This past weekend was NorCal's monthly tour and meeting. Former tour captain, Russ Drake, had a warning worth repeating to all R-Bike owners. Russ does his own minor servicing including oil. He just did an oil change and had not replaced the aluminum crush rings where the oil hoses fit onto the cover over the oilfilter. If you own a R100 or earlier machine, I'm sure you know the ones. Anyway the old crush rings were already too compressed and when Russ went to tighten down the banjo nuts which connect the oil hoses to the cover, they bottomed out and the cast aluminum piece split. Replacement cost was in the range of $85.+ and as Russ ruefully pointed out that would buy a whole lot of those d****d crush rings.
The truly bad incident of the weekend occurred when Gene Harlamoff made the mistake of using his front brake in the loose gravel of the road into the campsite. It was a simple mistake made at the end of a ride and for as experienced a rider as Gene I'm sure the mortification at spilling his bike hurt just as much as the tumble. I did not see the results first hand as a couple of club members ferried Gene home in a side car hack Saturday morning along with his bike before returning to the campout. But it's worth repeating guys that the rear brake is preferred when in gravel and should be used in conjunction with a judicious amount of the front.
Otherwise, the weekend was absolutely gorgeous. The weather cooperated for the most part. The minor exception being the tremendous winds we faced when crossing the delta. I understand that this was also true of those who chose to come across Pacheco Pass. The tour began in Livermore and was to go out Vasco Rd. What I hadn't realized was that Vasco Rd had been greatly changed in the previous week - the new Vasco Rd had opened - and ten minutes into the ride I knew that I had never been down that road before. Talk about WindMill Alley.
We were riding just a few feet below all those windmills which clutter up the landscape to the east of San Francisco. And they're there for a reason. But it wasn't until we hit the delta country that the full force of the wind was apparent as it came at us from the left side just about as hard as the wind coming from directly ahead.
For the ride down to Mariposa we stayed just to the east of the foothills. Many times we could look to our right and see california's central valley laid out some hundred feet below us while on the left were the steadily climbing foot hills of the Sierras. The hills were a beautiful green where they weren't covered with flowers and flowering bushes. This is possibly the most comfortable time of the year to explore this area alongside the central valley. Soon the summer sun will turn the hills that golden california brown and make us long for the higher
elevations where the temps are more reasonable. We regrouped in Oakhurst for lunch. Don Allison had ridden much of the way by himself and John Caramngo and Carole Feldman had stopped in Mariposa for gas as they hadn't availed themselves of the cheaper stuff in Stockton.
But the most spectacular scenery was in the push from Oakhurst over the hills to Trimmer and Pine Flat Lake. I won't bore the reader with more lame attempts to describe the scenery, only to say that the roads were twisty, sometimes one lane (but a large one lane), it was up and down hills and small mountains, and there were no cops and few cars. Humma, Humma , Humma was the sound of my little K-75.
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