I just placed an order for the City Navigator Europe NT Maps for my Garmin Zumo. They appear to have pretty good coverage for the countries I will be riding through. Yay, this is suddenly getting more real! I also got a cable for the mount. I was originally going to purchase a mount, but rather than spend $85+ on a new one, I’ll probably take one off of one of my bikes and re-use it.
My friends John and Bernhard are riding up through the Yukon this week. John’s just posted an OK signal from his SPOT messenger from Hyder. No doubt they are getting Hyderized this very minute. He promised to have one on me while over there.
Looking at their track and the route they took - the same one Sarah and I did two years ago – makes me wistful and nostalgic. I remember that morning when we rode over from Hazelton and those last fantastic 40 miles between the Cassiar Highway junction and Hyder. It was the twistiest ride I did on that trip and the most gorgeous. I look back at the pictures and it’s difficult for me to believe that that was me out there. I miss it but all I can do is live vicariously through them and be happy that they are out experiencing the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.
Vagabiker and I decided to take off towards the Cascade mountains for the long weekend after our initial plans to go dual-sporting in the Peninsula were ruined because of rain. The Cascades go from north to south through the center of Washington state and the weather to the east of the mountain range is usually warmer and drier because the mountains block the rain.
We were intending to leave around 10:00AM but we over-estimated and ended up leaving at a shocking 2:00PM. We both had issues on our bikes that we had to fix before we hit the road. Bad bikers fixing stuff right before a long ride! It’s a good thing nobody else was waiting on us. My Gerbing electric vest wasn’t getting charged from the XT. I couldn’t take the fuse out to see if it had blown, so I swapped it with the one on the SV and it worked. And Sterling’s GPS wasn’t getting charged from his mount anymore. He was unable to fix this and gave up and decided to reply on my GPS and mount. Fortunately we both use Zumos, so we decided to swap after one of them lost charge. It wasn’t ideal but it was the best we could do at such short notice.
We hit the road and headed north. We had plotted our route the previous night, which would roughly take us towards Sultan, then the Ben Howard Road towards Skykomish, on to Steven’s Pass, then off-road on a forest service road towards Lake Wenatchee, and finally another trail towards Lake Chelan, where we would stop for the night.
Unfortunately we had such a late start that we made it to Skykomish at 4:30PM. By the time we went over the pass and reached the first forest service road, we found that it was completely blocked by snow. Bummer! It had also been steadily raining and we were cold from going over the pass and reaching 4000+ feet elevation. We decided to continue riding US-2 to Lake Wenatchee and find a campground so that we could set up camp and relax and eat a good meal while it was still light out.
This turned out to be a good plan. We found a really good campsite at Nason Creek campground – the first place we looked. Being back in nature with the familiar camping smells was so fantastic. :) We set up camp and Sterling went out to gather wood while I started fixing our dinner of shrimp pasta. We ate by the fire and then went for a long walk. We didn’t find Lake Wenatchee but we did end up in this woody forested area mottled with pretty flowers. As the light started to fail, we returned to camp and hung out around the fire, sipping wine and scotch.
Day 2, we set out on the trail to Lake Chelan. We started on Chumstick Highway before getting on to the first FS road. It was a smooth, easy ride, even for a n00b like me, with lots of pretty views. There were a few spots that made me go *gulp* because of the height and drop-off, but I made it through them. Sterling was a fantastic guide and he kept a good pace that I could keep up with. At times he would take off into the distance, but I knew he would wait for me at the intersections so I kept my pace and went slow. I was probably excruciatingly slow but I wanted to finish the ride more than I wanted to go fast, and riding on dirt is still so unusual for me that I have to completely focus on it and take my time getting used to the feel of the bike on gravel, rocks and mud.
I’m posting this for my friend Oleg who unfortunately has to deal with a nasty issue of a leak in his gas tank. Worse still, Aprilia USA refuses to acknowledge his complaint and take responsibility for it, even though it is a known issue. Personally I wouldn’t be too crazy about shelling out something to the tune of $1000 for a new tank just because the manufacturer decided to go with a shoddily constructed part.
“From the very first time I rode an Aprilia V2 I was in love. Soon after I purchased a 2002 RSV Mille that was sitting at the local dealer, bike came with 2 year warranty and 96 miles on odometer. Since 2005 RSV had two mechanical issues; faulty starter relay, and leaking gas tank. Relay was replaced under warranty by the local Aprilia dealer, gas tank is another story.
