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Underdog delivers a bike to Utah

15K views 49 replies 6 participants last post by  Ditch Doctor 
#1 ·
It's pretty obvious, by now, that I can't be bothered to finish talking about the trips I go on. I don't know why I get ADD about it but it but that's what happens. I did pretty good on the 9000 mile one but it took years to finish and I mainly did it because my mom told me to keep a journal, which I didn't, and when the memories started to fade, I wanted to relive them and get them down on paper before they left my brain entirely. The Ireland one turned out to be a condescending lecture on etiquette and not much else. The HWY 33 one fizzled after the crash, despite there being a whole bunch more interesting stuff that happened later. And then there was my birthday trip with some friends where I crashed my Daytona in the middle of nowhere West Virginia and then changed a corded rear tire on my gf's R6, by hand, the next morning, in the grass, at a campground, which never made it on to the forum at all.

So, now, here we are at the beginning post of another one of Underdog's stupid oddyseys again. Undoubtedly hoping for something interesting but fully prepared for a three or four post disappointment.

What to do? Well, I'm going to try something new this time. I've downloaded that infernal "tappatalk" app and I'm going to try and document this one as I go. I'm doing this first post on my phone as a test.

Long story short, I have this friend who's a bit impulsive and reckless with his life choices. We'll call him Levi because that's his real name. He made an appearance in the HWY 33 trip, wherein, he crashed his 07 Speedmaster on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and we all had to gather ourselves up and flee the scene before the authorities showed up and started handing out tickets. Levi decided, not long after that trip, to move from Maryland to Utah on short notice and left his bike with Dan, the guy who's charging system failed on the same trip. Fast forward a bit and I quit/got fired from my job. Not long after that, Levi texts me asking my opinion on how to ship his bike to him. I told him I'd ride it there in exchange for a ticket home. The pact was struck and this is, or will be, the story of how the Underdog took the long way to Utah, or died, on a 2007 Triumph Speedmaster.

Here's a picture of the bike. Maybe. If this app works. And if my phone cooperates...


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#3 ·
Turns out I already had one. Wonder when I did that... Oh well, onward...

The bike:
The route:

How do I get the pictures to upload in the appropriate place relative to the text? These and other mysteries will be solved in time.


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#4 ·
The prep...

Here we are in the advanced editor with full blah blah blah support. Let's see if this sorts out the picture thing...

So prep, besides the normal packing, consisted of solving a slipping clutch problem. Before we get too far into this, let's try sticking in an image...



Well there's some code there. It looks legit. We'll go with it.

That might end up being a picture of the clutches if this new posting method pans out. They look new to me. I thought maybe he rode it with a mis-adjusted clutch and wore it out but that didn't seem to be the case so now I'm guessing he used the wrong oil in the bike and it pissed the clutches off.

Before we get too much further, let's post this and see if it looks right...

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#5 ·
That seems to have worked. Yay for the advanced editor. Here's the only other picture of the situation I took.

That's where the clutches go. Apparently there are two types and they are in there in a certain order so, if you take them out, they have to go back in the same way. Don't **** this up if you try it at home.

Now for a little clutch / oil theory...

Clutches work on friction. Oil reduces friction. Seems like putting clutches in with the oil was a stupid idea and I don't know why it's like this. It is, though, and we just have to deal with it.

So, obviously, it took some trial and error for someone to figure out how to make a clutch work in oil. Since it's a completely unnatural situation, the proper working of the whole bullshit probably depends on using the exact right oil and exact right clutches. So what oil do we use? Well, some dude somewhere put it in Levi's head that Shell Rotella 15w40 was the ticket. I helped him put that oil in. Later the clutches were slipping. So I guess it's not the ticket. Why are the forum people getting away with it? Who knows. Maybe they don't use up every last ounce of the engine's available performance (read: ride like an a-hole) like Levi does so they don't encounter the clutch slip. Maybe someone who owned it before him boosted the power somehow. Big bore kit? Who knows... Anyway, the lever pull isn't very heavy so I thought about putting in bigger springs to hold the clutch tighter. Springs plus gasket plus shipping was less than $40 bucks. Long story short, it worked. You can now use full throttle any time without clutch slip. Maybe... I changed the oil and put Walmart SuperTech 20w50 in it. So maybe that did something too. My over-arching theory, though, is that if you mash the clutches together harder, they'll give less of a shit about what kind of oil is in there.

Now... I can hear everyone gasping at the thought of me putting Wal-Mart brand car oil in a bike. All I can say is that I did my research and I don't buy the M/C specific oil hype. Well, I mean, some of it holds water, but I think most of it is marketing bs. I've used it in my Daytona for 40,000 miles and had no issues. I promise a dyno sheet and an engine tear-down thread on the Daytona if it makes it to 100,000 miles. Well, 106,000 miles because I rebuilt the engine at 6000.

