Category: Joe Gresh

Yamaha RD350 No. 9: Shocks, It Was Nothing

The RD350’s rear suspension seemed kind of springy to me, like there was no damping or the shock oil had leaked out. In corners the bike would hit a bump and bounce. Nothing frightening or dangerous but in combination with the front forks needing a rebuild anything less than smooth pavement was a ragged, unsophisticated ride. The RD still wore its original shock absorbers from 1974 so I figured it was time for a replacement set.

I found many options online, prices ranged from $500 to $50. I think we all know what option I took. Look, it’s not that I don’t want a really nice set of shocks it’s just that I’ve had some bad luck with expensive shock absorbers. In a nutshell they didn’t last very long. I mean it’s not like a dirt bike where you need good suspension. I’m using the RD350 on the street, an environment where you hardly need rear suspension at all. I found a set of shocks on ebay that looked similar to the original Yamaha shocks. For $47 shipping included I was willing to take a chance. The shocks arrived in about 3 days.

Out of the box the eBay shocks looked really well made. The chrome was beautiful, the top-mounting boss was cast aluminum and the things even have a plastic sleeve between the shock body and the spring to eliminate squeaking. The original shocks did not have this feature and squeaked a lot. They sounded like an old, rusty gate swinging in the wind when you hit a bump.

Fitment was straightforward except that the original Yamaha shocks had no bushings: the rubber inside the mounts fit directly over the shock studs. I had to press out the steel bushings on the new shock, which was fairly easy using a bench vice and a couple appropriately sized sockets. Instead of black rubber like the originals the new shocks used a material that resembled urethane and may in fact be urethane. It is translucent yellow and looks cool.

With the bushing removed the new shocks fit a bit loose on the mounting studs but not loose enough to fit a bushing. I thought about cutting a strip from an aluminum beer can and wrapping it around the stud to take up the slack but instead decided to hope that the now-bushingless urethane would relax a bit over time and swell to suit its environs. I often hope for mechanical things to fix themselves and frequently they do. The washers on either side of the stud sandwich the urethane a bit when the shock bolts are tightened so maybe they will smoosch the fit tighter.

After fitting the shocks I found the first spring preload position was too soft so I stuck a pin punch inside the nifty preload adjuster hole and cranked it up to the second position. That seemed about right. I wheeled the Yamaha out into the daylight and fired up the sweet-running two-stroke twin. It’s a sound that never gets old.

The first thing I noticed while riding was no squeaking, the eBay shocks were quiet. The roads around my place are sort of rough and there was a noticeable improvement in the bounciness department. It seemed like with the rear shocks working better the blown out front forks felt worse or maybe I just paid more attention. Corners were steadier and the rear tire rubbed the fender less than it did before. Still, it wasn’t the dramatic improvement I was shooting for. That might be down to the $47 price point.

Curious about the original shocks I compressed the spring with a long bar clamp and removed the spring collar along with the spring. Now I could test the shocks for damping action. Surprisingly both shocks still had oil in them and offered firm resistance to rebound. The compression action was much less as you would expect. It’s really hard to tell but I think the two Yamaha shocks offer slightly different hydraulic action. Certainly nothing I could feel on the road. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that there was probably nothing wrong with the original shocks. They work like they work I guess.

I’ll clean up the Yamaha shocks and pack them away to rot. In the meantime I’ll be running the eBay shocks to see if they hold up for 47 years like the originals. The new rear suspension has moved fixing the forks to the front burner. The RD350 handles well with clapped out suspension, I can’t wait to get both ends sorted and sample some of that legendary road-racer for the street performance RDs are known for.

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Yamaha RD350 Part 8: I’m Gonna Ride My Horse Till I Can’t No More

One of my many personality flaws is that I’m overly fond of television talent shows. It’s pretty embarrassing how many of these type of programs I watch by dribs and drabs on YouTube. I’d like to break free from the habit but it seems like there is always another undiscovered talent that needs my attention. One of my favorite talent show singers is a chick named Hadwin.

Hadwin has a very distinctive voice like Amy Winehouse or Janis Joplin had distinctive voices except she’s not like them at all. When she was very young, Hadwin’s strange body movements bordered on uncomfortable-to-watch but now that she is older she seems to have calmed down a little. Her voice ranges from a squeak to a low, hollow echo and it’s not so much the quality of her voice that makes her great, it’s the way she rips apart songs with abandon. I wouldn’t call her voice sweet but you’ll be able to tell it is her singing as soon as she opens her mouth. It doesn’t hurt that she looks a little bit like Emma Peel from the 1960’s British TV show The Avengers.

