Happy 40th Birthday

Wednesday, 25 May 2011

This October my 1972 Honda CB500 motorcycle will be 40 years old. It is 4-cylinder and 50 horse power that gets around 45-55 miles per gallon. I've had it for 11 years. When i first got it, it had 12,062 miles. Today it's at 21,595 miles.
Here's what it looked like when i first got it in 1999. It had a big old seat and tall mirrors. Other than the exhaust it was pretty much original.
Since then i've learned a lot from working on it. Usually the process is: something breaks, i try to fix it, i make it worse, i try fixing it several more times before i realize what i'm doing wrong then fix it properly.
This is probably the furthest i've had it taken apart. Over the years i've replaced a few things: brakes, tires, oil filter, screws and bolts, chain and sprockets hand grips, jets for the carburetors (I had them apart and took 6 tries to get them back together before i realized i had the overflow needle upside down) throttle cable which broke in Arizona and lots more.
I wrapped the exhaust. This is my idea of form and function working perfectly. The exhaust works better because it stays cooler and i think it looks better too.
I made a new seat. It's thinner then the old one and a little bit harder, but it's easier to ride and the center of gravity is lower which helps.
Mackinaw Bridge
The 45th parallel near Traverse City. This was on the same trip to Mackinaw. I rode around the outer edge of Michigan, about 900 miles in 4 days.
The biggest thing i've ever done is my 2,600 mile, 13 day ride from Arizona to Michigan.
Continental Divide somewhere in New Mexico.
Camping on Thanksgiving by Foss Lake Oklahoma at sunset.
Just outside of Phoenix Arizona.
Riding through the Petrified Forest.
I don't remember where this was. Maybe Texas?
This is a picture of every state border i crossed on my ride from Arizona. The only 2 i missed were Arizona and Ohio. The Ohio border is on a bridge, over a river, in 4 lanes of traffic, i didn't stop. For that entire trip the only thing that went wrong with the bike was the throttle cable breaking as we unloaded it from the truck. It's quite amazing that a 40 year old motorcycle rode 2,600 miles (most of that at 7,000rpm) without any problems. And still today it's running great.

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2,600 miles on a Honda - part 6

Thursday, 3 December 2009

By this point in the trip i was basically planning where i was going the the next day, the night before in the tent. I'm not sure if i thought that i wouldn't make it this far or what. I probably thought "eh i'll figure it out when i get there." I reached another goal that day. I finally saw an armadillo. It was dead by the side of the road but it still counts. A couple of days earlier i saw two roadrunners, they were really cool how they ran, almost exactly like the cartoon with their heads pointed forward.
US-412 was great, lots of hills and turns. I saw on the map that it comes close to Wirth, Arkansas but 50 miles was too far of a detour. Then i came up the the border into Missouri. I still don't know what the Show-Me State even means. The state sure didn't show me much. I know i only rode a hundred miles through the corner of the state, but I don't remember anything about Missouri except that every farm was growing cotton and it was all over the sides of the road, it looked like snow.


Then the only real wrong turn i made was when i tried taking a side road across the Mississippi River into Tennessee. On the map there were two roads on either side of the river and it looked like there was a bridge. Turns out there was only a dead end at the river, no bridge and i had to double back 30 miles to cross into Tennessee.
Then it turned out that the State Park where i was going to camp was closed for the season. So i camped out at this weird bait shop/boat marina/RV park/campground. It was also weird that this place was the most expensive spot so far that i camped. Palo Duro was great and only $12, Bull Shoals was $17 and the best place out of all of them, Foss Lake was free. I could draw you a graph showing how as price increased, the campsites got worse but i'm sure you get the idea. Also it was really windy by the lake and rained all night.

