Taking the day off from the motorcycle journey today, about 3000 miles so far and another 5 days to go. We went to the Tulsa Zoo for most of the day and had a blast. Except for the fact that every elementary school in the surrounding area must have decided to take a field trip on this same day, each school class wore color coordinated shirts. The poorer schools just wore whatever. Lots of shouting screaming kids in enclosed places is not fun for the animals or me. Whichever direction they went we went the other.

Together we took close to 350 pictures at the Zoo so I’ve split this up into 3 posts for the better ones. I tried to put down the names of some of the exotic species, if you know what something is that I left off feel free to let me know in the comments. Enjoy.

continue reading "Day 10 – Tulsa Zoo"

Cypress Trees

continue reading "Day 8 – Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas"

Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church moved from Rodney, Mississippi

On our way to Vicksburg from Natchez Trace Parkway we saw a tiny sign for a civil war museum. The Grand Gulf Military Park was a pretty cool place, many original earthen fortifications were still in place. They have quite a few interesting artifacts from the area. Most of it is Civil War related but theres everything from mastodon bones to Indian tools to a bootleggers submarine too. Its definitely off the beaten path, its a ways down a narrow 2 lane road deep into the woods that feels like you must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. There was also these odd roadsign markers in tenths of a mile measurements that I eventually figured out were distance markers from a nuclear power plant hidden back in there too, yikes! I dont know what I was worried about, I lived in Los Alamos and think the Trinity Site is a cool place to visit, we already glow in the dark.

If passing through the area check it out:

- www.grandgulfpark.state.ms.us

(I’ll put up these new July Trip posts here for a while, then backdate them to July where they belong when they fall off the first page)

continue reading "Day 8 – Grand Gulf Military Park"

The AIS or Air Injection System on the Yamaha V Star 650 is designed to dilute the exhaust stream with fresh air to help burn unburned or incompletely burned fuel so the bike can pass emissions tests. Many cars have similar systems to get oxygen to the catalytic converters so the breakdown can happen. As far as I know the AIS has been on these bikes from the beginning and predate the later years where catalytic converters were put in the pipes and indeed other types of motorcycles had AIS or Pulse Air systems as BMW called it back into the late 70′s.

It seems to be the first thing people do with these systems when customizing their motorcycle is ripping them off and throwing them in the trash. Some of the reasons for this are simply to clean up the looks, and get rid of excess parts that could potentially fail and introduce air leaks. More importantly for people who install aftermarket pipes removing the AIS helps stop that annoying backfiring on deceleration, however, if it was tuned properly it wouldnt do that. If it was optimally tuned for your riding conditions from the factory it also wouldn’t need it, but bikes get shipped all over the world to many climates and altitudes so they have to use general settings that will work anywhere.

There is also the theory that removing the AIS causes the bike to run cooler because it is burning extra unburnt fuel and generating more heat that it otherwise wouldn’t have. I can confirm by closely monitoring my crankcase temperature gauge that my motorcycle does seem to run about 5-7C cooler with the AIS gone, on the other hand, I also had been doing lots of carb tweaks that week and cant entirely attribute it to only the AIS.

continue reading "V Star 650 AIS Removal"

I mentioned earlier that Vaughn and Encino were pretty cool towns to photograph. I snapped a few photos out the window of the car on my way through to visit my bud Lalo who’s recovering from a bad motorcycle wreck. Again in a hurry I didn’t get to stop for long, maybe in the future when I’m not in a rush I can look around off the main streets for some other cool shots.

continue reading "Vaughn, NM"

Was an absolutely beautiful day today. I spent the morning putting the bike back together and headed up the mountain to check out the fall colors and de-stress. The weather was perfect! Not too cold, not too hot. The sun was out with outstanding lighting.

I guess many others had the same idea as the roads were packed with cars and a fair number of bikes too. All were enjoying themselves. Got a few thumbs up from a few of the other motorists too, it felt good to be out.

continue reading "Fall Colors"

Oh No! Another bike tear down. My landlords must just love me.

Task at hand today is just to clean everything off somewhat, check the wiring and cables and inspect for any other unknown issues to get a better idea of what work lies ahead and what I’ve gotten myself into.

continue reading "Airhead Cleanup"

Slinging mud, rocks, bikes, knobby tires and the smell of two strokes, I’ve never been to a hill climb competition before but it sounds like fun to watch. I was disappointed during the spring rally when there was a hill climb event scheduled at the Travel Center and it was canceled due to weather and that the course was never built. There was some issue with getting permission to cut down a tree.

This time had similar controversy. The tribe had agreed to the event long in advance and they were going to build the course. Then they backed out then agreed to do it again then backed out again. The course wasn’t actually built until Friday afternoon, the day before the event was scheduled. Up to a half hour before things got started a half dozen guys were still throwing the largest of the rocks off to the side.

continue reading "Ruidoso Hill Climb"

These are some of the pics of one of the groups of Mexican police at the Ruidoso Golden Aspen Rally over the weekend, I think there was about 25-30 of them. Former president Fox was also in the state, so they may have come up to the rally first and then went further north to escort him.

They were mostly all on very old Harleys, a few with some cool mods, with a few Goldwings, and Yamahas thrown in. It was a real hodgepodge of a fleet, it wouldn’t surprise me if these are the actual ones used in regular duty.

continue reading "Mexican Federale Police Bikes"

Its that time again, another Ruidoso Rally. Just random pics I took over the weekend that I liked.

continue reading "Ruidoso Golden Aspen Rally 2009"