Which is an off-kilter intro for my first big ride on the 1974 RD350. The bike still needs some work but I really wanted to put some miles on the thing to see how it would fare on a longish ride. I started with a run up highway 54 into Carrizozo. 54 is a long, straight road that averages about 4500 feet elevation. As it’s located down in the Tularosa Valley, 54 is usually a bit warmer than the mountain roads to the east. Most of the time traffic on 54 is going about 70 mph and on this day the RD350 was keeping up easily, spinning between 55 hundred rpm and 6 thousand. Unfortunately the RD’s speedometer was showing 85 miles per hour and no way was I going that fast unless a RD350 tops out at 130. I calculated my fuel mileage at the first gas stop as 41 miles per gallon. I thought that was pretty good fuel mileage for a thirsty two stroke. Must be that Torque Induction?

On the way up 54 I noticed the RD350 had a narrow blubbery spot around 5000 rpm and as I turned onto Nogul canyon road and climbed in altitude the blubbery spot grew wider. Nogul canyon road takes you by many curves to the base of the Ruidoso/Alto area. It’s a fun road to let the RD350 wail a little and the road tops out at a little over 7000 feet. I couldn’t wail too much because the RD’s oversized rear tire rubs the fender in hard corners. I have new, correct size tires ordered. By managing my engine speed, a process made easier by the Yamaha’s smooth-shifting 6-speed gearbox, I could get past the rich spot on the fuel delivery and from 5500 up the bike ran fine. You could feel the power loss the higher you went. Gavalin Canyon Road skirts Ruidoso to the east; it’s a twisty road but has a lot of local traffic trying to avoid the zillions of Texans who visit Ruidoso. Many times there are more Texans in Ruidoso than Ruidosoans.

On my way downhill on 70 to Tularosa I took the old road to The Old Road Café on the Mescalero Indian Reservation. The Old Road Café is a multi level place that looks like some sections are real adobe. The back porch area has a decided slant, I wouldn’t be surprised if it toppled over one day. The Old Road Café has the best tacos around. They are oily corn tacos with shredded beef, homemade salsa and I love the things. I loaded up on tacos, rice, beans and iced tea before taking the final plunge into Tularosa and the Tuliefreeze ice cream shop for a little reward.

All in, the RD350 tootled through the mountains and the valley for 150 miles. It was a blast listening to the little twin sing that old song and I was surprised by the RD’s ability to keep up with modern, yet rural traffic. If you had to you could run 80 miles per hour as long as you wanted to hold on. From faded memories I thought the RD would be more of an around town bike but after I get it sorted I see no reason the bike wouldn’t do well on long trips. The only limiting factor is the 3-gallon gas tank, which means you need to find a gas station every hundred or so miles. That’s not always easy to do in New Mexico.

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Grand Canyon National Park

Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park is another bucket list destination.  As As was the case described in our recent blog on Devils Tower, a movie inspired my first visit.  A contemporay review of the 1991 Grand Canyon movie said it was about “random events affecting a diverse group of people exploring the race- and class-imposed chasms which separate members of the same community.”  That’s an artsy-fartsy tinsel-town mouthful.  Grand Canyon was pretty good and it had some big name actors in it.  But we’re not here to talk about the movie.

On to Grand Canyon National Park. The name sounds majestic, and the Grand Canyon surely is.  I’ve been to the Grand Canyon many times (it’s only a day’s ride from home) and I would not pass on an opportunity to see it again.  It’s a great ride in a car or on a motorcycle. I’ve done full-family car trips and I’ve done a number of motorcycle trips. Interestingly, some of the best rides were on the 250cc CSC RX3 motorcycles with guys from China, Colombia, and the US (you can read more about the RX3 trip in 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM).

A Grand Canyon photo from the 5000-mile Western America Adventure Ride.

There are two places to see the Grand Canyon National Park, the North Rim and the South Rim. The South Rim is by far the most heavily visited area and offers the best views, but the North Rim is a better ride, especially the last 50 miles or so along Arizona Route 67 (also known as the North Rim Parkway). Getting to the South Rim involves riding through a spectacular desert to get to Grand Canyon National Park, at which point you enter a beautiful pine forest. And when you visit the South Rim, you can continue on in the direction you were traveling when you leave — you don’t have to backtrack. The North Rim is different: There’s one way in, and one way out. It takes longer to get to the North Rim along heavily-forested Route 67 (and that road shuts down when it snows), but wow, what a ride!

