Tag: Husky

Hasty Conclusions: Harshali Saddlebags

I’ve been working on Zed, my Kawasaki Z1, trying to get it ready for touring. I get the feeling that it will soon be safe to knock about the country again and if not, that the general population doesn’t give a damn whether they contract the virus or not. To that aim I purchased a pair of slick looking goatskin saddlebags from Amazon. I like to keep Bezos in the chips so I figured a pair of $33 Harshali bags all the way from Rajasthan would do the trick.

I didn’t want giant saddlebags, just something for tools and water maybe a snack so I thought the 11″ wide, 8″ tall, 3″ Harshali bags would be sufficient. Being male, I assumed 11-inches would be a fairly good-sized bag, you know? Turns out they looked pretty stupid on the Kawasaki. What looked stupid on the Kawasaki looks just right on the Husqvarna so that’s where the Harshali (one bag, right side) ended up.

The saddlebags look well made. The leather is as thick as a goat, I guess. The metal buckles seem sturdy and are a slightly tight fit for the straps. Like the long running joke in the British sitcom, Are You Being Served, I’m sure they will ride up with wear. One area I may reinforce is the frame strap-to-bag rivet. They seem sturdy enough for street riding but I bounce the Husqvarna of rocks and other hard objects. Two thin steel plates riveted with the leather sandwiched between might be the way to go.

The Harshali bags have several zipper compartments and dividers inside. Being only 3-inches deep these dividers seem pretty dumb but who am I to say. The saddlebag design looks like a lady’s purse missing the handle. That may actually be what they are but I’m secure enough to strap one on.

On the outside face of the bag there is a small pocket that would hold a pack of cigarettes if I smoked or a compact if I used face powder during a ride. It’s a good place for a couple-three candy bars or your bundle of sage.

The reviews on Amazon lead me to believe there may be two saddlebag factories in Rajasthan one building beautiful, sturdy bags and the other turning out stinky, ill-sewn, moldy trash. I got the good set. They smelled like leather the buckles and rivets were rust free.

I’m happy with the Harshali bags so far. Only time will tell if they hold up to the rough and tumble world of motorcycle touring. Which reminds me: I still need a set of bags for the Kawasaki. Bezos is laughing all the way to the bank.

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Day Tripping: Three Rivers

At Tinfiny Ranch it’s been kind of cool this winter. I haven’t been riding motorcycles much at all lately. Zed, the Z1 Kawasaki, needs its float needles changed as it has developed an intermittent incontinence on the far right carburetor. I have to keep turning off the fuel petcock because I don’t trust the carbs to reliably do their carb thing.

The Husky is way overdue for a valve adjustment but I have too many other projects apart and going on to hobble my Italian/Swedish mish-mash motorcycle at the moment. The Husky still runs fine so when Mike, my Eastern Assassin riding buddy texted me photos of his new KTM 390 Adventure bike and said, “The hell with this cold, lets do a little ride and you can check out my new bike,” I was all over it.

Mike rides more dirt than anyone I know. I’ve done thousands of miles of gravel roads with him and I’ve only seen a quarter of the trails he has. His normal trail bike was a 650 BMW single but that bike turned out not so great on rough trails. It’s a heavy, low-slung bike and it tended to fall over a lot. Mike, a reformed street rider, had a Harley Davidson Fat Boy that was gathering dust in his garage so he sold it off and used the proceeds to buy a new KTM 390 Adventure. I’m guessing not many people go from a Fat Boy to a KTM 390. The 390 weighs about 100 pounds less than the 650 BMW and straight-line performance is nearly the same although naturally the 390 spins faster to get the job done.

We met up for coffee and potato chips at a little tourist trap on the corner of Three Rivers and Highway 54. The 390 looks great. It’s very light feeling off the kickstand. The bike came with street tires similar to the crappy tires I run on the Husqvarna. The KTM is a bit high in the saddle but its wide seat is actually lower than the Husky seat. My short legs reach the ground about the same on both bikes.

