Gas Tank Repair, Football, applying for a job

Well, today I took some time off and played with the Silverwing. My granddaughter Boo and I took off the gas tank, took apart the petcock cause, well the damn thing is screwed up from when I had the hole in my gas tank. Is the reason the petcock is screwed up my fault? You bet it is. I am learning a lot about the mechanical side of motorcycle riding. Grin

I also did a lot of research on why it is backfiring so badly. I think that due to the petcock and what ended up happening earlier, that I have a vaccuum leak that is killing my ride. I am not sure where the leak is, though. I did pick up some new hose clamps when Boo and I were out dropping Matt off at football practice.

Because of the way the person knocked my tank off my bike when I was working on it, I now have no paint on huge stretches of my gas tank so while we were playing, discover what is wrong with the petcock, we started sanding. I have some primer to put on it as I clear off more of the damage.

The guys on the chopper charles forums have given me some ideas as to how to repair the crack in my faring that keeps coming unfixed when I hit rough patches of pavement. The problem is that the area I have had to drive on has a massive rough pavement stretch, some of the worst that I have ever had to drive on other than when I was dirt biking. It's a bit of washboarding along with some nasty pavement ending abruptly with no warning. If I don't get the faring fixed, I will end up keeping this goofy bungee cord across my turn signal forever.


So, that is where the bike repairs are at.

I was reading a Harley Advertisement today, that reminded me why I don't go into motorcycle shops unless forced. Within the past three years, I have walked into two different bike shops and been relatively ignored as they decided to wait on and talk to the guys who walked in around the same time I did. Once I had the money to buy a new bike burning a hole in my pocket. So unless i really need parts (and I try to get the lawnmower shop to order me the parts before I try the bike shops) then I don't go there.

Here is my experience with bike shops: They will order you a part that is too big, too small, there are no parts that are just right. They will tell you that they are sure it will fit when it won't. I have more control when I order off the internet. Interestingly enough, it is also why I don't fix my motorcycles up more. I don't want to have to talk to a shop.

But back to the Harley Advertisement, (see Kelly, I read) I was looking at the clothes, most Harley clothes that I know of only fit people who are perfect or next to perfect. Like, there's this bitchin' set of riding boots that I really like (instant drool), but when I talked to the clerk, she didn't act like you could have wide feet, you had to be like; perfect. And Iam a large woman. When I go into the local shop that has Harley motorcycle clothes, I only go to buy things for my grandkids. There are a couple of shops that make things that will fit me, but so far, I haven't found a lot that I am looking for.

For those who don't know, I called on a job this week. I am an awesome trainer and in my field I really enjoy doing trainings. I found a job in North Carolina and decided to try to apply for it. My hours got cut here and there is a course that I could write and use there that has been shut off to me here. And I want to move into that field. So I called people to be references and talked with the lady who is in charge of the agency.

I also check to make sure that I knew what section of the state it was in. I wanted to try to section hike parts of the Appalachian Trail in the next five years and this job would put me in the right area to accomplish the southern sections of the Trail.

My daughter is losing her job at the end of next week due to the factory she worked for going into bankruptcy and them not being able to find a buyer. So GM came and pulled molds. Then Chrysler came and pulled molds. Ford is pulling molds next week. The Ford Focus parts were a hard start-up. The factory is working seven days trying to get a buildup of parts in case the turnover doesn't go smoothly.

I fired up the Vulcan today, but decided not to ride it. The kids don't like the seat on it nearly as well as they like the seat on the Honda and well, I have a cab and a half Dodge Dakota. There were four high school football players, my granddaughter who's fourteen and myself all in that truck. I thought that matt was going to need to work the gas pedal for a bit, but then decided I could handle it. grin

Enjoy life, Ride hard and Stay safe. Marty

Deciding on what kind of journey to take

Well, the Silverwing is going down tomorrow so I can remove the faring and the gas tank. I need to double chek the hoses that go from the tank to the carbs and need to fix the faring. I am going to order a new windshield and some kind of a trunk. I don't have a rack for the trunk, but figure that I can figure out a way to fasten it. That way I will have a built in backrest and a way to keep my sleeping bag out of the elements.

I have to get my shoulder checked out to see that I won't do any major damage. That appointment is later on this month.

I looked at the four corners stuff that the California Club does, but I acutally like to have time to sightsee when I travel. I like to take the time to commune with nature. And people. And savor small towns. Other people can go on a road and say there is nothing to see. I can go on a road and feel history, decline and decay in spite of having every reason to thrive, or the ability of a community to thrive at all odds. LOL

I am seriously giving more thought to going away this winter for the winter. I am really wanting to get into the warm sun and there are plenty of places that I can go to do that. I'm thinking about a storage area so I can have a place to go to get my stuff when I get home. The kids will always welcome me to a spot on the couch.