My first Grand Canyon visit brought me and a riding buddy to the North Rim on a couple of Harleys nearly 30 years ago. It rained all the way in, we were thoroughly soaked and chilled, and I still remember how much fun I had. The Grand Canyon Lodge is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It’s a magnificent place to stay or you can just have lunch there.  The view is awesome, but I think the views from the South Rim are even better (and there are more vantage points).

Ah, the South Rim. That’s where I took the big photo at the top of this blog and it shows none other than world-famous concrete consultant and moto-journalist Joe Gresh.  It almost looks fake, like I had a cutout of Gresh and pasted it into the photo, but it’s not.  He’s just a very photogenic guy.

You can approach the South Rim from either the east or the west via state Route 64 running along the canyon’s southern edge. On my last trip, we came in from the eastern end, paid our fees to enter the park, and a helpful Ranger explained that there were a series of viewpoints along the way. We hit every one and each was beyond stunning. It’s hard to believe what you see when viewing this magnificent region, and it’s easy to understand why the early Spanish explorers concluded it was impossible to reach the Colorado River a mile below. You can see all the way to the North Rim (10 miles away as the hawk flies, but a full day on a motorcycle).  On a clear day you can see 100 miles.

The Tower at the eastern edge of the South Rim.

There’s an ancient tower of sorts on the easternmost viewing spot along the South Rim and we had an interesting experience there on the CSC Destinations Deal tour.  Our good buddy Orlando left his gloves on this new RX3 while we were taking in the view, and when we returned, we caught a thief red-handed trying to steal them.   Or rather, I should say red-beaked.  It was a big old crow (a bird, not the whiskey) and he was trying to make off with one of Orlando’s gloves.  We all started screaming at that big old blackbird, and it dropped the glove and flew away.  That was a good thing.  It was super cold that morning and Orlando would have had a tough time continuing the ride without both gloves.

Good buddy Rob giving a Grand Canyon elk a drink on the CSC Destinations Deal ride.  Don’t try this at home, kids.

The earliest known Grand Canyon habitation occurred during the Paleo-Indian period nearly 12,000 years ago, but the emphasis here is on “known.” Archeologists are still discovering ancient stuff down there. Geologically, the Grand Canyon started about 20 million years ago.  The Colorado River, flooding, ice, wind and seismic shifts worked their magic to create the 277-mile-long, 15-mile-wide, and mile-deep Grand Canyon.

Fine dining in Williams’ Red Raven restaurant, right on Old Route 66.  That’s me and good buddy Paul after a wild boar hunt.

Hey, here’s one more thought:  If you’re doing the South Rim, it’s something that you can take in in a day.  Most folks stay in Grand Canyon Junction just outside the entrance to the South Rim, but that’s a real touristy area and if you don’t like McDonald’s or pizza, your dining choices are limited.  My advice is to stay in Williams, about one hour south.  It’s just off I-40.  Williams is a bit touristy, too, but the hotels and restaurants are a cut above what’s in Grand Canyon Junction.  It’s a nice ride north to the South Rim early the next morning.   Trust me on this; you can thank me later.

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KLR250 Reflash: Part 4

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’ve been working on the KLR250 for forever. It seems that way to me also. Since the last KLR blog 325 years ago we have sold The Love Shack in Astor, Florida and the Widowmaker 250 no longer has a purpose in my life. I’m not one to store a good motorcycle and the KLR250 will make some newbie rider (or older experienced motorcyclist) a fine machine to learn the dark art of dirt riding.

It’s time for the KLR to go. I can’t keep all these bikes registered and insured, much less in operating condition. But before I let a new owner crash about on the KLR there are a few more things I need to fix.

Equipped with a worn out 21” front tire, a very popular size, I blew a few bucks on a new Dunlop semi-dirt tire and a new tube. These skinny 21” wheels are super easy to change tires on, it took like 20 minutes.

The Widowmaker’s fork seals were dribbling a decent flow of oil; in fact one tube only had a few ounces left inside. One fork leg came apart easily: Impact wrench on the bottom bolt and zing-zing it was apart. The other leg was more trouble. The recessed allen bolt just spun when I hit it with the impact.

