lessons learned

Yellowstone 16 – Heading home

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I had found a little dirt road with a flat spot where I spent the night. The temperatures started getting higher and every step seemed one too many.

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I didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary in the sun but I had to take a bit of time to process the photos and video footage I had recorded during the past few days.

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I didn’t find any shade to rest in while my computer was doing it’s thing but I did find some fossils.

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Parts of Nevada must have been under water a long time ago. It was impossible to take a chunk out of this slate stone face without finding some fossilized marine when breaking a sheet of rock apart.

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As much as I wanted to stay and keep looking for maybe an even bigger find the heat made the decision to move on easy and as soon as my memory cars were free again I got back onto the road.

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Despite smooth tarmac on the freeway every minute on the road took its toll on me and I was trying to find a balance between taking breaks and pushing on to get through the heat to get north as fast as possible.

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In the shade the temperature had risen to 40 degrees before my thermometer broke.

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I was driving on lonely roads with barely any other vehicles and signs of civilization only every 50 kilometers or so. I had almost run out of gas when I stopped at a grocery store in the middle of nowhere which also had a gas station. It was more a warehouse and it seemed a bit deserted and all quiet. All the few people I saw and who worked there were Native Americans. I regretted having taken the jerrycan I had bought for the trip off the bike before I started my trip because I was concerned about the weight of the bike. It wasn’t the first time I had almost run out of fuel.

I also got a box of ice cream -that was so creamy it wasn’t actually refreshing- and lots of water and I was back on the road after an hour in the shade.

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It was so hot that the apparently a patch of dry grass next to the road had caught on fire.

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Because my bike has an insatiable appetite I needed to top up the engine oil again which I did from the saddle because I couldn’t get myself to dismount the bike to carry out the task.

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I still had a few hundred km to go until I would finally reach colder temperatures but luckily it was already afternoon and hopefully only a few more hours of sunlight ahead of me.

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Finally in Idaho the sun was lower. Now it was only blinding me.

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My day ended at the a nice mosquito infested riverbank which allowed me to set up my tent with running intervals. At one point I looked at my shoulder and saw seven mosquitoes there. While I was counting them five more simultaneously took a seat on the back of my hand. Finding this place I had been looking forward to cooking some dinner on my stove and enjoying the beautiful sunset over the river but suddenly I wasn’t that hungry anymore. The fact that I was on a straw field wasn’t encouraging anyway. I had spilled some of my gear including my food next to the bike but after estimating the cost of taking the time to pick everything up to between three and five more mosquito bites I decided to cut my losses and take care of everything tomorrow. I went to sleep with a growling stomach after removing three more mosquitoes inside my tent from this world.

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Oil and filter change

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A little while ago I had noticed that the oil level on the KLR was extremely low. I hadn’t checked it much previously because I didn’t think it would be necessary after just a few hundred kilometers. The 2008 series of the Kawasaki KLR 650 however is known for burning oil like crazy and despite the previous owner claiming that this particular example does not suffer from this condition it turns out it very much does.

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Driving with low oil is of course very dangerous and can lead to damaging the engine and possibly locking up the piston(s) and as a result the rear wheel while driving. On a motorcycle that wouldn’t be exactly great. So the engine needed more oil. The gauge on the engine block shows empty but simply adding fresh oil is not a good idea. There is always some old oil left in the engine block. Much more than what the gauge might lead you to believe. On the one hand that means that possibly the situation is not as bad as it looks and you might still be able to drive but on the other hand it also means the remaining oil has to come out before adding fresh oil. The oil consistency and quality degrades under the extreme stress in a running engine and again would eventually clog up and damage the engine if it was left in there and just filled up with additional fresh oil.

So the proper procedure is to always drain the engine completely and refill it with (in this bike’s case 2.5 liters of) fresh oil. From time to time the filter which assures the cleanliness of the oil in the engine should also be replaced with a new one. Since I had no idea when the filter had last been changed on this bike (if at all) I decided to do that too while I’m at it.

I used an empty laundry detergent container to catch the oil from underneath the bike after screwing off the plug at the underside of the engine.

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After a few minutes the flow had reduced to a trickle and eventually stopped completely. Just like honey the oil flows easier when it’s warm because it gets thinner so it is a good practice to run the engine for a few minutes before an oil change. Not too long though so you don’t burn yourself when you open the cap and it starts flowing all over your fingers which is almost unavoidable.

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Next I took off the cap on the side of the engine that revealed the filter and removed it.

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I cleaned the filter barrel (not sure what it is called) …

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… lubricated the new filter with fresh oil …

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and put it back into the barrel.

