Out and about for another week...

This was taken from the street with the Samsung S5 phone...  I will probably make it the new header picture unless everyone votes against it...

The Bushes need trimmed, and the home management fellow assured me they were part of the monthly billing to take care of the yard...  Well do they look trimmed, or perhaps that new growth is just this month...?  I did go out and cut off the sprouts that are volunteering around the base of that Acacia tree...

We went on a big ride again today... and as usual, I was the only non Honda...  But we did have one other rear wheel tricycle Honda conversion bike...  Again I am still wandering all over the road at high speeds...  They put up with me, but I'm certain they don't like it...

We rode up to Roosevelt Lake North of Globe, Az....

We ate in a little country restaurant along the highway called Butcher Hook....   That was what the little town was called as well, but I couldn't find it on the map from Google, so I am betting that it has a name but its not incorporated with the state...

The 60 higway is very mountainous on the way to Globe East of where 79 goes South..  89 North of Globe is also but not as tight in its curves...  The ride along the lake is quite nice, but the water is again lower than I have seen it in years...   The front of the dam is exposed down well beyond where the new part was added, allowing at least 10 feet of the original dam from the early days to be seen..

These motorcycle folks don't stop for anything, let alone something frivolous like picture taking...

But I was quite surprised to find a white haired 60s something gal come out from under one of the helmets at the restaurant..  She was riding her own Goldwing and said she was from Vancouver Island, North of the Malahat summit..   She didn't know Rick Doyle...  She asked if he rode a motor cycle....  "Ah, well no, I don't think so..." The bike had BC plates on it and I wondered if she rode it down here, but then I trailer my bikes all over the place so why wouldn't she...?

We started at our usual gas station on the East end of the US 60 right before it turns Southeast at 10 AM..  It was about 3 PM when I was back in my driveway...  The temperature when we got home was 95...  You could really feel the increase as we descended South from the 188 and 87 corner...

Its almost 5K feet up there, and only 1400 down here in the East valley..  That ride is all down hill and 65 mph speed limit on winding twisties...   Of course, I am getting my trike tippy tilty thing under my belt, so I'm sure they would have liked me to go faster...   We were at or above the speed limit most of the way, and they do have Highway Patrol cops along the route, so I'm not overly concerned that they wanted to go faster....

Nothing else new from here.....!

Retired Rod

Can Am safer?

After several requests, I am going to try and explain how the Can Am motorcycle is different than a regular bike...  Other than it has three wheels which is obvious....  LOL..

But what about those three wheels, ?? aren't they what makes it safer?  Well maybe..  But it won't fall over...  Well neither will a regular two wheel bike if you are going faster than about 5 miles an hour...

The gyroscopic effect of the wheels spinning keeps them standing up..  This is also true for your bicycle...  If you fall over while going forward, its usually because you ran into something or something ran into you...

Now on particularly heavy bikes, like the Goldwing and Harley Davidson touring bikes, they can manifest that  heaviness  when you are sitting stopped..  And once leaned over too far, you may not be able (strong enough) to keep them upright...  But no one gets overly hurt just from tipping over at a stop light....  Embarrassing however....!

What makes motorcycles unsafe, is that you are not protected from other vehicles while sitting out in the open...  Not inside of a vehicle like a car or a truck..  Thus you are ejected from an impact...  This would be just as true on the Can Am..  So if you feel safer on the trike, it might be in your mind...

But wait, aren't tikes unsafe because they will tip over toward the end with only one wheel...?  Well perhaps if you are still riding a kids trike.. But motorcycle trikes are quite long, and designed with the two wheel axle to be long enough that this isn't a problem..   Unless of course you are hit by a car, which will lift the wheels off of the ground..  But then we are back to the same thing......  getting hit by another vehicle is the major danger...  trike or bike it is the same thing...

What makes the Can Am different is that the two wheels are in the front.. This is a selling point that the machine will not tip over from the forces of traveling forward...  But this also makes the machine feel like it is an off road quad bike..  NOT a Motorcycle!!  And for that very reason, motorcycle purists won't like the machine...

Quite frankly, it feels a lot like a snowmobile to me...  The big rear tire has about the same sensation as the snow belt, and the two front wheels feel like the skis do as they keep you from tipping from side to side....   But on a snowmobile, you do tip and raise a ski from the snow at times..  But the forces needed to raise a Can Am wheel are counteracted by a computer operated Vehicle Stability System....

