Fears amd dreams
Sometimes it’s a little scary. Been dreaming and planning and preparing for so long.
My fears and dreams coexist. We’re going. 182 day left til the adventure begins.
I can’t wait..
Eye surgery complete!
Correct your eyes, they said. It’ll be fun they said.
They lied! Holy crap that sucked big time!
“Breathe 20 times and it’s all over”. Well when you hyperventilate its mote like 180.. No pain, but you see EVERYTHING while they operate!
This is me last night…
Today however I see clearly! Perfect vision!
With shades on everywhere. Innside. Outside. Kitchen. Bathroom.
So. Much. Light!
It’s all good in the hood. And thank god Tonje was there to aid and prevent me escaping…
🙂
Practice practice practice…
I am currently enjoying (more or less) some down time due to a knee injury sustained at work as a bouncer.
My doc even sent me to an MR-picture doo-daa. While I await judgement on my knee-on-the-mend my girlfriend-soon-to-be-wife gets to go to work as a bouncer (really, she’s the best). What do I do with my downtime?
I do what any sane man would. Bring my tools down to the garage and practice taking off an putting back on the rear wheel on my BMW F800GS.
During our planned 13 month trip we’ll go through somewhere between 5 and 8 sets of knobbies on each bike. Factoring in a few expected flat tires it makes sence to practice a bit.
Last summer on our test trip we (Tonje and I) visited the Touratech shop in Lidköping. There we picked up a great instructional DVD made by Helge Pedersen at Globe Riders. With this as a guide it’s really a lot easier than it looks!
So, as said, I went down to the garage and tried it all out.
And look; I even got it back on again..
😀
Next time I’ll take off the front wheel as well. And take off and on the tires.
It’s good to be me 😉
The paint-job and the Motooverland bashplates
Every once in a while, a MC-rider will park his ride horizontaly. Never by design, as motorcycles have an inherit design-premise inidicating that parking should be of a more vertical manner..
I’m jumping the gun a little here..
All through the summer I spent hours in the garage, time and time again converting that little rented parkingspot to my own mechanical workspace. The last piece of equipment to be mounted on both HotStuff (aka Tonje) and my bike was the awsome bashplate from Motooverland. I had spent quite a bit of time researching and looking for the perfect crashbar and bashplate combo, and after I found the very rugged crashbars from Wunderlich, the bashplate from Motooverland was the only piece missing.
Crashbar test complete
The crashpars was somewhat a tight fit. That’s A-OK because you really don’t want the crashbars to move around too much… They offer great protection; proven. Before Tonje aka HotStuff and I had our test-ride those two weeks this summer, I had the crashbars installed on both bikes. The bashplates didn’t arrive in time for out test-ride, but we had no real plans for any offroad riding anyhow. Shortly after returning to Stavanger after our 2 week trip I stopped by a friends place in order to check out his own mechanical project. As I put out the sidestand, apparently I had a moron-moment, ’cause the bike leaned to the right. The sidestand is on the left side. Always have been.. So I ended up parking my ride horizontaly. Leaning it safely and firmly on the crashbars. You can see the three impact Points. No damage to the bike. Some scrapings on the crashbars and a massively bruiced ego. I’ve had my license since 1999, and only once before have I parked any bike horizontaly. My first day with a license in 1999…
So it was clear that I would have to deal with this in the near future. At the same time the bashplates arrived form Canada. OH HAPPY DAY 🙂
See the difference between the tiny plastic bashplate original from BMW and the much bigger and sturdier Aluminum (5052) one from Motooverland? 🙂 I couldent wait to put it on.
After a little while I discovered that between the BMW, the crashbars from Wunderlich and the bashplate from Motooverland, something was not a perfect fit. There are 6 bolts to fasten the bashplate, 4 underneath on rubber-cushon, and 2 in the lower front. The two in front would not align properly 😦
I emailed the good people at Motooverland for some advice- They quickly gave me 3 options for a fix. 2 0f them required a bit better equipment and workspace than what i have available. If you have read my post you may have noticed that I work out all my mechanical issues in the parking garage where we live, using only the toools I’ll bring for the trip. Also I have no place to mount a vice that was needed for the two first options. So option number three it is; – widen the forward mounting holes just enough.
It seemed like a easy fix. I strolled to the  local hardwarestore and bought a dremel-like tool and what seemed to be the correct bits. The going was slow and after a little while I notice the powertool wobbeling in my hands. For those of you that don’t know this; wobbeling powertools are generally not a great idea. Before I manage to hit the “off” switch the diamonddust covered bit I used went flying. But only after impacting my right middle finger. The same one that sometimes is used to communicate in traffic. Especially when one has polite but firm opinions about ones fellow travellers on four or more wheels.. Anyways. There where a lot of cursing and a bit of jumping around. At first I was convinced it was broken. But as sanity slowly returned I performed a basic self-diagnostic prosedure:
Does it bend? Oh YES it bends. Logic dictates it’s not broken, as it bends in the right place..
As I was squaring away my tools (I called it quits for the day after bandaging my very battered communication-device..) IÂ realize that I where not using protective goggels, or gloves.. I was just very lucky that the flying bit didn’t hit something vital, like an eye.. So the next day I strolled back to the hardwarestore and got even more bits, + goggles and gloves. As soon as my finger healed work where resumed and the adjustments made. Once this was done, I primed and coated the bashplates to prevent them form rusting.
- And while the bashplates where drying in stages of 2 prime coats and 2-3 black paint coats, I got to work on the crashbars. I made good use of the dremel-like-but-not-quite tool and ground away all scraches and rust and evened out the surface. After this was complete I wrapped my bike like a christmaspresent and got ready to apply a few coats of primer..
Gorilladays 