Burning Man and Laguna Seca

Here is a little quiz for you: where was this picture taken? Burning Man or Laguna Seca?

This picture could've been taken at either event: The hats, the funny hair, the beer cozies, the ear-to-ear grins, the blue sky.

What else, let's see: friends, fun, lots of (loud) events, making sure you drink enough water, heat, wind, camping out, sharing a common interest.

The races at Laguna Seca though have a couple added bonuses, for me anyway: you get to see the fastest guys on motorcycles in the world, and: it's right in our back yard.

And, thanks to Mike and Danielle, Arne and Michelle and Jim and Milli, all I have to do is get on my motorcycle with my tent and sleeping bag and show up to the best organized camp ever with everything and enjoy myself. And I did have a great time, thanks you guys!

One great thing that happened is Marco Melandri getting on the podium despite a foot injury. He just overcame the obstacles and kicked butt. It ain't over until the fat lady sings, and she didn't sing yet! Go Melandri, never give up!

And I picked him on the podium in the pre-race bet and won a t-shirt that Arne and Michelle got at the MotoGP race at Valencia. Yeehaa!

Time to smell the roses

This picture here is the aftermath of yet another motorcycle overheating fest at the MotoGP at Laguna Seca this year.

When I heard it'll be in the 70s for this year's MotoGP at Laguna I was relieved. Not only for my own comfort but for all those poor bikes that had relentlessly overheated last year trying to get into the track.

But I was wrong.

It was pleasant for us humans (although it did get pretty chilly camping at night). The bikes however, if you got caught with the coming-to-the-track-at-8.30am- crowd, had a hard time once again.

Although it was cool, being stopped in traffic is hard on any bike. All newer bikes are liquid cooled and made for speed, so going slow or not going at all gets even the coolest running bike into the red.

On many modern motorcycles the fan never comes on under normal operation (i.e. on the gas, and getting air flow cooling through the radiator), so when it does, a little bit of corrosion makes the fan stick a little initially. This makes the dedicated 30A fan fuse blow, and then results in a non-operating fan and an overheating bike.

My bike circled between 220F and 225F, which is totally borderline. I was glad I checked the fan operation before I left by letting it run and monitoring the temperature until the fan comes on (or not, in which case you need to check out why).

Still, I thought that was a little hot and I was prepared to switch my bike off at any sign of fluid leakage.

Unfortunately, a lot of people were unaware of their bikes leaking. There was one poor motorcycle that got kicked even though it was down already - literally: it leaked coolant AND was already obscured in cooling fluid smoke, kept dying, and the owner still tried to re-start the bike every time it died.

And although I usually don't exercise empathy for inanimate objects, even motorcycles, THAT made my heart hurt. Argh!

That's the time when you evaluate how much it is worth to you to not miss first practice in the morning. Is it about $2000 or more? Which is what it costs to get rebuild the engine or even swap one that you got form ebay.

Time to smell the roses (or the smell of overheating motorcycles...as long as it is not yours...) since there was no way for ALL of us to bypass traffic, since traffic consisted solely of motorcycles with the same problem.

In any other situation, the solution is to (safely) split lanes and keep the bike moving. After all, that is why the lane splitting law was adapted in California, not to keep cool bikers moving, but to keep hot bikes cooled down.

But at Laguna - yet another overheating mayhem, but apart from that it was a great and very fun weekend, and I can't wait until next year, and now I am writing another blog that deals with all the fun times we had...

Cheers!

I'm screwed

So...last Sunday night I got a nail in my tire. On the Richmond Bridge.

I write about nails in tires, I get a nail in my tire. Second time ever! I guess I have been lucky.

Fortunately Rich Gibbons from Berkeley Performance Motorcycles picked me up at 11pm on the Richmond Bridge. It's great to have good friends. Thank you, Rich, you are the best!

Two weeks ago, after writing about chains breaking - my chain breaks.

So now, on suggestion from Rich Gibbons, I'm going to write about the lottery. If I write about the lottery, I should win the lottery, right? All things come in threes as they say. So here is my pitch to test that. Kinda like myth busters. Only I hope this one is not going to bust...

If I win in the lottery this week, I'll mount free tires for a week at the shop...promise!

So wish me luck, you might get a free tire out of this...

