Wednesday (map, 415mi): Breakfast at the Avon Cafe. Late lunch at Jax Cafe in Eureka. Best burgers around. Hopefully this will be more than a log of where and what I ate. While gassing up in Seeley Lake I met the caretaker of said lake who fell in love with the bike. Happens all the time (still waiting for a cute gal to fall in love with it–so far it’s only wrinkled old geezers). Made it to Radium Hot Springs around 6:30 and stayed at the Gables Motel (yay wifi). Talked with a dude there who was on Holiday from Saskatchewan and used to race Kawasaki sport bikes. Interesting cat but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Was later reminded just how different Canadian TV can be. Some of it is like Bizzaro-world versions of our shows. Some of it is just completely “off.”

Thursday (map, 312mi): The next morning I found out they call it “back bacon” in Canada, not “Canadian Bacon.” Just 6 miles north of Golden my bike started running poorly. It wasn’t quite like a vacuum leak (though I replaced the vacuum caps anyway) and it wasn’t quite like running on one cylinder. After a little while it “cleared up” and I continued on. Glacier National Park is quite stunning (see gallery). When John and I passed through there in 2004 it was rainy and miserable and we had no idea how scenic it was. On the way down to Revelstoke had to wait to pass through single lane traffic due to a toppled over semi-truck trailer. As we got moving again three friggin jackholes on Harleys skipped the queue up to where I was and one of them insisted on running right next to me through the accident traffic. You just don’t pull that shit with someone you don’t know. Once we were in the clear I let them take off ahead of me. Gassed up in Revelstoke and headed for the Shelter Bay Ferry about a half-hour south. Due, I gather, mostly to the Nakusp Music Festival the line for the ferry was a few miles long and they only had one ferry running. Waited in line for over 3 hours with two blokes from Alberta (see gallery). We chatted about the usual stuff, bikes, differences between the provinces and between our two countries. Other than the heat, and seriously impacting my schedule, it was a pleasant enough time. South of the ferry I had that vapor lock type of issue again for a few miles, but again, it cleared up. At the time I was thinking it was a batch of bad gas. Luckily the start of the Nakusp Music Festival was still a day away so passing through there was easy and there were no cops on the road yet. Didn’t need a repeat of last year’s speeding ticket (although it appears that one wasn’t enough for ReneLouis and he had to have one for his new Moto Guzzi Norge). The rest of the day was uneventful and I arrived in Nelson around 7:30 that evening.

Friday: There were a couple groups rides I could have gone on, but I didn’t sleep well and slept in. Had a nice breakfast at the Red Fish cafe and hit the road about 11am for the Balfour Ferry with the intent of doing the Creston-Salmo loop (Google map), 154 miles. Ran into one of the groups in Creston, ReneLouis, Brad, Rocket Bob and Rich, who were setting up the Poker Run for Saturday and sat with them while they had lunch. They were doing the same loop, but counter-clockwise. I continued my clockwise loop alone without incident, well, that is until I was parking my bike back at the Grand Hotel. Every few years I have the same humbling experience, but this time it was with an extra dose of humiliation, to remind me I’m not an expert at this whole motorcycle thing. I forgot to put my kickstand down and almost dropped my bike on Keith’s new Triumph Trophy. Naturally, this was in front of a parking lot full of rally attendees. But this was good because I needed their help. I crushed my left thumb between my handebars and Keith’s bike, saving it from a nasty scratch. But that meant I couldn’t pick the bike up on my own, since I couldn’t get a grip on it with my left hand. ::sigh:: No harm, no foul, though my thumb is still sore.