I needed something to stop the inner damper rod from spinning the fork spring, which wasn’t offering enough resistance. Looking through my nut and bolt bins was futile. I found a spark plug was the closest to fitting the damper. I cut down the plug and removed the ceramic, then welded a length of all thread to the plug. With my new eye I could just make out the puddle. It was great, before I saw nothing but glare.

The damper rod retaining tool worked excellent and I was able to dismantle the other fork leg. After cleaning assembly was straightforward. A length of PVC pipe was used to press the new seals into the sliders. I didn’t have enough fork oil in one viscosity so I mixed 10 weight and 15 weight together. I figure I’m running 12.5 weight in the forks now.

I reassembled the front forks and all seemed done at the front. Next I installed a new battery just for the KLR250, no more sharing with the Husky and Z1. The battery has been sitting around a year or so but still had juice. I popped it into the KLR250, lowered the bike off the motorcycle jack and the thing started in about 7 kicks. These KLRs are tough cookies.

Thinking I was pretty much done, I took the bike on a road test. The carb might be a little clogged up as it’s either idling at 3000 RPM or dying. Once up to speed the bike ran as good as it ever has. Parking the bike on the brand new shed floor it was easy to notice coolant dripping from that small hole in the water pump housing. Rats, this is what I mean when I say I can’t keep them all running.

I ordered a new water pump seal and when it arrived I drained the Widowmaker’s coolant and removed the water pump cover and impeller. The seal is a spring-loaded ceramic type of deal and the spring part pulled off with little effort. That left the steel part still stuck in the engine.

If you’re lucky, sometimes you can thread a deck screw into the thin metal seal and pull the thing out with no problem. I wasn’t lucky and the seal kept looking worse the more I tried to remove it.

Finally I gave up and removed the right side engine cover to gain access to the seal from the other side. Removing the cover meant I had to remove the rear brake lever, foot peg and clutch cable. With the engine cover off it was a piece of cake to poke the seal out from the inside with a ¼” punch.

As you can see, I pretty much mangled the seal trying to save taking the engine cover off. For good measure I also destroyed the pump shaft oil seal in the process. I guess it needed changing also. Now I’ve got to look up a pump oil seal and a cover gasket for the Widowmaker. I think I’m going to clean the carburetor and see if I can’t make it run better low speed. Since I have to take the tank of to clean the carb I may as well adjust the valves. It’s super easy on the KLR250. And then it will be ready to sell.

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The 2021 Rubber Chicken Ride

If you had asked me a week ago what the Rubber Chicken Ride is about I would have replied, “I have no clue, Bubba.” Held annually in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico the 2021 Rubber Chicken Ride resisted any defining characteristics and after three days participating I still have no clue what it was about.

There’s an entry fee, $50, that goes to the New Mexico Off Highway Vehicle Association, (NMOHVA). I guess it’s a like a fundraiser except a motorcycle ride breaks out while passing the collection plate.

I met up with the near legendary dirt-riding group, The Carrizozo Mud Chuckers at the Truth or Consequences Travel Lodge motel. The Travel Lodge is one of the few remaining old school types where the room doors open out directly onto the parking lot. I like this layout as you can hang out as a group tinkering with the bikes. It fosters community spirit and you can lock your bike to the uprights supporting the overhang. At the motel we met six other Rubber Chicken Riders none of who had any idea what was going on and all pushing 70 years old. That’s like 3 years older than the Chuckers.

This year’s Chicken was stripped to the bare bones due to Covid. No group dinners, no Show Us Your Scars competition, no organizing at all: just show up and ride. Part of the confusion was due to my not bothering to download the GPX files from the Rubber Chicken thread on ADVrider, which I knew nothing about until I was at the event. I probably couldn’t have figured out how to migrate the files to my GPS anyway. It annoys me that those old codgers can download files into their displays and I’m still using paper maps. I think of my GPS is kind of a last resort deal; I use it when I’m not sure how to get home.

That first day we tried to find the Rubber Chicken sign up area at Healing Waters Plaza, a place no one in Truth or Consequences seems to have heard of. Everyone we asked sent us to a different Healing Waters but they were hot springs, not the sign up staging area. The town was named Hot Springs in the past and has quite a few still around. Luckily, my Garmin knew about the palm-lined plaza and after riding past it several times we were able to find the pocket park along with a couple other Rubber Chicken Riders. Oddly, there was no water in sight.