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The last step waso t close the barrel again …

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… and put 2.5 liters of fresh oil into the engine via the opening on the top right above the clutch compartment. As you can see the little gauge at the bottom of the engine is now filled to the top line again.

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Maintenance

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Since I bought my BMW F650GS Twin 8 months ago I had been riding it for 15 000 miles. During that time the maintenance I performed on it was limited to lubricating the chain and checking individual parts for wear. The dry Spanish summer was a strain on the bike overall but particularly on the chain. In hindsight I believe I should have lubricated it a lot more often than I did. Towards the end of my trip the bike didn’t perform as well as it should have. There was a strange noise coming from the chain as soon as it moved. Accelerating was only possible with much sensitivity on throttle and clutch as a regular immediate acceleration had become impossible without the chain yanking on the gears due to the fact that the chain had started to stretch – unevenly. That meant that I could not simply keep widening the gap between the front and rear sprockets by moving the rear wheel more and more to the back to compensate for the longer chain. So as a result of the unevenly stretched chain links the chain was jumping up and down dangerously when accelerating and decelerating, sometimes even skipping a tooth on a sprocket.

An old or even damaged chain usually damages the sprockets as well. Only changing one of the elements of this little ecosystem means that the unchanged ones will war down the new part very quickly.

A few days after I had received the parts I had ordered I was driving home from work late at night when the inevitable happened. On a little hill at just over 20km/h I heard and felt a tension on the engine building up and suddenly being released. I immediately lost all power and no matter how much I twisted the throttle I was not accelerating. Luckily the street was empty I had just rolled towards a red traffic light. I glanced down onto the chain and saw that one of the double sided chain links had snapped and the chain had jumped off both the rear and front sprocket.

(Photos taken after the fact.)

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Unlike a bicycle chain it should be impossible to lift the chain off the rear sprocket. About a millimeter is OK. With great effort I got the half broken chain back around the rear sprocket but it didn’t want to stay on. This should not be possible:

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Luckily I was just 500 m from home at that point so I pushed the bike up the little incline and to the parking lot. It was time for some bike maintenance.

Spain 34 – The final challenge – Part 2

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The path got a little smaller and looked less and less like a road a GPS would suggest.

I stopped at a sign which I hoped would clear things up for me. But it didn’t. It was in Spanish (which I don’t speak) and it had tons of warning signs at the bottom and one little passage in English saying something like permission from the local government is needed to drive here and only 4×4 vehicles are allowed to pass. I wasn’t sure as to why my GPS would suggest this rout. The GPS app on my phone I was using (“HERE” ) had still not failed me across the 12000 km I used it on so far, even in Iceland it worked like a charm. So my optimistic thought was that this was probably just a short connection to the main road which had to come any minute now…

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The road didn’t actually look too bad which gave me confidence that my theory was right. The only thing that concerned me a little was that there were mountains all around me and no visible place to get out. Maybe a tunnel, I though. Probably.

The further I went though the clearer it became that this was not a “real” road. Ahead of me was just a wall of rock and no trace of a proper road. The weather also started to reveal the fact that I had climbed quite a bit in the past two hours. There was thick fog all around me.

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My last bit of hope that this was going to turn into a proper road was taken away by the little stream running through my path.

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I was beginning to think there might have been something to the little warning signs on the sign post earlier.

Briefly a few little houses I passed gave new hope but it was short lived as most of them were ruins. Also the road got worse and started to get steeper.

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The bike was fully loaded which is not ideal for off-roading but there is no way around that when traveling long distances.

Riding on the rocky terrain was tricky. By trail and error I realized I had two options. I had gone slow at first trying to slalom around the larger stones looking for the most even ground. But as it turned out going slow was actually more difficult than the second option, going fast. Especially with a heavy bike this is the method of choice for this kind of terrain. The best technique is to shoot over the rocks with momentum. That way you are not constantly pushing the handle bar around risking losing the bikes balance because the bikes momentum that doesn’t change when you have already yanked the handle bar in a different direction to avoid the next rock. And it is also far less likely to be thrown off balance by a rock under the front wheel which suddenly makes the wheel jump. If you go fast the momentum of the bike swallows up these kinds of sudden bumps. Naturally going fast on this kind of ground is a challenge in and of itself but trying both it quickly becomes apparent that going fast is the way to go.

It got steeper and steeper and by the looks of it I was simply going up the mountain that lay ahead of me. Not tunnels. No main road.