This is similar to modern traction control systems..  What it does is add braking, and adjust the throttle independent of the inputs of the rider..  This keeps the wheels planted on the roadway at all times..

Steering.  Remember this is not a motorcycle, so it steers like a car or quad bike.. It does not require counter steer to cause the bike to lean into a corner..  Actually the bike leans away from a corner and compresses the springs on that outer side a bit...  This can be discomforting at first as you feel like you might fly off toward the outside of the turn...  So you tend to lean your body toward the inside of the turn...

Brakes.  You don't have a handle bar brake lever...  Braking is done with a single pedal on your right foot...   Again the computer is adjusting how much braking each wheel uses...  This was quite apparent at a rapid stop when a light changed in front of me in traffic..  The brakes were  variably applied by the computer brain to keep me going in a straight line...

But that straight line was effected by my inputs..  The steering is power assisted as the front wheels are larger and wider than a motorcycle...  I was then adding too much input and the assist was causing me to wander...  I had this same problem when I first went highway speeds...  I was over correcting and wandering around in my lane on the road...  It will take some time to get this feel under my belt.

Engine and transmission.  The engine is a Rotax 1330 ccd three cylinder inline..  This is bigger than last years 998 V twin..  With the extra cylinder and more displacement, the engine develops more bottom end torque..  This minimizes the amount of rpms needed to develop power in each gear..  The older engine required larger rpms to maintain speed..

Shifting.  The newer bikes come without a clutch lever...  The conventional manual and clutch is available, but the dealer said they didn't sell well against the newer semi automatic...  The transmission has 6 forward gears and a reverse..  This is controlled with a paddle shifter under the left handlebar..   Your thumb changes the gears upward and your forefinger shifts back down... Or you can just let the bike shift by itself as it slows..

So this thing is not a motorcycle! Its not a quad bike or a side by side either...!  Its somewhere in between...  It weighs about 1050 pounds and needs the newer bigger 115 hp engine..  But it gets better gas mileage with that bigger motor than its predecessors..  On the 200 mile run the other day, I used a little under 5 gallons of gas..  That is somewhere near 40 miles per gallon...  That is certainly acceptable...

I know this is a technical post and if your not that interested, you probably didin't make it to this point, but I got the idea that some folks wanted to know all of this..

Tomorrow will be an ordinary, what's going on post I promise..

Retired Rod

Bike ride and storage lot problems..

Thursday, I went riding on the new Spyder with the Goldwing Road Rider group... I have a Goldwing and have paid this years dues, so I am a member... But I was the only non Honda in the pack...  Not too sure how they liked that.... Not the rank and file members, but the ones leading the ride..

We ended up eating lunch in a Steak house type of restaurant in Oracle Az which was 100 miles away..  This took most of the day and drove us thru many mining towns and past open pit copper mines....

What a way to get some break in miles on the new machine....  And I am not all that familiar with it, as I was struggling to steer the wide front end trike...  It has power steering assist, and is very sensitive at highway speeds...  Consequently I was over steering, or chasing the controls for a good portion of the beginning of the ride..

Friday, was power wash the motorhome out in the street in front of the house.... And we had to have a record day in October temperatures....  96 and very sunny....   I came inside and sat in front of the fan a lot with what seemed like gallons of lemonade...  I never did get the outside toweled down, so the water spots are what they are...  But its cleaner....

Late in the afternoon, I hooked mr Jeep on the back and we headed to the storage lot....  They have had their problems with folks climbing the concrete walls and breaking into things stored inside...  The lot is surrounded with razor wire on the top of the walls, but the perpetrators have been using wire cutters to cut away sections in order to get thru...

The lot owners have installed critter cameras on various permanent structures, in order to get pictures of the thieves, but that doesn't help the folks that have had their stuff damaged or taken...  This seems to be a new problem in Apache Junction since so many housing units and storage lots are unattended in the warmer times of the year...

So with trepidation, my MH is now stored with the others....

Saturday has found me cleaning the inside of the house here in Mesa...  Dust and dirt has collected for the last 6 months without a single hand to wipe things off....  And its laundry day as well...  Seems to never end...

Retired Rod

From Mesa!

