I broke one of the plastic tabs off of my right plastic side cover on my motorcycle today. I was trying to remove it so it wouldn’t meet the same fate as my left plastic. It still should be able to stay on but its annoying that one of the three tabs is now very much broken. Perhaps this is a sign that I need to build my own side covers to make the bike more awesome. When Jaime’s dad saw my bike in the Starbucks parking lot today, he couldn’t figure out what sort of bike it was until I told him. I sort of like the stealth bike appeal.
Taking a friend to Salem through the heavy fog
Today I went on a ride with Jaime up to Salem. Her father met us at a Starbucks just north of downtown. She took her bike to Portland with him this afternoon for winter storage.
The air temperature never went above 50 the entire ride and in fact in some places was probably closer to 40. A thick layer of fog that alternated between hugging the ground and hovering about 15 feet above the ground stayed with us all the way from Corvallis to Salem and back again. I added an extra layer of pants and an extra layer of long sleeve shirt today compared to what I had on Friday. It helped quite a bit. My only real problems were the periodic fogging up of my visor on the inside and the periodic moisture buildup on the outside of the visor.
On the return trip I was alone and was able to bomb back quite quickly. It seemed that the fog made traffic go more quickly than normal. The ride was about 80 miles total.
I took on fuel in Corvallis at 86.6 miles on the odometer before I left town. I paid $3.99 total getting 1.814 gallons. My fuel economy was somewhere around 47 mpg. This cold air seems to make it run a bit more rich than in the summer.
Bombing up past Camp Adair and back again
This morning I backed my motorcycle out of the garage for a quick jaunt up past Camp Adair and back again. The air was cold and I was a bit concerned that my bike wouldn’t turn over. Three cranks and it was fired up. After about five minutes of warming the engine in the 40 degree F air, I was ready for a ride.
My thermal layers consisted of spandex tights, spandex cycling bibs, long johns, ski socks, a long sleeve shirt, my motorcycle jacket, a neck warmer, fleece undergloves, and my normal riding gloves. I was only slightly chilled even when keeping up with the speeding traffic along 99W. For a colder or longer ride, I think I will wear my fleece pants and maybe one more layer under my jacket. A baklava might also be handing to keep my chin from getting cold.
The clear visor on my helmet kept fogging up today. Every ride it gets a little more bothersome. I’ve got some anti-fog stuff that I use on my SCUBA mask and my snowboarding goggles that I’m going to give a shot. Does anyone have any other ideas of what I should try?
One sad note of the ride was the loss of my left plastic side panel. I have a note on that over in my maintenance log.
In total, my ride was about 33 miles long and very fun!