25 people there. Someone asked me if I was lost since I was wandering around with a gps.

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Battery Replacement

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, the battery in my iPhone4 only has about ⅔ of the original capacity and would barely last through the work day. After a quick search on Amazon, showed that I could get a replacement battery and the toolkit for about $12. They arrived on Tuesday and after watching the short video on ifixit.com, I disassembled the phone, replaced the battery and reassembled everything. Total time was maybe five minutes. I don't have any photos of the disassembled iPhone as the phone is my point and shoot camera and it was sitting disassembled on the desk. So here is just a photo of the toolkit and the battery. I hope the battery will at least last through the day again. If I knew that the process was this simple I would've replaced the battery a long time ago.

Still no signage on the artsy piece next to the parking lot. Maybe so you can target trucks/cars parked in motorcycle parking (the spaces across the parking lot). The sign states that it is only valid motorcycle parking until September 1^st. After all, who would be crazy enough to ride after Sept 1? I chose not to park there since the parking lot was deserted when I arrived this morning plus I sort of take up a whole space anyway. And I've ridden (driven?) the sidecar rig every time I've gone to work since May 1^st.

One other task that I have been putting off until I was fairly sure of the positioning and alignment of the sidecar has been to cut off the excess tubing from the 70° mounting bosses. I wrapped them with painters tape and cut them with a reciprocating saw. I then filed down the sharp edges and finished the cut off with some gloss black paint. When comparing the before and after pictures, you can see how much extra material there was.

Without the excess tubing, I think the mounting looks a little cleaner. I also pulled off the front strut and finished painting around the hole I drilled in the lower fairing last week. I had accidentally picked up dark blue paint last winter and in the dark garage, I couldn't tell the color that I had painted the lower mounts until some sunshine returned in the Spring. I repainted those parts of the sidecar frame gloss black not that anyone besides me would ever notice.

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Skyridge Drive

On the first Monday of the month, the Airheads group meets at the Silver Gulch microbrewery. If I happen to be in town, I generally try to make it out there for the get together. During the Summer, we get visitors at the meeting who are passing through town usually on there way to/from Prudhoe Bay along the haul road. Not many riders going through town these days. On the way back, I stopped on Skyridge Drive which follows the ridgeline between the Tanana Valley and Goldstream Valley. It is near sunset but I couldn't get a good view to the west. Too many trees. This is the view looking north into the Goldstream Valley towards Fox.

This road used to be one of my favorite routes and part of my "scenic route" during the warmer months. There has been quite a bit of road construction lately resulting in this nice pavement. This road is pretty treacherous during the winter and even the AWD cars with studded tires have issues with this road going downhill.

After looking at this photo, I'm more convinced that I want to add yet another light to the side car near the front of the fender for more visibility. I will probably remove the small white LED lights on the side car as they don't seem to help much.

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Nothing Going on Here

It's been one of those kinds of weekends. I put over 250 miles on the side car rig but didn't go anywhere. Just running around town i.e. to the coffee shop, the farmers market, multiple hardware stores, grabbed a couple more geocaches, etc. I did manage to get at least one geocache for the month of August. That got me a bunch of virtual "souvenirs" such as the one shown below. But at least it got me out and about.

There was originally a ride to the Monderosa planned for Sunday afternoon, but only two of us showed up with our raingear. We decided to postpone for a week to see if the weather is any better next Sunday. Usually, there is a pretty good turnout for these Sunday afternoon rides to the Monderosa. Since the ride was cancelled, I rode around the local area looking for scenic spots but didn't find anything. There was never enough rain to really get wet but enough to make everything damp.

One little bit of excitement on the riding front. While turning around in a parking lot, the sidecar wheel lifted up for a few seconds. I just eased up on the throttle a little and the wheel came down just like it is supposed to. I'm pretty sure that it unloads frequently just while driving around. When turning right, you can feel the bike lean to the left as weight of the side car compresses the rear suspension of the bike as the sidecar wheel unloads. You can also feel it transfer back while shifting your weight towards the side car. When turning right, I generally transfer most of my weight to the right peg while moving right. On left turns, you do just the opposite. Moving around while turning seems to be more important with the softer sidecar spring I installed last month.

After modifying the right lower fairing, I figure that I should paint the cut edges. In this picture, you can see how thin the plastic really is. This is the upper front side car mount. I did hose off the fairing last Thursday but the continuing rain made it so you can't tell. The dirt roads probably didn't help much either.

After digging through the pile of stuff that I received from the previous owner of the bike, I found bottles of touch-up paint. They look pretty official...

I now know what the original color code was in case I want to repaint something. Like maybe the sidecar.

 

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