The 101 along the Oregon coast is awesome, there was a lot of light houses. We were so far behind schedule but we had to see at least one of them.
We timed it just right at the peak of low tide and got to explore the tide pools along the beach.
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By the time the air museum closed and kicked us out it was getting late, we had to turn back to Tillamook Oregon and find a place to stay. Ok, mom & pop place with apartments on the upper floor and ice cold unheated pool $70, big improvement from the gouging the night before in Seaside. Cece had been wanting crab for days, we had to get some now before we leave the coast. Guy at the front desk of our motel recommended a nice place a ways north of Tillamook overhanging a cliff right on the ocean that had live lobster and dungenous crab. That thing was bigger than she was, HUGE!
I went with something a little more tame, seafood pasta.
She thought this was loads of fun LOL
I’m a big engine guy, I could have spent days in this place looking through everything. I had to go out through the rail yard to get a closer look at this thing. A working one of these was going up and down a tourist railway along the coast, since it took us all day to ride 50 miles it passed us a bunch of times. I’ve never seen a steam engine in this configuration, it looks like a huge Moto Guzzi.
Its a giant V Twin under the boiler with an open crank like the old hit and miss engines were. The hit and miss ones were like this for easier access for maintenance and lubrication, but got more dirt contamination and faster wear so they needed more maintenance…
Open drive, yikes! This obviously is from the time when railway safety was self policed 😉
Rolls Royce Merlin After the cheese factory we tried to haul butt down the road to finally get some miles under our belt today. Doing under 100 in a day just isnt going to work. Well a bit south out of town on the 101 when we were just getting into a groove we spotted the Tillamook Air Museum. Theres absolutely no missing it, its an enormous building. I thought OK, our mileage for today is already shot anyway, lets stop to check it out. We watched the film on the history of the place, after it was shut down by the Navy space was leased out for private industry, at one time it housed a lumber yard, a saw mill, and a paper mill all at the same time under one roof. This is hangar B, A was destroyed in a fire after something like a million bales of hay went up. Pictures just dont convey how truly enormous this building is, you could fit a couple office buildings inside.
I’m not much of an expert on flying things and by now all my pictures of the plaques identifying what things were are all scrambled out of order. If you know what these are let me know and I’ll update the post. Back on the road. We really picked a bad day to be trying to get anywhere along the coast. Highway 101 goes through several small towns and all of them were having their local 4th of July parades so traffic was at a standstill for miles and miles. We went through 3 or 4 parades at a snails pace while roasting on the hot bike.
Finally got to Tillamook! We had made a grand total of about 50 miles in 6 hours hah.
Tillamook is my favorite cheese! I refuse to eat that individually wrapped plastic crap they pass off as cheese in my sandwiches. I rediscovered it in my 20’s. My mom said when I was little I wouldn’t eat anything else, she would make fresh bread for us every week with tillamook. When she went back to college and called home 4 yr old me said dad was feeding us nasty sandwiches. LOL She was upset thinking hed let the food get moldy or something, no dad bought the cheaper Kraft stuff with store bought white bread. Gross! 😉
Yet another aquarium. At the hotel we were given a voucher for one free thing of seal food so we had to go to Seaside Aquarium, its one of the last privately owned ones in the country. 28lb lobster! holy crap!
Exploring town. Seaside is a bit like a permanent carnival midway. Arcades, bumper cars, rental 4,6,8 man pettal cars, all the usual carnie miday games to seperate you from your money and the most unhealthy food ever like funnel cake or cotton candy. Never been in a town thats like a year round fair.
Some really impressive hotels here.
Lots of tourist and trinket shops. Messing arround in one of the hat shops. I would totally wear this snowboarding 😉
Time to hit the road again. We were advised against going around the Olympic Peninsula like I had wanted and going through the rainforest, as it would add half a day to the trip. So instead we caught a ferry across to the peninsula and went straight down the 101, California here we come! This is our second ferry of the trip. There was two lanes for ferry traffic on the road in and quite a backup, so I just got in line and waited. Meanwhile I saw a few bikes going past now and then along with some cars, I didn’t think anything of it as there’s other businesses down this road by the docks. After more than a half hour of waiting a guy a few cars back gets out and comes up to talk to us wanting to know where we were from and everything. Then after a while he mentions You know you don’t have to wait in line with the cars right? WHAT? Bikes get preferential treatment on the ferries, they go on first and last and get to go to the front of the line. Sweet! It would have been nice to know that ahead of time. Here we are squeezed on with another bike as the last ones to board. This ferry was massive! two decks for cars and another for foot traffic and passengers. Easily 50 cars on here. Other than the air craft carrier museum I went to in Corpus Christi TX this is by far the biggest ship I’ve ever been on. Biggest one that was actually moving.
