A New Trip?

This page is all about the time between the Tale of TAT events and the Tale of GEAR events. It explains how we got ready for the GEAR trip. Below is a log that keeps track of the events.

So as you can see the trailing filter took an absolute beating. It is important for me to note that this may be slightly off since my bike was bought used and the filter had some more milage on it before the trip, but an extremely large majority of both filters lives were on the TAT trip. They are the original filters from the manufacturer, including the new filter. We went ahead and reinstalled the original filters because the old ones, despite how bad the trailing one looks, still kept every last speck of dust from getting into the engine. The channel behind the filter was spotless on every filter when we opened them up. That gives us a lot of faith in these filters.

Now lets move on to the last topic I have for todays post. We shortened my bike. Remember that issue where I couldn't reach the ground? It should no longer be a problem. We managed this lowering by using a lowering kit. It is surprisingly simple. It just changes the swing arm angle to make it less steep and hence lowers the middle of the bike closer to the ground. Of course, this messes up the triangulation (the balance of the bike from front to back) so you have to lower the front shocks too. It turns out the front shocks are able to move by sliding upwards through the frame towards the handlebars. By doing these two things, the bike is now about two inches lower than it started. Now listen, I know that a whole two inches might not sound like a lot. Think about this. I could only reach the ground with my toes. Now I can stand nearly flat-footed on the ground. This adjustment took me from fearing to stop because of dropping the bike to not thinking twice about it. It makes that much of a difference. I have only gotten to ride the bikes once since the fixing and lowering because we do not have the proper insurance and other similar documentation on it yet. We just needed to test the bike in a controlled parking lot to make sure it was good to go before spending the time and money re-obtaining the insurance. Already in this one 10 minutes session I have already built up far more confidence in stopping than I ever had on the TAT trip. Be sure to get your bike to fit you right even if it means delaying your trip. It is worth it.

With that, I have pretty much caught you up on everything to do with the bikes. During this time we made no progress on which trip we are going to do next. I will update you on this when we get the information. See you then.

As a note, I would like to say that the picture above is the first picture to ever be posted on this website. (UPDATE 02/11/19: I actually found 2 photos posted before this one on the Gear and Bikes page of the TAT trip. I had forgotten about them.) It made me realize that I never made the photo gallery for the TAT trip. Unfortunately, it will be extremely time consuming to do this the way I want to. It may be some time before it is completed given the site can even handle this many images. (UPDATE 12/15/18: I have discovered it will be difficult to do this. For right now I suspending this idea until I find some information on some of the technical bits needed to do this. This does not mean I am giving up on it, only that I need to figure out how and it might be awhile.)

-----

12/08/18 Hey. I have more news. Before that, it is really late. It is getting to the point that it is almost really early instead. I just figure out that it is 3 AM. But I figure out what I am going to put here and I have been meaning to do it for two days now so I am doing it dang it. So it is truly December 8th during this writing. The events in this post happened on the 6th. Now for the news. My Dad went down to the DMV and got the motorcycle documentation. You know, the title, registration, and inspection. The problem was it took him 5 hours to do it. Just sitting around for 5 hours. I got the following text later word for word: "You owe me one Son......5 hrs to get the Inspection/Title/Registration for you bike". He is obviously not impressed. Nevertheless, the work is done. I would have gone down and at least suffered through the 5 hours with him if it were not for my class scheduling and the time needed to get there and back just to sit for 5 hours.

I also realized that I have no idea how he got the bike there. It is actually recommended that you ride the bike to the DMV for processing as long as you are not ridding a long ways but I assume you are allowed to bring it in on a trailer as well. It is just the DMV parking lot is really small and not very ideal for unloading a heavy motorcycle by yourself. Either way, he figured that out too apparently.

The important thing to gather from this post is that my motorcycle is officially fixed and ready to go for the next trip. If you do not remember why it was broken in the first place, here is a quick sum up: Bike experienced some difficulties over the course of the TAT trip do to some rider errors and some unforeseen events. Trip ended. Bike was shipped home. When the bike arrived, the bike was taken to the shop for some work. Instead of getting worked on, the bike was declared totaled (despite being very rideable still). The insurance gave us two options: Total the bike and risk loosing some money by having the shop fix every scratch and dent or salvage the bike. We opted to salvage. The salvaging process involves selling/giving the bike to the insurance company. You then turn around and buy the same bike back from the company as a salvage title. This salvage title also comes with some bonus cash that you are supposed to use to fix the bike yourself and get it back on the road without having to use a bunch of money on paint jobs and similar stuff. Dad proceeds to fix bike while I am away and I work on it when I am back. Dad ends up doing a lot more than me due to the limited time I am home but Dad seemed happy to work on it. Dad finished up the bike and took it to the DMV. This posts events unfold. We have now completed the circle.

With that story wrapped up, info on the bikes is not likely to change unless we find some more parts or something. The rest of this page should be on things like possible trips and planning things out. Speaking of which, everything seems pretty stagnant at the moment due to how much we all have going on. We are still mainly thinking about the three trips from before: The Blast to Brazil, The North/South, and The Arctic Circle. Those are all described above. I am very tired. It is now 3:30 AM (for a 30 minute write here, although I am a little slower at the moment due to inconveniently wanting sleep and this post done at the same time which as you might imagine does not work out very well). See you in the next post.