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It looked like my GPS had finally properly failed me. Once again unfortunately the GoPro Camera doesn’t properly convey inclines due to it’s wide angle but the road became so steep that the engine died again and again. I had reached a point where I had to make a decision whether I wanted to push on or turn around. The problem with turning around though was that going downhill on a gravel road is the worst thing you can do on a motorcycle. The bike may be heavy but it is not heavy enough to give you enough grip and once you start sliding there is no stopping. Hence there was no going back.

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A few more meters ahead the road got so steep that I even lost all grip going up. Many times I started the engine twisting the throttle and playing with the clutch but I didn’t get far. Each time after the engine died the released weight of the bike forced me to get up and put my feet on the ground while hitting the breaks and try and push against the bike wanting to roll down. When starting the engine again I had the choice between full throttle or slow and steady. Full throttle would have meant digging the rear wheel into the gravel shooting out rocks. Slowly playing with clutch and throttle meant tormenting the clutch but it seemed to be the only other choice.

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After many tries only gaining a few feet I finally got a rock large enough under my rear wheel to give me some grip and with more throttle I got the right amount of speed to shoot over the gravel again. A great relief not least because the clutch had already started to smell.

Another five minutes ahead I thankfully reached some kind of valley where the road didn’t seem to be climbing anymore. At least for now.

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I turned back to realize how far I had come.

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The view was breathtaking and I stopped to relax for a few minutes and take a few sips of water.

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Spain 27 – Running on empty

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Just after leaving Lisbon I noticed I had almost run out of gas so I pulled over at the next gas station. Upon opening my wallet I realized that I had almost run out of cash also and I knew my prepaid credit card which I got just for the trip wasn’t topped up either. The annoying procedure that in Portugal you have to pay at the gas station before getting gas finally came in handy as I had the chance to decided to only fill up my tank enough to get me out of the city.

I used my remaining cash to pay for some food for the next day at a supermarket and wasn’t really sure how to continue from there. But I now had enough fuel and supplies to push the problem away from me for at least another day.

So I kept going North enjoying the beautifully multicolored sky that promised rain ahead of me.

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To add to this unfortunate situation while driving on the highway an insect flew into my helmet and got wedged between my head and the helmet. I was driving with the visor up but was still wearing my sun glasses to protect myself from situations like these. As soon as I noticed the bug shooting into my helmet I ripped off my brand new glasses (5 Euros) smashing them in the process trying to use a temple as a hook to fish out the bug. I must have gotten it out but it hurt and I wasn’t sure if it was from the insect stinging me or simply the fact that a bug hit my head at 70km/h.

When I stopped though I couldn’t see any sting or bite mark so I continued, visor down – naturally…

Along the way I kept my eye out for places that might offer WiFi. But this was not the most populated area and most buildings were residential ones. I knew I could top up my prepaid card online but didn’t really know how and didn’t want to use expensive roaming on my phone to google how. Unfortunately the charging process can only be done in 100 Pound increments. I hadn’t gone through that process in case the card wasn’t going to work in Euro-Land and I didn’t want to get 100 Pounds stuck on the card.

However after checking another restaurant for WiFi I remembered that I had installed an app from my prepaid credit card company on my phone before leaving London.

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Never having opened it before I was relieved to find out that it was also for topping up the card. All I needed now as a few bytes of roaming on my phone and a minute later my day was saved and everything was looking up again. Even the clouds were moving away.

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It was also getting late and I started looking for a spot to set up camp. I had changed my GPS target to the only larger green patch on the map within reach.

Along the way ever so often I met fellow adventure rider. Many of them on BMW R1200GS’s. The mother of all adventure motorcycles like mine.

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Upon getting closer to the green patch on my map I realized why it was standing out. It was a little mountain chain. Respectively the weather changed quite a bit. Luckily I had taken out my warm clothing and sleeping bag insulation just before leaving London to save a little more weight… Mentally I was preparing for a cold night.

I hadn’t found a single promising spot on my approach so far so I decided all or nothing and kept going. The temperature had fallen below 15 degrees.

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I figured nobody would live directly below the face of the mountains so I tried to find a path to get as close to the foot of the mountain as I could.

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Setting up the tent didn’t take very long.

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Dinner consisted of bread, cheese, ham and half a kilo of strawberries.

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Spain 20 – Gibraltar

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I rode through the night for two hours through what appeared like un-populated land on the GPS but the roads lead me through fenced grazing land with “no trespassing” signs. I was about to trespass until I found a little path that only went 30 meters away from the road and didn’t offer much cover but it had to do.

Surprisingly there were huge number of mosquitoes there so I used my mosquito head net and together with my biking clothing I didn’t get bitten a single time. (Maybe though it was actually because they were scared of me because I looked like a nightmare from a horror movie.)

