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Visit to Trail Tech

Nov 14th, 2010
by daveg.
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I was very fortunate that my route was able to take me through Battleground, WA, which is the home of Trail Tech.  They helped me out before the trip started with a Vapor Road Computer and an X2 Headlight.  Both components have been great and I wanted to do a quick meet-and-greet with them at the factory.  Unfortunately it was pouring down rain so I didn’t get any pictures.

I’d like to take a second to thank Garridan over at Trail Tech for all his help and support.  They’re really stand up guys and have some pretty interesting new technology coming out soon.

Every post must have a pic.  Here’s the pic after riding the worst 6 hour rain storm of my life.

Finally at my friends Elsa and Tim’s parking garage.

The Pacific North West usually doesn’t rain this hard for this long.  It was one of those rides where every few minutes I wanted to pull over and get a hotel to wait it out, but then I’d stop and the rain would subside a little.  It was torture, but I stayed fairly dry considering my exposure time.

Posted in: USA.

Oregon and Cornhole

Nov 10th, 2010
by daveg.
2 comments

The trip continues…

Based on the insistent recommendation of Jayne, I met up with Gail and Eric who took significant trips across I think nearly all the continents.  They put me up for a few days and I reinstalled windows and brought life back to one of their laptops.  daveg mobile tech support– always on duty!  They were quite an interesting couple who had limitless stories of travels to places I hope to see one day.

Gail and Eric and ultracute doggles

I pretty much think it is impossible to have too many shower nozzles.  Apparently Gail & Eric also agree.

They suggested a great ride around the base of the cascades in Oregon for my route towards Portland.

Twisties for miles

It was an amazingly scenic ride.  The problem was that the higher in elevation, the cooler it became.  I ended up having to cut back towards the flatlands because I don’t have cold-weather gear.

Mountain Lake in Oregon

I eventually made it to a suburb of Portland, Oregon to stay at Jayne and Stefan‘s house.  I met them at the Horizons Unlimited meeting.  Jayne is an American who did some very interesting work in Afghanistan and Stefan is from Germany and has probably seen everything worth seeing in all of Europe.  They’ve been married for a couple of years and moved to the USA last year.  Both of them have a substantial online presence, so make sure you check out their sites.

We had tons of fun over the couple of days that I stayed at their house.  We also had some quite interesting meals:

German Breakfast

The German breakfast was a treat as it reminded me of my travels with Theo on my way to the tip of South America.

Stefan grilling German style

We also enjoyed cooking outside with a type of grill I had never seen before.  There was a pan for the coals with a pyramid made out of poles suspending the grill surface with chains.  The cook gently spins the cook surface so that everything cooks evenly over the coals.  Ingenious!!!

German style BBQ

Look at the meat spin!!

The Great Cornhole Fest 2010

The only way to top off such cooking was with playing many games of Cornhole.  It is a very simple game.  You toss bags filled of corn or beans onto a platform.  If the bags stay on the platform you win 1 point.   If you make it in the elusive hole you win 3 points.  It is game which is much enhanced by slight inebriation.

Sink the bags into the hole

Jayne watching while her husband Stefan goes for the glory of Cornhole

On to portland……

Locksmith with finally found keys

Posted in: USA.

Beekeeping in Northern California

Nov 8th, 2010
by daveg.
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Bees!! Again!!

I met Michelle at the HU meeting in Petrolia.  Michelle has traveled around the world climbing things and also rode her motorcycle to Guatemala.  Check out her blog from her trip here.  She invited me to ride with her a few days to visit her friends Dick and Kathy who live near Eureka, CA.  It was a great experience because I was able to see how different people live in the US.  I’m a product of the suburbs — impeccably clean neighborhoods with strict home owners associations, houses chose because of school districts, big box stores, and career oriented decisions usually resulting in living in suburbs of major American Cities.  Dick and Kathy seemed to make a different set of decisions but seem to yield the same results but with a very different feel.

They live out in the country with the nearest city of Eureka, CA.  They are now retired with what sounds like very happy and successful kids– the goal of all child producing families.

Upon touring their property, we got to check out Dick’s beekeeping operation.  He mostly produces honey for his family and friends but also sells his excess.  Dick is also the head of the Humbolt County Beekeepers Association.  We spent quite a bit of time checking out the hives and I learned even more about my future hobby.  I love bees!

Dick's hives

Several of the hives he set up with purchased queens/bees and others were those that he caught from swarms that he collected locally.  You can see in the picture there is an electric fence.  The fence is only active at night because the bears will try to rob the honey.