We rode towards the Sacramento Mountains ending up at the little Santa Nino de Atocha church. While not a religious man, I like earnest churches and old graveyards. Last time I was here my Kawasaki gas tank sprung a leak and I had to hurry home before I ran out of gas. I didn’t have time to check things out properly.

The graves at Santa Nino de Atocha are fairly well maintained. It’s a lonely spot but I believe the church still draws a few congregants from the huge ranches situated all the way to the mountains.

Poor little Sofia never had much of a chance. As I grow older I realize everyday is a gift.

Fancy glass-enclosed Mary (I think, I don’t know my saints)

Raiders fan for all eternity.

Laser-cut steel cross. Very nice metal work.

It gets a little nippy in New Mexico’s winter but the brilliant blue sky warms your soul.

Somebody left the sprinkler on and created an ice fantasy over by the church’s RV camping area.

Mike and I shot the breeze for a while and made grand plans for the rides we will take his new motorcycle on until the temperature started dropping along with the sun. I don’t want to do much night riding anymore so we bundled up and headed back to our little towns on opposite ends of Highway 54 (La Luz and Carrizozo).

It was only a 100-mile ride but I felt recharged when I got home. Mike has managed to put a thousand miles on the KTM in only a few cold weeks. If I don’t hurry and get back to motorcycles he’ll have the thing worn out before I ride again.

Need more Gresh?

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Time Travel

The Husky…a machine for compressing time.

When I was 13 years old in Florida you could get a restricted permit at age 14. The restricted permit was a driver’s license that allowed you to drive as long as an adult was in the car with you. Assuming he/she wasn’t suicidal, the adult was supposed to keep an eye on your driving and coach you. An adult would help you pick up the nuances of parallel parking, rude hand gestures, and, in Dade County, gun fighting after minor traffic accidents. Needless to say, having an aged, creaking burnout sitting in the car fouling the air with the smell of stale urine cut down on motoring fun quite a bit.

There was a motorcycle loophole in the restricted permit system. If a motorcycle was less than 5 horsepower, and if you stayed off the major highways and didn’t ride at night, you could ride solo without adults helicoptering over your ride. It was wonderful. Obey these few rules and a kid could ride his motorcycle anywhere he pleased.

Motorcycles between 50cc and 90cc were right in the 5-horsepower wheelhouse but your average traffic cop couldn’t tell a 175 from a 50. Many bikes were rebadged to appear smaller displacement than they were. I never knew anyone in my circle of friends that got busted for riding a bike too big. Of course, you had to be reasonable about the subterfuge. A 50cc badge on a Kawasaki 750 wouldn’t fly.

Two months before I turned 14 the state upped the age for a restricted permit to 15 years old. The world ended that day. Massive volcanic eruptions, cataclysmic earthquakes, a steady rain of nuclear weapons bombarding the United States, nothing was as devastating to me as Florida’s stupid statute change.

I would have to wait an additional 365 days and I’d only lived 5000 days in total. The year dragged by. Endless days were followed by endless nights only to be repeated one after another. I had to attend yet another grade in school. I couldn’t wait to be done with public conformitouriums anyway and this stolen year of motorcycle riding made it all the more aggravating. The drip, drip, drip of time counted my heartbeats, counted my life ebbing away. I was inconsolable, miserable and the experience placed a chip on my shoulder for government that I have not shaken off.

There are 9 years hidden in there somewhere!

Begrudging the failed clutch on my Husqvarna the other day I came to the jarring realization that I have owned the bike 9 years. I swear, I bought this thing not more than a couple days ago. I degreased the countershaft sprocket area to gain access and removed the clutch slave cylinder. From the inside of the slave I pulled out an aged, creaking o-ring that smelled of stale urine. The leak had allowed the clutch fluid to escape into the crankcase. Except for the missing 9 years the clutch repair went well.

Einstein was right; time is relative. From my 14-year-old perspective a year was an eternity. Now, as an adult I’m scared to close my eyes for fear that another decade will have passed by at light speed. Or worse yet, I won’t be able to re-open them at all.