Henceforward this blog will etch into history my adventures on the BMW K 1600 GT - people, places, calamities, happenstance and all joyous occasions. Read on about my journeys, maintenance, equipment reviews and more.
Let's just start with the map this time around. This unique motorcycle art is a team effort. I can't really take any of the credit, except that it was my GPS that recorded this one of a kind motorcycle art. I have named it "The Failla #2 - Angry kid peeing on floor." The sunglasses part was us looking for the nose part. We were clearly off by a bit; but, we rejoined the route and had an excellent ride.
There are plenty of twisties on this route. We found ourselves pretty far south. I kept telling Paul that we should just go to Mexico while we were this far south. Paul needed to get home to take the wife to dinner and a movie, so we took the super slab back home. This little trip was over 400 miles and it took us about 10 hours.
This is what the southern California desert looks like at an average speed of 400 miles per hour.
Below is the map of the trips I've done since coming back to California for this contract.
This is my 6th week here in southern California and I just got back from my second motorcycle trip. A horrible, debilitating, near death experience overcame me last weekend; precluding me from doing this trip then. The whole affair involved a box of tissues and me sitting on my couch catching up on movies. My head was so big, I couldn't have stuffed it in my helmet if I tried; not to mention that sneezing in your helmet is simply gross.
As usual, I started making noises to my friend Paul about a weekend trip by about Tuesday. One can never dream about riding too long or too far in advance. My dreams about riding to Alaska have been going on for a couple years now. The plan was to go to Mexico. Understanding that the tip of the Baha peninsula might be a bridge too far, I picked out a destination that was only a few miles past the border...like 560 miles. That seems doable if we got to the border the night before and left at first light. Paul is much wiser than I am. I have no trouble admitting this. My spirit is unrestrained and to the untrained eye, nearly reckless. I will abandon caution and just go, carrying nothing but a credit card and a pile of cash. Pretty much everything else can be had with a generous allowance of time and the expert services of UPS, DHL and FedEx. Paul on the other hand brought up things like the chance of amoebic dissentary from drinking the water and how we should bring our own and how gas may not be available. Paul also has a wife that is concerned for his well being and she would like us to go in a bigger group for safety. I'm thinking that that isn't likely to happen and since being surrounded by men with AK-47's that speak nothing but Farsi, I'm not so afraid of the Federali's or banditos. Perhaps Paul and his wife have not had similar experiences. Strange indeed. That being said, God probably put Paul and his wife's wisdom in my path for a reason and because of that, we were off to the Mexican Consulate to get papers and Chaparell's to spend money. If these requirements could be satisfied, my spirit would be unleashed. God help Mexico.
So, it's late afternoon on Thursday and Paul sends word that he's ready to leave for the Consulate. I lock up the computer, bolt down the stairs and jump on my bike like a cowboy running for his life. So, off to the consulate we go, only to find out that we need to make an appointment during the week. They have limited hours. So, we get back on the bikes and head over to Chaparell's. There, we manage to put together the fuel and water cells I described in a previous post. During all this, we decide that we're going to do the trip I was planning for the weekend before.
Fast forward to Saturday morning. I'm getting pretty lazy about getting ready for motorcycle trips. I generally keep the tools and whatnot on the bike at all times and since I'm wearing riding clothes for a trip, the only thing I generally need to get together is electronics. On this trip though, I will take my tent because last trip, it almost became a necessity. All this stuff needs to be packed and I make it out right on time and meet Paul at Denny's right off the 10/215 interchange. I am wearing my banana suit. I wasn't sure I was going to like this setup. I really like the high vis color. The only thing they could do to make it brighter is make it out of uranium so I glowed. If I ever get hit by a car, there's no doubt the cop will not believe the "I didn't see him" excuse.
The ride up the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) is gorgeous. We rode from Santa Monica all the way up to Monterrey before cutting inland. On the way, we stopped at Anderson's Spit Pea Soup in Buellton California. It's hard to believe that a restaurant could make a business out of split pea soup; but, there it is. I had the split pea soup in a bread bowl. It was fantastic. I never imagined such a thing.