Upstairs on the passenger deck. This was so long I couldn’t get a shot of it all with the curvature of the hull. There was a snack bar, mini restaurant and gift shop on board along with tons of vending machines for anything you could want. Watching out the windows this thing was booking it, it was faster than all of the smaller private boats and smooth as could be. I could barely feel that it was moving.
All the bikes from the front of the line that got on first. Lots of Victories. After getting everything repacked to hit the road first thing in the morning, Jenny wanted to fix the water faucet on the front of the house. This was at 5pm. I said more than once home repairs like this shouldnt be done this late even if you think it’ll be a 5 min job, cause it wont be. Oil field man, I guess its up to me. I dismantled the faucet and we headed to Home Depot to get some repair gaskets. Nothing. Get a replacement valve instead. Go home and the thing will not budge, of course theres no access to behind the wall to brace the pipe. All the time I’m working on this slugs are coming out from under the house, giant ones, little ones, fast ones, yuck! This is the whole reason for doing this, they were eating the flowers and we traced them back to the dripping faucet. I do not like slugs! They are too much like leaches, I ended up dreaming about being stuck in a small room with slugs pouring in from under the walls… We’ve been looking at snakes, lizards, gigantic spiders, all kinds of deadly venomous things for days and I end up having nightmares about slugs LOL. Trying with all my might the copper pipe sheers in half 5 ft back Doh!! Now we have to rebuild the entire line.
Back and forth to Lowes like 5 times, I’m so glad they stay open till 9pm. We ended up using this new product called Shark Bite plumbing fittings. Very Cool!!! All you do is press the copper, vynal, galvanized or whatever pipe in one end till it stops and pull a bit and its locked in place water tight. There is a little C thing that you can press around the collar and reverse the process to release the pipe. So basically no tools required, no soldering or anything.
We got one to join the two copper pipes together and another threaded one to join the faucet to the copper. Once we had all the parts it was done in 3 or 4 mins. SWEET! Something like this could put plumbers out of business. Another day of mostly relaxing and helping out the family we were staying with. I had just changed the oil in Montana but the bike was having all kinds of problems with the new oil so it was time to dump it and put in something better. I put in Shell Rotella T synthetic then. At first it ran great, butter smooth shifting and ran much quieter etc. But over a few long hard days shifting had gotten rougher and rougher to where I was having to double clutch a lot of the time to get it into gear, and the oil level stayed fine. After prolonged high speeds the bike would develop this god awful whine, using a screwdriver to my ear I tracked it down to the cam chains. It was bad enough that on the highways I couldnt even hear the pipes over the screeching of the engine. It literally sounded like I was running a turbo in there somewhere, it was bad. But then after it cooled off overnight, everything would go back to normal and it’d be quiet and smooth as can be untill the bike warmed up several hours later. As many of you know my bike’s probably had the most leaks of anyone here due to my stupidity er.. stubbornness to ride when its below 0. I’ve had leaks from all of the common areas in addition to the bottoms of both jugs, the stator grommets, both sides of the crankcase and more I should probably just change my nickname from lynx to leaks heh. Well afer much work (years) I was able to fix all my leaks and with no riding in cold temps this winter they have stayed fixed, that was until I ran that damn Shell Rotella T 5w-40 synthetic. I started getting seeps from everywhere all over again. I felt bad for leaving lots of oil drips all over the nice concrete driveway I was parking in, even when it was leaking before it never left quarter to silver dollar sized spots. All my leaks came back with a vengeance all at once. @#$%!! Time to get rid of that shit. How to change the oil on the road: Lasanga pan and a big flat rock from the neighbors yard.
With the bike a little more level you can put the 17mm wrench on a few inches above the ground and it will hang there.
Then just step down on the wrench to loosen it and do the rest by hand. Piece of cake, no lift needed. |
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