The other riders we met at Healing Waters were as clueless as we were so we sat around and talked bikes for a while then the Chuckers and I decided to ride out to nearby Elephant Butte Dam to check out the scenery. After the dam tour we hit up the local Denny’s. You know how they say landing and take off are the most dangerous parts of flying, that’s how it is for me getting on or off the tall Husky 510. The Husky’s kickstand is so designed that once you’re on the bike you can’t tip it over far enough to retract the stand. This means I have to get on or off the bike with the kickstand up. Not a problem on a normal motorcycle, with the Husky it takes Baryshnikov-level flexibility to toss a leg over the high seat and rear luggage stores. I’m no Baryshnikov.

I got half way off the bike but my boot hung for a life-altering moment, still on one leg the bike started to topple over the far side. I pulled the bike back towards me but pulled a little too much. With my stubby, grounded-leg near the centerline of the wheel track the bike toppled over onto the near side taking me out in the process. In the Denny’s parking lot. In front of everyone.

Back at the Travel Lodge we grilled the other riders.  They resisted at first but stopped struggling as soon as they were evenly browned on both sides. The way it was supposed to work is you download route files and load them in your GPS before arriving, then at the plaza meet up with like-minded riders and off you go, a merry band of riders. It’s a great way to meet new riding buddies. There’s no NMOHVA sanctioned rides. This is the loosest possible group ride you can imagine. One of the riders had an old, Rubber Chicken event T-shirt. In a testimony to how damaged things have become since Covid all we got this year was a tiny NMOHVA sticker with a rubber chicken on it.

The second day there was a sign up table at the Healing Waters Plaza. Maybe 15 riders had gathered and we had a good gabfest with the boys and one girl. By now we pretty much had the event figured out so the Chuckers and I headed out to Chloride, an occupied-ghost town for one of the routes: the Chloride canyon loop. We didn’t have GPX files but the Chuckers had paper maps.

At the end of the road in Chloride the road turns hard left and becomes unpaved. It’s sort of rough and rocky being a dry streambed at the bottom of a steep canyon. After about a mile of this abuse we stopped to reassess our riding skills and time left in the day. For a route that 6 guys on dirt bikes had done just a day before there were no tire tracks except the ones we were making. I dreaded turning on the Garmin because I’ve never read the owner’s manual, it always leads to a bunch of button pushing and frustration instead of riding. The Garmin said the road went for 5.6 more miles then dead-ended.

We started doubting our direction. Maybe we are on the wrong route, those 70 year-old guys couldn’t have gone this way. None of us liked the idea of riding this rocky trail 5 miles and then turning around and riding it back. We chose an alternate route. Seeing as there were no official routes anyway we felt we could take liberties with the Rubber Chicken.

Our alternate route was a long, 60-mile stretch of fairly easy dirt bookended between 80 miles of pavement on either side. The route seemed to go on forever. We went over the continental divide twice, once on paved Highway 59, once on Dirt Road 150. The later it got the faster we went. Highway 152 was a marvelous twisty road that we could use as much of the side-tread of our knobbies as we dared. We arrived back at the Travel Lodge at 7 pm; 9 hours of riding over widely varying terrain made for excellent sleeping.

On the third day of the Rubber Chicken Ride, a Sunday, the other riders at the Travel Lodge had loaded up their bikes and gone home. The Mud Chuckers and I decided to leave the Rio Grande Valley and work our way one valley east to Tularosa Valley, our home turf. In retrospect, we didn’t get much for our $50 but it got us away from our usual dirt-riding spots and it supported the NMOHVA so it was money well spent. While I was telling this story to my wife, CT, it must have sounded like I was complaining. Maybe I did bitch a little. She said that volunteer organizations always need help and that maybe next year we should print a few maps, plan a Rubber Chicken route and set up a ride instead of waiting for others to do the hard work for us. That sounded an awful lot like a gauntlet being thrown down to me.

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Yamaha RD350 Part 7: Clutch Without The Cargo

The clutch cable on the RD350 was at max adjustment on the lever perch and the clutch action was a bit stiff so I removed the left side engine cover to clean things up. The cover locating dowel on the bottom was a little corroded so it took some wiggling and wobbling to get it free. Inside I was rewarded with an ignition/alternator assembly that looked nearly new. The screw heads are un-boogered and the cad plating looks like new.

I paid quite a bit for this motorcycle but it’s been worth it as the bike has seen very few ham-fisted sorties into the mechanical aspects of the thing. The sprocket area was well covered in chain grease so I needed to bag up the alternator and clean the area.