-----

12/15/18 Hello again. So I intended to write this entry last night. Technically it is still the same night, the next day just started. It is 12:45 AM. So it is really early in the morning. Anyway, I was talking to Dad while we drove to town to play some racquetball. (Yes. We enjoy this. Racquetball is a sport entirely contained in a small room with a very speedy rubber ball and big racquets. I highly recommend looking that up if you haven't ever heard of it.) During this conversation Dad and I were discussing the new data chart system I have been working on for the trip. (That new system will make it much easier for me to enter data into the charts each day. Sometime I will make a big page about how that works.) I pointed out to Dad that I was concerned that going through time zones would really mess up the charts since the system I made is dependent on the time I enter into it. It is possible that the charts will always use the time zone that we start in. This means if we ever go far enough away it could be a different day at home than it is where I record the data. This skew in days would royally mess up the chart system. During this explanation he looked at me and said something about how we would not have to worry about the time zones for this next trip will be entirely in the same time zone. I caught this mention. I was not about to let that remark go without an explanation. He said "Well we are doing the east coast trip right?" I did not reply. He then explained the trip. He intended the North/South trip that I have explained here. He then asked me what else we were going to do. I said that I did not know. If we are being realistic here it would be pretty difficult to even make the distance to go to Brazil or to the Arctic Circle. Sure, I will make the bold statement that we could set out and probably make it to either place as long as we took a break once in a while to let ourselves recover. However, those two trips are going to take a lot of time. That is time that I will probably have over summer break from college. However, Dad just does not have this break. I mean he does have to work and all. His livelihood is rather important. He can't just go ditch work for 5 or 6 weeks at a time like that. (The TAT trip was pushing it honestly but we still had time to have a lot of great fun.) So our best bet on making another great trip is to take one where we know we can make the time comfortably and enjoy ourselves just like we did on the TAT. So the North/South trip is the way to do it. So with that one remark from Dad in the truck during a conversation about my chart system we are now pretty well dedicated to doing the North/South Trip. The trip will be the same idea as the description here. Head up north into Canada. Turn around. Head all the way down into the farthest point in Key West Florida. I will get a lot more specific of the trip once we take the time to sit down and study this trips details some more. I just don't want to say something and then have to correct it later. The tentative GPS route is similar to the BDR route I mentioned earlier. Specifically the MABDR (Mid-Atlantic Backroads Discovery Route). We might end up changing that later, though. The rest of the information about the trip will be released later once we sit down and really get into the nitty-gritty details of this trip.

Wait, I have one more thing for todays post. I know that I literally just said "I just don't want to say something and then have to correct it later" but this is important. I was looking through what I have written here and noticed that I may have lead to a misconception relating to the Blast to Brazil trip. There were actually two separate ideas of what this trip would entail. My idea was to fly the bikes down to Brazil, ride around in South America, and fly back. Dad's idea was to ride all the way down Middle America and end in Brazil (South America). I never formally clarified the differences, so there you have it. Either way, I do not think we have any intentions of following through with either of these ideas for at least this next trip. I just wanted to clear things up. Alright. Thats all. I will post those nitty-gritty details on the North/South trip soon like I said. Keep checking here for updates.

-----

12/26/18 - Hey again. So I have some cool news today. As of the last few days Dad has officially ordered the maps for the North/South Trip. Specifically, he got the GEAR Up and GEAR Down GPS maps. (GETTING LINK FOR THE GEAR MAPS) The plan for these is to very loosely follow these maps. We have no intention of strictly staying on the map unless things seem to be getting hard to navigate. The GPS chip is there to give us a strong guiding hand but we are allowing ourselves to wander off course a bit. I am unsure when these GPS chips will arrive, but they should be here sometime, probably later rather than sooner. Its on the snail mail.

The second topic for this update are the new tank bags for the bikes. For Christmas I received my cool tank bag. Dad already got one in secret and checked it out to make sure it was what we wanted. It is made by Mosko Moto and is called the Nomad. (Here is the link for that tank bag: https://moskomoto.com/products/nomad-tank-bag) It has a lot of really neat features, but before we get into them I want to point out that our old tank bags (Coleman Magnetic Motorcycle Tank Bag) did perfectly fine for us. The only issue was Dad somehow managed to loose one of the magnets out of his bag and it did not stick well enough anymore. I can personally tell you that the old tank bags can take a serious beating and still not only protect your stuff but also stay intact itself. Anyway, back to the new bag. The new bag is nicer in the fact that it has a lot of individual compartments that are specifically designed to hold certain things that you know you will be needing. A few things are pockets for pens and pencils, a pocket for sunglasses, and a specific holder just for contact solution and cleaner (as in the little plastic things that work like glasses). You can pretty much remove anything you do not want in it or at least collapse it so it is out of the way. It is also separated into several different sections. There is the "Beaver Flap" that is right on top and is made for quick and easy access on the fly. Then there are other pockets, each of which has different types of mesh or solid fabric pockets. The entire top of the Beaver Flap is covered in MOLLE attachments. (MOLLE is a series of modular loops that a crazy amount of stuff can be affixed to.) We have an attachment that has a clear face that is big enough to fit an entire iPad into if we want. I will probably stick my phone and other things I will like to see in the top of it. If all of this was not enough, the entire rig can be removed from the bike and converted right into a backpack by adjusting some straps and then stuck right back on the bike later. The last feature it has is arguably the most important thing on the entire tank bag. It can store water. Thats right, we should not have to take any CamelPaks or other similar water carrying backpacks with us anymore. This tank bag has a bladder that stores water and has a little mouthpiece just like our backpack style water carriers do. For those who have never used a water source, the backpack weighs a lot and makes your back incredibly hot by blocking the wind from flowing through the protective jacket and also by simply laying on your back all the time. By having the pack inside the tank bag we eliminate these issues without forfeiting our valuable water source.

I also got a set of heated hand grips for Christmas. Dad had not tested these yet, but he had apparently done a lot of research to figure out which ones to get while I was at college doing that stuff and making this site better. So, in our own ways, we were both figuring out the next trip. We installed both the tank bags and the heated grips today. The bags were easy. The grips had a little more work involved due to the gluing of the grips and the wiring. Dad and I watched a quick YouTube video to make sure we were doing this right and discovered a really cool trick for getting grips off. You can take a small nozzle and push it into the end of the grip from an air compressor. The air will expand the rubber grip, removing it from the glue that holds it and making it really easy to remove them with very little effort and no cutting. It worked great. Here is the YouTube video if you want to see it: (I AM GETTING IT, PLEASE CHECK BACK LATER. SORRY). Once we got both bikes rigged up we checked everything out and have decided that we should probably re-glue my grips as they did not set properly and are going to slowly slide around when I use them. That is a project for another day as we were both hungry.

