So I spent this previous weekend up in British Columbia (again), this time in the company of my good friend Colleen and a bunch of folks from ADVRider.  In contrast to most of my longer trips, which tend to be 90% pavement and 10% dirt, this trip was very heavily biased toward dirt and gravel riding, and was very challenging for me.  I considered myself a fairly competant dirt rider, though new to it, but these roads were well beyond anything I've experienced before and at some points I was definitely outside my comfort zone.  The Strom was dropped a number of times on one particular section of very nasty road (marked "EXT. ROUGH / 4WD ONLY" on the map, which should have been a hint to avoid it) and though it escaped without any damage other than scuffs to the Givi bags, it was still quite a harrowing experience.

The road in question involved 45-degree scree and boulder slopes, crossings of relatively deep streams, and other adventurous things which were more difficult on the mostly-street VStrom 1000 than they might have been on a bike better suited to this sort of thing, like a KLR.  The various mods I've made to the bike - removing secondaries, changing the gearing for crazy acceleration, etc - didn't really help it out in the back-of-beyond, either.  Ah well.  Colleen tells me that adventure is "adversity recounted at leisure" and I'm inclined to agree.  That doesn't mean I feel like seeking said adversity out in the future, though...

Check out Colleen's ride report of the trip at her website here. My pictures are also posted on my Flickr page for any interested parties.

In other news, at the beginning of this trip I noticed that my recently-installed crash bars from Pat Walsh Designs had failed.  Several welds had given way under normal operating conditions.  I emailed Pat when I returned from the trip and I need to give him credit for outstanding customer service and standing behind his product very honorably, as he's having me send the bars back at his expense to figure out what went wrong, as well as offering me a refund of my money or a brand new set of bars.  This kind of customer service is rare in my experience.  I haven't decided whether I intend to replace the bars with another set of his design, but given my treatment I would be happy to do business with him in the future.

The most memorable, of course, were the previously-alluded-to encounters with the military in the Black Hills on our day ride out of Custer.  Colleen (DantesDame), Robert and Trina (BMW-K and Mrs. BMW-K) and Jim (JimWilliamson) and I decided to spend that day playing around on the network of dirt roads stretching between Custer and Deadwood, and when discussing the trip the night before was warned to "watch out for the Army."  I thought "yeah, whatever, dude" to that warning, but it turned out to be prophetic, as the exercises that were being done in the area were on a much larger scale than I'd thought.

We hit the roads and had an amazing time.  The dirt meanders through dense woodlands, is very lightly travelled, and offers a lot of challenges to a new dirt-rider like myself.  Colleen and Jim provided a nice swift pace to match, and I had just started to get comfortable with letting the rear slide around corners on our dirt ride in Montana a few days before, so I was pushing myself up a bit and moving at a good clip, sliding tires and having a ball.

Coming into a corner I noticed a sign to the right of the road which read "Military Police Checkpoint Ahead:  SLOW DOWN NOW."  Sensing that this particular traffic sign meant serious business, I got on the brakes, scrubbed some speed, and came around the corner to be greeted by a barbed-wire fence along the left side of the road, and a gate in the fence.  Behind the gate was parked a very large and imposing vehicle painted in olive drab, and sitting in the cupola was a gunner looking straight at me down the barrel of his machine gun - I believe it was a pintel-mount M249, but Robert apparently ID'd it as an M60.  Behind the guard was a temporary field camp of some sort, and a large open field upon which were two Blackhawk transport helicopters with a couple of infantry squads arrayed in formation in front of them.

On my list of Things To See Beside The Road, this was pretty low.  Surprising at best, and quite intimidating.  Obviously no harm came to your humble narrator, but when one is prepared for deer as the day's threat, and faced instead with machineguns, it does tend to rattle.

Later on in that same ride, we found ourselves coming toward a three-way intersection.  I was ahead of the group and had stopped to take pictures of the other riders as they approached, and as I saw them coming I also saw traffic from the other direction - a convoy of military Humvees, in olive and desert tan, coming towards us.  I mounted up as the others passed, followed them through the turn-off that would take us back towards home, and then noticed that the Army had also taken the turn and was following us.

On the straightaways, we were keeping a faster pace than the Humvees, but their nice 8' width and low center of gravity meant that they never had to slow down for turns.  Not so with us riders.  I gunned it up quick and headed to the front of the line, but Trina, who was riding sweep, tells me it was quite an experience loking back over her shoulder ever turn and expecting to see the huge grill of a big truck right behind her.  On the way back to Custer we passed several big field camps.

In addition, parked at one corner on the road the Humvees were travelling on, was a small pickup truck - a Ford Ranger or something like it.  In the front seat were two men, both wearing checkered Arab keffiyeh headdresses.  Either we saw a pair of actors, dressed up as part of a training exercise for the convoy, or we saw the two most unlucky terrorists of all time, camped on a deserted dirt road in the center of a major military training operation.  I'm assuming the first is correct, but the second would be so poetic...

There were a number of other amazing experiences in this trip, but I seem to remember the times spent on the dirt better than the rest.  On the very last day of the trip, Colleen and I spent a fair bit of time on muddy dirt backroads in British Columbia.  A grey and cold day, and a wet one; big puddles stood in all the potholes, and the roads were quite slippery as well.  I'd never ridden in the mud before and it was a great time sliding around, though I must admit to some worries at times.  All well in the end, though, and the Vstrom was dirtier after that leg of the trip than it's ever been.

