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By Lynx, on July 26th, 2010 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.
Continue reading T&C Motorcycle Plumbers
By Lynx, on July 26th, 2010 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.
Continue reading Road Trip Oil Change, again…
By Lynx, on July 25th, 2010 While we were on that end of town we had to visit the Reptile Zoo a few miles away that Cece had been wanting to see for weeks since she heard about it LOL.
Pretty big place with lots of animals and plenty of space. I really think Cece’s museum needs to expand now after being there, but hers is in a 300 year old part of town, they werent really building for zoos back then 
I’m not going to post too many of the snake pics. We got took way too many for Cece’s boss, maybe 500 total, I’ve only uploaded the best ones. For those snake people that are interested in checking out the full gallery go here: http://picasaweb.google.com/Xocmal/ReptileZoo#
One of my favorites, Gaboon Viper. They listed this as the second most poisonous in the world
Look at the patterns, amazing. I saw a video of one in their natural habitat and they’re near impossible to see amongst scattered dead leaves.
Continue reading Reptile Zoo
By Lynx, on July 24th, 2010 Next day, tire time! Rear tire was almost slick by now and in desperate need of replacing. After asking around on the boards and checking the google reviews of places in the area I settled on Adventure Motorsports and went there first thing in the morning through the rain. They hadnt opened yet and were in a company meeting to give bonuses to anyone who could brainstorm ideas to bring customers in. One of the guys nods to me and yells out how about deals on tire changes? LOL
Manager of the service dept asked if I had an apt. Nope. He says they are booked solid for a week out and doesnt have the techs to work on my bike right now. WTF? I look around and say its pouring rain, I dont see anyone else here waiting in line, I’m the only customer here. He storms off I’ll see if I can fit you in.
The overworked techs come out to check out the bike and can barely believe that its a V Star much less that anyone would take a 650 across the country. One of the lead techs says to just ignore his boss and starts typeing in my info on the computer.
They had a really big selection of bikes. With a seperate building across the lot for the service dept. You can just see in this pic off to the side is a small diner/coffee shop. This is the only bike dealership I’ve ever been to that had a resturant inside. They gave us a voucher for one free meal while getting serviced.
Cece even found something she likes.
Continue reading New Shoes for the V Star
By Lynx, on July 23rd, 2010 More walking around Seattle after the Aquarium.
NICE! My kind of store! I was even more impressed that these colorful restras are not treated like many of the touristy decorative ones are in the tourist traps back home so they can actually be used for cooking and eaten.
Off to Seattle Art Museum. Right across the street on the corner was a Harley Davidson dealer, cool! Except I went inside and its an HD dealership that doesnt actually sell bikes or parts… Clothing only LOL. I’ve heard jokes that Harley Davidson was merely a fashion designer that sometimes built motorcycles on the side, now we have proof that it is!
The Art Museum unfortunately was closing at 4:30 and we got there at 4, bummer. The ticket ladies said they would let us in for free or whatever “donation” we felt apropriate for a half hr. its like 4 floors so no way we’d be able to rush through or see much of anything and we just left.
Continue reading Exploring Seattle
By Lynx, on July 22nd, 2010 Next day in Seattle, went back downtown to check out the Aquarium and stuff around there. First time using the GPS during the trip, worked out pretty well. I’m too cheap to spring for a bike mount for the GPS so I just superglued two strips of my industrial strength velcro to the back and stuck it to the camera bag mounted behind the windshield. It worked fine and cost a grand total of maybe 15 cents.
The entire aquarium building is suspended over water, it looks like its on flat ground but its actually hanging out over the ocean on Pier 59.
Continue reading Seattle Aquarium
By Lynx, on July 22nd, 2010 The Aquarium of course has some great reef tanks that were just amazing with the colors and varieties of fish.
These anemones were huge
Colorful Corals
Giant scallop
Continue reading Seattle Aquarium – Reef Fish
By Lynx, on July 22nd, 2010 We loved the Seattle Aquarium sea otters!
I’m amazed at just how big sea otters are. I guess I always thought them to be like river otters, nope not even close, they are as big as Cece. Wikipedia says up to 5ft and 100 lbs, just a smidge smaller than Cece 
They were great fun to watch especially the young ones. I got some video but it didnt turn out.
Continue reading Seattle Aquarium – Otters
By Lynx, on July 22nd, 2010 With the bike repaired they took us to the Ice Caves up the valley. Pretty neat. I have no idea where we were, I think this is in the national forest.
View from the parkinglot.
Trails were very well maintained, except for the end it was wheelchair accessable. We went through marshes and swamps first, no pics of that.
My first rain forest.. Now I know what they mean by checking which side of the tree for moss to find your way. Back home, moss? whats that?
Continue reading ice caves
By Lynx, on July 22nd, 2010 Next day with nowhere to go we just slept in and did much needed tasks like laundry, and mailing another box of crap, I mean souvenirs home. Cece’s aunt and Uncle showed us around the nice little town of Lake Stevens and gave us some ideas of what to do around the area.
First though, another bike repair.. Over the two weeks we had been on the road my tour pack had begun to sag more and more in the back to where it was getting hard to read the license plate, but more importantly it was creating a growing lump in the bottom of the bag and taking away valuable space. My luggage rack did not go all the way to the end of the bag and over time the vibrations and bumps and 120lbs+ of weight had caused the thing to sag.
Took the thing off and much to my surprise it had bent the whole luggage rack down too. See in the pics how the Custom World International rack is all one solid piece with the sides bent down, it had bent straight across there where the sides end. I didnt think to get a picture of how badly bent it was. I had Rusty hold the bars to keep it from falling and picked the whole back of the bike up by the end of the rack. With the rear tire off the ground I could shake it up and down a little and it’d slowly bend back a millimeter at a time. That thing is fricken thick, it took a lot of effort to bend it back straight. Luckily it seems to have only stretched the chrome a bit and didnt crack it.
With it mostly straight I cut a piece cut a piece of this stuff from Lowes in half and wired it to each side with a strip of pizza box on both sides and on the top between the metal and the rack to keep from scratching it too badly.
Continue reading luggage rack repair
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