While we were going through Big Sur National Park and right in front of the Lucia Lodge, the spring from my center departed my bike in with an interesting clank and a show of sparks. How? Well, we were hitting some twisties and while doing so it some uneven pavement. My suspension compressed and when it released, momentum throws the center stand toward the ground. This has happened before. Usually, the spring pulls the center stand back up and there's no issue. This time, the suspension compressed again and much faster than the spring could pull the center stand back up. The result was no tension on the spring and pop, off the bike it went. When that happened, the center stand was not held in place by anything and dropped to the ground with a show of sparks and a disconcerting sound of metal dragging on the ground. Paul was able to hear all this over the intercom. I pulled over and used some wire ties to hold the center stand up. Unfortunately, I wouldn't do the job quite right and the wire ties would break. I would have to redo the job.
Continuing on, we discussed the rest of the route. I really wanted to do a loop around Lake Tahoe; but, we also considered going over the Golden Gate Bridge. We opted to cut inland around Monterrey and leave the bridge for another time. When we got to Monterrey, we decided to pull off the road and consult a map. It so happens that we pulled off right at a Starbucks. Neither of us were hungry yet, so we decided to press on after deciding on our routing, and of course, a beverage.
Around 10:30, we were about done with riding and decided to find a room. This would prove to be another crazy situation where we can't find a room. Conventions and such seem to follow Paul and I wherever we go. So far, we've done 4 trips together and in 3 out of the 4, we did not find a room on the first try. Last trip, we ended up riding another 115 miles before finding a room. This time, we finally found a room on the 10th try. Yes, the first 9 hotels we tried were booked. We pulled in at 12:45am. This was not our personal worst, having arrived before 1:30 am. We said last time that around lunch time, we should start making calls for a room. This would confirm that is what we need to do. Chances are, we won't, and chances are, we'll go through this again.
Day 2 - we're an hour away from Lake Tahoe on Rt. 50. Even though we weren't able to crash before 1, I was up at 7. I really wanted to repack my bike since I did such a miserable job of it the morning before. So, when Paul made it out to the bikes, I was already packed up. The plan was for breakfast in Lake Tahoe. Little did we know that the ride to Lake Tahoe was going to be gorgeous with plenty of twisties. From here on, I have to let the videos tell the story.
This is the whole trip around Lake Tahoe, condensed into 26 minutes. Nobody will watch the whole thing; but, one day, I might be laying in a nursing home and these videos are what I'll have to remember my adventures by. Feel free to forward through. It's all about the scenery. I promise, there's no wicked motorcycle action scenes that you'll miss.
Of course, I can't leave this post without the maps. The first one - this weekend's travels.
This map shows the travels I've done since I've been back in California.
This one shows all the trips I've made in the US to date on my BMW K1600GT. I only count trips of 250 miles or more. So far, I have 57,650 miles on this bike.
I have a need to carry extra fuel and water with me when I ride sometimes. I've had more than one occasion where I was very close to being stranded for lack of fuel. With plans to ride the Dalton Highway in Alaska and be more adventuresome in Mexico and Canada, extra fuel is really not a luxury. It's a necessity. I hope I never need to pour fuel into my tank from my reserves; but, I'm ready if I do.
This solution is nice if A) You don't want to or really can't fabricate a metal backing plate to mount your fuel cells; or, B) you want a system that is easy on/off and can be used on different bikes. In my case, I'll probably ride my K1600GT to the Dalton, rent a dual sport, do the ride to Prudhoe and back and get back on my K16 for everything else. This fuel solution will work with any bike as long as you can tie things down.
The cooler is an AO 48 pack off road cooler. I bought it at Chaparells and payed less than $100 for it. The fuel cells are Roto-Pax 2 gallon cells and the water cell is a 2 gallon Roto-Pax water cell. There is just enough room to squeeze a couple ice packs in there, if you wanted to keep the water (and fuel) cool.