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In the morning I saw that my location really wasn’t covered very well but like before nobody had noticed or cared about my presence.

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When I was searching for a camp spot I had to rely on the head light of my bike. It’s a strong light but centered on the road. It didn’t illuminate a big area and made the search difficult in the pitch dark night. To make the next search a bit more convenient I adjusted the angle of the headlights a bit so the light would go further ahead. A minor adjustment that did make a big difference.

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However it is still not ideal. I decided that I would get auxiliary lights for my next trip. A great side effect will obviously also be being more visible by other drivers on the road. According to accident statistics the big majority of accidents not caused by a motorcyclist himself are caused by the other driver not seeing the motorcyclist.

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My next stop would be yet another country. Gibraltar. Gibraltar is just a tiny spec on the coast of Spain and it is part of the UK. The official language is English and the currency British Pounds.

 

I was just under two hours away from Gibraltar and approached the border in the afternoon after having stocked up my supplies and filled up my tank.

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Contrary to what I had been told the border crossing went very fast without any waiting time whatsoever. I felt right at home with my British license plate.

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Gibraltar is basically just a big rock. There is very little space which makes for a very interesting dense city/country layout. The main road of the country that leads from the border to the center is shared between cars, motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians – and planes. An airfield goes straight through the road. It’s not a little one either. It’s a full scale runway. When a plane is approaching or taking off traffic is closed until the last pedestrian has left the road (which sometimes takes a while) and then air traffic occupies the road for a few minutes.

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My trip to Gibraltar had one particular purpose. Seeing the monkeys of Gibraltar. The only place in Europe where monkeys are native in the wild. I was told that this is from a time when Africa was still connected to Spain. The monkeys live up on the rock so you have to either walk, drive or get the cable car to get to the top. Although as far as I know you can’t actually go all the way to the top.

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I chose the road which was not for the faint of heart. Very narrow and with a deep drop on one side it did however offer a great view.

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In fact the unique look and flair of these roads would be worthy of a Bond action sequence – which they were. In “The living Dailights” Bond (Timothy Dalton) is parachuting from a plane onto the mountain to find out that the training exercise he is part of took a deadly turn.

Parachuting over Gibraltar

(You can see the same mountains in the background as in my photo above)

Landing in tree

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Half way up the mountain I found what I was looking for.

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The Monkeys are used to people and come close if you are in their path. I had been told to be careful with my belongings as they are known to borrow tourists equipment they fancy. But I had no problem. I watched the monkeys for an hour and then kept going up as far as I could. The highest accessible point for non doubble-0 agents is the entrance of a cave system that was dug into the mountain centuries ago to fight against the Spanish and other threats in multiple battles.

The caves were not very tall.

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They had multiple window like openings to the face of the mountain where cannons were placed making it an ideal battle station position. From these holes in the walls you can see all of Gibraltar – and I am not even exaggerating. Spain begins roughly at the top half of the photo.

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You can see the main road intersecting the runway on the left. The busy field on the bottom is the cemetery. People of all religions are burried right beside each other for lack of space. Considering how tiny the country is there is a huge amount of football fields. I counted eight.

After visiting the caves I ate my dinner at the top and took in the beautiful view.

Exiting the country a little while later I regretted having filled up my tank before entering as everything turned out to be extremely cheap here. I think the taxes are a lot lower if there are any at all..

I was back in Spain and heading for Sevillia.

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Accident

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So, from day one I have been skeptical of riding a bicycle or motorcycle in London. Mostly because of the taxi drivers who drive like they are alone on the roads (just like in any other city). On that Sunday afternoon I was about to turn left on Regent Street just before Piccadilly a hundred meters short of my destination (MPC). With the left blinker on, at only a few mp/h I was lining up to turn left. Slowly rolling up towards the turn after the green light I got hit by a taxi driver from behind causing me to drop the bike.

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Luckily neither of us was hurt.

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He hit me at my right pannier. The impact force tilted it 45 degrees against the mounting position. I didn’t think that was even possible. It must have been quite a force but the good thing is that I didn’t feel much of the bump because of this buffer effect. Having panniers probably the closest thing you can get on a bike to haven some sort of crumple zone or bumper. Not only do they protect the rider but also the bike from more expensive damage.

I was coming from where the bus is with the cab driver right behind me kind of like in the picture below with the cyclist and the cab behind her.