The last thing for this update is the newly thought out trip plans. They are still vague, but have at least been narrowed to a trip and a few general time schemes. The plan is to head out sometime in the spring to do the southern part of the GEAR loop. From this point we have two options. The GEAR loop just so happens to pass relatively close by to home. We can stop in between doing the southern loop and the northern. This means we can stay at home for a little while and rest up, or do whatever needs done like work or other things, before we continue up the the northern part of the trial later in the summer. By doing the southern loop in the spring we avoid the crazy heats of the southern summer. By doing the northern loop in the summer we avoid the spring chilliness of the north. It works out all the way around. Now the only issue is figuring out what we are going to be doing around that time and plan the trip in.

That pretty well catches you all back up to speed. I will post here again whenever new things come about.

-----

12/30/18 Alright. I am back again. Today I have something different. I do not have any new information about the next trip, but Dad and I both went out for a ride today. This ride was to test some things that we had done such as the heated hand grips, seeing if my grips would stay in place with the new glue, and Dads "new" windshield. Dad cut his gigantic windshield up so that now it is the size of the original windshield we got with the bikes. So now it looks a little strange to us because of how short it is in comparison to what it was, but we think it is going to work. Dad also tweaked his clutch around to make it better for him to use and wants to make sure that it was not going to slip. The plan was to head out and go to the store to get Dad a racquetball racquet and then head court to play some racquetball. After that maybe we would head home and maybe get something to eat. We would take the bikes and test these changes out on the way. The ride took a big turn from these plans. This was such a series of events that I am going to write about it here. So we started out in the right direction by going to get Dad's racquet. We got to the store and rolled in without changing clothes. So here we are in a Dunhams (sports store) just waltzing around in three layers of clothes and helmet hair. Nobody really seemed to care about our appearance or at least they did not mention it. Then we rolled out to go play racquetball. That is where things went awry. We went up to the door to get in and found them locked, still in our riding clothes. We noticed there were people running around inside and lights on. We tried every door on the place and found them all locked. After some inspection we found the place was closed on Sundays during the winter. This did not really add up since there were people inside, but we assumed the people had somehow gotten a gig with the owners to practice inside the building. So we packed up our racquets in the back bag of Dad's bike and rolled out to take the long way back, a nice 45 minute ride, just to get a trip out of it since we did not get to play racquetball. Dad set his GPS on a Garmin Adventure route. (Garmin Adventure routes are basically GPS intentionally doing a slower route that is more curvy and hilly just to make it more interesting for motorcycles. Pretty cool really most of the time.) So we ended up on a nice and curvy paved road. We were enjoying that one. My olny issue was my knobby tires sounded like a Light Saber from Star Wars becuase the tires are quite when I am in a turn but get very noisy when I cross over the center of the tire, resulting in the iconic "werm" noise. After a while, the GPS told us to turn off onto a gravel road. It looked pretty well maintained. Sure, we can do that. After that we discovered that the road the GPS wanted us to turn onto did not exist. So we continued on the gravel. We found the second road did not exist either. So we were stuck with the road we were on. After some thorough wondering and a short accidental trip through a cemetery loop next to a church we ended up finding ourselves exactly where we started, meaning we did a really big circle and had made it nowhere. We tried again. We somehow ended back up at the same intersection. We stopped and figured out our own way out using the GPS map but without using any of the routing systems. We discovered a path and went for it. After we got to the road we picked and ignored the GPS, we went along for awhile without any issue. Then we got to this one intersection that the GPS wanted us to go one way, but neither option looked very good. So we just followed the GPS. The road quickly went from gravel to path. It turned into a place that they had to mark the path on trees with those little metal diamonds so they could find it again and we knew we were in trouble. We found a whole bunch of mud and watery holes. Note that Dad only had on his street tires (90/10's to be precise). Those tires led to a spectacle of sliding and nervous yells through the comms that I found quite hilarious as I sat comfortably on my knobby tires. After a while, Dad got stuck in a mud-hole. He couldn't get out. So here I am watching Dad wail on the throttle and getting nowhere while trying to figure out how to somehow help his sad situation when suddenly two dudes on fourwheelers come rolling up from the opposite direction we were headed. I wish I had a video of their faces. Here we are in all our glory. One fellow sitting on what appears to be a nice street bike with street tires stuck axle deep in mud in the middle of nowhere while some skinny kid sits on an almost identical bike with knobby tires just reeling in the situation. They had no idea what to think of that and their faces showed it. So they just did what I was doing, sit and watch. Eventually I gave up trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing to help this and just asked Dad. He did not give me any helpful instruction, presumably because he did not know either, so I asked him if he wanted me to just give him an push. He said sure, which is his way of saying "I do not really know, but it is worth a go at least." Then I nearly made the dreadful mistake of standing right behind the rear tire. My fourwheeler instincts told me to move as the spray from the sinning tire was about the blast me. At this point the two fourwheeler guys kinda looked around trying to find a way to help. One got off and kinda stood there awkwardly for the lack of any ideas to help. The other just sat and listened to his onboard radio to avoid the awkward situation. I don't blame the standing guy or radio guy either one. So eventually Dad and I realize that going forward in this mud-hole is not going to be an option because there is a large pipe that cuts across the middle of it. This pipe prevents the bike from getting enough momentum to be able to get out. Before making a decision, Dad asked the fourwheeler guys what was on the rest of the trial. There was only abut a mile left anyway. How bad could it be? One of the guys told us that there was a big rocky cliff we would have a hard time with. We did not know what he thought was a hard time for us, remember he probably did not see us as very skilled in this current situation, so we just took his word for it. We just nudged the bike until it was at about 90 degrees to the road and the front tire was finally out of the mud-hole. Dad then used the clutch to gently spin the rear tire so we could turn it almost all the way around and I gave Dad a little boost by yanking on the pull bar to get his back tire out of the rut. He was free! Just like a muddy eagle on a bobsled sliding down the hill. Anyway, he rolled down the hill a ways and started back up to help me turn my bike around. While he was doing that I looked back at the two fourwheeler dudes. The one who got off had returned to his seat and the radio guy was still listening to his scratchy music. I kinda looked at them and they caught on that I was trying to let them by. As I expected, they plopped in the pit, easily road through, and continued on. We thanked them for the help (basically the information and some energy via embarrassment). The two guys left and Dad quickly turned my bike around. It was a lot easier since it was not stuck in a mud-hole. Dad took my bike for about 20 yards down to where he stopped. In that short distance he remarked how much easier mine was to ride with the knobby tires and shorter height. The tires are an obvious benefit in the mud and the shorter height makes it a little more responsive. (This is presumably why those super bikes that go really fast on the paved circuits are so short. They need that quick turning time and low center of gravity to stay moving at those speeds and turns that sharp.) After that, it was just a matter of getting back out of there. When we finally did get back out we ended up going the opposite way from before at that intersection where neither option looked good. It turns out that this option is a much better road that is a connector to a bunch of other stuff. Essentially, it is really easy to ride so everyone can get from place to place. We then found the fourwheeler guys again. With no shame in furthering our own humiliation Dad asked what the fastest way out to the highway was. They cracked a smile but they were good to us. They told us to just stay on this trial until we found the pavement and then take a right to get to the highway. We thanked them again and they headed off down some hairy looking trial that both Dad and I would love on a fourwheeler but would not dream of on these bikes. After some more creek crossings (I did not mention these before, but there were a total of 7 creek crossings, one of which was pretty deep, none of which gave us any issues) we ended up on some greasy hill. Well I have learned from experience that for some reason Dad has particularly bad luck with greasy hills (like that one on Virginia on the TAT trip for example) and that right now his odds were even lower due to his slippery street tires. So I rolled way over to the left side of the road to give him a lot of space. He started up. He immediately began a spectacular balancing act that I was almost certain was a loosing battle. He even told me to go around, which is good because I was already doing that to save myself. Somehow by some coordination and a lot of effort he actually kept the rubber side down and made it up that greasy hill. I have to give him credit here, that was not an easy task even with my knobby tires and he did pretty well with it on his street tires. After that we finally made it up and out of that hollow and onto the foretold pavement. Dad checked the GPS map manually to be sure we were headed the right way. We were. GPS actually got that one right. We rolled out of there and down to the highway. On the way back we got stopped at this reconstruction site. You see, the highway is right along a big river on the outside of the river bend on one side and the other is a big hillside so steep it is basically a cliff. That means the hillside really wants to flow over the road and into the river as the river eats away at the dirt underneath the road. The result is a road collapse so big they have to shut down one side of the road and alternate the flow of traffic through with a stoplight system. When it was our turn to go, we rolled through and found, of all people, my grandparents, which I would later discover had just left our house after finding out that we were not there due to our much extended motorcycle excursion. So now I had that to explain. At least they are great and forgiving people. But first, a more important issue. For quite a while now Dad and I had been trying to find a way to the gas station to get some more gas. It was now to the point that both of our gas lights were flashing at us like that time in New Mexico on the TAT. If there is one thing that we learned from that New Mexico incident it was exactly how far you could push an empty tank on these bikes and still make it to the station (which is roughly 230 miles between full tanks). If that knowledge held up we would make it with some gas to spare. We did make it. I had nearly .8 gallons left in the tank, which would have gotten me another 40 miles or so. We were fine. So we took the quick ride back home, chucked the bikes in the garage, and went to eat Mexican food as we had intended to eat about 3 hours ago when we were supposed to get back. We did not get wash the bikes. We will have to do that tomorrow. However, we did take out the racquetball racquets, the racquetballs, and our shoes from the back of Dad's bike from the failed trip to the courts before heading inside. As far as for the stuff we were testing, I think we got a pretty good testing in. My hand grips stayed in place. The heated grips work really well and are wonderful. Dad's shortened windshield is a little too short now on the highway as the wind hits him right in the forehead but it is really nice to be able to see over it in technical situations. Dad's clutch worked really well with his new tweaks. We also discovered that street tires do a surprisingly well on the mud if you can get past the bobsledding motion of it. Those 90/10 tires earned every bit of there 10% of dirt mobility. We also figure out that riding on gravel is in fact easier is some situations if you go faster as some cool guys name Terry, John, and Walker tried to tell us, and that Dad has figured out how to conquer a greasy hill. So there you have it. Our wondrous and unexpected trip from closed building to muddy fourwheeler paths and possibly grouchy grandparents. I hope you enjoyed it because, believe it or not, we did. I will post here whenever I get something to write about. See you then.

