Laura and I thought that it would be a good idea to learn how to do some basic maintenance on our motorbikes, so we went down to Autozone and bought a socket wrench set and oil filter remover. 4 hours later, and a couple spills on the garage floor, we now know how to change the oil.
I bought a windshield for the Virago the other day. The install looked pretty easy, until I realized that I had to cut the wires on the front turn signals so I could relocate them a little bit farther down the fork. It wasn’t very difficult but it did turn an “I think this’ll take about an hour” project into a “Damn, that took three hours!” project.
Still, it’s better to know how to do things yourself — even if it takes longer than you thought — than to be stupid and pay someone else to do it.
The windshield is great at blocking the wind (was that redundant?) and rain. And bugs. Now that I have one, I can’t imagine going without it.
I also ordered a generic book on motorcycle maintenance as well as the full service manual for the Virago 535 on CD-ROM. Just a few things to prepare for the cross country trip at the end of July…
The family that I was living with in Canby, OR decided that they wanted to hire a nanny to take care of all the kids — so they asked if I could start looking for another place to live. At first I was freaked out, thinking that I didn’t have any options, especially since I’m only going to be in Oregon until the end of July.
Then I started looking around at work. Hey, we have a shower. Toilets. Refrigerator. Microwave.
Check. Check. Check.
So I live here now:
Laura and I went camping near the coast at the Oregon Sand Dunes / Suislaw National Forest on May 11th.
Originally, we had planned to go down to Crater Lake. Then we called and spoke with the park rangers who told us that there was still 10 feet of snow on the ground… so better to come back in July. At the last minute, we went to the dunes.
The trip was nice… Laura drove the Insight south on PCH 101. We had no idea where to go, but eventually as we entered the national forest surrounding the dunes we started looking for a campground that wasn’t busy. With about an hour to spare of sunlight, we found the Waxmyrtle camping area. Only one other group was there, and we found the perfect campsite that offered the most privacy.
As the sun started to set, we got the tent set up, unpacked our things, and took a (dark and dim) look around before going to sleep. Saturday morning came bright and early, so we ate some breakfast and took a walk on a trail to the beach — where we saw sea lions! About 30 of them were hanging out near the shoreline, some swimming around, while others lay on the sand and looked at us.
The entire time we didn’t see any other people (which is how we like it).
Flickr photos: Oregon Sand Dunes
Sat 03/10 11:10AM 215-801-XXXX INCOMI CL
A few hours later, we met hugged here.
I’ve known Laura for almost 2 months.
Crazy. Awesome.
5 days legal, 300 miles already. Sometimes, I surprise myself.
Laura and I went on a scenic loop from Portland to Mount Hood this past Sunday. We saw a few waterfalls, rode on the Historic Columbia River Highway for about 15 miles (all that’s left of it), spent too much time on boring I-84, visited the Bonneville Dam, and headed south towards the mountains.
The road from Hood River to the mountains was nice. Not much traffic. At one point, as we were coming down a hill we had an unobstructed view of Mount Hood towering above the pavement in front of us. As we got closer the temperature dropped and caught us by surprise; we entered a “Snow Tire and Chain Zone” and started to see some snow beneath trees on the side of the road. Thankfully, it hadn’t been raining or snowing recently.
At the first sight of civilization, we stopped south of the mountain near Government Camp, got some hot coffee, warmed our hands, and took a break. Fortunately, this was where the road declined sharply back towards the valley, and we had only about 10 more minutes of really cold weather. The ride back to the city wasn’t too bad… nothing much to see, but at least the traffic wasn’t too crazy.
160 miles round trip.
Flickr photos: Motorcycles to Mount Hood