Anyway, the clutch works and I'm riding it to Utah.
 
#9 ·
More prep.

Tomorrow is the roll out day. Gonna try to make it from Baltimore to Outer Banks NC. Should be a pretty solid day of riding.

Today's goal is to get packed and get mirrors on the bike. It had a missing left mirror and a cracked right one from the accident. I was able to borrow a pair last minute. The guy said he didn't want them back but, just in case, I made up some adapters instead of butchering the mirrors or the bike.

OEM mirror on the right. Borrowed on the left.

Need a way to get this thread attached to this hole.

Welded two metric nuts together to make a long nut and then welded on a piece of random all-thread.

Ended up with this.

They don't look horrible and they'll work fine.

Now to get packed and get the gf finished packing. She's going with me to OBX for a week, then we're hitting the Tail, then splitting off. She'll go back home and I'll head for Georgia.

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#14 ·
Lunch in Pocomoke City.

Pee break for the woman like fifteen minutes later.

Some kind of weird hello kitty entertainment center in the gas station.

About to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, $30 for two bikes.

We're about 7.5 hours in and have almost 2 left.

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#15 ·
Bout 9 hours and 350 miles. Not sure how that few miles took that many hours but it did. I feel like I fell down a flight of stairs but, when we got here,we were literally handed plates of food and glasses of beer as soon ad we rolled up. Not a bad day all in all.





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#16 ·
Not much to report today. Wasted the morning. Gave myself half a haircut and had to recharge the batteries on my clippers. Drove 40 miles to play one round of mini-golf after lunch and now entering hour number two of waiting on our food at a restaurant.

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#17 ·
Having trouble relaxing. Feels like I'm wasting time when I should be making miles. Riding my friend's bike feels like a responsibility mote than a vacation. Guess I'm worried about getting it to him in one piece. Gf says I'm distant. She's not wrong.

We went on a beach walk this morning and caught a crab.

Then we fed some chickens, ducks, and turkeys that were just chilling by the road.


Next we're gonna drop one guy off at a rental car place and see the Kitty Hawk museum I guess. Later tonight some other folks are arriving including a single chick who's supposedly a slut. Should be fun to watch.

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#19 · (Edited)
We were going to leave the beach Thursday but weather.

So we basically did nothing Thursday and travelled Friday.

Lunch in Raleigh with an old friend I hadn't seen since the days when there were only two genders.

Screwed up my hotel reservations for tonight and ended up on the phone for an hour dealing with it. Ended up in the, I'm not gonna say "shittiest" but probably close motel in Boone. I'll get a picture of it in the morning if I remember since it's dark now because it's 9pm.

Making matters worse, I always forget to take the key out of the bike since it's under the seat by the battery, so my extended dealings with the first hotel left me with a dead battery. Pushed it a long way till the road started to slope down and I could get enough speed to roll start it. Pretty exhausted and irritated at the moment.We made about 400 miles today and it only took 13 hours to accomplish.

Tomorrow: ride an hour to hang out with her friend in Abingdon. Then ride 3.5 hours to Robbinsville NC, our base of operations for Tail of the Dragon activities.

The Speedmaster is doing OK except for a nearly worn out rear brake and a strange vibration that comes on at about 20 mph. It sort of starts in the rear, goes to the front, stops, then starts over. Like a humming almost. You feel it in your ass, then legs, then hands, then it's gone and this happens over and over till about 40 then it's either gone, or it's constant, or the damn thing is just too loud to notice it anymore. Not sure which.
 
#21 ·
We made the Dragon today. Came down from the north because we had to divert to a couple of dealerships to buy and install rear brakes on both bikes so we ended up making our first pass of the Dragon fully loaded and with 5 hours of riding fatigue on us. We took it easy, though, and made it to Robbinsville and our hotel without incident. More details and pictures to come but, first, philosophical musings. Hmmm.

I've got different gear this time around. Namely a Bluetooth headset through which I can listen to audio books while riding. This goes a long, long, long way to keeping me out of my head. However, sometimes, when Erin chimes in to tell me she needs gas, the book won't restart and there I'll be. Alone with my thoughts.

That did happen a couple of times today and I did have some musings. One of which is the fascination people who aren't doing motorcycle trips have with people who are doing motorcycle trips' trips. Now, on a side note, I try not to run my mouth about my experiences unless people really pry because I hate it when someone gets on their personal stage and won't shut up about something they know/did/saw and I don't want to be seen as that guy. Usually I'll just say "yeah, I did such and such and it was pretty cool" and leave it at that. When people do get interested, though, one phrase they use a lot is "the open road."