Anatomy of a bee hive

Here is my attempt to annotate a beehive.  Please correct me if I’m wrong and I’ll fix the graphic.  But take a look at the picture and you should be able to get a good idea of the anatomy of a hive.  You can also check out this page which does a good job describing the anatomy.

Beehive entrance

Check out the bees entering and leaving the hive.  The most interesting are the worker bees who function as entrance guards.  They sit on the landing area in front of the hole into the hive and inspect incoming bees to make sure that they are from the correct hive.  If they aren’t they will be rejected or attacked by soldier bees.

Foraging bees landing and guarding bees inspecting

Here’s another closer up shot.

Inside the bee hive pulling out an individual frame for inspection

Dick pulled off the top cover so he could inspect individual frames to check out the hive’s health.

Dick and Frame

Here is Dick showing us a frame where comb is being produced.  Some of the cells in the comb are used to birth new bees while others are used to store honey.   The boxes below the queen excluder (first couple of boxes usually) are for birthing, while the upper boxes are for honey.

Queen bee on a frame

He picked through a couple of frames and found the queen.  I was super excited to see a queen working!

Frame full of bees

So many bees!

This frame is almost entirely capped

Happy Beekeeper

beehive frame upclose

A queen bee that is unhatched

Dick was trying to delay the making of new queens in one of the hives so we found a cell that was producing a new queen and we squashed her.  Beekeepers yield such great power.

It was a great unexpected trip and was fun meeting Dick and Kathy and traveling a few days with Michelle.

Michelle and I taking off from a great visit to Dick and Kathy's place

Posted in: USA.
Tagged: ·

The Great Procrastinated Update.. Here I come Thailand!!

Oct 14th, 2010
by daveg.
9 comments

Well, to call it great is a bit of an overstatement.. but this is certainly an update.  Why haven’t I been updating the blog?  Did I give up?  No.  Truthfully, I’ve been a little lazy, but it is really because I’ve been having so much fun these last couple of months traveling around the USA, meeting good people, eating excellent food, and catching up with family and old friends.  One cannot ask for a better trip and I haven’t even left the US!

So.. what’s been up?  Here’s the summary.  I’m going to back-fill some details as the weeks progress.

Petrolia -> Eugene -> Portland -> Seattle driving through some of the most beautiful coastline followed by the worst weather of the trip (cold + rainy).  I hung out in Seattle for a few weeks with some old friends.
After several conversations to people at the HU Petrolia meeting, I concluded that I don’t really have the budget for Australia. While I *REALLY* wanted to go, I just didn’t have the money. The way I knew this was when the guy from the Bay Area was saying that Australia was too expensive

So Unfortunately, Australia is going to be another trip.

I then started rearranging my trip to go straight to Thailand from Seattle.

I called around to several shipping and logistics companies around the USA and ended up using http://www.frontierforwarder.com/worldwide_agents.htm . They helped me ship a motor out of an africa twin to Singapore last year. I priced sea (normal cargo) and air shipments, but ended up going RoRo.

RoRo is short for Roll-On-Roll-Off, a method of shipping where the cargo rolls itself onto the ship. This is typically used with cars, excavators, and farm equipment that is too large to fit in a container. They also take motorcycles . This ended up being super expensive, but I was happy to not have to deal with crating anything up.

The New Plan: Drop bike off at the Port of Tacoma near Seattle for shipment to Laem Chabang near Bangkok. The bike will be there around November 10th… I’m going to get on November 3rd.

Until then, I’m spending time with the family in Kansas City, Missouri.

Every update must have a picture… here I am all dressed up at the port in Bellingham, Washington:

Dave

In Bellingham, WA

Posted in: Uncategorized, USA.

LA to the Horizons Unlimited meeting in Petrolia

Sep 7th, 2010
by daveg.
6 comments

Onward!!

After a nice 4 day break of crazy highspeed travel I’m back on the road out from LA.  It is great to be back on the road — especially these roads.  They’re some of the best in the USA, I am actually thinking about getting a trailerlike this 5th wheel for sale california and take the whole family.  I’m headed to the Horizons Unlimited Petrolia meeting.  Horizons unlimited (if you don’t know) is a motorcycle traveler website.  Their user base is pretty international as well as are their trips.  It is a pretty good place for international motorcycling information if you can find it.

Oil! on the side of the road in Ventura by the coast

From the recommendation of fellow inmate Richard who not only let me stay in his RV but also recommended the route to and from his place.  The other sucker tourists were taking the 1 or 101.  Not me, I’m taking 33!