-----

01/01/19 Happy New Year! Hey there. Welcome to 2019. I have some new information for you. It will not be a long post, but I will catch you up. After discovering the slippery bobsled feeling of his tires on the last trip Dad wanted to change his tires over. This is a pretty common occurrence, but this is the first time that I have been able to use Dad's fancy new tire pullers. They are made by Motion Pro and are called the Heavy Duty BeadPro FS pullers. I did not know what FS stood for and asked Dad. He jokingly said "Finger-Smashers". It actually stands for Forged Steel. Anyway these tire pullers are great. They are particularly big, but that is what makes them work so well. They are shaped differently from other pullers and have a unique method of use that seems to be effective. Check them out. If you are worried about the size, so were we. We got told by a big fellow at the end of the Tail of the Dragon on the TAT to just get a big pair and make a spot for them regardless of the size. They are worth it. We did not believe him until we got a pair and tried them out. It is great. He was right. That is really all I have for you today. Just check those out. They are worth it. Here is the link directly to the Motion Pro website: https://www.motionpro.com/product/08-0536

Oh, and for the record we did wash the bikes today.

-----

01/14/19 Before I get into this I need to explain that this post is quite late and should have been written within a day or so of the last post. I had it in my head that I had already written this. I supposed better late than never.

So the maps for the GEAR Up and Down loops showed up. They are the same style maps as before: the big set of full size paper maps (around printer paper size, or 8.5x11) and the smaller index cards that show each section of the map. I have not got to see the GPS map yet, but I imagine it is also the same with no direct GPS instructions and instead points on the map that you just have to find your way to. In all honesty I do not know what would be better as far as GPS instruction goes. In one hand you have easy path following and you can just enjoy the ride without worrying about where you are going or watching for the turn. In the other you have the constant nagging of the GPS voice while you are trying to ride. I still can't here the GPS instructions through the comms anyway. I personally think the waypoint system with no GPS is far more efficient since I imagine it does not take up near as much data on a chip (just points, not entire lines for the roads) and the roads are very likely to change anyway when riders get there. The waypoint system allows the riders to take a different approach if need be than a specific route by GPS. Plus the waypoint system gives the ride a sense of freedom. You want to go look at that thing? Go ahead. The GPS isn't going to start blasting you with U-Turn commands and reroutes.