(update: Didn't win the lottery. So much for good old sayings. Back to the drawing table on how to get filthy rich.)

Jennifer's Travels

Every once in a while you need to get away from what you are doing, and you need to get on your motorcycle and get far out of the city and your regular life.

So when my friend Sarah Lyon, who made that great calender about female mechanics (and in which I am the July girl, and which you can still buy at Sarah's website) said she would drive her BMW from Kentucky to San Francisco I borrowed a Honda Transalp from my friend Vincent which is more touring worthy than the GSX-R and decided I would meet her somewhere before she hit San Francisco and go motorcycle camping for a week or so.

After a lot of back and forth on where to meet, since she got caught in Salt Lake City with an electrical problem on her BMW, and then got delayed another day because of high winds that actually toppled a semi, we decided to meet in Winnemucca, at a randomly picked restaurant called Las Margeritas.

We pulled up at the same time, by a minute apart, me coming from Jackson, CA, 280 miles away, and her coming from Salt Lake City, 350 miles away. Sometimes, slacking with the departure actually makes it work out perfectly. Rushing is waaay overrated.

From there we continued north to find those hot springs my worn out Hot Springs of California book was talking about, 9.2 miles after this junction, and the 4.3 miles to the left, and watch out you might miss them. That is where this picture was taken.

It was a great trip, leading us to beautiful and remote camping spots nary seeing another soul from Nevada to Oregon back to California and Nevada and then California again.

We found a beautiful green camp site called Dairy Creek with knee high grass to stay at in Oregon, rejoicing to the eye after dry and gray Nevada.

We drove around Crater Lake with 10 feet high snowbanks surrounding us and the thick fog obscuring the view of the big hole in the ground completely, and it was totally surreal.

We staid with a Bonnie, bartender in Cedarville, who took us in because we got surprised by dark and full motels trying to find hot springs down a long dirt road.

We got stuck in the mud by the Trego Hot Springs in the Black Rock Desert on my bike, and had to walk back 3 miles back to the camp site and return the next morning with Sarah's bike to dig it out after the dust-turned-into-mud-after-the-rain had dried up again.

Fortunately Sarah had tools (shame on me, I didn't, arrogance of a mechanic). We had to take the fender off which was so caked with mud that it had blocked the front wheel which we hadn't realized with dusk falling and a long way back to the camp site.

On the way back (shame on me after preaching about chains all this time) my chain broke at 85 miles an hour on the freeway in Stockton. And fortunately again, it didn't get balled up and locked up the bike or broke the engine case, it just fell off and stranded me at an off ramp with No Services, and we had to find a Uhaul to get me back to the City, which cost me $300. Argh.

Nevertheless, it was all worth it, one of the greatest trips I have ever taken, and I highly recommend packing up your motorcycle this summer, by yourself or with friends, tent and sleeping bag, and hit the road in the search of serendipity, since I now have a lot of great stories to tell some of which might appear at one point in this blog, but for the sake of keeping it sweet and (somewhat) short this time I'll end here. Keep posted!

(photo by Sarah Lyon, of course)

You're screwed

In this city, you're getting nailed a lot. Or screwed. However you want to put it, I like to call it nail city. That's as in - getting a nail in your rear tire.

And this object on the left here is the biggest object I have EVER seen in a tire, by far, and usually it's a nail, or a screw, not a BOLT, like a 1/4 in x 25 or then some.

When I worked in Munich I saw like 1 screw in 1 tire of 1 customer in about 4 years working as a mechanic.

In San Francisco, I see people with screws in their tires come in almost every day.

Needless to say, this tire was completely flat and beyond repair. Most of the time the nail or screw goes in straight, in the middle, making a little hole that can be patched easily.

How the hell did this THING work its way into the tire? I have an answer for almost everything, but this time - nope. No idea.

Usually the tire is low on air, or low on tread, so the nail has an easy time to go through that kinda thinnish rubber layer, or the object is very sharp.

The little mean sharp ones are the those that preferably work their way into the brand new tires.

Like the little sharp nail lays there on the street and is bored and fed up with its location, and thinks to itself: Hey there is a brand new tire rolling down the street, I think I'll hitch a ride with this one.

Only that that hitch just brings it to the next shop, where it gets pulled and permanently deposited into a garbage can. Duh. That didn't get you very far, little dumb nail. Thought you were sharper than that. Caused me a bunch of pain though.