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The taxi driver claimed it was my fault for dropping the bike after him hitting me. I thought he was joking. He tried to convince me not to report it to my insurance because I would be held responsible for dropping the bike anyway – as a result of his mistake crashing into me.. He hadn’t thought this through despite trying to tell me the same thing fifteen times. Besides the broken right pannier and mount the left side of the bike is all scratched up. But luckily after contacting his insurance the next day they very quickly got back to me saying that they will pay for the repairs thus accepting the cab drivers obvious fault.

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Looks like this was not the first time he had hit something either.

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I also reported the accident to the police the next day (which I found out you have to do within 24 hours anyway). Interestingly my insurance and his insurance both offered me a hire bike free of charge for the time my bike will be at the mechanic. Initially my insurance wanted to pick up the bike and bring it to Birmingham for repairs since they have their headquarters there and their own mechanic. But they agreed to let me bring it to BMW in London to get it fixed which makes it a lot easier for me to keep track of things. After getting an estimate of the repair costs I’ll send them to the cab drivers insurance I hope everything will be sorted out quickly so I can still do my Spain trip.

All in all there wasn’t anything I could have done differently to prevent the crash which is a bit comforting at least. Most people I know who ride bikes/motorcycles in London all have had either a few close calls already or accidents so I guess I can only hope for the best in the future – and maybe try and avoid cabs as best as possible.

Breacon Beacons 2 – Engine Trouble

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The next morning after breakfast I packed my things, and got ready to continue my journey. But when I started the engine I noticed a strange clicking sound just like the sound that you hear on a bicycle with different gears idling when the pedals are not moved. So I stopped at the next parking lot to look for the source of the troubling sound.

 

 

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The front sprocket cover was filled with chain oil residue. A sign for bad lubricant being used (applied by the dealer).

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I tried to clean it as best as I could but nothing would stop that strange rattling sound. (A plastic bag is a pretty decent substitution for a working glove to keep your hands clean so you don’t get your biking gloves all oily on the inside if you don’t have the chance to wash your hands right after the work.)

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After two hours of fiddling around with the chain it became more clear that the sound had to be coming from the chain or the sprockets and not from inside the engine. That was a big relief. Still I wanted to find a mechanic shop to get an expert opinion to know whether it would be safe to continue the journey or not. Google said there was a shop half an hour from my location but when I got there I discovered that it was closed which was not a big surprise because it was Sunday. From there I decided it was best to end the trip here and try to get back home without adding to the damage on the bike.

This was disappointing but I am actually glad this happened because I learned a few valuable lessens:

I need to carry more tools with me. I should have the possibility to take off the chain and sprockets, to inspect inspect them, clean them or swap them. I should have the tools to adjust the chain tension and I should lubricate the chain regularly and carry the lubricant with me on bigger trips. Also I will add disposable plastic gloves to my tool kit.

 

Lands End 7 – On filtering

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After having forgotten the time, spending two hours at the beach instead of 20 minutes I got back on the bike and set course for London.

Traffic was bad and we were slowly crawling up the hilly motorway, stopping countless times. As annoying as that was it made me understand something I had been wondering about for quite some time. The reason for filtering on a motorcycle. It’s probably not what you (or I) thought. What filtering really is all about is that you don’t have to stop. It’s not really about getting ahead. Being stuck in a traffic jam on a bike is very different from being stuck in a car. For one you can’t really drive with the clutch alone like with a car so you constantly have to rev (with your right hand) while squeezing the break leaver every other second while balancing the 150 kg motorcycle uphill. So you have all your muscles tensed up for as long as you are in the jam. This is annoying for 5 minutes let alone two hours. It gets exhausting fast. Especially when you have already been riding 800 miles in the past two days. So filtering is not all about speed but more about convenience or rather fatigue. The only problem is that with a bigger bike like mine with panniers you are not that narrow any more so it’s more difficult and often there just is no getting through.

It was getting dark and I was still stuck in traffic in Cornwall with a regular work day just hours away – in London.

While waiting – one driver had a megaphone out the window asking drivers to honk x amount of times for the correct answer number x to a question – I noticed that my bike was casting two shadows onto the car in front of me whose driver had just honked twice giving the correct answer to the question ‘Which is the capital of Norway?’. That’s when I realized what the yellow triangle warning light must have been about! My head light had to be out for me to see the shadows in front of me. After finally getting a chance to exit the motorway I checked the light at a petrol station that had already closed for the night and sure enough only the parking light was on. I didn’t have enough tools with me to get the bulb out or to check if it had just gotten loose so I adjusting the angle of the lights housing instead so I could switch on the high beam and would not blind anybody.

The tools on the F650GS are under the seat so it had to come off:

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This high beam solution worked well and traffic was getting better at this late hour so I continued my journey safely and reached London at around 11pm.