"The open road" has always seemed kind of like a trite phrase to me. It's loaded with all kinds of deeper meaning when people say it. Hell, nobody even "says" it. More like they "invoke" it. Sometimes they invoke it with a broad sweep of the arm to call attention to the grandioseness of it all. Sooo, I guess I'll muse, philosophically, on "the open road."

"The open road" is just the road. Like how long do people think the fascination with "the wind in their hair and the sun on their backs and nothing but the road in front of them" lasts? A few hours, maybe? Maybe I'm different or jaded or something but I feel like these people have never woken up, for the tenth time in a row, to a complete mess of a hotel room, bike luggage everywhere, stuff all strewn about which must be condensed back down and then strapped back on the bike. Then, if you're me, you've got that goddamn camel back. It's essential for making time so you don't have to stop or risk crashing every time you want a sip of water but the straps always get caught on stuff while you're trying to put it on and, sometimes, you even forget to put it on till you're about to let the clutch out and you see it there, mocking you, as it hangs from the mirror. Now you have to get neutral, but sometimes you forget and let the clutch out anyway and kill the the engine with a dramatic forward lurch like a squid. Bonus points if you do it in front of an audience. Then you have to take off the helmet which, depending on your situation, could also mean taking off a pair of glasses and removing a perfectly positioned pair of ear buds. Well, you're too lazy to do that, of course, so you try to let the straps all the way out on the camel back and put it on with the helmet in place, only to find out that your head with a helmet plus an arm is like seventeen feet in diameter in real life and you get nice and tangled up till shit is wrapped around your neck and your arm is tied to the side of your face. Finally, you have to concede defeat, remove the helmet, put on the camel back, which is now resting on its usual pressure points, making something that weighs five pounds feel like twenty. Now, put the helmet back on, then take it off again, put the ear buds in, then put the helmet on again, then the glasses (which now fog up because you're all hot from being geared up for ten minutes but don't have the wind yet), glove up, check key on, clutch in, mash the start button and nothing. The goddamn bike won't start! What the ever loving **** now??? Well, the battery is a few years old and I didn't bring a tender with me, maybe the headlight ran it down. No, there would at least be a click. Get off the bike and check the headlight anyway. Remember the kill switch, which you never use but could have bumped in the chaos. No, that's fine. Then you remember killing it like a noob and it's still in gear with the kickstand down. Kickstand up, start button, BOOM, you're off and running. Bonus points if there has been a car behind you waiting to get out of the gas station this whole time.

If all that weren't bad enough, sometimes you roll out of your hotel / friend's house / park bench / patch of grass and your brain just won't come on line. You're drowsy, lethargic, and you check the odometer every what seems like 30 minutes only to find you've gone like a mile or two. 8 perceived hours into the ordeal and you've gone ten miles. Only a perceived week left till the end of this tank of gas and then you have two more to do today if you're gonna make your next spot, which you've already reserved, so there's no punking out or you lose $70. What to do? Your eye lids are sooo heavy but not riding isn't really an option. Well, there are several things to try that your brain thinks are reasonable in its highly crippled state. In no particular order: "Well, maybe if I just keep my eyes open a little bit and slouch some?" Then it's "well, what if I just close one eye at a time?" Then it's "well, what if I close both eyes but only for a couple of seconds?" At some point, some part of you realizes that this is all bs and you're going to have to stop and get coffee. After coffee, you can either wait for the coffee shits to kick in, which they may decide not to do at all, thus, putting you behind schedule for no reason, or get back on the road only for the coffee shits to kick in twelve minutes later, making you stop, yet again, which, again, puts you behind schedule. Or, maybe, instead of coffee, you can get off and do some jumping jacks, which invariably result in the "jumping jack shits" except you are on the side of the road now or in a parking lot rather than a gas station and now you have to find someplace to go to the bathroom. Which, yet again, puts you behind schedule.

Of course, if none of that has wiped the glamour off the "open road" yet, there are always the people who want to know "where you're headed" immediately followed by"where ya from" immediately followed by "oh wow" immediately followed by some question relating to logistics, or how you deal with the heat, or the cold, or the rain, or all them crazies out there, or how did you get all that time off, or some comment on how they used to have a Suzuki SV 650 (I swear you could have a "how many degrees from an SV 650 are you?" game just like the Kevin Bacon one). People, God bless their souls, are the biggest time wasters ever. My suggestion is to, whenever possible, keep your helmet on and stay astride the bike while gassing up. This keeps most polite folk at bay. God forbid you sit down and start lubing your chain or checking your oil or patching a tire... "Hey maing, everything okay there? I got a buddy two towns over knows a guy with a mechanic shop's got tools an shit. Ain't open on Sundays though. But there's this nice hotel about three miles back. Gitta room for about one fifty. Real nice lady runs it. She used to be my nephew's aunt but then they got divorced and now we don't hear from er much anymore but there's a lil ole restaurant out back of the place an they got real good corn beef hash there." Twice on my 9000 mile trip I had people strike up conversations and end up talking to me, literally, all night. Like no shit, a solid 6 or 8 hour conversation that started sometime in the evening and didn't end till the sun was up. Not even joking.