The plan is purchase some webbing plastic side release buckles that are the same size as the ones on the bag, as well as nylon webbing and anchor the webbing under the seat for quick on and off. We can also put another webbing/ buckle on the back of the seat to keep the bag from moving forward. Since there is a trunk on my bike, the bag moving backward isn't an issue. Even without the webbing attached to the bike, tie down straps will easily do the job.
I had been back in California for no more than a week and it was time to get my riding fix in. The first person on my list to call was my friend Paul. "Paul, I'm back in town. Wanna ride this weekend?" Paul asked his wife for permission to come out and play with his long lost friend and just that quick, we were planning a trip.
My first choice was Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. It is my favorite park. The thing was it's too early in the season to be riding in the cold and with highs of 55 and lows of 33, I decided that there would be plenty of time to do that when the temperatures were warmer and in the mean time, we could enjoy some riding while temps were more seasonal. Since I had recently watched Tombstone, I thought Tombstone would be a good destination. Paul also suggested Sedona and I hadn't been there. Couple that with a trip to Kingman to visit his dad and we had the makings of a route. All that was left was to assure that we got plenty of time off the super-slab.
There isn't much in the way of roads in southern Arizona, so really, we only had one choice and that was 85/86, loop back up to 10 for a short distance and then 82/83 to get us into Tombstone. Paul noted that 80 out of Tombstone and up 191 would make for a fine route to Globe on 70 for the night or possibly Payson, just up the line a little. The next day was to be Sedona, followed by Jerome and then Kingman to see his dad. After that, it was to be some of 66 and then the I-40 super-slab home to California.
The plan was to leave at 6 and make our first stop in Gila Bend. That would put us in good position to make Tombstone by lunch and get up to Payson. Of course, who can work when thinking about a ride? I was getting anxious and asked Paul if he could leave by 1700. His day was moving right along, so the plan was to be kickstands up at 5. At 16:45, I started getting ready and at just about 1700, I was out the door, never looking back at my computer. Paul was not near his bike. A few minutes went by and Paul came out to tell me he got last minute tasking and we'd have to leave later. No problem. We went up to his office and waited for some processes to finish. We didn't get on the bikes until 1830.
The plan was still to get to Gila Bend, even though we'd get there pretty late. Traffic on I-10 was pretty light. There was a minimal amount of splitting lanes we needed to do to make forward progress just east of Yucaipa; but, other than that, we were doing well. We decided to get off the super-slab in Indio and start south on 86. This would get us to 8, which gets us to Gila Bend. Evening temps were perfect and other than being disappointed that we couldn't really see Salton Sea, we had a really nice ride. We decided on a Cracker Barrel for dinner and had some really good sandwiches. Can anyone identify this thing on the wall???
We pulled into Gila Bend after midnight and stayed at a Best Western that had a space theme. The Space Age Inn I think it was. Entering the main office, this is what we see:
The next day begins with breakfast at the Space Inn:
...and we're off to Tombstone. Tombstone is a small place. Blink and you miss it.
We didn't stay long, we had plenty of riding ahead of us and other than the obvious tourist places, it seems like the place was largely modernized. It wasn't the wide dirt rode with sparse buildings on either side that I had hoped for. I was also hoping to see several cowboys and horses, and maybe a gunfight or two breaking out in the street. There was none of that. There was a modern fire station though and I thought I'd grab a couple pics with the bikes and some apparatus.
It would seem that we can't help but find interesting things at lunch. Does anyone want to tell me what the hell this is? It is in Tombstone.