Apartment manager called me at 8pm to tell me there was a strong smell of petrol in the underground garage and my bike was leaking fuel. Upon further investigation I found that it was leaking pretty badly, and had to park it on the street overnight since it was already pretty late to troubleshoot. I time off work and pulled the bike apart the next day, turned out that plastic tank had warped around the fuel pump mounting area and wasn’t holding fuel. Fuel pump mounts to a flat surface using metal nuts embedded in polymer gas tank. When I pulled the fuel pump off I discovered that flat surface wasn’t flat any more, it had arched between bolt holes so rubber gasket could not make good contact.
A quick call to the local Aprilia dealer revealed this as a known issue. They said it was due to US fuel containing ethanol which tank isn’t designer for. Ethanol makes plastic soft and it deforms. Dealer suggested shaving off material to make the surface flat again, however it could only be done one time. Tank would leak again and I would need to get a new one, which in case of Italian bike will not be cheap or speedy.
I left a number of messages and emails with Aprilia USA; they requested VIN number and in an email informed me that someone will get back to me “in the near future” which is rather vague. I also filled a case with NHTSA since I consider fuel leak a safety problem. Fuel pump sits right over the rear cylinder and could potentially cause Colin Edwards / Aprilia CUBE incident. Last thing I want is to jump off at freeway speed.
A few quick facts. Bike in question is a US market Aprilia RSV Mille #255 made in 2002. Gas tank is made by Acerbis for Aprilia in Italy. Searching AF1 Racing sponsored online forum I found that my case isn’t isolated and that this is a pretty common failure for plastic tank Aprilias.
NHTSA case number is 10329969. http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/complaints/results.cfm?odi_ids=10329969&SearchType=QuickSearch&summary=true.
It also looks like Aprilia USA isn’t doing a whole lot to ether post a recall or come up with a fix for this problem. I know that for most of these cases warranty is out but should a gas tank fail this way after 5 years of normal use?
Thanks to the intrepid bike geek Bluepoof, here’s a hack I’d like to work on for the XT at some point. I used to have one of these tool tubes on the ex-Beemer and would be nice to have a bit more storage space on the XT.
http://www.bluepoof.com/motorcycles/howto/xt225_tool_tube/
Tool tube on Bluepoof's XT225
Vagabiker and I are trying to figure out what we’re going to do for the Memorial Day weekend. We’ve been riding down to Eugene, OR for the past two years for the unofficial BMW “Spring Forward” party (incidentally, that’s where we first met). This year we can either continue the tradition (which would be nice as we’ll get to see many familiar faces whom we haven’t seen in a while) or we can try something totally different.
We are toying with the idea of going dual-sporting on the Peninsula and try out a few rides from the Sound Rider Guide to Dual Sport Rides in Western Washington. This time we have the GPS files, so that we don’t get hopelessly lost and turned around. Motorcycling and camping – can’t believe it’s only a week away!
I finally got around to ordering a new front tire for the SV – a Michelin Pilot Power Road 170/60 to match the rear that I put on in Cody, WY last August. I assumed that the tire was okay and just a bit squared off because I could see tread, but it miserably failed the Lincoln head penny test, so I’m glad I got it done sooner rather than later. I was a little amazed to find that Eastside Motorsports had the tire for a paltry $95 – the same price as MotorcycleSuperstore.com. Good job on them to match online competition! Saves me the time of ordering online and they get my business.
I’m taking the bike to Fluid Suspension Science this weekend to have Dave Alexander take a look at why it’s riding so rough. The front end is really “bouncy” so that if you push down on it, it comes back up and bounces, rather than staying up. This is greatly amplified when I ride on rough roads like oh say anywhere on Seattle backroads. Hopefully Dave can nail down what’s wrong and we can fix it soon.
A couple of friends at work are riding up to Alaska in two weeks – one of them to the Yukon and the other up to Prudhoe Bay. They pinged me to ask if I wanted to go (yay short notice!) and I had to decline for the obvious reasons – I don’t own a big dual-sport anymore and I don’t have enough vacation to do a ride like that if I want to ride for a month in Europe this summer. Part of me can dream though… I so miss Alaska…
Checklist of the things I need to do on the bikes somewhat in order of priority:
SV
– Fix suspension problems ($150)
– Replace front tire ($150)
– Check brake fluids (replace stripped out screw on reservoir)
– Find nuts and bolts for Givi windscreen ($10?)
– Fix Garmin mount
– Fix ignition key issue (takes several tries to turn the key)
– Do inventory of rusting/stripped bolts and replace :(
– Fix right mirror
– Get new slip-on exhaust ($200-?)
– Fix dent in gas tank or get custom painted tank ($200-?)
– Replace rear seat with cowl ($306!)
– Fix tear in front seat (new Corbin?)