There hasn't been much to report, as the trip down the mountain into Mesa was routine...  It isn't without its moments, though... You descend down from 7600 feet to 1400 feet in about 100 miles...  Up at the top, it looks like you are in Colorado with all the lodge pole pine trees and the cool air...

You wind around doing a bunch of ridge running until you go over the side of the cliff....  Well not literally, but you go down the side of the mountain on the edge of the road built into the wall...  They use bridges to suspend the gaps between the mountain peeks... You know, standard mountain driving stuff...

I used the exhaust brake to slow my descent as I had the Jeep on the back, which is the heaviest vehicle that I have ever pulled with the front engine diesel motorhome...  Remember I have the Dodge pickup sized engine at 6.7 liters and the Jeep at 4200 pounds is right at the edge of what I can successfully pull..

But we got here Sunday afternoon and it was in the mid 90s...  Which is always a shock to the system..  Especially since those summer temperatures left the Midwest several weeks ago..  And all that stuff that was loaded into the motorhome had to come inside the house..  I say "WE" but my partner is Biscuit, and she can't carry much inside for me...  LOL

That took me a couple of days to get mostly in here...  and I was very sore in the legs from climbing up and down the steps into the coach...  The motorhome still out in front of the house and needs washed, but I got side tracked..

As you know, I couldn't pull the motorcycle and the Jeep at the same time..  And buying another Jeep for out here is out of the question based on price...  So on Tuesday I went to my Honda dealer thinking I would buy another smaller goldwing style bike...  One without the top case and many of the options..  Its called an F6B...  That is cheaper too..

But such was not to be the case, as they were out of the 2014s and the 15s won't be here for several weeks...   But what they did have on sale were Can Am Spyders....

After a day of running around getting insurance and the money lined up, this is what I brought home last night...

This is a reverse tricycle...  With two wheels in the front and only one motorcycle style wheel in the back...  It has a car tire on the back, as this doesn't lean from side to side..  Several of my brothers from the Romeo Riders have these and they really like them.....

Otherwise, I have been calling the cable TV people trying to get the internet set up which turned into and exasperating experience...   I didn't want to write another rant, so I didn't write anything...  The short story sticking strictly to the facts, was that the cable was pre wired into our house, and they told me to just hook up their box inside and all would be good to go....  Ya, right....!

After chasing phone calls and fighting over a non existent password, some how an installer that never rang my door bell must have done something outside...  Out of the blue, it started working...  I only have 4 gigs of data on my phone so for this year I have given up and went to unlimited cable internet...  That will cost more, but I shut off the cable TV service in KC so it will come out about even in price...

Perhaps we are closer to being up to date now, but stay tuned something will get messed up tomorrow for sure....

Retired Rod

I'm outa there

I had better get to  blogging or the prophecy made by Run N Rose several days ago will come true...  She said that I would just show up in Mesa one day, as I make the trip rather quickly...

So tonight, I am in Arizona, but not in Mesa... Rather I am camped in the KOA in Holbrook...   I came from broken camper waiting for recall parts.. to being here rather quickly...

We went to the Romeo ride on Tuesday up in Northern Kansas City...  The ride was to Weston, a small village on the Missouri river...   This is a tourist community where wine making and antiques are the main items sold on the old main street...   We ate breakfast in the old cafe on that main street...

When we returned back to Southern KC I went over to the freightliner dealer to see what the current excuse would be...  But to my amazement, the coach was done!!!  Of course they didn't have time to give me a call..  He said he was just about to call me... Ya, right....

So Wednesday was the load it up day, and Thursday was load the groceries and toiletries...  Once those are in, the house is no longer where you are going to sleep that night...

So by mid afternoon, I was on my way to Wichita..   I used to stay in a very nice CG that is all concrete and irrigated grass...  No mud anywhere...  But they want $50 bucks....

But this spring, I found an old KOA that is no longer affiliated, out West of the airport... $28..  I arrived just as the sun set...  And yes my site was muddy gravel....That night, I put all the stuff away once the motorhome was opened up so that I could get to the closets and the drawers...

On Friday, I drove all the way to Tucumcari, Nm...  This is all two lane roads that are choked with heavy trucks...  Surprisingly it moves right along in the high 60s..  But the road is so rough in Oklahoma and Texas that things fell all over inside the rig..