Overall, it was an amazing time with some really great riders.  I feel my skills, especially offroad, have really been sharpened by this trip, and I was very glad for the chance to get so far from home and see so many amazing roads.  I'm very much looking forward to the next attempt, although a trip this size doesn't come along all that often.  More's the pity.

This coming weekend (tomorrow!) I'm off to British Columbia again for another mostly-offroad ride, again with Colleen and friends (from advrider.com, this time).  Wish me luck...

Dry.

I had no idea just how freaking huge these things are until I saw it on the road.  The rear tire looks like it's off a truck.  And more importantly, I don't think they lean; at least, the rider I was following never leaned any.  The engine sounded right nice, but somehow, I'm guessing this is very much not the bike for me.

Anyway.  You can find the photos from this trip here. 

When I hadn't seen anyone by noon, I called BMWOR to try and figure out if anything had gone wrong, and they did a little bit of digging before calling me back to inform me that UPS had neglected to ship the suit, it was still in Eugene, and furthermore that UPS had backdated their logs to claim that it was the BMW shop's fault.  Long and short of it was, there was no way my suit would arrive today, and I had scheduled the trip tomorrow to begin bright and early in the morning. 

In my previous dealings with shippers they've not been very accomodating when something goes wrong, but perhaps they take the word of a manager at a BMW dealership as being more important than that of a surly 30-year-old scientist, because I soon heard back from Lin at BMWOR that they'd arranged for the suit to be picked up, by me, at the Redmond UPS center, tomorrow at 9.  So I'll ride there in my old gear, with Jen following, unpack and change into my new PHantom in the parking lot, and then send my old gear back home with Jen and hit the road.  Assuming the suit fits, this may still work.

If not...well, after the money and the hassle of trying to get this all together, I'd rather not spend much time dwelling on the "not."

While waiting in vain for the UPS truck, though, I did manage to wire my GPS to my bike's electrical system, so I don't have to go through a pack of AA batteries every day I ride.  That's something.

In summary:  a big shout-out to Lin and BMWOR, and a big fuck-you to UPS for screwing this up and lying about it.  With luck, everything will come together in the end.  The bike is almost packed, the new tent will work well, and I'm hopeful that I can get on the road tomorrow morning without anything else going tits-up in the process. 

In order to get ready, I've been working on the bike fairly regularly.  Last weekend Kaylee got new tires (Michelin Anakees, which I've been quite happy with so far) and a JB-Weld patch job for the minor wound in the bottom of the crankcase that I sustained in the gravel on my last trip.

 Before on the left, after on the right:

This weekend, I took steps to ensure that the above incident doesn't repeat itself, with a skid plate and case guard combo from Pat Walsh Designs.  For about $300 after shipping, the lucky Vstrom owner gets this:

...along with installation instructions and all the required hardware.  The installation process was relatively simple, although it is impossible if you don't have a way of supporting the bike that isn't the sidestand.  I did have to really crank on the bolts for the crossbar; it seems that the bars are a little off from a perfect fit.  Also, the bars really do sing at around 6000 RPM; I assume this is some frame vibration being transferred through them.  If I didn't wear earplugs before, I certainly would have started after installing these bars.  They do look like they provide great protection, though, and they'll help out inordinately when I'm off-road.

Installed, they look like this:

I also took the time today to resynchronize the throttle bodies, check the throttle position sensor (dead on, which is good because my instructions on how to adjust it were sketchy at best), replace the spark plugs with shiny new ones, and pull out the secondary throttle plates.  For the uninitiated, the throttle on the VStrom opens and closes a set of valves in the intakes which control airflow to the cylinders.  However, the bike also has a secondary set of valves, which the computer controls.  They're supposed to keep the throttle performance smooth, but word on the street is that all they really do is sap power and acceleration, and that the bike is greatly improved by their removal.  Since it's a simple matter to put them back in, I figured I'd give it a shot.  Removing them was the work of about a minute, the only sketchy thing being the utter importance of not losing one of the tiny plate screws in the engine.  A little magnetic probe took care of keeping them under control for me.

From a first brief ride, I honestly can't tell much of a difference.  It feels like there's more power in first and second, but honestly it may be psychological.  I need to spend more time on the road to be sure.

Finally, I moved the windscreen up to the Ultra Double Secret Fourth Position, in an attempt to minimize buffeting on the freeway.  So far, so good.  Again, I'll need time to tell whether it's actually working.

Also, now that I'm broke, I'm intending to camp on the way.  My camping gear was a little bit short, so I've picked up a new tent from Mountain Hardwear; a Viperine 3 free-standing tent that looks kind of like a modern art sculpture.  Yeah, it's a very large tent for a single touring motorcyclist, but I'm hopeful that Jen and Ember and I can get some short backpacks in, now that we've got a portable shelter of some sort.  Space for the puppy meant a 3-man tent, and honestly the 7 pounds won't be a real big problem on a 1000cc bike.

Now, to start thinking about routes... 

IMAGE_025.jpg, originally uploaded by Req(q).

I left Fortuna this morning in the company of my good buddy Colleen, am almost immediately abandoned the traditional roads for a 20-mile section of twisty gravel. Since technically the VStrom is a dual-sport, I figured it was worth a shot, and luckily Colleen was good enough to give me a few pointers... From there we followed a bizarre, one-lane road running along the Salmon River, eventually ending up in the tiny hamlet of Callahan, pictured above. The town appeared to consist of one general store and a tavern, in which a five-piece band was playing surprisingly good swing.



Tomorrow, back to Seattle, hopefully by an interesting route... Stay tuned.