Cleaning the clutch release and countershaft sprocket area revealed that the parts were also nearly new. I dismantled the clutch actuator and cleaned up the cover.

I encourage others to leave original finishes alone but the left side cover was missing a lot of paint and had that white corrosion patina that speaks to poor maintenance. A rattle can of Rustoleum satin black matched the original engine color well so I gave it a little squirt. Note I did not polish the bare aluminum parts or touch up the points cover. That stuff wasn’t too bad.

While I had the clutch helix cover apart I decided to install a new chain. I’m not one of those, replace-it-all-or-you’ll-die, type of guys. If the sprockets look unworn I’ll slap a new chain on the old sprockets. I realize this is hearsay in the Big-Sprocket boardrooms but those guys are in the sprocket selling business. The RD sprockets look like new so don’t worry, it will be fine. One glitch was the old tire is a 3.75-18 IRC, the bike calls for a 3.50-18. The narrow swingarm of the RD can barely accommodate the extra ¼ inch. I had to adjust the chain a wee bit tighter than I like to keep the tire from rubbing the front of the gusset. That problem will be solved when I replace the tires.

The RD350 uses a 530-size chain; that’s a pretty heavy chain for a 350’s weight and power. Once these items wear out I plan on going with one of the many 520 chain conversion kits for the RD350. With small displacement engines you don’t want to waste power spinning a heavy chain.

After greasing the clutch release helix and clutch cable, along with the perch pivot the clutch is much smoother and easier to pull in. The RD350 is geared kind of high in first gear so you’ve got to give it some revs and slip the clutch to get it off the line without bogging the thing.

With the new chain and the clutch adjusted I figured I better get the bike legal because there’s no way I’m not going to ride it. I burbled down to DNA title services in Alamogordo with all my paperwork and it was a breeze to swap the title. In New Mexico we have privately run tag agencies in addition to state run agencies. The lines are much shorter at the private places and there’s an incentive to sell you a tag or they make no money. I had my choice of yellow, blue or black tags. I chose yellow because it’s old school New Mexico, like black tags are in California. The transfer, taxes and a two-year sticker cost $265 US dollars.

Arriving home from the title place there was gas leaking from the petcock. Close examination revealed that the hoses were leaking at the petcock barbs. I replaced the leaking fuel hose and added two huge fuel filters along with those springy, compression hose clamps. We will see it the leaks have stopped next ride.

I replaced the funky original Japanese swingarm and brake pedal grease fittings with normal ones that fit the grease gun everybody else on the planet uses. All of the areas were free breathing and took grease ok which makes me think they’re not clogged with hardened old muck.

I still have quite a bit of work to do on the RD350 but it’s rideable as is. I don’t trust the old tires, besides being too big the rear tire is very out of round and who knows how old the tubes are? The front end needs new oil and seals and the steering stem needs greasing. The rear shocks are like pogo sticks. I’ll get to it when I get to it, you know?

More Joe Gresh Resurrections are here!

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Phavorite Photos: Alone in China

We were somewhere in China approaching Aba after leaving the Tibetan Plateau, and somehow it was just Gresh, Sergeant Zuo, and me.  I can’t remember why we were separated from the rest of our group.  Honking along at a brisk pace and blitzing through one area after another, the photo ops were flying by and I wanted to capture at least some of them with my Nikon.

I finally caught up with Zuo and Gresh and flagged them over.  I asked if I could go back a mile or two and they said they would wait.  We had passed a Buddhist temple with a gold roof.  The overcast skies, the green mountains, the asphalt, my orange and muddy RX3…all the colors clicked.  I needed to commit that memory to the SD card.

When I turned around, I was surprised at how long it took to return to the spot you see above (I think we were on China’s G317 highway, but it might have been the G213).  Then I felt fear:  What if Gresh and Zuo didn’t wait for me?  I don’t speak the language, I had no cell coverage, and I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to wherever.  It was like being in outer space. It was just one of those crazy psycho unreasonable moments that sometimes hits when you realize you’re not in control of the situation.  I snapped a few photos, they looked good enough on the camera’s display, and I wound out the RX3 to get back to my compañeros as quickly as possible.  They had waited.  I was in clover.

About a month later as we approached Beijing some of the street signs were in both Chinese and English, and it was obvious Beijing was directly ahead.  Gresh told me he felt better because if we had to we could find our way home.  I guess I wasn’t the only one having those “out in the boonies” feelings.  It happens.

Earlier Phavorite Photos?  You bet!  Click on each to get their story.

