Total miles: 275 miles
Estimated travel: 4:15 hours
[ Sunday - August
23, 2009 ]
It was simple enough to wake up, pack it all up, and head home.
Since Bishop is in the 3-4K altitude range, we need to inflate our
tires. Attempts to go at it by hand with a bicycle pump end
quickly after about 10 pumps. There's just too much volume in a
motorbike's tires for the hand pump to truly be effective. So we
opted to ride down the street and pull into the nearest gas station.
We pull into a Chevron at the southern edge of Bishop. At least
the air is free here unlike in LA.
You have to pay to inflate your tires in Southern California.
Talk
about making a buck at every opportunity. Darn! It's a
funky air hose tip and it doesn't work for motorbikes. Nice
try. We go further south with slightly deflated tires until we
spot the next available gas station.
It's Sunday so we're expecting the worse in terms of traffic.
Undoubtedly everybody, their mother, dog, cat, cow, pig, etc. is
heading towards Southern California. Just as anticipated we're
stuck in traffic with the worst of LA drivers. You name it,
tailgating, speeding, cutting off, etc.. At last, another Chevron
in Independence. Finally, this one has a flex hose instead of
that funky hard adapter. Now we can get down to business.
35 rear, 32 front. Nu does 42 rear, 33 front. For some
reason, his rear TKC80 can handle higher pressure than my
150/70-17. Oh well, it is what it is. Back on the
road. This is much better. Now we should be able to handle
higher speeds.
Once more another down pour drenches us right at the southern edge of
Olancha. It seems like we're blessed to experience all types of
weather conditions on this trip. Extreme heat (107F), pissing
down cats and dogs, and the extreme high desert winds. If it
sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not. I like riding in the rain,
and I'm getting very comfortable on the 8GS even in high wind
conditions.
Partly through the trip home, Nu notices his XD-3 visor is shaking
pretty violently. Upon closer inspection, he's lost one of the
two screws, on one side of the helmet. Looking a little further,
he
notices he's missing his laminar lip on the windshield. The crash
at the beginning of the trail in Mammoth yesterday must have thrown the
winglet flying off in a direction. That explains why he's getting
so much helmet vibration that eventually cause the visor screw to work
itself loose. Poor guy, nothing is going right for
him this trip. In the end he had to take the visor off and use
the
goggles and face shield for the rest of the trip home.
No trouble on the rest of the way home. We waved numerous cagers
to pass us as we're taking our sweet time enjoying this life.
However, there is one incidence that was rather comical. The
stretch of the 395 Hwy between Kramer junction and Adelanto is
basically a no passing zone. A 25 miles stretch of no pass
zone. A pain for some. We're indifferent about the
zone as we're enjoying ourselves plodding along. Somewhere in the
scheme of things we picked up a CHP on our six. The speed limit
is 65 MPH, but we've settled on 60 MPH as
it makes our trip much more manageable and safer due to the windy
conditions. Since we're perfectly legal and in order, there is
nothing much the CHP can do or want to do to us. Chances are he
probably didn't
have much else to do anyway. So what did he do? He just sat
back and relaxed. After all, the posted speed limit is the
maximum and not the minimum. Nu and I were wondering whether the
CHP was going to break the law and pass us in a no pass zone.
Nope, he didn't do it. He only passed us once the Hwy opened
up. As for the chain of cars behind him, they weren't going to
complain about a CHP going slow. In fact, they gave him a wide
birth. As for us, we didn't care that he was behind us. If
needed, he can turn his sirens on and we would have pulled over for him
to pass. Too funny. Cagers... Angles by day, devils by
night.
We both make it back home in relatively good time.
Subsequent days had us analyzing what went wrong this year and why we
couldn't make it in a far as we did last year on the same trail.
The answer comes down to weight. We were carrying too much.
Adding myself, the bike's weight, and the equipment weight has the bike
coming out to almost 700 lbs. Wow! Too heavy. We
definitely need to trim the fat next year. I'm surprise I didn't
go down more often. A testiment to the 8GS's capabilities.
