Near Cat-astrophe's

What the hell is up with cats lately? Why are they suddenly challenging our tires with such frequency?

In the past week, I've ridden past two dead felines on the sides of roads. Then, while out riding last night, a kitten comes barreling out from the opposite side of the road, on a straight course for my front tire. My immediate reaction is that it'll realize I'm right there and will stop/turn around. Nope, it actually ADJUSTED it's path and pushed faster, still trying to cross in front of me. I clutched in to slow my speed and opened the throttle up to scare it off - no dice; it kept coming on strong. At this point, I ease onto the brakes a bit, figuring this thing just HAS to realize there's a large, very noisy object directly in it's path and it'll have to stop. No, it keeps coming! It gets to within ONE FOOT of my tire (I'm cutting hard to the right and stomping on the brakes at this point) when it suddenly throws itself to the side, twisting upon itself and pedaling furiously at the pavement to get back to the safety of where it had come out from. I couldn't believe the thing had almost been mowed down by my tire like that.

Then this morning, I'm riding in to work and a grown cat comes flying across a lawn on my right, gets to the edge of the road (just as the vehicle in front of me pulls even with the cat) and the thing pulls up hard, one leg in the air, just poised and ready. I can see that it's scanning the traffic and it just WANTS to go for it. Last night's memories are flying through my head and I'm looking for an exit direction in case this thing decides to go for it. Thankfully, it's pea-brain didn't click into "GO!" mode until just after I passed by. Looking in my side mirror, I saw the streak of gray and white make it safely to the other side - having shot between the two cars behind me and under a bus going the other way. Un-frikkin'-real.

Here's hoping this weekend's road trip doesn't involve any more animules trying to jump under my tires.

Ride Hard...Take Chances (but not if you're a cat, Dammit!)

Falling Behind and Catching Up

I know! I know...I said I was going to stay current with the blogging, and I've been slacking of late. I have been out on the bike, though, so that should garner some leeway? Or not. But here's what's been going on;

I'm back to commuting on the bike, which is a frikkin' huge relief. Love being back in the open air again. The weather gods have seen fit to bless me with an extended summer season, which I am truly thankful for - and for which I'll have to find something worthy to sacrifice...maybe that new Heineken beer-keg that I bought last week? Yeah, maybe I'll have to sacrifice that soon...although, it'll be my liver that actually does the sacrificing... (I don't even drink Heineken, but that beer-keg looked pretty interesting so I picked one up. I guess that's what you call good marketing/advertising.)

I did a memorial run this past Saturday. It was the 2nd annual memorial run for Shayne Cabino. He was a Lance Corporal in the Marines and he made the ultimate sacrifice on October 6th, 2005. (http://www.shaynesrun.com/) I'll do a write up and post some pics when I have a bit more time. I'll do a quick post now to get things a bit caught up, but I want to take my time when I do the write-up for this run, as it deserves respect and I don't want to just slam through it.

This past Sunday, A few of us went to CT - the weather was plenty warm and the sky was 100% pure blue; not a single cloud to be seen anywhere. (Trust me, I looked for one, too. Being as susceptible to sunburn as I am, clouds are my friend.) Riding around, I found an apple orchard and stopped in.

Our hunting/gathering skills were put to the test as we sought out the red & ripened fruits. The apples didn't put up much of a fight - they were just "hanging" around, anyway (I'm here all week, folks, try the veal!).

The blackberries were a different story; after about an hour of searching (and eating), we'd gathered barely enough berries to cover the bottom of the carton. The decision was made at this point to abandon said orchards and head off down the road again. We found some good roadways, soaked up a ton of sunshine and didn't roll back into the homefront until almost 12 hours later.

Just prior to heading down to CT, however, I noticed that my left-rear directional was loosening up on me and had actually turned downwards a bit. Realizing that my rear tire really didn't need to be kept abreast of any intentions to make a left-hand turn, I knew I would need to set things right.

The next opportunity I had to delve into fixing things, didn't come until a couple of days later. The first thing to do was to remove the duct tape I'd used to secure the directional for the CT trip and ensure that it wouldn't come completely apart and start rapping off of the paint.

Next was to remove the sissy bar frame and the fender-strut bolts to give the fender some play. This would allow me to both; push the fender down a bit, as well as ease the strut out a bit. Between the two, I would have enough room to get at the bolt which was loosening up.