The bottom line is that the "open road" is a chore. I don't know who first romanticized it but they were either a genius at playing off people's existential cabin fever, or it wasn't as complicated back in the day or, maybe, I'm doing it all wrong. I will never understand how someone can put in 700 or a thousand miles on a bike, then have time for a hot shower, change of clothes, nice sit down meal and conversation with the waitress, then get to bed at a reasonable hour after scribbling down a few pages of notes and drawing a sketch of a bald eagle while watching the sun set over a cup of Earl Grey on a grassy hill side only a mile's brisk hike from the quaint bed and breakfast that just happened to have a vacancy with no notice because it's the off season and the only other people there are a retired British Air Force captain from the Vietnam era and his mail-order Croatian bride who is 40 years his junior and is just there making sure his oxygen bottle is full, waiting on the big payout.

But, I mean, aside from all that it's not too bad I guess.

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#22 ·
Skipping back a day...

I didn't do much in the way of pre-trip checks on the bikes. The clutch thing was basically it. As it turns out, though, both bikes had worn out rear brakes. Erin's still had some pad left:

Mine, not so much:

In my defense, the Speedmaster only has 13,000 miles on it so I didn't really think it could have a worn out rear brake. Either they're dragging all the time or Levi used the rear most of the time.

We rode frome Boone, NC to Abingdon, VA for brunch with a Friend of Erin's, then on to Kingsport Cycles in Kingsport to pick up rear pads for the Speedmaster.

While there, I discovered Erin's rear brakes but Kingsport didn't have rears for the R6 so we had to haul ass to Knoxville for those, making it to the parts counter with ten minutes to spare.

All brake jobs went successfully and we were back on the road. Made it to the Tail with some daylight left and got the usual pictures.

I should have worn sunglasses...








Today, we wasted half the morning fiddling with the gopro cameras and, now, we're heading back up to the tail to shoot some videos and dust off the chicken strips a little. Hopefully that's all that will happen. Knocking on wood for a safe day at the circus...

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#23 ·
Our day at the tail was short but incident free. We did one out, which sucked because traffic and one back, which was much better. We got some video but it looks slow as shit because we actually are slow as shit and because gopro's are what they are. I'll post up a link once I get something on YouTube. Meanwhile, the Killboy store now has two hammocks on the upper deck.


On the way back to town, we stopped at the suspension bridge.



We were going to do the Cherohala tonight but messed around on social media too long so we'll do it tomorrow.

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#24 · (Edited)
DAMNIT!!!!! I missed you! I would have happily ridden the brake pads up to you in kingsport. I ride in and out of Abingdon some on my northern NC/VA rides. The snake is just outside Bristol TN and is the place to be up there.
Been wanting to meet you for years. :bowdown:

Great day to be riding, and the hammocks addition at killboy are awesome.
Glad to see the trip has been enjoyable and really enjoying the philisophical musings.
I would take some time off of work and come ride a ways with you this week, but life must go on here.

Spent the weekend in the deep mountains today and woke up to sunrise overlooking the skyway and thought it would be cool to ride with @harcourt and @The Underdog

Got an idea for you. And this comes from part of me wanting to be a sarcastic bastard, part of it comes from being an educator, enlightened, and wanting to share to better humanity...., and part of it comes from me Actually being a sarcastic bastard.
If you know you forgot the camel back, and you are stressed and annoyed already, and you KNOW that its going to be a super hassle. just take off the helmet and glasses, brush away the sweat, take a good long drink from the camel back BEFORE you put it on... it will make putting it on worth it, you have the immediate satisfaction of the work you are doing and wont mind it so much. Then put everything on and cinch it/ fit it BEFORE you put your glasses and helmet back on.
(keep in mind, this is coming from the guy that go so damn excited to be riding in A group that he abandoned his pre-session system and did a two hot laps before getting flagged from a coach because he didnt zip up or secure his boot.... not to mention the many many times on the street I have done something stupid.):whistle:

part of the ride, the open road, is just being you. If that means being frustrated, ask yourself WHY, go through any number of emotions while you ride and dissect them. learn more about yourself. That's what I do, and find my rides bear good fruit for life.

Enjoy "the open road" my friend :biggrinjester:
 
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