Tim TomCross Country Adventure

[shwaz]

pssst.... tim... guess what happened while you were gone

i'll give you a clue - my wife went out of town for a weekend and i bought a skunk

welcome back! look forward to hearing all about it

 

[marvinsc]

Bravo, well done young men!:clap:

 

[Guest]

Glad to hear you made it back safe Tim

Did you get there in time to see your girlfriend?

 

[Tim Tom]

I did make it in time, and none of my things had been out the window! Feels strange not to be riding all day though. I'm not quite sure what to do with myself now... I wanna ride some more!!

 

[7981GS]

Any new leaks on the bike yet?
Also, it should be about time for yet another valve adjustment in the near future.

Eric

 

[Tim Tom]

No new leaks yet. Still loosing a small amount from the cam tensioner, but I'm about to order a new gasket for that. Also gonna pick up a new valve cover for that valve adjustment. :-\\\

The bike ran like a true champ since we left Reno. I'm still jonesing for more riding though, and since I have this week off still I think I'm gonna do some day trips.

Maybe to Canada and back...

that is a joke. I think.

 

[7981GS]

Don't forget, that if you are careful, you can re-use the half moons.
Just reinstall them the exact same way after you clean them up.
The cam chain tensioner is only subjected to oil spray so just cleaning the surface and applying a thin layer of the Ultra-Black and it will work perfectly.
You can do the same with a new gasket also.

Eric

 

[erljhnsn2003]

Glad to hear you had a safe trip. I see you use a Tele as your avatar. What's your preferred genre? I'm a blues/rock bass player myself. Oops, sorry, back on topic.

 

[marvinsc]

Glad to hear you had a safe trip. I see you use a Tele as your avatar. What's your preferred genre? I'm a blues/rock bass player myself. Oops, sorry, back on topic.

Actually he plays a very skinny one!

 

[Tim Tom]

Glad to hear you had a safe trip. I see you use a Tele as your avatar. What's your preferred genre? I'm a blues/rock bass player myself. Oops, sorry, back on topic.

Actually he plays a very skinny one!

My tele is my 'real' electric guitar, I play all sorts of stuff, just always liked the look and sound of the Telecasters.

And this is the "Slim-line Travel Ax" as I dubbed it, that is referred to above. Made from a crappy Yahama Strat copy that I got for free. Played it through a 9v battery powered amp the whole trip and it sounded great.

One of the better pictures I have of it in use courtesy of Mr. Steve. Also pictured is Mriddle's son Chris, we had an impromptu jam session during the RRR! I was really glad I brought it with me for the trip, and it will definably be coming along on the next one! (I just got a text from Kyle saying something about Nova Scotia, just can't keep a good adventurer down eh?)

 

[erljhnsn2003]

Ok, I'm seeing it now. Two single coils and a humbucker. Interesting. I may need to look into a Stienberger and a 9v.

 

[salty_monk]

If you didn't change it already you should also change the cam chain tensioner O ring... can cause just as many minor leaks as the gasket itself....

I have some pics very similar to yours in Nor Cal. We did the ones in Lassen like "the Stig" (helmets & gear on, in the snow..)

 

[Tim Tom]

Ok, I'm seeing it now. Two single coils and a humbucker. Interesting. I may need to look into a Stienberger and a 9v.

I tried out some of those travel guitars before I left, but was not impressed with the sound. They all sounded a bit weenie to me. Much better off in getting a cheap used electric something, move the electrics up a bit, and throw it on a bandsaw. It's smaller, still has volume and tone knobs, and 5 way selector switch, and was cheap enough that if something happens to it you don't really care.

I have some pics very similar to yours in Nor Cal. We did the ones in Lassen like "the Stig" (helmets & gear on, in the snow..)

I loved riding in Nor Cal. Some really great roads up there too. 89 and 299 were especially memorable. I believe I have a few Stig Style pics along route one somewhere. Lol Just didn't want to take the time to remove the gear, but the view was so good we needed to get a picture of it .

PS those mounting racks of yours worked like a treat for the Mermites! I got many compliments from guys either in the service who recognized the cans and thought it was brilliant, or BMW riders who wanted to know where they could buy them, because their $1200 Jessie Panniers were too small...

 

[Allie]

Glad you had such a great safe trip! Rest up, hope to catch you soon.

HSS is nice to have in a travel guitar. My 'teacher's special' only has the EMG - one setting, NASTY. Sounds good when you want overdrive though.

 

[salty_monk]

Glad the rack & Mermites worked out for you!

 

[Tim Tom]

Ride Report: Day 1

Ride Report: Day 1

Okay people. It's time for me to start putting our adventure into words before I forget too many of the good details and the days just run together into one looong ride . Hope you all enjoy the story, or at the very least some more pictures. With no further ado, here goes.