Saturday: Met up with friends for breakfast once again at the Red Fish Cafe. There are plenty of other places to eat in Nelson, and they’re all good, but Red Fish is awesome. There was a group consensus to bail on the poker run and instead we did the Kaslo-New Denver loop (Google map), 169mi. The top of the pass between those two towns is just gorgeous (see gallery). Our initial party was Keith, Marty, Zdenko, Karen and Brent, with John following in the chase truck. Rocket Bob followed us up to Kaslo but went back to Nelson. We had planned on lunch in Nakusp but because SOMEBODY had to stop in Kaslo for ice cream a mere hour after breakfast, that threw us off. Just as well as the cops were out again around Nakusp and I hate doing the speed limit. As mentioned above, ReneLouis did go to Nakusp and did get nailed for another ticket. He caught up with us in New Denver as we were finishing up lunch. I also took a few shots of a couple vintage bikes on a trailer there at the Valhalla Inn, an Ariel square four and what appears to be a WWII era Norton. At lunch we were also joined by a Triumph Thruxton rider from Alberta named Ritchie (?) who accompanied us back to Nelson. What followed was some of the best riding of my life. Keith lead the way on his (now award winning) 2003 Cardinal Red America, followed by ReneLouis on his new Moto Guzzi, then me, then the Thruxton. The four of us blazed a trail through the twisties, occasionally stopping to allow the rest of the party to catch up. My bike was just singing with the bark of the specialty spares exhaust bouncing off the cliff walls and the concrete barriers separating the road from the lake below, as well as harmonizing with the exhaust notes of the other riders in my group as our RPMs rose and fell together. It was…well, as close to a Zen state as I’ve ever been. If my depiction sounds a lot like sex, well, it was the next best thing to sex and lasted a whole lot longer. That evening at the banquet the food was good as usual. Rocket Bob got the old fart award, and Keith got the Best Cruiser award. He was positively beaming. And there was a nice moment when they recognized John for returning after his crash last year.

Sunday (map), 436mi: Got a very late start, about 11am MST, after our customary Sunday morning breakfast at the Hume Hotel. They have one of the best eggs benedicts anywhere. With the goodbyes said and my stuff loaded in John’s truck, I blasted over the Creston-Salmo pass, stopping only for a photo opp at the top (see gallery) and at the border so John could catch up and I could get my passport out of the back of his truck. Interestingly both border guards, going each way, wondered how I got the license plate “BOLLOX.” They give the bureaucrats at the Montana DMV (or the old biddies who might complain) too much credit for knowing British slang/profanity. John and I met up with Del in Bonner’s Ferry, ID, for some coffee and pie. Yeah, another delay but I hadn’t seen Del in years. Unfortunately his lovely bride Janet couldn’t or wouldn’t join us (having just returned from a camping trip and looking horrible or somesuch nonsense), but he brought her lovely Bonneville SE to show off. Just outside Bonners Ferry my bike started “doing it” again. I nursed it along at about 50mph for about 15 miles before it just exploded in wild acceleration again. Soon I will be tapping the hivemind at BonnevilleAmerica.com to figure that out. After a snack at the Little Bear Cafe in Thompson Falls I transfered my luggage from John’s truck to my bike and headed for home. I probably should’ve stopped there in T-Falls or in Missoula for the night, but I continued on in the dark, watching for critters but ultimately making it home around 10:40 without incident.

Total Miles: 1486. Number of Days: 5. Average Miles per day: 297.2.

UPDATE: Zdenko’s Gallery on Flickr (don’t critique–he’s very sensitive), Rocket Bob’s Gallery on Facebook (must be his blue period), Keith’s Gallery on Photobucket.

View Larger Map

I purchased the Track feature for my SPOT GPS Personal Tracker, so I don’t have to hit the ‘OK’ button to mark a waypoint on my Google Map (link in the side bar). The map above is the plan. Could change a bit. If I make good progress Wednesday I might jump over to Banff and/or Lake Louise. I’m planning on averaging 360mi per day. Easy on a super-slab. A little more taxing on two-lane twisties with lots of tourist on the road. May not make it all the way to Radium the first day. Probably take Friday ‘off’ in Nelson and do a day ride with the gang on Saturday. Home Sunday.

View Larger Map

Also, my SPOT personal GPS tracker page shows the points at which I pressed the “check in” button. Unfortunately I haven’t figured out how to limit the page to just this weekend’s activity, so it show last weekend as well. Figured out how to delete those couple from last weekend.

Photos

View Directions to East Helena, MT in a larger map

Traveling alone. I’ll have my dual disc front wheel for the first time, as well as my SPOT GPS transceiver and the iPod Nano. If the GPS works like it should, I’ll post a link to the Google Maps page it generates. My plan is to hit the “report in” button at each gas stop or overnight stop. Probably won’t have the Kuryakyn Grips and Breakaway cruise control installed. A little too close to start making new mods.

Update: Bike is back on the road. Might have to bleed the brakes one more time to get that last tiny bit of air out of the system.

So I decided to try and create a web-based version in Javascript. Pat sent me his data file so I could pull out his numbers for all the jetting options.

Voila.

It’s not quite finished. The math seems to be working, but I’m still testing. It isn’t pretty but it works. The biggest difference between this and Pat’s original application is that you have to click the “Calculate” button to update the main jet number. When I get some time I’ll throw some graphic design mojo at it.