Other than that I do not have much more to talk about. It might be awhile between posts for now due to limited contacts between Dad and I due to school and work. See you in the next post.

-----

01/23/19 Hello there again. I do not have any new information about the trip. I just wanted to let you know that we are basically waiting until the trip gets closer now. It is kind of hard to determine how long you need to prepare when you start planning. Since we already have a lot of the stuff from the last trip it did not take us near as long to get ready. Now we just have to wait for the trip to get closer so those things that we know we are missing right now will finally be noticed and we scramble to get it all done. So yea. The site is not dead. I am still here. But for now, I guess the site is in a kind of hibernation.

Nope. So right after typing that I decided to go ahead and make it official. We are doing the GEAR Up and GEAR Down trips. I will collectively be calling this the Tale of GEAR. I am releasing the new trip log and data page for the Tale of GEAR. This marks the day when I consider this trip officially happening (for no apparent reason other than I do not see any reason that we would not go anymore). Thats all I have for you. If you want to check out those pages just use the navigation to use the new Tale of GEAR tab that replaced the "Tale of a New Trip?" tab. Alright. NOW the site is going into hibernation until the next post at least. See you then.

-----

02/06/19 So quick disturbance in the hibernation period of the site. I don't know, the site got hungry or something and woke up for a bit. Long story short, we now have a tentative plan on the trip. The concept is to ride the southern part first during the late spring and then ride the northern part in the early/mid-summer. We planned it like this strictly because of scheduling issues and, more importantly, the weather. The south gets pretty hot in the summer if you haven't noticed. We want to avoid that. The north is pretty rainy and cold in the spring sometimes. We want to avoid that too. So there is a simple solution: Do the routes when the weather is good. It happens to be that our schedules and the weather should somewhat line up if we do the trip this way since the spring won't be as hot for the southern part and the summer would be more comfortable for the northern part. So if we play our cards right we can do both parts when the weather is more comfortable (we hope). Also, there are some small things that I noticed that I have not really stated yet. 1) We do not plan to camp in a tent on this trip. This will save us a lot of weight and storage space and also make us feel better since we will be able to sleep well. 2) We still are not sure if we will do the trip in two sections at different times, do a quick pit stop at home for a couple days or a week between the two loops, or if we will just do the whole trip in one go without returning home. Honestly I think that decision will have to be made while we are on the trip as we do not have a good way of truly predicting Dad's work schedule. 3) We have tried out those heated hand grips. They are spectacular and totally worth whatever criticism you might get for whatever reason.

Before I allow this site to return to the hibernation, I want to do a quick catch-up on some stuff we have been testing out. Dad and I still have not tried the new tires. We do not plan to touch these tires until we are just about to leave on the trip to maximize there lifespan for the trip. Dad did ride my bike around a little now that we shortened it and he does like the new height. He says it makes it feel a lot more stable and responsive in technical stuff. (I agree with that.) He might end up lowering his too. I have discovered that a pair of racquetball glasses we use for eye protection (as dad is a loose cannon over there) work amazingly well as motorcycle glasses. They are actually just general safety glasses, but they are made for a hard hat type setup. They are really light and they grip your head gently with very bendy ear pieces. These traits make it great for racquetball, but they are perfect for riding motorcycles as well. They offer a full eye coverage, meaning that even at 55 mph (88.51 kph) or so you can have the shield up and not have any issues with the wind blinding your eyesight. The flexible earpieces form to the shape of the helmet and your head so that they do not made your ears or temples hurt from helmet pressure. They do not poke into your skin on impacts (from what I can tell without crashing). The nose piece is made so that it protects the wearer from having the glasses shoved up their nose on impact (potentially and issue with wind gusts before) and also made so that the nosepiece can't be pushed far enough back to irritate the eye. The lightweight nature and perfectly clear lenses makes it almost like you don't even have the glasses on at all. I had to check 2 or 3 times to make sure they were still on my face. How much did they cost? $10 for 3 of them. The only issue I have with them is they do not have any tinting at all, meaning when the sun is rising or setting it is really blinding. I really want to see if there is a market for making this type of eye protection but with auto-tint technology so that you could wear them any time, anywhere and not have to worry about a thing. I am sure it has already been done because Dad has a pair. However, with the design I have in mind I think I could improve on Dad's glasses and sell those instead.

Alright. That's all I have for you right now. The site is tired and is going back into hibernation for the winter. See you later.

02/24/19 We have gotten close enough to the trip to be able to plan a little more. We will most likely do the trip in two sections. This would involve the same south-in-spring and north-in-summer method described before. The southern trip will follow the trail for the most part on the way down . However, when we head back up north we have noticed a lot of interstate or similar roads. We are trying to find a way that is a little more curvy for the way back up. Something that is more fun than an interstate but still gets us back home quickly. For the northern trip we have discovered a complication. There is a ferry that takes us across a large gap from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland. We find it is really expensive to use this ferry, it is 350 miles of boating, it takes 16 hours, and it only runs 3 days a week. However, there is a second ferry that is much cheaper, is much shorter, takes around 6 or 7 hours, and runs every day twice a day. The difference is that the short one takes you to the western side of Newfoundland and the longer takes you to the east side. (Newfoundland is a sort of giant peninsula). We want to be on the east side (the side closest to the Atlantic Ocean). So by taking the shorter ride to the west side we are going to have to ride the rest of the way to the east side. Since we are taking the trip to ride our bikes anyway we decided that this was not an issue. So thats the plan.