Day 0: The Preparation Story

The idea for this trip happened about a year ago. Kyle had come up to visit me at school and we went out to the pub. Of course we talked bikes. I brought up the crazy idea of riding to Alaska, he said he'd go with no hesitation... And the adventure bug bites... For the next year or so I saved up my money. Put aside 10 bucks here, 25 bucks there, skipped the little things, and over the course of a year had saved up about $1200 for our adventure. About 4 months before the trip, Kyle and I got down to looking at a map and realized just how far away Alaska is. 14,000 miles there and back, if we took the short way . Reality set in, and we revised the 'destination' to the west coast. Picked July 2nd as the day to leave, and went to work adventurizing our bikes. Kyle made his bags from some sheet steel and a welder, I made mine from Army Surplus Mermite cans. We bought a tent, dug out the camp cooking stuff from Dad's basement, and were ready to hit the road!

Before anyone asks I'll tell you what I carried. In the top tube was my sleeping pad and the Travel Ax guitar. In the right case I had my socket set, 10-in-1 screwdriver, tire plug kit, with very small compressor (thankfully didn't need it, but glad I had it all the same), my little netbook laptop, a freezer bag with misc electric chargers and things, the Fender Mini-Twin guitar amp, a drawstring bag of clothes, one towel, and a pair of flip flops.
In the left case I had a 7x12x5 plastic container with more tools, voltmeter, spare rear spline, some zip ties, box wrenches, pliers, wire cutters, spare wire, spare connectors and fuses, some JB weld, anti-seize, Loc-tite, and a few extra bolts. Also in the left case I had a spare RR and Stator, small hatchet, cooking gear, homemade stove using Heet and cat-food cans, peanut butter, honey, and bread.
The compression sack held my sleeping bag, long sleeve shirt, and rain gear.
The little tank bag carried the maps for the day, a bottle of water, cell phone, wallet, and swiss army knife, and some other odds and ends.

Kyle carried the tent, as well as his clothes, sleeping bag and rain gear. I was the pack mule for the trek .

My GS ready for adventure!!

Taken on the first day, at the first gas stop. It was so clean then...

Day 1: July 2, 2012

We hit the road around 8:30 am that day. Our destination for the day was our Aunt's house in Ebensburg PA, about 260 miles away. However one of our goals for the trip was to avoid major highways as much as possible, so after looking at the map we headed out towards Gettysburg. The traffic from our house until Gettysburg was pretty bad, lots of tourists there for 4th of July. We stopped in Gettysburg and had our lunch of PB&J, and couldn't wait to be on the other side of the town. It was really hot, and slow moving traffic in little towns was brutal. The little towns were actually very pretty, but growing up in the area I didn't appreciate the old Victorian houses and so didn't really take any good pictures of them. Too busy riding .

Kyle using the back of my bike as a table, it worked out really well as a table....

On the other side of Gettysburg was a different story. We had started climbing the mountains and were on some really fun roads. As the day wore on, the temperature dropped a bit into something more bearable, and he riding was very enjoyable. The little mountain roads of PA did us well and we rolled into Ebensburg around 4 pm.

Aunt and Cousins were excited to see us, and cooked up a fantastic dinner or grilled chicken and veggies.

Here is the rough route we took, I did not write down the exact road names for this day but this is the approximation.

We used paper maps to plan our trips, the google image is made after I got home as a documentation tool.

We rode a total of 265 miles on the first day, and it took us about 8 hours to do it. Not an impressive pace by any standards, but we made it there in one piece, ready to go the next day!


To be Continued....

 

[Tim Tom]

Ride Report Day 2

Ride Report Day 2

Day 2: July 3rd 2012

We left aunts house in the morning and headed west some more. Avoiding the local highways we stuck to little two lane roads and spend most of the day climbing mountains. If anyone is ever in PA, rt. 381 and rt. 21 are pretty awesome. They are little switchback roads that go up the mountain passes in the south-western part of the state. Of course they were just training for some real fun.

Our route dipped into West Virginia for about 30 miles along rt250. Holy crap that was a good road. Tight corners you could see through and a 55mph speed limit make for race-track esque fun. Trust me.

We crossed into Ohio around 1 pm, and picked up rt 78. Another fun road for you Ohio guys. Open corners, no nasty surprises, elevation changes, it was an absolute blast. Our skies started to grow pretty dark though, and we found an interesting place to pull over and put on the rain gear.

That is a GIANT steamshovel bucket. It is huge.

Really huge.