Today (Saturday) I left about 9AM..  It was all I 40, but I went right thru Albuquerque,,,  even though it was Saturday..   I stopped for lunch at the Casino out West of town where gas was much cheaper at $2.79..  Diesel however was as much as a dollar higher in town and $3.59 at the car lanes out front of the casino...  Its so big out there, I drove the MH right thru as well...

Once out of New Mexico, I gained the second hour because Arizona doesn't have daylight saving time..  That isn't too good though, as it is only 6 PM and its already dark outside...

Biscuit is a good little traveler, but doesn't want to eat too much...  But I fooled her this noon, by putting about a teaspoon of ranch salad dressing on her dog food...  Boy that changed everything..  she ate every morsel and even licked the bowl...  I won't make a habit out of that, but she needed to eat after three days...

If all goes well, its only a short drive to the Arizona house from here..

Retired Rod

Guilty!

The evidence...............!

There's the plastic bag  that came from the Pet store...  In the bottom there are several beef Bully Sticks....   She loves those and will almost kill for them....  The bag wasn't all spread out like that, it was ready to move into the motorhome, if I ever get it back...  But Biscuit's smeller was working overtime.....



Who me..???  Whadya mean what's that in my paws...?

You were tryin to hold out on me, weren't ya dad....?

Retired Rod for Biscuit..

Repairs

The motor cycle was finished right on schedule Friday afternoon...  Its was raining and cold.. So I went with the trailer and picked it up....

The motorhome was not done on Saturday, as there are still no parts to be had anywhere...  They keep promising that they will be in tomorrow, but the awful truth is they have no idea where any parts might be or when they will be here....

I'm sitting here grumbling.......!!

Retired Rod

Destiny

Does our mood rub off on our dogs?  Biscuit is whining at me for some reason, but its unknown what that might be....Lets see, she went out potty, has food in her bowl and water too....  She is just whining at me because she feels bad........

Or is it because I am not motivated...?   Lets see, its overcast and cold outside...  Barely 50 degrees in rain showers... Misty dreary soak you to the bone rain showers...  I would have left here by now, but.....

The motorhome is still over at the Freightliner repair shop...   Well on a good note, the parts are supposed to come in today...  Assuming that they do, they will be installed sometime this afternoon or perhaps tomorrow... They do work on Saturday.

Well what about the motorcycle...?  It has what we call the Honda front end shake...  It has always done this to varying degrees..  Honda Goldwings are notorious for this problem...  New tires and complete balancing didn't help any...  It shakes if you let go of the handlebar...  So according to Honda, Just don't let go....  You shouldn't be riding no handed anyway...  So they won't help you with the problem.....!

We have a neighborhood mechanic over in Lawrence named Tim, and that is where the bike is...  Tim is replacing the bearings in the neck..  That's the front of the frame where the handlebars go thru the frame...  Like a bicycle...  The thought is that these bearings are weak from the factory and need to be replaced with ones that are much more robust..  On the Goldwing it is at least a 4 hour job...

Tim claims he will be done late in the day, today.. (Friday)..  But its too cold to go over in the rain, so I will have to get the utility trailer on the back of the Jeep to go after it...  Besides, I am only one guy and can't drive both vehicles back home...

So I'm moping around this morning not knowing what to do next....  My destiny is in the hands of my repair folks....!  LOL

Something will happen, but who knows what....

Retired Rod

It didn't pass

Every year before I head out to Arizona, I do the fall service work on the motorhome...  I don't do it myself, but rather take it to the Freightliner truck shop here in Kansas....    And this year I received a recall...  Its about the brakes on the back of the rig...

I don't know the particulars about what is wrong, but I do know that mine are included in what isn't acceptable...   So get it fixed, right....?  But guess what, they can't get any parts to fix the problem even though there is this recall...  Or perhaps because there is this recall, they have used up all the available parts....    So here I sit in Kansas...  But the weather remains only chilly at night but otherwise nice...

So while I was waiting, it was time to do something with the Ford car that I have been putting off all summer...  Its must be an emotional thing, as we bought the car for Loyce to haul her sewing stuff and fabric to Arizona...  She never wanted to use the back end of the pickup when we had it...  Even though we had a topper that enclosed the entire thing....  She still thought of it as dirty back there...