Big enough so my desk can stay set up. And I can have a heater in there. And my desk chair. I wanted that the last time and well, it didn't really work well.

I would need to take my trailer. The biggest problem with travelling all winter by motorcycle is that one needs such a huge variety of stuff. Well, that and the fact that I take things because I'm a woman and I can. That sounds terrible, but it's true. LOL As a writer, I like paper and a pen, a computer, my wifi card, sometimes I like a stool so I can sit by a campfire. Then I need laundry soap to wash my clothes because they stink after three or four days of being by a fire.

I like to eat better when I am gone for a while. A Jet-Boil stove is great for short trips, but for long trips, well, I like a different answer.

So I am thinking. The way I travel is that I could have the longest perimeter travel ever. Who knows? Where would I need to be when? And how long is winter is the northwest corner of Texas? I could probably hide out at the trailer for a bit after my parents leave also, but by then it is warm.

What am I looking for? Life, love, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Or a chance at a job? Or a book? I wish I knew.

But then that is why I am me. Marty

To finish catching people up ;). I brought the Silvering home and took it back to the shop. Now they have fixed the brakes better. I haven't screamed at them yet. I may fairly soon.

Anyway, back to thinking about just what I want to do about that gosh darn perimeter tour. First up, do I want to try to take the Silverwing or do I want to take the Vulcan. Neither one is in the shape that I wish they were. It will cost about the same to fix either of them up for a cross-country trek.

I have been out riding off and on for the past three weeks. I took the Wing up to Higgins Lake for the Michigan Peer Support Specialist Training. I took the roads up to Bad Axe and Lexington, but no really long riding. I need to try a longer ride.

The Wing has a backfire that I have to fix. It happened after we got the bike back together from the Hole in the Gas Tank that happened up at Higgins Lake. I was so pissed. I lost a ton of gas all over the parking lot and the ground. For those of you who don't know, I am one of those enviro-geeks, the one's who want to save the resources for our grand kids.

The people at Higgins Lake were great. The loaned me gas cans, assistance getting my bike back together, (thanks Bob and Jeanne) gave me rides to the auto parts store, advice on what kind of goop to use (thanks Ernie) and helped me to not panic.

I am sure that the accident that I had helped the gas leak and I am glad that it didn't start while the bike was in storage when one was around to get to it.

So now I know how to patch a gas tank. Whoohoo. Are my skills improving or what? (You can all stop laughing now.)


I've started a list and started to look at my calendar so I guess that perimeter tour will need to finish before the snow hits the Rockies if I turn left and before the snow hits the Appalachians if I turn right. I am glad that I live in a Border Town. I won't have to travel anywhere to get to the perimeter. LOL.

I am thinking about moving South for the winter. I need to decide before my lease is up. LOL

Marty

A Green Dodge Dakota, Retrieving my Silverwing, Thinking about life

The guy who helped me tie down the bike asked me about my insurance. he said that he looked at my bike when it came in and he didn't think that the accident caused my brakes to lock up when I described what had happened. It starts to sink in that I could have died because some punk didn't actually fix the brakes like I thought.

I try not to think about it on the ride home.

Anyway, a couple of weeks later, (by the way, did I mention that my computer and my video camera are working well?), I am out riding the Kawasaki as I can't stand to frickin stay home so I am cruising and cruising and cruising around the town as I didn't want to go too far, but couldn't stay home. I turn down a road to head over to Yale, and then I find a green Dodge Dakota sitting by the side of the road with a for sale sign on it. Did I mention that I thought about a price, also?

I go, no, not really. A truck that is what I am looking for in the style I want. It's a cab and a half, forest green, bed liner, runs well, shifts well, brakes are good, wtf? You have got to be kidding me. Maybe I should buy the truck and go get the bike. Most people don't like to travel as much as I do. I love it. Absolutely love to travel.

I decide to buy the truck. I am scared to drive a vehicle all that way that I don't really know. That was part of the problem with the Wing. But I grab the keys, climb in and head off to pick up the bike. I was worried about how it was going to be loaded up, but figured that I could always call a wrecker to hoist it up. I did know that I couldn't help load it and still couldn't climb up in the bed to tie it down very many times.

The trip down gave me a lot of time to think it over. The first thing that I did was to go to the storage area and sit on the bike. Wow, did it feel good to be sitting on it. Wasn't rideable, but I was sitting on it. I wheel it out of the storage room, gather up all my luggage onto a cart and take a deep breath. I had it back. That was important to me.

Sitting outside the storage area, I started talking to guys and there were a couple of bikers who worked there. One even had a ramp in storage there. They loaded my bike into my truck and actually listened to the way that I wanted it to be tied down. The tailgate wouldn't go up so I double-checked that I wasn't going to lose it, and took off. I couldn't go back the way that I went when I had the accident, so I headed across on I-10 and headed up I-75. It was still early in the day when I left Jacksonville.