Prior to doing the pushing/pulling, I undid the directional wiring from the clips inside the fender, as this would give me the play I needed so as to not stress the wiring itself.

With all of that taken care of, I was able to sneak the torx wrench in, tighten things up nice and securely and then reassemble everything. (I checked the other directional while I was there and it was plenty tight still.)

The last step was to take a rag and some gas and clean the duct tape residue off of the directional itself (it's the stuff that looks like scratches, in this pic).

And with that, she was good to go.

As I mentioned back at the start of this post, I've still got to do a write-up on the memorial run I attended this past Saturday. Sadly, I need to attend another run this coming Saturday, out in Olean. It's for a great guy who died on the job, back at the end of July. I'll be taking Friday off and heading out that way. I'm kicking around the idea of just riding straight through to Ohio (because I can) and then backtracking to King's house for the night. We'll do the run on Saturday and share some silence, some stories, and some laughter. Then Sunday, it's back home again.

My buddy Paul is actually going to be in my neck of the woods when I get back home, so me, him, and Zig are getting together to discuss our (motorcycle) trip to Scotland next year. That's right - Scotland! No time to get into that now, but rest assured; there will be plenty of info as the time approaches (Aug. '08).

So it should be a lot of miles this weekend - which is just fine with me. I hope the weather cooperates for everyone out there. There's plenty of pavement for everyone - Fall is coming, and Winter isn't far behind - get the miles on while you can!

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Rolling!

Zig was convinced the problem with the front end was due to the (new) tire having not been inflated to proper pressure. I was convinced there was no way that that could account for things flopping back and forth. So, there was only one thing to do. I walked the bike out once again, fired things up and rolled out towards the nearest gas station. Keeping things under the 40 mph speed limit wasn’t a problem, as the front end felt like it was going to fly off in a different direction at any moment. Got to the gas station, popped a few quarters into the compressor and brought things up to where they should be (I figured I’d be a sport and check the rear tire while I was at it, and it took a few pounds as well). Then it was test-time. I twisted the front end from left to right a few times and was surprised to find that things actually felt much better. The real test of course, was to rock and roll down the blacktop and see how things handled.

Firing her to life once again, I rumbled to the edge of the pavement and awaited the next break in traffic. With the mental green-light received, I eased into the flow. Doing some leaning here, and some counter-steering there, I found that the bike basically handled like I felt it should. Sweet! I brought her up to highway speed and eased through the traffic, paying close attention to every twist, lean, and turn, to make sure that everything felt right - it pretty much did! I would rate the feel as being 95% of how I felt it should ride. There were a couple of times where the bike seemed to hesitate in reacting to a counter-steer, but for now, I’m chalking it up to getting used to the new risers.

So I took it out for a bit last night and she seemed to ride well, overall. Then this morning, I rolled up another 60 miles - in the rain. I suppose this would be a good spot to say something sappy like “Even though it was raining, it was the best ride ever!”…or; “It may have been raining on the outside, but I was all sunshine and smiles on the inside!”. Nope; the rain still sucks, period.

I suppose I could also point out that the two+ months that I’ve been down, have been the driest months we’ve had in years? And yet, the minute I’m back up and running, it starts raining? What’s up with that?

So anyway, with any luck, the saga of the front end has drawn to a close. I’m not 100% sold yet, there’s still that odd feeling every now and then, but we’ll see how things…roll. I’ll be…rolling…up the miles and we’ll see if that odd feeling goes away (or, maybe I’ll just get used to it). Time will tell…

Can’t seem to get the old Aerosmith lyrics “I’m Baaaaack! I’m BACK in the saddle, again!” out of my head. But that’s a good thing.

So I’m rolling again! I’ve got a couple of memorial runs coming up, some fall trips planned…there’s a lot of mileage to be made up, so hang on. This could get ugly.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Learned a few things, but class ain't over yet...

Today, I picked up the last part that I'd need (exterior retaining ring for the bottom of the steering head). Got home and put the entire bike back together - making sure not to make the mistake that I'd made the first time (more on that later).