So the pickup got traded off and we had the ford explorer... as station wagon like vehicle that was carpeted in the back...  Seemed much cleaner to her, so that is where all of her hobby stuff would ride for the winter...  She drove the car too.  Had all her stuff in her possession...

But the car has mostly sat around since she passed on....  Only had 13,000 miles on it, in the last two years....  I knew it had to be sold, but I had sold her little CRV last spring, and just didn't get around to selling the ford...  Like I said it must have been emotional...  I kept thinking, that has to go, but then didn't do anything...

But Monday, I made my mind up that the car shouldn't sit here another winter, not being used...  So I drove around getting used bids from dealers....  And yes, I know that I could have sold it outright, to a private party, but you have to deal with their credit, and if they can get a loan...  And then deal with the possibility of a bad cashiers check..  We used to do all of that when we were in the business...

I just wanted the car gone a quickly as possible...  So after several bids, I found a used car sales manager that really wanted it on his lot, and we made a deal for him and me too...  That meant check in hand by 3 PM on Monday afternoon.

So today it was time to transfer the Jeep into Kansas from Arizona...  The first year of license in Az was up at the end of this month, and the renewal card is out in the mailbox in Mesa...   Also its cheaper to register the Jeep here in Kansas for both License and Insurance... Though not by very  much..

So I spent the day working thru the DMV trading the Jeep for the Ford..  Things haven't changed much as I started by taking the Jeep for inspection at 9 AM..  They make sure the title and the vehicle match up and that it isn't stolen... Really all they do is take your $20 after they look at the title and the VIN on the car...

And after taking it all up to the main DMV office, it only took.......... 3 hours of waiting in line to get it all done...  They have this new system where you can get a number and leave while you wait... They inform you on your cell phone with text messages how your coming along in line and when to come back...

It was still another half an hour to wait once they told me to come back....  It only cost another $20 as the credit for the old Ford was applied forward to the Jeep, but it seems to take all day long to get it done...

So the Arizona Jeep, is now a Kansas Jeep...    But that won't stop me from taking it back to Arizona!!   But the motorhome not being done might slow me down a bunch....  I'm supposed to check back at the end of the week to see if they have found the parts....  Doesn't say much for having a Freightliner chassis, now does it...

Retired Rod

Wednesday is rain day

To that avail today didn't disappoint....  It started raining in the middle of the night and acted like it might let up for a while this morning....  But as I was outside with Biscuit for her morning walk, the sky opened again....

I looked at the radar and it didn't look too bad... But it just kept coming.. So, it was back in the jeep to go over South of Topeka to a small town of Carbondale, Ks...   The restaurant is named the Pepper Patch and they had Chimi changa lunch special....  But it was swimming in a sea of molten white cheese.....  My arteries were cringing...   So I ordered Taco salad...  But of course I had to add the ranch dressing on top of that, so I didn't save much in the way of oil..........

I felt much like Al of the Bayfield Bunch as I aimlessly drove back thru the countryside watching the farm work that is now in full progress...  The corn is coming out as fast as they can go...  By then the sun was out full tilt, and the fields are a sea of golden brown..

Well its not like I didn't get to ride this week because on Tuesday, my son Ben and I headed off down to Adrian, Mo. and a place called Wimfields...

They had the shamefully big breaded tenderloin.... and a drink for $7....  I did cut off about a third of it and bring it back in a to go box...  It hasn't been consumed yet, so perhaps it will get tossed...  I'm trying to do better, LOL

That day was sunny and bright, so we all followed in a group for the afternoon ride, wandering all over southern Missouri and then into Kansas...  Ben and I split from the group about 2:30 and then rode directly home...

Biscuit doesn't understand it yet, but tomorrow is another big day for her as she is scheduled to get her fall hair doooo..  She is fairly long too...  So she will be all wierded out over the deal and will not forgive me for a while...

September 30, always seems to be the day of change around here in Kansas as last night we attended the last softball game for the 4th graders...  Grand daughter Claire was out on third base in the second game of the double header after dark under the lights...

The phone camera is kind of blurry as the lens must have been open for a long time, but you get the idea..  These games aren't overly serious, as they call them after an hour and a quarter no matter what enning it is....  But is is great experience, and fun to go out on a nice warm evening....

So that's what is happening around here...  other than mowing the lawn and doing the dishes.... LOL

Retired Rod