We had 4:30 hours of riding ahead of us before we would call it a day and were pretty jazzed by the fact that we would get to a hotel room at a reasonable time, have a relaxing dinner and perhaps catch up on some of the sleep we missed the night before. That didn't happen. We finally made it to Payson and decided to have dinner before checking in for the night. We stopped at a Chilli's in Payson. During dinner, I thought I'd call for hotel reservations and perhaps get an Internet discount. The obvious choice in Payson was the Knight's Inn we saw on the way in. It was $94/night. When we got there, I went to check out the room since the outside of the place looked pretty run down. Well, the inside was pretty run down as well. I could just imagine the bed being nothing but springs, no hot water and having bed bug bites all over me by morning. We passed. That was the beginning of a long night. We went up the street and found a Days Inn. They wanted $269 for a room with a king size bed. No thank you. The Comfort Inn was sold out and it was at that point we realized there must be some convention in town. Well, there were like 3. We tried calling the Days inn back; but, they sold the room while I was on the phone with them. The next town up the line was Camp Verde. I made several phone calls there and those hotels were sold out. The same went for Sonora. The next place was Flagstaff and I struck out there until I found a Doubletree in by Hilton. They had one room left - 2 queens for $254. Without hesitation, I gave the guy my credit card and we headed up there. When we thought we were done for the day, we needed to ride another 115 miles to get to a hotel room. Instead of a realizing evening and extra sleep, we ended up getting in at 0030hrs - 30 minutes earlier than the night before after a chilly climb to 7000 feet.
Getting into the room, I dropped my stuff and started charging things. The Sena died in Camp Verde and so did my iPhone. So I put those on the charger and flopped into bed. I didn't realize that the lamp I plugged into was controlled by the switch by the front door. My stuff got about 10 minutes of charging time the whole night! Paul to the rescue. Being always prepared, Paul pulled out his XP3 battery charger...
With this bad boy, I was able to plug my sena in, put the battery pack in my jacket and get a charge while we rode. I didn't have to be tethered to the bike at all. My iPhone went right into the USB port on the bike, safely tucked away in the lower cabinet. By the time we stopped for breakfast, my Sena was fully charged and the iPhone was at 83%. Over breakfast, I finished charging the iPhone on the XP-3. When both were done charging, the XP3 was still at 75% capacity. I have to have one...although, maybe the XP1, which will charge a laptop. Pics from breakfast. I don't always wait until someone is ready for the picture.
My kind of place:
So, from here, we decided to take I-40 to Rt. 66 and into Kingsman Az., where we visited Paul's dad; a very nice man with rich experiences to share. He's a retired Marine with a very nice gun collection he was very willing to show off. Paul's step mom is also a very nice lady and she did a fantastic job decorating their house. After a couple hours visiting, it was time to pull up the kickstands and head home. It would be 8 or 9pm before we got back. That didn't mean we were going to do the super-slab the whole way. We jumped back on 66 and went through some of my favorite parts of 66 through Oatman, where there is a little town that has borough's that come down off the mountain at around 1630-1700 to visit with the crowd and get some treats. Here's some of the twisties leading up to the town and, of course the boroughs we found there when we arrived.
Excellent trip. Fun was had by all, and of course, I'm ready to go on another trip right away. Some notes...Paul turned 72,000. on his LT. I am just about to turn 56,000 on my GT. As always, here are the maps:
This service takes a requires some explanation. My bike is consuming oil. You can look at my other posts about that. The dealerships I've spoken to all say that adding a half quart between oil changes is within normal specifications. I did a service at 51,000 and used non-synthetic oil. You can see the post about why here. This service was to change back to synthetic and get back on the normal maintenance schedule.
I wanted to know exactly how much oil I am consuming so I could gauge whether the problem is getting worse or better. When I did the last oil change, I added exactly 4.5l oil. I ran the bike and did the oil change per the instructions in the rider manual. That brought me to half way up on the dipstick...between the min and max marks. Over the last 3k miles, I did not get a warning light indicating the need to add oil. Again, wanting to know exactly how much oil I'm losing between oil changes, I ran the bike, let it cool a little and opened up the drain and sump. I let the oil drain and drip all night long. I wanted to capture every drop. I also dumped out the oil in the filter. When my oil change was done, I measured it out. I had 4350ml oil. So, I'm consuming 150ml oil every 3k miles. This indicates that the problem is probably not as bad as I thought it was...not that it isn't bad. During the warranty period, I was a bad BMW owner. I never checked the oil. I never knew that a 4.5l oil change only got you to mid way up on the dipstick. I, being your typical American want bigger, better, faster and always the max. When I got the first alert about the oil being low, I brought the level up to the max mark with 500ml oil. I thought that was the amount I was consuming. Still, I'm not happy with consuming 300ml every oil change.