Rolled the bike out into the driveway...brought her to life and let her warm up...nudged the shifter down into first...mentally crossed my fingers and rolled out. Damn. Same problem as before; the front end feels very unstable. It wants to roll to the left. I took it out onto the street for a bit - and while I did notice that it's a little better than it was the last time, it's still no where near rideable. If I try to counter-steer to the right, the bars fight me and the bike doesn't want to go in that direction.

I did notice that the handlebars are a bit bent from when my body must have slammed into them when I hit the tree. The left side is a bit bend outwards and downwards. Would this account for the problem? I wouldn't think so - the bend is very slight (I didn't even notice it before tonight).

But the bottom line is I'm just spinning my wheels at this point (pun intended). So I touched base with a buddy of mine who had recommended a good shop back when the accident first happened. I got the contact info and will give the shop a call tomorrow and see when I can bring the bike in. I'm hoping that the problem will be something simple...but I'm not going to hold my breath.

In closing, I'll fill you in on what the boneheaded thing was that I'd done when I reassembled the front end a week and a half ago. I forgot to put the fork tube pinch bolts back into the lower tree. Never even noticed/realized they were missing until I took the front end apart again. Not having them in there allowed the forks to spin independently of each other, inside the trees. And when I pulled the top bolts out of the tubes, the rubber washers showed signs of spiral slicing, further proof that the forks had been spinning. I thought for sure that would explain the flopping sensation that I was getting, but apparently it wasn't the only problem. As I said; the front end was better (tonight) than it was the last time, but there's still something I'm missing.

I learned a lot about the front end assembly, stuff that I didn't know before, so I guess I can chalk this up to a learning experience. Now I just need the shop to teach me the lesson(s) that I'm missing and I should be all set. No snow currently in the forecast, so who knows...maybe I'll still get a chance to roll up some more miles this year. Time will tell.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Stupid is as Stupid Does

So I've been away from the blog for a few days, I will now catch things up. The elusive fork did indeed show up on Friday afternoon. I bolted from here faster than a two-bit thug splits a bad scene when the cops show up. Blasted over to the dealership, picked up the magic fork and shot home. I set to getting things wrapped up so that I'd be able to ride up north for the long weekend. Got everything on, looked good, rolled her out into the driveway, fired her up and let things come up to temp. Grabbed a fistful of clutch, eased her down into gear and rolled forward...for about a foot. Something was definitely wrong. The forks felt like they were flopping all over the place. WTF??? What did I miss? I shut her down, tightened up the risers (I'd forgotten to do that - Zig noticed they were loose) but still no dice. I thought maybe I could fight the forks for the ride up, and opted to take the bike around the block to see...nope, I hadn't gone 30 feet before I realized there was no way I could ride the bike. Dammit!

So I rolled it back into the garage. Time was tight and we needed to hit the highways and catch up with the crew from NY. So, with a sidelong glance back at the bike, I lowered the garage door (like a curtain on my plans), we threw our gear into my truck and headed off on four wheels.

The weekend itself was good. There were lots of laughs, plenty of stories, and a few tears shed for recently departed brothers.

Last night; it was back to the bike. The plan was to tear the front end off again and inspect the bearings and races - that being the only other thing I could think of. (The frame looks fine, so I think that its safe.)

Got everything opened up and was disappointed; rather than finding a bunch of flattened or mashed bearings, everything seemed good and solid. So I figured I'd take a break for the night (I'd already worked a 13 hour day before I even started in on the bike, and I was pretty beat). I'll have Zig come by today (since he's got a lot more experience with bearings), and have him take a look at them and lemme know what he thinks.

And then this morning something hit me - I don't want to say what it is because of how incredibly stupid it is, if that's what turns out to be the problem. If it is...I'll swallow my pride and write it down here for all to see and laugh at me. If it isn't the problem, well then, no need to expose myself to unnecessary ridicule.

I figure I might as well replace the bearings and races while I've got everything opened up, and then I'll make sure to NOT do what I did the first time I reassembled everything, and hopefully that will take care of things and I'll be rolling again.

Maybe then I'll be in a better mood. Hell, I might even come back and expound on the Labor Day trip a bit. In the meantime, here's one pic that I managed to capture this past weekend. Not sure how I did it, but it came out hella cool.

So wish me luck on the bike...actually, if you're going to make a wish, wish for me to be less stupid. Maybe that'll get me further...

Ride Hard, Take Chances