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Yamaha RD350 Part 6: Rubber Match

One day many years ago, when I was around 12 or 13 years old, I took my metallic blue Honda Mini Trail on the road. My older buddy, Russ Adamson, who was legal on a Honda CL100, was with me on the street adventure. My Mini Trail didn’t have a tag, I didn’t have a license or any business on the pavement, but that didn’t stop us. I just wanted to ride, to be free without being hassled by The Man, like Peter Fonda said in those biker movies from the late 60s/early 70s era. Unfortunately, The Man had other ideas. I made it all the way to Milam Dairy road in the town of Medley, about 10 miles from home, when I was pulled over for obvious reasons.

The cop was a real stickler for details. He arrested me and called a tow truck to haul away the mini bike. I sat in the back of the patrol car looking out the window as he took me to the cop shop. Russ checked out ok so he was allowed to ride back home. At the cop shop the other cops looked at my cop like he was crazy. “You’re arresting him?” My guy held firm to his principals. I was booked, finger printed and was going to be put in a jail cell when one of the cops said, “You can’t put him in a cell, just let him sit here behind my desk.” I didn’t know exactly where I was, South Miami I think. We had driven a long way to the station. I called my house but nobody was home so I sat there wondering what prison food would taste like.

The situation was so unusual I didn’t know I should be scared. Other cops were stopping by and talking with me, trying to keep me in good spirits. I had quite a few spectators. I was a real celebrity collar. Some cops would just look at me and shake their heads in disbelief. One of the cops told me, “We’ll see you back here in a few years on a big Harley,” and then laughed at his joke.

Russ had gone to my house and told my mother what happened but he wasn’t sure who arrested me. Miami in the area I was pinched had several overlapping police departments. There is Metro Dade, Medley Police, Sheriffs and a few others. My mom started calling the various forces patrolling the city.

“Your mother is coming down to get you,” the desk cop told me. Mom came in the police station as angry as I ever saw her. I figured I was done for: no more mini bike. Astonishingly she was not angry with me. She read the riot act to any and all cops within earshot. Turns out I was like 30 miles from home. In lieu of bail, Mom had to show her voter’s ID card to spring me and all the way home she was mad as hell. But not with me.

Events were getting out of hand. My mother called Charles Whitehead, a writer for the local Miami paper and he wrote a humorous column titled, Dangerous Joe Rides Again.  In it he joked about the police arresting and fingerprinting a little kid. Whitehead claimed that a desperate crime spree was stopped by the brave actions of the police. Remember, this was before kids routinely shot up schoolyards. I think Whitehead was pining for a gauzy, Norman Rockwell, soda fountain type of police encounter. The upshot was Whitehead felt the cop should have tossed the mini bike in the trunk of his patrol car and taken me home. Which would have been worse for me by far. By arresting me the cop took all the attention away from my stupid actions and took it on himself.

With my mom and dad by my side I had my day in traffic court. After a long day of waiting we were the very last case on the docket. I was charged with driving without a license and having an unregistered vehicle on the highway. Neither of which you normally get arrested for. Since I had no license I couldn’t lose it or get points against it. I plead no contest. I don’t remember the fine but it was like $100 I think. That was a lot of money. I never did manage to pay them back.

This old story came to mind when I rode the untagged RD350 down to the La Luz post office to sign for a package of new rubber carb tops from India. India makes a lot of parts for RD350’s. I haven’t switched over the title so the RD is still in the previous owner’s name. I haven’t registered it for a tag because I’m still working on it and to get a tag you have to buy insurance. The title was safely at home so I had no proof the bike was even mine. It was as if I hadn’t learned a thing from that arrest so long ago.

Like that Honda Mini Trail, the urge to ride the RD350 defies common sense. I think that’s the appeal of vintage motorcycles: they make you feel like a kid again. I just want to be free, to go where I want without being hassled by The Man, you know? The bike still needs a lot of work but I think I’ll focus on getting it legal next. It’s obvious I lack the willpower to stay off the thing. Dangerous Joe indeed.

More Joe Gresh!

Endurofest 2021: Part 2

The second day after my crash at Endurofest 2021 I woke up in Beaver, Utah and my entire body felt like each bendy-joint had been shot through with formaldehyde. The two ibuprofen I had taken last night were joined by another two this morning. There’s safety in numbness, my brothers. Fawlty Towers had a nice little breakfast included with the room. I had a premade, Jimmy Dean sausage biscuit sandwich and a plastic-wrapped blueberry muffin. By the time I made it out to the bikes I was feeling fairly good but I vowed to take it easy and try to avoid crashing again.

