To Richfield, with love.

Aside from a few hiccups the Antelope island trip went well I felt. One of the rather nasty hiccups had to do with my speedometer. For some reason my bike enjoys eating speedometers. On the way home from the island I noticed the top part of the speedometer gauge face was cracked... concerning but not critical yet. However the needle had developed a VERY bad bounce, it would bounce about a 30mph spread, so it was very hard to know how fast I was traveling. With enough cars on the road it's not an unmanageable issue, I just match speeds with the other traffic. To an extent I can also tell how fast I'm going by knowing what gear I'm in and what my engines RPM's are.

I tend to be a bit of a pessimist, and a perfectionist. As such I wanted my speedometer to be in top condition, and since it wasn't, I wasn't happy about it. I contemplated my options, and consulted the all knowing SOHC4 forum, and found what I felt was a reasonable solution. Someone had stated that their speedometer bounced really bad as well and they had poured Denatured Alcohol into it and poured it out. The running theory as I understand it, is some grease had gotten between the magnet and the housing and was causing it to read erratically, and the alcohol helped to clean it up. Well that sounded like a simple fix for the erratic bounce, so I tried it.... err the results were a little less than spectacular.



As I posted this image I decided that maybe the results were just more spectacular than I had hoped for. As you can see, the gauge face paint started to run, and was exacerbated by me using compressed air in a vain attempt to get the alcohol to evaporate before it did any more damage. Oh well, the gauge face was cracked anyhow so it's not like I destroyed a pristine part. I could still use it for the most part, AND the alcohol did seem to get rid of the annoying bounce.

Saturday my friend and his family came over for a barbecue as a thank you for his help in rebuilding my moms deck a few years back. Yeah, the thanks was a bit late, but life sometimes gets in the way. After the barbecue he needed to go out to another friends place and pick up his laptop, so I figured I'd take the opportunity to load my bike up with the sissy bar bag my brother in law is letting me borrow (Thanks Isaiah, it's working awesome!) and a few other bits and see how she would handle before I left for the trip. With the new windshield installed and the gear packed down she handled really well, we hit 70mph with little problem. On the way there the crack that had been forming on the faceplate finally finished and the gauge face broke. Since the top piece flipped upside down and lodged itself in the bottom of the speedometer, it's not a big deal. I can still read the trip and odometer, and heck I couldn't read the gauge face anyhow so whatever.



For anyone looking at the above picture and trying to figure out what's wrong with it, notice the 30 is upside down and on the right hand side of the gauge.

Since the odometer works, and as I said the speedometer sort of works (even the "working" ones aren't THAT accurate, they are known the show you going up to 10% faster than you really are) and I'd been looking forward to this trip for a while now, I decided just to go with it. Heck, I can always match speeds with traffic right?

Fast forward to today, Monday, I had scheduled to leave work early so we could get down to Richfield with plenty of time. When I filled up on Sunday I calculated my MPG with the windshield at approx 28mpg... I was not thrilled at all with this, but since it's what I had to work with I figured I'd just go with it. I decided I'd better fill up before I hit 70miles on the odometer, or risk running out. After about 42 miles my back end was feeling a bit numb and we were coming to the last town for a stretch so I pulled off the freeway and into a Chevron station. I filled her up and was VERY surprised to only put a gallon in. The more I thought about it the more it sort of made sense though. I had been doing 75mph in 5th gear with my rpms at 6k. I'm guessing at that speed the windshield was making an air bubble big enough to keep most of it off me, thus improving the aerodynamics. I also think that since I was holding her to such a high rpm the entire time, the non-stock carbs I had installed were working more efficiently at the higher range. I figured I'd try testing my hypothesis. After filling up we got back on the freeway and continued heading south at about 75mph. After another 26 or so miles we pulled into another Chevron and filled up. Estimated mpg is 38, so from this I'm thinking that 6k rpms is about where I want to hold the bike at if I can, as it seems to give the best gas mileage. I apologize to anyone who isn't into motorcycles for the above paragraph, it's just my musings on why my modifications are functioning the way they are. The main story is I'm just thrilled to death to be getting better than 28mpg!

