Don't mess with this man

I encountered this man east of Reno, just before the sun was down, on a recent road trip that I took on my recently purchased "couch", an 04 FZ1.

Despite the stern look on his face though, he was very nice and posed for the camera...

Ok, so he is not some red neck yahoo trying to chase me off his property, although that almost did happen to us a couple weeks ago on another trip.

It's Joe at the Supermoto races that were held at Reno Fernley this weekend, and the reason he is holding that gun is because he just got done starting off the 1 hour Supermoto team endurance race.

The start was done LeMans style which was refreshingly old school (is that an oxymoron?) and very exciting to watch. Here is a video of it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=2I6NBVNx9YM

Make sure you turn up the volume. Sounds like a stampede when everybody running toward their bikes that are leaned against the wall, then jumping on them, kick starting the bike and then taking off like bats out of hell. Fun!

Brave Travelers

You all have read these great travel stories by brave people that we admire for doing it, and you dream about doing it yourselves, but never do.

See, there is always an excuse: no time, can't get off work, don't have the right bike, since what you *really* need is a BMW R100GS, KLR650, Harley, Goldwing, Big Tourer of any make or an Enduros bike, right?

But not Michael Lohr, seen in this picture: he has a 2006 Suzuki GZ250, and he just drove it up from San Diego past San Francisco and is now on the way back. He says he needs to take a break every 50 miles, but hey, he's on vacation, so no rush, and he is definitely having fun, so that's what's it all about!

So whatever you have, don't let yourself prevent from a road trip. Everything is possible, you just need the right mind set.

And there is a good amount of people doing it, seems like it's getting more and more, and some come by here, for an oil change, new tire or repair to keep going, and it's always fun to talk to travelers.

I have a soft spot for traveling. After all, that's what I was doing when I fell in love with San Francisco, and got "stuck" here, meeting a good man and opening my own business.

That's what I love about traveling. You just never know what's going to happen. Finding the sweet spot. The Serendipity Factor. I love the serendipity factor.

My next adventure: Mexico over Christmas. 4 weeks of going where the weather suits me. Too cold? Drive closer to the coast. Too warm? Let's go to the mountains.

I'll be sure to make lots of pictures to share with you. And if you know of a great hidden away place to go in Mexico, let me know? Thanks!

Air Filter Issue

What's smiling at you here is a Kawasaki air filter that is rotten. The missing portion was probably sucked into the engine.

Since that missing smile chunk is so warm and fuzzy it'll just burn and do not too much harm, but if you get into the dusties, with a smile like that, the dust is going the past of least resistance, right through that hole, and into your engine.

So washable air filters are pretty great as long as they last, but eventually they rot.

And paper air filters? They usually don't rot like that, unless a mouse gets to it (and I have seen that, but don't have a picture of it) and they can't be serviced, so when they clog, they look like this:

Another nice one from my bad bad air filter collection: you can see nicely how your air filter should and should not look like....pictures do speak more that words...

So no more words. This is a short one. Until next time...

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)