Albany & Fort Griffin

Destination: Albany & Fort Griffin

This weekend was perfect timing for a nice day long ride with temperatures peaking at 92 degrees!  You could not have asked for a better day.  Cowtown Motorcycle Group planned a trip to Albany, TX with a historical stop at Fort Griffin.  Once again, Cowtown did not disappoint!  It was a perfectly planned and executed ride with wonderful stops and historical content added. Again I met some more riders who were very sociable and friendly.  For the second time riding with the group I felt completely welcomed and comfortable. Everyone has been real and true to character. In all honesty this group is simply "Amazing".

We met at 8:00 and took off around 8:30am.  The sun was behind our backs heading to our destinations and on our backs when returning.  Gotta love that!  It was a bit windy but not so bad as to spoil the ride.  The group was 17 bikes strong this time.  We had a combination of road types on this trip, highways, farm and market roads, little back roads, and even some dirt roads rounded out the experience.  If you had a preference on type of roads, this ride would meet your expectations.  We got back into Fort Worth around 7pm. It was a dawn to dusk ride tallying in over 300 miles for the day.

After a couple of stops along the way we stopped to have lunch at the IceHouse in Albany.  Historically it was an old ice house that has been converted into a restaurant.  We visited the courthouse area and some replicas of older building styles that would have been around during the founding of the city.  After that we headed out to Fort Griffin.  Windell, one of the organizers, had researched the old fort and gave us a very informative history account about the place upon arrival.  We also visited some replicas of the buildings that once stood at the fort.  The jailhouse was the original masonry and stood in the same place as when it was first built.  Definitely not the type of jails were used to seeing in our modern civilization.

On the trip home something happened to my GoPro video cam.  It locked up completely.  I couldn't even turn the thing off without taking the battery out, and after doing that, it wouldn't turn on!  Because of this setback I was unable to record the beautiful scenery for part of the route home.  Fortunately none of the previous footage taken was lost and I was able to make a video of the majority of the ride. After researching the problem with the camera I found out it is a common issue and most people had to contact GoPro and get a replacement.  "Sigh", looks like Ill have to deal with that this upcoming week.

Cowtown Motorcycle Group: Albany & Fort Griffin 2013

Fork Fix

I had to take off work this Wednesday for personal reasons and decided to work on the forks to get that gushing leak fixed.  We wouldn't want Margaret to be parted from practicing too long. Honestly, I was apprehensive before getting down to work on this task.  I know its messy and the bike is old so parts are difficult to come by if something goes wrong and breaks.

We began by raising the front end with a floor jack and a 2x4 under the frame. Then we removed the calipers and zip tied them to the frame to keep them out of the way.  Doing this prevents having to drain the brake fluid and bleeding the brakes when reassembling.  Then off came the wheel and fender.  I removed the fork oil drain plug from the left side and then realized we had not taken any pictures.

I drained most of the fork oil out of the left side on this picture.  There wasn't much oil left.  Each fork takes 11.9 fl. oz. and there was barely enough in there to even coat the bottom of the oil pan.

This one is from the top cap looking down into the fork before removing it from the bike.  It's easier to get the cap off while the fork is still secured before removing it from the bike.

And finally, the fork is out, now drained completely and ready to remove the old seal and slide the new one on, fill them with fork oil, and put them back on the bike.

Total time from start to finish for both forks was just under 3 hours.  Not bad, they work great and don't leak anymore.  I also raised them an extra 1.5 inches in the triple tree so it would lower the bike a bit and hopefully give her a bit more foot on the ground when coming to a stop.  By doing this I also lost 1.5 inches in suspension travel but were not riding the bike hard and it would be difficult to bottom them out anyways.

This weekend is supposed to be up to 80 degrees and I am looking forward to using the entire time dedicated to riding.  Saturday I have another ride with Cowtown Motorcycle Group and its about a 300 mile ride. Sunday looks like a good day to get Margaret back out for some more practice.  Our HOG chapter is having a skills day on Sunday so were going to take the Kawasaki out there to have some company while she practices.

New blog reports from all of this will be coming soon!

Fork Failure

We went out again for Margaret to get some practice in last Sunday afternoon.  Temperatures were in the high 60's which in my mind is a sign that we should be doing some sort of riding and not waste away the day drowning in the sofa and gurgling at the TV.  So off we went to the practice parking lot to progress some more.  It had been a couple of weeks since she rode due to cold and rainy weather so we started her off easy to get accustomed to the basics again.  This just wasn't her day though.  She couldn't get her confidence level up for some reason.  She kept walking the bike forward with her legs to get it moving instead of clutching, and was riding about 7 miles per hour.  I could see the hesitation and asked her what was wrong but she said she didn't know.  After about 10 minutes of trying to get back into it she came to a stop and dropped the bike.  No harm done, but she was very upset so we called it a day and went back home.

All night she kept beating herself up about how badly she had done.  Even the next day she sent me texts about it and finally asked if we could go out for a little while when I got home from work.  She said she didn't want to wait too long before riding again after having a bad experience for fear that she might give up.

When I got home we headed out on the faithful Kawasaki to the faithful practice parking lot.  She hopped on and took off like she had been riding for months.  Strange.  We didn't do anything serious this time, just wanting her to build the confidence again.  She did get on the throttle a lot more than usual though while shifting through the gears and started coming out of corners laying on the gas!

During this short practice session, Murphy struck again!  She pulled up, came to a stop, and I just happened to look down at the front left fork.  Oil was gushing out, UGH!  Blew an fork seal.  See how hard she was riding it?!  Hehe, I rode it carefully back home and parked it.  For a bike that is 32 years old things like that are to be expected.  Well let Murphy off the hook this time. I already have the seals from an order I placed from when we put in transmission seals.  Just figured I would see how long the forks would last before tearing them apart.  Yuck, replacing fork seals is a messy job and I wont be looking forward to doing that.