Anyway, just thought I share this THING with you - the sheer SIZE of it...incredible. I'm in awe.

Cracker

Your local shop has told you to replace your chain. The last two times around. And you have chosen to ignore it.

The chain has loose and tight spots, depending on where in the rotation you check it. Or it already hangs down to the ground, almost anyway, looks rusty, and you can lift the chain off the sprocket by over 1/4 inch.

So what happens when your chain breaks or comes off? If you are lucky, it just comes off, falls on the road, and hopefully your buddy behind you won't run over it and crash.

Or it could whip up and hit you, the rider...I have seen it on a race bike once...the chain made a hole in the tail section and hit the rider in the back.

The chain is going at the speed of the bike you see, and the energy it picks up from going around is at least as high as crashing at 100mph, and that's the speed when I crashed and broke my hip, so I have experienced those forces at 100mph first hand and believe me, it's violent.

Or, as in this case on this picture right here, the chain doesn't break, but "just" comes off the sprocket and balls up under the chain cover and breaks the crank case. And if you are lucky, it won't lock up the rear wheel and you won't crash.

This guy was lucky. The bike is still in pristine condition, really nice actually, on the outside, but what this seemingly innocent little crack there means that it's basically done for, NFG, engine broken beyond repair.

In some cases, it can be fixed. If the crack is in an opportune place and you have a really, really good welder at hand that is willing to work on (not the usual "no, we won't touch") motorcycles, you might be able to get that welded.

If the crack is in a place like on this GSXR1000 though, i.e. in the walls on the precision bored hole that holds the water pump, there is pretty much no way you can fix this on or off the bike, since it would have to be machined afterwards to take the pump shaft again, and the filings from the machining will get into the engine, not to mention that it is somewhat difficult to get the motorcycle under a drill press, sideways and square.

Only solution in this case: new engine. On some bikes that would exceed the total value. So if you would like to avoid this fate, learn how to check your chain for the correct tension, and for "tight spots", which is hard to explain in writing, but if you come by anytime during business hours, I'll be happy to demonstrate, for free, and with pleasure. After all, I like my fellow motorcycle riders to stay alive. I hate going to funerals.

And don't forget to lube your chain every 300 miles or so, that'll make your chain and sprockets live a whole lot longer.

We got the Crissy Fields Community Hero Award!

This is not quite motorcycle related, just thought it would be an interesting tidbit out of our day at Werkstatt Motorcycles.

As part of the Capp Alliance Project (CAP) we just got awarded the Crissy Fields Community Hero Award 2007 for pulling neighborhood resources together to implement a plan to keep Capp Street clean!

And last Saturday I took off the coveralls, put on nice jacket and pants and held a speech at Crissy Fields, San Francisco, in front of a bunch of people and officials, all proud of our CAP crew and of what we have accomplished, and what a great success it has been!

( And it was a windy day as you can see from my hair blowing and I don't have photo shop...)

There is also a year-long exhibit at the Crissy Fields Center, so when you are out there in the Crissy Fields which is part of the Golden Gate National Park System, drop by and check out the video of me and the crew wielding the brooms on Capp St...You can also check out the video here.

Since I kind of started at the end, here is how all that started in the beginning: There is a Homeless Center located a couple doors down from us, the Mission Resource Center, and I have been going to the meetings and working closely with the Center to improve the neighborhood and address some of the problems we are having here related to our homeless neighbors.

In one of those meetings we founded a group called CAP: Capp St Alliance Project, with the goal of improving our neighborhood and Werkstatt Motorcycle Repair is now sponsoring the CAP clean up crew that comes by Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning to clean the streets, and it worked: We now have one of the cleanest streets in San Francisco!

The way it works is that CAP hires and trains homeless people for a 2 month internship to clean the streets and become leaders of their community.

And the participants have taking this on with vigor and pride, and for some of them this became a stepping stone to get regular jobs and housing and to leave homelessness behind them, so this has been a real success on several levels despite having a nice, presentable, livable and safe street to boot.

Frankly, I am a little surprised how far we have gotten with not that much effort, but it goes to show that a little effort goes a long way!

I would like to thank everybody that has been part of CAP, especially Vero, Julie and Laura from the Resource Center, and all the guys that have been part of the clean up crew and made such a big difference!