Other news related to this came in yesterday when I posted "Dirty Little (Dealership) Secrets, Dirty Little Lies." I plugged my blog on FaceBook's K1600 site and one of the readers indicated that he had a similar problem and indicated that on 2012 models and some 2013 models, the pistons weren't made right. His BMW started smoking at 65k and he had to tear it down and replace 3/6. Obviously, I'm now very concerned that I have a major repair coming and will need to be very careful about how far off the grid I take this bike. I'm keep monitoring the oil situation and hope for the best.
As for cost of ownership, I'm at $0.61/mile. Even if I do the piston replacement myself (above), should it be needed, I'm probably back to more than a dollar per mile to maintain this bike!
For reference, here's the 6k service checklist. All these items were completed during this service.
This is a short, well written rant based on a true story...
So there I was, riding along on my K1600GT when I glanced down at my clutch reservoir and took notice that it was significantly darker than the front brake reservoir on the other handlebar. Being that I was well into a nearly 19 hour trip that day, I decided to ask Siri why that might be. Siri is useful much of the time, like when I need a trivial fact or figure when I am riding and can't exactly consult Dr. Google. This time, she basically punted. She said "I found this on the web, take a look." Well, I couldn't, so I waited until I got home and still couldn't resolve my question; but, I was preparing to do my 54,000 mile service, so I decided to change it. Now you have the background part, the lying part is coming.
I consulted the Service manual to make sure I understood the procedure for changing the clutch fluid and, of course, there were a couple surprises. The specific surprise I'm referring to was this:
Notice that little diddy about "Oder the bleed screw and dust cap through the electronic parts catalogue (ETK)." I thought that is what you'd do if you broke it somehow. That's not what it meant. I removed the gearbox cover and guess what...there is a grubscrew there, and no bleed screw. You have to purchase this little part to do this maintenance work. So, off I go to the local BMW dealer to get this screw. Since there are no specifications, I have no idea whether or not a standard bleeder screw would work and I don't want my bike down for a long period of time.
At the dealership, I worked with a parts guy to identify the screw. They don't have this diagram, they have a parts diagram and on that diagram, this screw is called a vent screw. Since it took me an hour to drive there and will take an hour to drive back, I asked the parts guy to verify this is what I needed with a technician or the service manager. When he came back, he said that it is what is called for; but, he didn't have it in stock. He also said that the technicians don't use it. They believe that unless the clutch isn't working, you shouldn't mess with the fluid. It's a pain in the butt. What they do is pull the fluid out of the reservoir only and refill it with fresh. ARRRRAAGGGGGHHHH!!!! If you don't understand what I just wrote, let me say it another way. The technician (some or all) charge 3 FTE's for this procedure and they do it in a non-standard, unauthorized way that results in the owner getting a mix of fresh mineral oil and old mineral oil in the clutch system.
This is the rant part. I stopped taking my bike to the dealership for maintenance because they are simply not treating it with the white gloves that I expected of a high priced service department. You can read my past blog about my 48,000 mile maintenance where I found stripped bolts and all kinds of other pain inflicted on my bike at a dealership. Now, I'm learning that technicians are taking (authorized by the dealership or on their own) other short cuts. I have no idea if oil has actually been changed, filters changed, etc. Mr. BMW insists on a very aggressive and expensive maintenance schedule and who knows how many of his dealers are not doing the work as specified by the hard working engineers who designed and relentlessly tested this bike. Right now, I'm trying to chase down an oil consumption problem that started right after my bike went out of warranty. I have to include, as suspect, all past oil service and whether they were done correctly or not. My utopian bubble has been further deflated.
All good cautionary tales have a word of caution. Here it is. Do the work yourself or reap what you sow. You paid good money for a world class motorcycle. Something excited you about this particular brand and bike. In order to get the full lifespan out of this motorcycle you need to make sure the bike is serviced properly. If you do it yourself...and if you don't know how, learn...you'll be sure. Another way is to take your bike to an individual you've known since you were both in diapers and have him/her do it.