– Remove handguards and see how that feels
– Replace brake/clutch levers with ASV shorties ($250)
– Add knee grip pads to tank ($35)
– Replace headlamp glass ($100)
XT
– Fix vibrate-y handebar with lead shot
– Fix tweaked rear left turn indicator
– Figure out side luggage options – soft/hard panniers?
– Add heated grips?
– Get centerstand?
– Find bigger tank?
I’m beginning to see why I’ve been putting this off all winter.
Ever since I started riding four years ago, I’ve wanted some nice photos of me with my bikes, but never actually got around to getting them taken. You know how it is – you go out on solo rides and ask random people to take your picture and after you’ve thanked them and they walked away and you actually look at the picture they took, all you can do is sigh and hope you have better luck the next time. I’ve often thought of scheduling a photoshoot with one of my photographer friends and have them take some good pictures, but every weekend that the weather seemed nice enough to do this, I decided go riding instead of standing around the bike and looking pretty. :P
So I guess I was a little pleased that the AMA scheduled a real photoshoot with an excellent local photographer, Cory Parris, so they could get a picture to go with the article I wrote. (Well okay, I was a bit peeved that none of the pictures I took on my ride weren’t good enough. :P). Cory was fantastic to work with and he took some really outstanding photos. The light wasn’t very good on the day that we picked, but he worked around it and got some really good images.
I posted some of the ones I liked in this post. I wish these had been in the magazine instead of the one they went with because you can actually see my bike in them. Oh well, at least I have these to look back at and send home to mum. :)
“Someone’s got a case of the Mondays!” You’ve heard that before and it usually isn’t me. I like Monday mornings because unlike most people I like getting up and going to work and having a week of work to look forward to. Some Mondays are exempt though. Like today.
I’ve vowed to wake up early and go to work every day this week. This usually means getting out there before 7:45AM when traffic turns to shit on WA-520. I cut it too close, got geared up, got on the SV and turned on the ignition and… nothing. It wouldn’t turn over, meaning battery issues out of the blue again. This is the second time in as many months that the battery has died for no apparent reason. I last rode it on Saturday, so it really has no reason to be doing this. F***ing electrical gremlins.
This meant walking back up and getting the key to the XT and riding that to work instead. By now I had missed the window of opportunity and looked forward to getting stuck in bad Monday morning traffic. The XT started up grudgingly and I rode it out. Switching bikes that are so different is always tricky and my muscles take a little adjusting – my steel-plated arm is always the first to protest for the first ten minutes. My muscles were the least of my worries today though when I realized that the brakes on the XT are way less reponsive than the ones on the SV. I found this out when a moron car just *stopped* in front of me at a “yield” sign. Wasn’t quite expecting that and stopped with only about an inch to spare between us. Ugh… my fault though. I should have been looking ahead instead of off to the side to yeild to traffic.
The second time was worse. As I droned through stop-go traffic on 520, an asshole Subaru driver unexpectedly swerved from a gridlocked left lane into my lane with no warning and I had to stomp on the brakes again. This time the bike went all wobbly and I’m surprised that my knobby tires had enough grip to come to a stop. I’m also grateful that the driver behind me wasn’t tailgating me and didn’t collide into me. I recovered and retaliated by honking at the Subaru driver and flipping him off for the next five minutes. I’m sure he genuinely hadn’t seen me at all and he kept trying to wave an apologetic hand. I passed him in a little bit and glared through his window while he still looked apologetic. I’m not quite sure how menacing a tiny motorcyclist on a 250cc bike looks, but I put everything I had into it. :P I wasn’t really mad seeing as I had recovered and no damage done, but it was more to shame him into realizing that making lane changes without looking is Not. Cool. and maybe him and the drivers around him would remember that in the future. Really I did it all for him. :P
I made it to work unscathed. The XT is such a fantastic bike to ride, in spite of its limitations. Maybe I’ll ride it through the rest of the week.
On the miscellaneous bike news front:
1. I did an oil change on the SV on Saturday. Fresh oil, whee! I noticed that my drain plug bolt was missing a crush washer and the oil filter didn’t come with one. I need to remember to get one the next time I change the oil. And umm.. also hope that the bolt stays in place without one. It did for the last 3000 miles, so why not 3000 more?
2. I noticed that 5 out of 6 bolts on the Givi windscreen were missing. They were either taken out by the douchebag who stole more bike two weeks ago (likely) or vibrated off in one night (doubtful). This calls for a trip down to the hardware store to find substitutes. I should probably also get some OEM nuts and bolts to replace some of the more rusty ones on the SV.
3. I washed the bike! After about 6 months. This is pretty good going by my track record.