Highway 33 through Los Padres National Forest

Highway 33 through the Padres National Forest

This was a great road.  Tons of twisties that weren’t so tight that you had to ride in 1st or 2nd gear like the twisties I’m used to from riding in Central and South America.  Heh, in Texas, we don’t have any corners until you go about 90mph :).

Strangely everything was fine in the mountains but things flattened out and I came upon a cruiser rider getting hauled out by heli.

Heli Rescue

You can see the downed bike if you squint a bit

I was sitting by the fire fighter/flagger guy and talked about the incident while we waited for things to clear for about 20 minutes.  From looking at the skidmarks and tracks offroad, the guy was going into a very gentle curve way too hot.

dirtbike on gravel road on Soda Lake Road

Seeing a heli-rescue is always a wakeup call.  This is a dangerous activity I’m doing here… and I haven’t even left the USA yet!  Thanks to Richard’s recommendation, I finally found some gravel.  I’ve been riding these TKC 80s for 2000 miles and haven’t seen a spec of dirt.  Soda Lake Road was in great shape, but it was gravel that was navigable at highspeeds.

ALPACA!!! ALPACA@#!$%@#$% So fluffy. So cute.

After staying at Richard’s for a night and having some OK mexican food (I miss TexMex!), I found some of my favorite critters on the side of the road.  One day I will have my own Alpaca!  So cute!! You can house train them you know.

Pleasant country switchbacks on Santa Rosa Creek Road

I arrive at HU Petrolia at about 7pm after a very long day of riding.

Horizons Unlimited Petrolia

Horizons Unlimited Petrolia

Horizons Unlimited Petrolia

Horizons Unlimited Petrolia

I met a ton of great people there and took a daytrip with other like-minded riders.  This was the first time that in real life that when I talk about my trip people’s eyes don’t go either glaze over or look at me like I’m crazy.

Michelle

Smittie

Juan

I met 3 other riders from California at breakfast and we did a bit of dual sporting in Humbolt county.  No.  We didn’t find any weed.

Petrolia was a great location for the meeting.  Unfortunately there is talk of moving the meeting to central California to get more socal riders to attend.

I can’t remember her name, but she was working at the campsite and gave me free lambchops! Thanks!!

Posted in: USA.
Tagged: · · ·

Race Tech visit for suspension upgrade

Aug 27th, 2010
by daveg.
2 comments

After the long ride to California to the LA area, I was very happy to be able to pull my bike to the main office of Race Tech on time for my scheduled appointment.  I arrived at 9am and met Erick, the salesman who I was talking to over email.  We went over various suspension options and weighed all my gear and plugged the information into their spring calculator on their website.  Erick then took the info over to techs and reviewed the settings and came up with a new suspension configuration for the DRZ.

Why alter the suspension?

Most bikes are designed for riding with either one or two people and not for touring.  This is particularly true for the 400cc Suzuki DRZ.  I did the first couple of thousand miles with the stock suspension unmodified.  The added weight of me plus my gear overloaded the suspension.  Riding straight down a highway, I didn’t notice that I had a suspension issue.  The problem comes when you’re doing anything else such as braking, riding uneven roads, offroad, and even potholes.  Basically the suspension would bottom out during any radical change in movement.  This was particularly a problem during braking with a full tank (7.3 gallons!).

I knew ahead of time with the added weight that I would need to change the springs inside the shocks to support my added weight, but the guys at Race Tech also recommended to change the valves in the shock to change the dampening rate.

The front and rear springs were resprung to a stiffer spring and the valve was also changed to alter how the spring rebounds.

Erick from Sales (and former racer) getting his hands dirty while removing my rear shock

Race Tech let me help (or rather, watch) them do the work.

Rear shock

Front

Front

The Race Tech is a truly professional shop / office / warehouse located just outside of LA in Corona, CA.  They did an excellent job with the suspension upgrade as well as even fixing my spacers that were too big for my luggage mounts.  It no longer takes me 25 minutes to mount up my seat!

Check out this awesome Police Edition KTM:

Kickass Cop Bike

Kickass Cop Bike with the Trail Tech X2 headlight

My first test drive of the new feeling bike was quite a surprise.  I am no longer able to put both feet on the ground– now I’m the points of my toes like I was before I started loading the bike with gear.  The highway ride is quite a bit more stiff but with the most immediate effect in braking.  I’m now able to ride with a full tank and fully loaded bike without having tremendous front-end dive when using the front brake.

I still haven’t taken her off-road yet, but I’m sure that’ll happen soon enough.

Posted in: Uncategorized, USA.

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