Now that the general plans have been covered, lets cover some new things and gizmos. So I was having an issue with my new shorter kickstand where the foot was too small and it would poke into the ground. Dad just so happened to finally give in and buy a new welder. This welder can also weld aluminum. So Dad found some free time and welded up a duck foot for the shorter kickstand out of some aluminum plate we had lying around from the dirt track racing days (that's another story). The foot now has a lot more surface area. The only issue is the larger surface area also means a bigger chance of the kickstand smashing your foot when you take it off the center stand. You just have to watch out for it. I don't know if I confirmed it yet, but Dad did in fact lower his bike down to about the same height as mine. He had to get a shorter kickstand. Well, since he got the new welder he didn't have to. He was able to cut a chunk out of his old stand and weld the the stand back together without the chunk with some aluminum chunks as bracing. He pointed it out to me and asked what I thought. I couldn't tell the differences. He had to explain to me what he did to the kickstand before I could see the difference. It is not a perfectly smooth weld but the paint he used hid a lot of the scratches and bumps from his welds. Very good work. Dad has also been busy shopping online. He got a SPOT Gen 3 satellite emergency locator on eBay for a steal of $35. They usually cost $150. I asked him what was wrong with it. He replied that nothing was wrong at all. The seller just wanted rid of it and did not set a high price for bid. With a payment for the global positioning services it will work just like any other new versions. In all honesty, we should have had this button on the TAT trip, but we did not have time to get it and it seemed trivial to get one. Now they we have been through the ringer on the first trip we have decided it might not be that bad of an idea. So here we are. That pretty much catches things back up to date. I will write more. The site is still in hibernation, but things are stirring. Something may happen soon.

03/03/19 Alright. So somehow it is already March and time has flown by in what feels like minutes. This is an update as to what is going on right now. So the plans are pretty well set. If you know anything about taking motorcycle trips or if you read the TAT log you know that very little of this is actually going to go to plan. You might also think that with the information that I have listed on the site that we are very loosely planning this trip. You would be right. Instead of getting every little thing down like we tried to do on the first trip we just got the basics and the rest will take care of itself as it inevitably did on the TAT trip. The "basics" are things like knowing where gas stations are and knowing generally where fuel up (especially up north), finding some general transportation across things like the shorter ferry ride I wrote about here, and finding some general ideas of what we are looking to be riding, such as one road in the middle of nowhere that is around 2 days worth of nothing but a gravel road, which is fine by us. (This particular gravel road is supposedly very wide and so remote that they actually give you a GPS spotter that you push if you are in trouble and help will come get you. You return the spotter at the end of the road. This unit will likely be used on top of the spotter we already purchased since they really want us to have their's too while on this road. Also we will need to carry extra gasoline here since we would be really pushing the bikes, probably literally, since there are no gas stations there.) Dad is searching around for all kinds of nooks and crannies for this trip and have found far more issues with the trip north than the trip south due mostly by lack of human population in the north and therefore a lack of stuff we need to ride. He has already come up with many solutions and revised a bunch of them when new problems arise.

On a more physical and immediate side of things Dad purchased a huge 40L bag from Mosko Motto, the same people the panniers came from. This thing is basically where we are going to stick most everything we need to take with us that takes up a lot of space, like a tent. Speaking of which, Dad bought a small bag for the tent poles to replace the one lost to a hole being burnt into it by a tire on Engineer Pass (true story). It turns out that the tent pole bag was not needed because, much to our surprise, the 40L bag comes with an attachment just to hold the tent poles. Yet again, Mosko Motto's product was a wallet emptier, but we think it is well worth it. These bags are rated to survive brutal falls like the one I took in Oklahoma on the TAT trip that sent my poor top bag flying and mashed up a bunch of stuff (also true story). The bags we had before were fine, but we think Mosko Motto's durable system of how they attach the bags, particularly how secure they are while you are moving but also the easy removal of the bags themselves when you are stopped, makes them a much better option for trips as long as the TAT and the GEAR. For shorter week or two week trips our old bags would work wonderfully, especially if you were not in a hurry on the trip. Dad also realized a particularly troublesome issue. He has a really hard time getting the bike on the center stand with the new bags on it, even when the bags are empty. He noticed the biggest issue is not really the weight of the bags. Instead, it revolves around lowering the bikes. He shortened the side stands but not the center stands. This means the bike has a lot more leverage and needs to be lifted a lot farther to get it on the center stand since the bike stands lower to the ground. This also means adding just a little bit of weight feels like a lot due to the leverage. Dad thinks he can pretty easily shorten the center stands to make them more usable (via cut 'n' weld) but at the same time he worries about making them worthless by making them so short they do not lift a tire off the ground. I was no help to this situation as he had already thought of everything I could think of to fix the problem. For those wondering why we don't just take the center stands off, the center stand is very, very useful. It is useful for parking, but more importantly for working on the bikes. The center stand acts like a built-in floor jack that lifts the bike off the ground and allows for easier working conditions. We really don't want to loose the center stand for these repairing and maintenance purposes. But for now we have no solutions to the heavy center stand lifts. We will have to see what comes out of this one.

That pretty well sums up the post. I will write more when more news comes. Until then, keep it cool.

Wait! I forgot! There is a big thing I need to chuck into this update before I forget again. We are going to camp on this trip. Somewhere in this post I said we do not plan to camp much. This was before we realized that a huge part of the trip has a large distance between towns. We might not make it do to whatever the trip throws at us. So the solution is to bring the camping stuff. That's it. Happy camping for us. Hilarious and completely unpredictable camping issues for you to read. Great fun for us all.

-----

03/30/19 Alright. So today I have a story to tell as well as a review of some new stuff mixed in there. So let's get straight to it.

Today Dad and I went out with a plan to see some covered bridges and to ride around on the bikes. The covered bridges really are not the idea here, it is more to just get some riding and testing in, but the covered bridges are a cool way to get a goal and destination in mind. For those who are unfamiliar, covered bridges are usually wooden vehicle bridges that span a gap of some sort, usually a water source, are usually short in length, and of course have a roof that covers the whole bridge. They are somewhat famous here in West Virginia since they were a technological feat when they were first made. Keep in mind that it was around the 1820's for a lot of the bridges and it was very difficult to get a bridge to be stable with the techniques available, especially one with a roof, yet many were designed and built despite this. The ones that are still standing today are either preserved and only accessible on foot or are maintain and still used by traffic. Anyway, we got all our clothes on after some breakfast and rolled out.

