No chance to get away yesterday after being at Brad’s for over 8 hours getting the shock situation improved.<\/p>\n
I started out on my very tip toes. After he changed to a different spring the motorcycle dropped about 3\/4 of an inch. After rebuilding the entire shock and adding shims internally it brought the height down another 1\/2 inch. While the motorcycle is still taller than it was with the old shock (it should be since Brad thinks I was riding on the spring with no shock absorbing), I’m going to see if I can live with this height. After packing the motorcycle last night it seemed to settle down a little more.<\/p>\n
I got up very early planning to leave at first light and headed for the computer to check the forecast. I was somewhat dumbfounded when I saw the latest forecast for Amarillo was for wind 45-50 and gusts to 65 with sand storms.\u00a0There was no way I was going to ride into that and after checking all options determined I would have to stop before Amarillo so no need to rush out the door. Since the forecast was better for Tuesday I considered not leaving until the next morning — but what if the forecast changed again?<\/p>\n
Got out of the house around 11:00 and found out how windy it was after leaving Denton on 380 headed straight west. It was a bad side wind and I wasn’t sure how long I’d hang in there. My jacket was catching enough wind that it was lifting me off the motorcycle seat even after I zipped everything up that I could.<\/p>\n
When I got to Decatur and headed more northwest the wind became tolerable from the direction is was blowing. The wind speed was expected to build with the heat of the day — the temperature was in the 90’s by Wichita Falls where \u00a0I stopped to get fuel and a weather update. Wind in Wichita Falls was 28, 30 in Childress, and 39 in Amarillo so I decided to see if I could make it a while longer.<\/p>\n
Fun things on the ride up 287 — I saw a herd of camels (no kidding) and a herd of buffalo with several babies.<\/p>\n
The wind was steadily building and what I initially thought might be a dark sky due to rain turned out to be a dark sky due to dirt in the air. Being a hard contact lens wearer I was less than thrilled with approaching that.<\/p>\n
After I rode into the blowing dirt and the wind got worse. My mouth was full of grit (lovely) but my eyes were doing okay. Even though it was in the 90’s I decided I better not drink any more water since it required opening my visor.<\/p>\n
Several miles outside Childress the wind had gotten so bad it felt a couple times like it was going to smack me over — I was once again headed due west so the wind was no longer angled from behind me, but straight from the side. The air was the color of mud. I called it, found a room, and will watch the evening news to see what they say about the dry line that’s causing all the wind. If I try to look up and down Main St. here in Childress I can’t see very far because there’s so much dirt in the air. I talked to Mike Truel in OKC and he said the line was moving at 60 MPH so I hope it’s gone in the morning. If it is, I’ll be on the road very early to make up some miles.<\/p>\n
After not getting the motorcycle back until Thursday and then changing to a shock that made the motorcycle way too tall I’ve adopted an “it is what it is” attitude. I’ll do the best I can and get out to the rally when \u00a0get out to the rally.<\/p>\n
Good news — the motorcycle is now low enough I don’t think I have to get the side stand lengthened (I thought \u00a0did at the end of the day yesterday) — the bike sits at an acceptable angle when parked and I am able to boost it up when it’s fully loaded. Oh – and it rides a whole heck of a lot better. I’m looking forward to a calm day of riding when I can really focus on the change in the ride rather that holding on for wind gusts.<\/p>\n
If the adventure doesn’t begin until the first thing goes wrong, then I’m already on an adventure \ud83d\ude42 65 MPH gusts — that’s ridiculous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No chance to get away yesterday after being at Brad’s for over 8 hours getting the shock situation improved. I started out on my very tip toes. After he changed to a different spring the motorcycle dropped about 3\/4 of an inch. After rebuilding the entire shock and adding shims internally it brought the height […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64],"class_list":["post-1016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trip_reporting","tag-california"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1016"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1018,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions\/1018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}