Luckily the next day the roads were fairly dry. But since the high temp for the day was 45 degrees it was not that much fun. Then came the most dangerous part of the trip. Trying to take my picture in front of the border into Kentucky. The sign was in the center of a 4 lane divided highway with a 2 foot shoulder. Good thing the road wasn't busy.
After a long day of riding i made it to Mammoth Cave and at 3:30 and got to go on the last tour of the day. It ended up being just me, a guy from Chicago and the tour guide. I had always pictured the cave as a small cramped tunnel maybe 10 foot wide. But now i know why it's called Mammoth Cave. It was huge. They said it was the longest cave system in the world, over 400 miles of tunnels, but the size of the "rooms" is what got me. Only a half mile in and there was 100 foot high ceilings and walls probably 200 feet wide. They had 3 hour trips the next day which i wanted to go on but i had to keep heading home. I would have liked to spend all day down there. Except when the guide turned out all the lights for a laugh.
At this point i was 470 miles from home. I figured 2 more days. The next morning was really cold as can be seen from the thick layer of frost on the motorcycle.
To this point i had taken a picture in front of every state border that i crossed, until Ohio. There was absolutely no place to stop on the bridge, over the river, on the highway. So i just kept riding and made it to Dayton, 230 miles, by 2:30. When i stopped to get gas i saw a sign that said "Detroit 140 miles." My choices were to stop then and ride tomorrow in the cold rain or ride home in the dark. I decided on the second option. I crossed into Michigan right after sunset. An hour later and i was at 15 Mile and Ryan Rd, only a quarter of a mile from my house. That's when it finally hit me that i had actually made it. So if you happened to be standing on the corner that night you would have heard a crazy guy with a loaded down Honda motorcycle screaming for joy in his helmet.

For some reason i thought to myself "if the bike breaks now i can always push it home." Although the bike was GREAT. Other then replacing the throttle cable and some spark plugs it performed flawlessly. Not bad for a motorcycle that's 37 years old. The whole trip i wasn't really thinking that i would really make it the whole way, so when i pulled in the driveway i could not believe that i actually rode 2,600 miles.

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Michigan to Arizona - part 1

Monday, 9 November 2009

Well i just got home from my 2 week trip to across the United States. The main part of the trip was me riding my 1972 Honda CB500 from Phoenix to Michigan. But before i get to that , the week before i left with my friend John, we went up to Bad Axe and spent some time with his relatives on their farm. I got to help milk cows and plow a field. They actually let me drive that thing for almost half the day, by myself. I think i plowed around 60 acres.




Now on to the trip. Basically it was three days of driving:
Michigan to Nashville
Nashville to Texas
Texas to Phoenix

Before getting to Nashville though we went to the Louisville Slugger factory and got bats made with our names on them. But Nashville was really great. John and i went to the Country Music Hall of Fame, saw some of the Montreal Canadians players walking from the hotel to the ice arena, went to a concert at the Grand Ole Opry and hung out downtown afterwords.

Carrie Underwood was just one of the people singing that night

Main street in downtown Nashville, there was live country music in just about every bar

Oh ya and we played putt-putt and rode go-carts every chance we could

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Jackson again...

Sunday, 20 September 2009

Back to Jackson one more time this year. Ya i got poison sumac again all over my arms and legs, ya i got to hang out with donkeys, which by the way i could have bought, according to the farmer for $200. We also found an abandoned house that had some funny records from the 70's and a motorcycle exactly like the one i have, a 1972 honda cb500. Went to the Milan drag way one friday night and i almost brought a stray cat home that was living in the spare tire of our trailer. It was quite a trip.

Oh ya and the day before i was sent out of town i was made part-time by my company. Now that i'm back it's gonna be time to start getting that government money back i've been paying for all these years.

i found my new best friend
whoa there buddy, back up a little

uh no...that's not a "fanny pack" it's a hydration waist pack for your information. i asked, $200 and one of these donkeys could be living in my back yard right now.




what are the odds, the exact same bike as mine, too bad it was rusted solid

come on ladies... i mean if this record doesn't make you want to be a swinger i don't know what will


cutting through the wheat fields early in the morning

praying mantis

milan dragway on a friday is the coolest place in michigan. it was super fun

driving through a soy bean field with the truck

the stray cat coming to get some roast beef that i had been feeding it

aaahhhhhhh!

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