So the first thing of interest was actually on the way to the first bridge. We saw this camper that had apparently suffered an engine fire and had the entire front section of the camper burnt off. We do not know why the guy still had it sitting in his yard. Next up, we have one of the most odd events of the entire day. So we are flying down the interstate trying to get to where our backroad route starts when Dad just so happens to look at a car parked off the side of the road. He thought the car was just parked there but he took a second look just to make sure there was not some person needing help there. He then sees the shocker. There is a dude standing beside his car. Normal so far, right? Well here is the catch. This dude has no pants on. No pants. No underwear. Nothing on at all. Dad literally sees this dude's bare bottom hanging out as he drives by on the interstate. It gets weirder. He still has a shirt on, so it isn't like he just didn't have clothes. To make matters worse, he is just standing at the back door of his car, with the door open, looking into the car from the outside. This means that even if he was trying to pee and just dropped his pants to do it he would still be peeing directly into the back seat of his car. In any scenario described or not I would think the guy would at least do it from the other side of the car where his rear end is not hanging out for all of traffic to see. So just try and get a good explanation here. I had also looked at the car briefly but once I noticed it was not moving I redirected my attention elsewhere and so I missed the dude, which I am not upset about. Anyway, after that extremely odd event happened we were driving on a country road to get to the first bridge and I saw a black lifted truck parked beside a house that was perfectly normal except for the fact the the entire front left tire had been mashed entirely into the fender well behind it. It was like the tire hit a fire hydrant or something. Quite honestly I would like to know the story on that one. Then, at last, we finally got to the first bridge. This one was arguably the coolest. I don't know if you have ever ridden old wooden rollercoasters, but there is a distinctive noise when the coaster gets to the top and the chain ratchet blasts through the last few spots in a loud clacking noise. That noise is what driving across this thing sounded like. The boards were all a little loose so that they slapped down with a woody clap every time your tire would touch on of them. The boards were laid across the width of the bridge, not the length, meaning that there were a whole lot of loose slappy boards to hit instead of a few. If you road behind somebody you could see a wave of boards move as the tire of the bike bent the boards down in series. It was fascinating. We took a picture of ourselves by sticking a phone camera on a low tree branch with a delay timer, running into position, and waiting for it to take our photo. We did that same process of planting the phone somewhere for a picture for each and every covered bridge we came across. Somewhere between the first and third bridge we found what appeared to be a dandy section of the road that basically dropped right into a very shallow creek and drove right up the creek for a ways. We could see the other side. It looked fine once you made it up the creek. So we just followed it right up the creek and out. The other bridges were all the same idea as the first except they all lacked the wonderful slappy boards of the first bridge. At one bridge a fellow came over ho apparently also rides and tried to give us a bunch of directions. We listened to him to be nice and held a conversation, which was genuinely interesting but not particularly useful information, but we had already planned the route and wanted to do it. While we talked to this guy, a second odd occurrence happened. So a dog was chasing a side-by-side (AKA buggy, OHV, tiny jeep, etc) up the road. The side-by-side lost the dog. The dog sees us talking. It apparently had nothing else to do so it wandered across the bridge to us. I watched it for a bit. It did not approach us. Eventually, I deduced it was harmless and let it over with a pat on my leg. It happily trotted over and stuck its head under my hand in a successful attempt to get pats. In the middle of this conversation with the guy the dog walks over, sniffs the guys pants at his ankles, cocks its leg, and pees right on this guys leg. I don't think the guy even owned the dog. Somehow the guy did not notice this act by the dog, maybe because his pants soaked it the urine, or maybe he just didn't care. I later figured out that Dad had not seen this either. So Dad saw a naked guy on the interstate and I saw a dog pee on a mans leg and get away with it. I think I made out better honestly. Somewhere around this time we went into a small town and got a bite to eat at a place that had a name along the line of "Mama's Too" that was, you guessed it, a mom and pop kind of place. (Actually the daughter was running it but the point still stands.) Dad and I both had the special, ham with mashed potatoes, white gravy, green beans, macaroni salad, crackers, rolls, and butter. It was all good stuff. After that we found a paved covered bridge. It is actually still used very heavily by the local traffic. They had to put a sprinkler system in it and pave the bridge, but otherwise it is still a covered bridge. It is exceptionally long, about triple the length of the first bridge even as the first bridge was decently lengthy itself. While we were hear the wind blew my glove off the seat. No big deal. The problem is that my glove had my earplugs sitting on top of it and they are now on the ground somewhere. They are marbled grey and black. The ground is grey gravel. These things are literally camouflaged into the ground. So we start searching for the EarPeace earplugs. By the way, I really like the EarPeace earplugs. They are new to both Dad and I. Basically, you can change how much sound they block out and what type of sound based on what core you put into the middle of the earplug. The earplugs are designed for helmet use so that they do not make your ears hurt after you wear them for awhile. They come with a little can that you can put them in when you are not using them that just hooks on to whatever strap you want on your bags. You can get some that can play music and possibly play your communication comms between riders as well, although we just got the noise reduction kind instead. (Here is a link to the EarPeace site and the ones we got: https://www.earpeace.com/products/motorcycle-ear-plugs?variant=40836255236 .) After we finally found the hidden earplugs on the ground, we went ahead and crossed over the bridge with plans of turning around and going back so we could head on home before it got dark outside. This was interrupted once we got across by trying to do a u-turn in a Sheetz gas station, realizing they had a bathroom, and eating some Buckeye candies (soft caramel with a soft but also solid white cream center). Once that detour was over, we headed home. On the way there we accidentally found another covered bridge. We couldn't ride across it, but we still took our picture with it after being interrupted by 3 semi trucks in a row by using the timer camera method and a dirt hillside with roots and rocks on it. When we were making progress towards home the GPS route said it would take about 30 minutes to get back, just in time to get back before dark. Well, that didn't happen. GPS was trying to get us to out some sketchy roads that we did not want to do this close to dark. We found the quickest easy way back with some gravel and pavement and headed forwards. This would set us back a little over the sketchy roads, but it was worth it. We then came across a whole bunch of Marcellus Shale oil rigs. Marcellus is a style of deep oil drilling that produces valuable oils for manufacturing purposes using huge concrete pads, massive drilling rigs, and hundreds of tanker trucks. It is a big deal here. Lots of controversy about things I am not explaining here for the sake of time. So we come across one of the truck routes. They sometimes block you from entering a section of a road for a bit so the massive truck can wiggle it's way down the skinny road without having to back up or wait for cars to somehow pass them (or back up all the way down to the bottom). We got caught in this scenario. We thought about turning back, but the lady working the stop/slow sign assured us this was the fastest route even with the wait. So after the truck found its way down we headed off. The rest of the ride home was about missing these trucks, potholes, and possible delays. We flew down backroads. A lot of backroads have speed limits that are crazy for cars but fine for agile motorcycles. It did get dark on us. The temperature (which was previously a very unexpected 70 degrees at this time of year) dropped quickly. We eventually made it back to the house after lots of headlight complaints (our headlights are apparently a little high even on the lowest setting) and realized how bad we are going to hurt tomorrow after bout 12 hours of riding today. That is going t be rough. I guess we will see about that then.