I didn't name names here. It is possible that I ran across one bad technician or one bad dealership and the rest of utopia is well, utopian still. I have my doubts about that though. Please don't ask me, I won't give up my source. The idea isn't to persecute one dealership for being honest with me, it's to remind people of the harsh reality of the service world.
One of my friends posted recently about straight razor shaving. I used to shave this way in college. I can't say that I was ever really good at it; but, I used to do it. I decided to get back into it again. My knowledge of blades and sharpening is much richer than it was in college and I'm much more able to keep a sharp blade and an unscathed face now. So, this trip was to "The Superior Shave" in Jacksonville to get a straight blade razor. Believe it or not, there aren't many places that carry quality shaving products anymore. Everyone seems to be content rubbing lather from a can of fat impregnated with tetramethylbadshit in it and spending $19 for a few razors that will last you no more than a month. The flip side is you can get a subscription service these days where they take your money whether you need more blades or not. I've never done that, so I can't vouch for the quality. Shaving with a straight razor is just as much art as it is science. Amazon doesn't seem to fit into the art part, so I thought a motorcycle trip to the closest specialty store, 4 hours away, was completely apropos.
I am not one to ride on the Interstate unless I'm really pressed for time or simply tired of riding. I am also getting to know Florida really well. Without looking at a map, I knew that my route would take me out 50 to 301 north into the Ocala National Forest. From there, I really wanted to ride A1A up the coast to Jacksonville. All I needed to do was connect the two segments. I did that on BaseCamp and uploaded the route to my GPS. Normally, I would take the time to put in about a billion waypoints to force the route; but, I really wanted to leave, so I picked 5 waypoints and decided to call it a day for the GPS.
Routing this way is truly not desired. I think that if you don't have the time to properly force a route, just write down some waypoints and navigate by road signs. My GPS constantly...I mean constantly was "recalculating," so much so, I just turned off routing guidance and navigated by road signs and what I could remember of the route. If I got lost, I got lost. As long as I made it there before closing, I would get what I needed and get back home before the clock struck midnight...which isn't important anyway.
When I got up toward Ocala, I decided to have lunch at Fat Boy's BBQ in Ocala. I didn't see any fat boys though. There were a couple skinny chicks serving. I guess they keep the fat boys in the kitchen. There I consulted a map...a paper map...like the kind I'm always preaching about carrying on your bike. It showed that 40 was my connector to A1A. I thought I'd punch the address into the GPS when I got to Jacksonville and let it take me in the last 5 miles. The plan was a success and the ride was wonderful. It was great to see the ocean again. The weather guessers were predicting a hurricane for the weekend, so it's possible that the coast could be pretty well hammered in the week coming.
The Superior Shave store was right where the GPS said it would be. It is a nice place with tons of soaps, brushes, razors, strops, scissors, nail care instruments and so on. I spoke with the owner who is 6 years younger than me. He made no bones about telling me he knew everything about Dovo razors and that there were only 3 such serious stores for this type of thing. He was helpful. He also has a problem. Amazon is kicking the shit out of this niche industry. He told me they hired 7 people to work this industry and since that happened, business is tanking. He can't believe how much damage they've caused in such a short time. It is a pity. Big Internet giants continue to put the little guy out of business and soon, you won't be able to shop for anything in person. I'm sure they want it that way; but, there are certain things you want to try or test or feel or experience before you buy. You may also want to talk to an expert, etc. It's a sad state of affairs to be sure.
With supplies in hand, I tucked them away on the bike and went to find dinner. It was after 5. Chillis was as good a place as any, so I went there, caught up on email, messages and whatnot while waiting for a salad to arrive. Going home, I tried to wing it; but, before too long, I realized that the sky to the east was turning ugly and I needed to put miles between me and it. I opted for interstate roads and watched most of the way home as the storm continued to build. It seemed like it was growing parallel to my position the whole way. When I got to Spring Hill, there was a thunderstorm going on not to far south of me.
It was a good trip and now, my bike is ready for its next maintenance cycle!