Going back just a we bit, as we were heading in to Nephi (the last stop I mentioned above) I looked up in time to see what appeared at first glance to be a long 4x4 piece of wood in the road. For a split second I was VERY concerned. At 75mph on my motorcycle, hitting something that big would not have ended with me still upright. I very quickly checked my left hand mirror and looked back and then changed lanes right as I realized it wasn't a piece of timber, but the blown tread off of an 18wheeler. It has always annoyed me that semi's would run their tires till they blew apart, but when riding a motorcycle, this debris takes on a whole new dimension. I am not sure what hitting it would have done to my bike, whether I would have wrecked or not, but I'm sure grateful I didn't. Not more than a few miles after the rubber booby trap I saw flashing lights. It seems someone else had already had a VERY bad day. As I flew past I could see 2 firetrucks and a highway patrol car parked next to a vehicle on it's side in the brush next to the road. I have no idea the condition of the passengers in said car, but I sure hope they were all right.

After we left Nephi, we pulled back on to I-15 south bound. As I was gaining on another semi truck I noticed the wind was getting really rough. I figured it was the draft from the big rig, so I accelerated to pass it. As I was passing the turbulence lessened a little bit, but once I pulled ahead it got worse. It took me a few minutes to realize it but I was dealing with a cross wind. It's not too bad dealing with something that is constant, but this cross wind would come and go. As I was contemplating this I noticed two vehicles pulled to the side of the road, and a third one, a truck pulling a road construction sign pull quickly too the right shoulder and stop. While I took the next few minutest to contemplate what was going on, I noticed another construction truck coming the wrong direction on the left hand shoulder. At this point I dismissed all 4 vehicles as being part of a road crew and continued to ride along my merry way.

Shortly after this the speed limit bumped up to 80mph, so I gave her a bit more throttle and enjoyed the thrill. Again, she handled it very well for about 15 miles or so, and then it came time to pull off in Scipio. I had started to notice some lightning flashes on the horizon we were headed toward and decided I'd better put the rain cover on the sissy bar bag. I pulled in to another Chevron (I'm biased, I like Chevron gas, and I'm willing to pay a bit more or drive a bit further to get it.) I filled the bike up and was a little saddened to see the mpg had dropped to 35, but still not too bad and I had been having some fun on the throttle, so that may have explained it. I pulled off my laptop bag since I didn't have a rain cover for it, and gave it to my mom who was following me in her car (it's always nice to have backup :) ) We discussed the odd happenings with the trucks on the freeway and she told me that we must have just missed seeing someone go off the embankment and that is what those 3 trucks had been stopping for, the other one that was going the wrong direction was probably actually picking up road cones. So 2 really nasty accidents on the way down today, and neither of them were in a place that I would have thought of as particularly dangerous. The first one, the car on its side was on a really straight stretch of road, and this one wasn't really much of a turn.

We started off again, taking a different highway, and I noticed the temperature had dropped pretty dramatically, and the smell of moisture was in the air. Sure enough it began to rain. It wasn't to terrible, it was heavy enough to keep from dirtying up my visor, but not so heavy that it was dangerous. For about 5 or so miles I enjoyed this natural swamp cooler effect. The speed limit here was only 65mph. After a while I had a white car pass me in a no passing zone, which I thought was really tacky and rather dangerous. It wasn't until I got to Richfield that my mom was able to inform me that I was actually only doing 55mph... so I guess I won't hold it against the white car for passing me. After about a 3.5 hour drive we pulled in to my uncles drive way which is where I will be calling home for the next few days as I venture out on day rides, exploring the beauty of central Utah. Here is a pic of the bike parked in front of his bushes.



His house is actually in a little town just to the east of Richfield called Glenwood. It's a small town, no street signals yet, but it has grown the the 20 or so years I have been coming down. Here's a few more pics of around the town, the post office is pretty small as you can see.



Glenwood is right near the mountains.

The family reunion was fun, unfortunately about only half the family could make it. But even with only half, it was a study in controlled chaos :)



It began to rain a little and we had a pretty double rainbow. Unfortunately my camera doesn't do the colors the justice they deserve, but it gives you a decent idea of what it looked like.



Here's a pic of the sun coming through the misty rain in a valley a ways off.



I rode the few blocks back from the park where the reunion was held, to my uncles house and parked on his sidewalk. After a few minutes I looked down and noticed a puddled of oil forming and decided it'd be rather rude of me to let my bike leak oil on his sidewalk so I moved it a bit. I know the oil is leaking from my oil pump, and seems to be getting a little worse as time goes on. For now I just plan on checking the level and keeping a spare quart with me. I must not be leaking too much since I topped off before leaving home and after 170 or so miles the level doesn't seem to have dropped much. Guess I'll be fixing that when I get home. For now though I just want to enjoy the time down here.

Brandon