We got the rain gear on, and hit the road again. Rode for about 20 miles. It sprinkled a little bit then stopped. So we pulled off and removed the rain gear... 10 miles later we were caught in a serious down pour. Luckily we found an old gas station to take cover in, but we still got wet. Put the rain gear back on, and tried to ride through it. It was too much water. I couldn't see anything, and there were places with almost 6 inches of water on the ground . Pulled into a car dealership and waited it out.

Finally the rain let up and we continues west. Found a campsite for 9 bucks a night in the middle of the state in the flat boring part . Hit up the local grocer for some dinner supplies and cooked up a nice BBQ chicken and rice dinner. Went great with out 24 oz. Fosters.

Our route on day 2. Rode just over 300 miles. Getting better.

 

[Tim Tom]

Ok.... More Pictures for you all

Ok.... More Pictures for you all

So I have been less than stellar at writing up a ride report. As it turns out they are much more work that one may think. To remedy this problem, I will be sharing the abbreviated story with you, very much picture heavy. I hope you all find this satisfactory. Also I am quite sad to be back at work, and reliving my trip through pictures will have to tide me over till I can do another long ride. So without further ado here goes. I will be keeping the pictures in chronological order, and with some captioning should be able to illustrate my travels for you all.

Where we last left off we were camping out in Ohio...

We had the left the twisty part of Ohio yesterday (the south-east btw) and spent the day riding past flat farm after small town after more flat farms. That day was also was the start of both of my two mechanical issues.

About 90 miles from the campsite my R/R gave up the ghost. Luckily I was prepared for this, carrying a spare RR and stator, and it decided to break in a nice shady spot (it was at least 110 that day). An hour later and we were back on the road.

The second mechanical failure came about 90 miles after fixing the RR. I noticed a plethora of smoke coming from my engine! It was so hot, that the oil had been run incredibly thin, and was ****ing out of lots of places. Stopped in a Walmart parking lot and put in new oil which seemed to help. But the leak had sprung, and it would continue to leak for the next 2000 miles!

We made it out of Ohio, through Indiana, and found a campsite in Illinois near the border.

Not a bad view to fall asleep to. That day was by far the toughest of the trip though. Everything got easier after it, as we found our riding rhythm. Although we had not heard the last of that leak yet...


The next day was riding through more flat and boring stuff. We made it across Illinois by lunch time, and were pleasantly surprised by Misourri. The northern part of the state is fairly hilly, and has some very good sweeping turn roads. We were on Rt 50 for most of Missouri doing 75 mph on good fast sweepers. Heavenly compared to the flatness we endured through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois... I was having so much fun in fact that the only pictures I took of Missouri was near the border into Kansas. Opps.

This is Kyle's face about 10 miles from Kansas. He'd driven across it a few times, and was NOT looking forward to riding through it. I apologize to anyone here who is in Kansas, I do not mean to be rude, and your state did surprise us actually...

THIS was our campsite in Kansas!

Friggen A! A huge lake, with boats and wave runners, and incredibly nice people.

We took full advantage of this and went for a swim which after riding in the heat for 3 days was an unearthly sensation.

Our little mobile home at one of the best campsites of the trip. Who'd a thunk it would be in Kansas?? Not me for one.

To be continued.

 

[Tim Tom]

Continued

Continued

We woke up pretty early the next day, and were greeted with another gorgeous gift from our Kansas camp. The sunrise.

After this last beautiful image we spent the next day crossing the flats of Kansas. It was flat. And straight. And boring to ride. To make matters worse there was a 30 mph crosswind, that affected my much more because of the taller profile of the GS, an I often found myself thrown around on the road. Combined with the enormous turbulence from huge trucks going the other way, it did NOT make for a particularly fun day.

However at around 3 pm we had reached the CO border. With much celebrating.

We turned north and headed towards a friend of ours who lives in Denver. Luckily this put that annoying crosswind at out backs, and we were FLYING. Good thing too, because the sky had turned very dark, and there were active thunderstorms on both sides of the road. By some miracle the road stayed dry until we were about 20 miles from our destination. It is an unnerving feeling seeing two huge storms on both sides of you, and expecting them to converge on you, but somehow they never do. It was brilliant.

Our luck did run out though. A block from our friends house, there was a train crossing. We just missed making it across. It was one of those super long ones. Then it started to rain. Then the train stopped moving, still blocking the road!

It was a looooong train.

We found a way around the stopped train, and we happy for a nice hot shower.

The next day was a maintenance day. My rear tire was down to the wear bars, but I had acounted for this, and sent a tire ahead of me.

We got the tire on, did another oil change, and the next day were ready to cross the Rockies!

 

[Baatfam]

You brought a bowling ball on your trip?