The best thing I could come up with is that I was selling my bike and getting out of motorcycling. Of course, that isn’t funny, just depressing. For my Triumph peeps I’d probably change it to selling my trumpet for a Harley or something equally unlikely (no offense to Harley).

The new design isn’t a joke, either. Felt like I needed to freshen things up around here, but I still can’t find the time to update my old “Dog’s Bollocks” theme. In due time, I suppose.

I’ve had the bike out twice already this year. Probably haven’t put much more than 50 miles on it. Last Sunday the weather was gorgeous so I got out in the garage and finished drilling out a couple baffles in my stock pipes. Naturally I was required after that to go for a ride and test them out. I’ve been running factory short Triumph “off road” (“short TORs”) mufflers for nearly 8 years, but I’ve always wanted to see what the stock pipes sounded like gutted, or at least partially gutted. I left in the third baffle and the reducer cone at the front. The results were amazing. The exhaust note, while not sounding tuned, sounded incredibly deep. I should have done this 8 years ago rather than buying the short TORs at around $385.

So now that I have these drilled pipes, I still have to mount up and try out the set of short slash-cut mufflers by Specialty Spares that I picked up used recently. Zdenko put a set on his girlfriend’s bike and says they sound nearly identical to his Specialty Spares long cannons, which I love. So if these SS shorties are that good, I’ll probably sell the drilled stock pipes.

Not 100% sure on the makeover happening this year. Events conspire to derail. But it’s no sweat; I’ve waited this long I can wait a little longer. Besides, I’ve got plenty of other things to do on the bike. Next up I’m going to install the Speedmaster drag bars, aftermarket pull-back risers with stepped bolts and finally, finally, finally, the dual disc front wheel. If I have the time and the will I will try and do the new turn signals and headlight, the latter requiring some rearranging of the wiring at the front of the bike.

But one thing at a time…

On the heels of my last post about selling the D&Ds, I just listed several items on BonnevilleAmerica.com in the classifieds. Here is the gallery of images, but I don’t have the prices listed in the gallery, only on BA.com.

Current Item list:

1. The aforementioned D&D mufflers–need stripping and coating SOLD
2. Triumph tall sissybar and luggage rack–usually a very popular item SOLD
3. Stock tail light housing–good for blacking out while still saving your original chrome piece
4. Triumph chrome rear brake reservoir cover–chromosexual approved SOLD
5. Stock dash–again, good for color-coordinating with your tank or just blacking it out SOLD
6. Optronics fog lights–cheap, lots of light SOLD
7. Triumph chrome front brake reservoir cover  with British flag sticker–also chromosexual approved SOLD
8. George Foreman Grill (stock sprocket cover)–good for hacking up and customizing
9. Aftermarket horn–meh
10. Triumph chrome control levers–again, chromosexual approved SOLD
11. Phantom Pad–weird, but if that’s your thing, okay–WON’T FIT A TRIUMPH
12. Thunderbird Sport front rim, 17×3.5″, with spokes–good for you fat front tire fans, 1″ shorter than stock, 1″ wider than stock–laces right on to the stock America hub SOLD
13. Triumph tachometer–could be fried, need someone to test it for me and only pay me if it works (which means my bike is still screwed up) SOLD
14. Triumph rear fender luggage rack–still chromosexual approved SOLD
15. Someone’s interested in my effed out Belt Drive kit SOLD

More to come. That’s good enough to get started.

Now that I have some Specialty Spares slashcuts, I’m going to dump the D&Ds I have. Nothing against D&Ds, I just love the sound of Specialty Spares. I picked the D&Ds up off ebay a couple years ago and they’ve been sitting on a shelf in my garage since. They have some surface rust. My plan was to have them media-blasted and ceramic-coated black (keeping the heat shields chrome and the exhaust tips polished). Since I bought these with the plan to black them out, NewSpeedmaster started selling black D&Ds but they cost some bank. I got an estimate from Jet-Hot of $115 for the ceramic-coating. If I remember correctly Wolfe will do it for less. Even with shipping you’ll have Black D&Ds for less than half the cost of new pipes. Even less if you go low-tech with some BBQ paint like some have done.

I paid $75 plus shipping for these pipes and that’s all I want out of them. Here’s a picture from the original ebay ad. I’ll take some fresh shots of my own this weekend. The Specialty Spares were shipped from Iowa to Montana for less than $20 so I can’t imagine it costing much more than that for these (though they are longer). So let’s call it an even $100 shipped.

Next I’ll be listing a tall Triumph Sissybar with Luggage Rack and my HD Hard Bags. Gotta take some pictures first, though.