Almost to Valsetz

 

On Sunday, Drew and I went on an adventure on our dual sports into the central Oregon coast range.  Our twin goals were Valsetz and Valley of the Giants.  We made it to within two miles of Valsetz before we were flagged down by a state trooper.  Evidently motorcycles have recently been banned from the forests even though cars and trucks are still allowed.  We are investigating the matter further to see if we can get special written permission to travel on forest roads.  The whole central coast range is inside a Cooperative Travel Management Area.  It would have been nice if the signs we passed had mentioned motorcycles being disallowed.  The trooper gave us a warning and shooed us out of the forest.  We are now researching new places to ride or ways around the regulations so that we can get our dual sports some more exercise.

This video has a few clips of some of the more memorable sections of road that we ventured across.

 

Elevation profile.  The dip in the middle is where the state trooper turned us around.

Route map.  Note that it’s difficult to get a good GPS lock in the forest.  It’s even harder when in deep ravines.

This was a spectacular place to ride.

Spare can of fuel.

Now where are we?

We are here.

We almost explored up this road.

Gorgeous country.

 

 

 

Valsetz is down there somewhere.

Microwave relay station.

Why yes, we are on an adventure.

 

 

On the Road with Carl

On Saturday, Carl and I went up to the Columbia Sportswear Employee Store in Beaverton. I scored a new snowboarding jacket while Carl took care of most of his Christmas shopping. On the way up, the speedometer on the XS850 decided to break (sheared cable). Coming back down, the tachometer went crazy and snapped off its own needle. Something in the middle drive and possibly the starter assembly also started making a bunch of noise. There’s always something new and interesting to fix on old motorcycles!

Dual Sporting with a PC800

Today Drew and I went up around Marys Peak on his recently acquired Yamaha XT225 and my Honda Pacific Coast.  I’ve ridden most of these roads before so it was my pleasure to introduce Drew to them.

In the middle of nowhere on our bikes.

Drew with his new toy.

Me with my PC800.

A short while later while riding along, my back end slid out and took me and my whole bike with it.  The action starts around 50 seconds into the above video.  I was fine and the bike was fine.  No damage to anyone other than a bruise on my right leg.  Yes, my right leg.  I must have whacked the foot peg when I went down on the LEFT side.

 

Road marks.  It was very deep gravel on top of sand or something similar that looked like it was nice and compacted.

No real damage to the PC800.  Just the Mick-O-Peg bent in a bit.  A little pushing and it was back in the right position.

 

Once I get a dual sport, we’ll explore this road.  The PC800 is too valuable to go crashing very often!