Luckily our day’s route was an easy one. We rode 50 paved miles to an abandoned mining town named Frisco. Frisco is 20 miles south of Milford, Utah and was by all accounts a rough place to call home. The local graveyard told a sad story of infant death with the average age of the little ones only a few months. One of the oldest inhabitants died at 39. There’s not much water or shelter near Frisco but a large silver mining operation kept the townspeople busy for their short lives. Zinc, copper, lead and gold were also dug out of the rocky ground.

We poked around the ruins of the Frisco mine, there’s metal everywhere. It’s a great place to get a flat tire. Then we headed back north to Milford for some Chinese food. One of the DT250s started acting up on the return ride to Milford so we lost two DT250s as one healthy 250 followed the ailing 250 back to Beaver. They almost made it home before the sick 250 seized. I mean like a few blocks from home.

It was getting on in the afternoon so the rest of us decided to forgo Milford’s Chinese food and get a mystery burrito at the local stop-n-shop. The egg-roll sized burritos were in a glass warmer case and the tin foil wrapping covering each burrito was tagged with prices ranging from $1.99 to $2.79. There was no way to determine what you were getting until you unwrapped the thing and bit into it. I got a $1.99 and it turned out to be bean and cheese.

Leaving Milford we took the dirt road over Soldier Pass back to Beaver. It was a nice, 30-mile graded road with a few sandy spots. I welcomed the break and did not fall over the entire way. In the afternoon we took a graded dirt road high into the mountains east of Beaver. At 11,000 feet, Godzilla (my RT1B) was struggling along in first gear.

The third day of Endurofest I was feeling much better. Riding these old dirt bikes requires flexibility and the first two days I was tight, steering the bike instead of riding it. As I loosened up the bike could move around as needed and my control increased. The beating on my body lessened and I was rolling with the terrain. I started to feel it, you know? We did a loop into the western foothills along a fairly easy route with only a few rocky sections thrown in.

I left Beaver Sunday after the morning ride, leaving the remaining riders another afternoon of trail riding.  The Flagstaff Endurofest was the last time I had ridden Godzilla and the rust was evident, hence my crash. It took a full three days before I felt confident on the bike. It looks like I’ll have to add a few days of dirt riding/de-rusting to my preparation list before next year’s Endurofest.

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Endurofest 2021: Part 1

After a Covid-cancelled year in 2020 Endurofest came roaring back in 2021. Unfortunately the 2-year lay-off has already eroded my meager off-road skills.

On our very first ride I managed to do a header in a rough rocky section. I was bouncing along ricocheting from rock to rock when a combination of tired arms, inattention and poor riding skills pitched Godzilla’s front wheel sideways and down I went on my right side.

It was a hard landing on rocks and for a moment I couldn’t move, like in those dreams where you can’t move except I was awake. Or maybe I wasn’t awake.  It was probably only a few seconds. As my senses returned I rolled over onto my back and looked up at the brilliant blue Utah sky in wonder. How did I get here?

My foot was pinned under the motorcycle and Larry had to lift the bike off me. I stood up pretty well and managed to get Godzilla started. I went very slow the rest of the trail.

Never one to miss plugging sponsor’s freebies, my BMG jacket and ancient, Speed & Strength helmet from The Helmet House took the brunt of the crash and I am only a little sore. Godzilla suffered a bent foot peg and a damaged front food platter.

I really need to ride more dirt to stay sharp. Dirt riding, like any skill, improves with repetition so I’ll go attack some more rocks.

I think we have about eight Enduros at this year’s fest. Down a bit but understandable considering the crappy year our entire planet had in 2020. It’s just good to see your old friends and shoot the breeze without worrying about dying.

Endurofest headquarters this year is at the Beaver, Utah Quality Inn. It’s a great location if you’re into a Fawlty Towers kind of management. I showed up early and the manager was freaking out saying “I can’t put you in the room the people haven’t left yet!” There was no panic from my end. I mean, I get it. Just asking.

I got a suspicious look when I asked for a room with two beds. “There’s only one of you. Why do you want two beds?” I don’t know why but I defended my request,”My buddy Hunter might show up.” That seemed to satisfy Basil so the deal went down as planned.

This blog may be riddled with errors as I’m typing it on a cell phone and can’t actually read what it says.  More riding tomorrow!

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