I was tired because of the stress, so I stopped early. There were four bikers who came in to the hotel later after me and I took the time to talk to them. I ate lunch in the local dive. It reminded me of Nebraska, where the only sit-down restaurant was in the gas station. The food was good, but I didn't really want to go back there for breakfast either. I thought about making it over to two-wheels m/c resort to try out my camping equipment, but didn't think I would be able to sleep on the sleeping pad yet.

I'm sitting back tonight, thinking this stuff through, wondering where I am going and what I am going to do about that damn dream to do a perimeter tour this year. I need to do it. I need to do it for me, for who I am, for who I want to be. Cause if I don't, I won't be who I want to be next year.

So, maybe I need to start planning things out once again. I had hoped to go camping with J.Rock this month, but it's not going to happen. so in a way, I feel like I wasted another month. I'm free the 10th or 12th of September for three weeks, I could do the Northern Section, come back for a couple of days, then go back and finish the rest. I need a calendar, a map and a hitch for my trailer.

Marty

The Trip Home, Getting on a bike again, Buying a Truck

Well, I got my bike out of the impound lot. There were a bunch of guys standing around helping. Or not helping depending upon what you thought they were doing. We had the Grand Am, it was riding low, the bike trailer that we wanted to rent wasn't going to work and Grandma was unhappy.

I have a tendency to spit nails when things don't go my way and it seemed like there had been at least a week of those kinds of days. I look like a wimp as I can't pull on my jeans, so I am wearing these old lady fru, fru clothes. They were about all I could find. For the past week my luggage and the jeans that I could wear were on my bike. In impound. I pick up my leather jacket and look at the shredded mess it had become. I have two, it was my favorite.

My clothes were there, my tent was there, my sleeping bag was there, my hard luggage didn't have any major holes in it--pretty scraped up but no holes, my mess kit was pretty dented, but hey. The key locks in the hard luggage still worked. My reading glasses were still there.

So I am standing there trying to figure out what to do. I already knew that plan A--the one where the Grand Am pulls my bike back to Michigan on a trailer--was down the drain. I decide to get a storage room and put my stuff in it. But we have to get the bike on the trailer.

I still don't feel like moving at all. But the guys that were tying down my bike to the trailer so I could put it into storage were doing it all wrong. And they didn't like to listen to this old fru fru lady. So this guy walks up. And he said, no--don't put the tie down straps there, put them here, on the engine guards. And don't put the tie downs there, put them on the luggage racks that attach to the frame. We're going to tie this bike down like it was a Harley, even though it's not a Harley.

If it was a Harley, it wouldn't have gone down with locked up brakes. I think, "Cute, very cute", but decide to take the cut because, frankly, i don't know if I could climb up on the trailer to retie down the bike even though I knew the tie downs weren't on right.

We get the bike back to the storage room; my daughter and Matt manage to muscle it into the storage room after I take most of the food out of the bags. The kids are happy, i have granola bars, chips and munchies for the ride home. I leave the clothes and the rest of the stuff on the bike, not sure just how I want to do what. There's a bike shop just down the road, do I want to try that one?

We pile in the car, a crowded mass of wall to wall people and we all settle in for a long ride home. Grandma buys the food since everyone is crowded because I am hitching a ride.

My daughter doesn't stop for the night. She just keeps driving. And driving. I take more pain medicine and try to block out the remaining pain by sleeping. It was way more than I could handle--riding home that way. Did I mention that I would have been happy to pay for a hotel room as well? Hell, I would have payed for a couple of them.

We get home and I try to figure out how to sleep. It takes a week or so before I want to think about lying down to sleep.

The Saturday after I got home, I got out the Vulcan to ride. It did hurt like hell. At the same time I have found that if I don't get back on, fear rules. I don't mind being afraid, but I absolutely refuse to stop going for my dreams because I am afraid. If at some point in the future I decide to not ride because there is too much of a chance of my dying, that is one thing. If I decide to change my dreams because I have thought things through. What isn't OK, at least for me is for me to stop riding because I am afraid to get back on.

So, I got on and rode up the road for about twenty miles to the roadside park up north of Lexington. At the roadside park I didn't really feel like talking to anyone, just chose a rock to sit on and looked out at the water.

After I got back, I thought about how I was going to get my Honda back to Michigan from Florida. One week down, three to go before the storage room rent was going to be due. I wanted my bike back by then.

I start thinking about buying a truck. I envision a Green Dodge Dakota, falling into my lap at a price I can afford, in a couple of weeks. At least it gives me something to think about besides worrying about what my Honda will look like. LOL

Marty