Overall, the trip today was a fun one. However, we still learned a lot about our new stuff. The most obvious thing is the need to adjust the headlights, which may be caused by having the back of the bikes squatting down a little farther than usual due to the new gear having different weight layouts than the old gear. The new gear is the bags from Mosko Motto (side bags and top bag), the EarPeace earplugs, the new tank bags also from Mosko Motto, the shorter height of the bikes, my new duck foot, Dad's new helmet, and Dad's new transitioning sunglasses. I will give each a quick overview.

Mosko Motto Sidebags and Topbag: These work incredibly well from what I gathered today. They have a lot of handy features that make them very useful (too many to list here). The straps can be tied back using the velcro straps that come on the bag. There is a place for abut everything you would want to take. They are great. (The following two links are for the sidebags and topbags we have. Sidebags:

The EarPeace earplugs: I already talked a little about these on this post, but these things work great. You can adjust how much sound they reduce and what kinds of sound by getting different cores for the earplugs. You can get some that play music or maybe have comms between the people in your group if connected to other devices. They come in their own little water proof container with a spare plug holder built right in in case you lose one. The best thing is that they do reduce the noise well but do not make your ears hurt when you where them for awhile. The only problem is if you drop one it can be very hard to find it.

Tank Bags: These things are also great for the same reasons as the Sidebags and Topbags. They are also made by Mosko Motto. Super handy. Very nice. Durable. No chance it is falling off. It also holds water that you can drink like a CamelBak, although we have not testing that function yet. (Here is a link to Mosko Motto's site where they sell the tank bags: https://moskomoto.com/collections/motorcycle-tank-bags/products/nomad-tank-bag .)

Shorter bike heights: I have talked about this a lot. I can now reach the ground. Super easy riding. Better response times at the cost of some vertical travel.

The new duck foot: We call that plate you stick on the bottom of the sidestand to make it more stable a duck foot. I was a joke name we had before the TAT trip that stuck. Dad welded up an aluminum one himself. It works well. However, the kickstand needs adjusted so that it is a little shorter as it is hard to find a place to use it at its current length. That is not any manufacturers fault, though. We just need to tweak it.

Dad's Helmet: It is one of those helmets where the entire chin can pop up like the visor does so you can talk to people or eat with your helmet still on. It also has a pop-down visor that acts like sunglasses. It is really useful for him since he needs to talk to people a lot when we travel. He is currently having problems with the helmet rubbing a particular spot on his head to the point it is painful.

Dad's Transitioning Glasses: These glasses adjust themselves to the sunlight. They get darker in bright light and more clear in dim light so you can always see optimally. The problem is they only ever get so clear. If it is completely dark, you can't see well out of them as they are still ever so slightly tinted darker than they should be. Otherwise, they are a pretty cool product.

Alright then. That pretty well covers today's adventure and catches you up on some new stuff we have. Have a good one. I need to get some sleep now so I can tell how much pain I will be in when morning comes.

04/27/19 Great News! The site is officially back out of hibernation. The next trip is 14 days away and boy do we have some stuff to get ready. I created a countdown clock for the start day of the trip and set it on the main page. I am getting the charts for the data page and the log up and ready. Things should be up and ready soon.

04/29/18 I tidied up some stuff around the site. I created a YouTube channel for the website. The TAT Video is posted there. I also fixed all of the charts to be the correct charts for the data page of the GEAR trip. Overall this was a tech fixing and bug smashing day.

05/09/19 Alright. It is officially 2 days away from the trip. I am going to close this page down with this last entry. Don't worry, though. The site will continue on the GEAR Adventure Log and the GEAR Data Page since the trip is starting.

We did a test of the bikes today. A longer one. Something like 300 miles is an extremely rough estimate. It turns out nearly everything is working properly. The ride itself was interesting. We got sent out a gravel road that was in decent shape, nearly ran over by a sudden school bus out of nowhere, had a good meal and some dessert, then rode back the interstate in the dark and came the closest we ever have to annihilating a possum.

We also discovered that there is not a single recorded trip for the GEAR route. We might be the first people to ever do GPSKevins GEAR route, or at least the first to record it that we can find. So that's kinda cool.

Also, I will be recording the trip using a GoPro Hero 4. I have ran a bunch of tests on this camera and it seems to work well as long as you stick it in one position on the stand (or whatever you stick it to) and leave it there. It doesn't matter what you do to it as long as its box is firmly stuck to its stands. It is a little old now and sometimes it freezes. This happens mostly right as I start it up to record. It starts recording a frame or two then crashes. Most of the time it works fine. For the record, it is frankly astounding that this camera is still working at all given how old it is and the stuff it has been through, so kudos to GoPro for building such a stable device.

I really like the tires we have on the bikes now and Dad does as well. They are my favorite tire so far. They are called the Mitas E-07 if you want to go tire shopping. We had to do a little bit of tweaking on some things and we discovered a few things we forgot to pack, but otherwise everything is ready to go. The trip is set up. If you want to read about the trip, use the links below to get directly to them. See you there!

Link to RevZilla page for the tires: https://www.revzilla.com/motorcycle/mitas-e-07-tires?rrec=true

Click the buttons below to head on over to the trip!

:)