August 30, 2012 Motorized Bicycle trip to the Beach Bike to the Beach Lot in Ocean Park, WA from Milwaukie, OR I have done it two times, but not on a motorized bicycle. Well, let’s get this to the start. Vellen (son) and I go to the salvage yard every Wednesday to look at the crashed cars and/or bid on some of them. I wanted to go to the coast early and just hang out. Talking to Vellen in the car I said, “I think I will ride my motor bike to the beach lot.” I told Myran (son) about it that night. His look was, “Have you lost your mind?” He had good reason. Let’s talk about the bike a little. I bought it for $35 and the motor for $150. By the money I spent things are not looking too high tech. The high tech is there because this junk really works some of the time. Myran said it was 125 miles, but that was not right. It was 140.4 miles and the extra 15.4 miles was “I really hope it don’t quit on me.” That would be about an hour before dark and pedaling drops me down to about 6 to 8 miles an hour - With the motor it would be 24.7 miles an hour. That is where it likes to run. Under that I had better be helping it by pedaling, like on a hill. There is about 2,000 miles on the motor and it needs a new motor bad. My long planning over a trip kicked in. Did I say Wednesday? That is all of a half a day to tune the bike and pack. Wednesday night Myran and I went to get our hair cut at the Barber College ($5). Let me put it to you this way. You get what you pay for. I got a quick great hair cut and then there have been others, but it grows back just fine. Even the good ones grow to look scruffy. Yes, I gave my blog to them - 1,027 hits so far. Well, back to the trend of thought. REI is next to the barber college. A back packing stove was what I needed. They have a lot of them. For 5 ounces less I could spend $50 more. It didn’t happen. You do remember the bike, and CHEAP comes to mind. $79 for the stove and pot. PROLSD is the name of the stove == 110G/4oz $4.50 will boil 2-1/2 gallons of water, two cups at a time. The time to boil 2 cups is 2-1/2 minutes and you can tell when it is done because the side is black and then turns orange when it is hot/boiling. Back to CHEAP. Costco has 10 freeze dried Mountain House dinners for $42.99/box. They use 2 cups of boiling water and taste great. I keep wandering off on something other than the bike. I am 70 years old. The head on the bike motor was leaking, so I made a copper gasket for it and found some old plugs that have been around forever. If I turn the end down to .150 I can get the cap on. New plugs are $1.50. I know what you are thinking, “CHEAP.” I have three in the box of tools with me and every kind of wrench I think I will need. There is not very much to this motor so the wrenches are very few, like 5. I am going to the beach so Ilene cooked me coffee and clam chowder. I put saddle bags on the night before so food, water, and stove go in one side and sleeping bag in the other – tent and air mattress on top. The rest goes in the basket in front. Ilene said I should take 4 fresh peaches. I don’t have to tell you what happened to them bouncing in the basket. Peach juice comes to mind. Tools, rain gear, gallon gas can, jerky, candy bars, and three little bottles of booze. Not more than 2 miles from the house that plastic sack bounced out and one of the little bottles broke. Whine, cry, boohoo. That was the only thing that could break in the basket and it did. The rest stayed in that time. When I hit a sunken part of the road, things jumped around a lot and sometimes out. I would have to stop and pick them up. The motor made the bike shake a lot and after an hour your hands and butt tingled a lot and it would be time to stop and rest, and then off again. The trucks that went the other way would wave at you. Some would give you lots of room when they passed you and some would not and others would not because they didn’t have room to give. I rode way over from the white line. This was good because there was this motor home that had his tires on it. When the big trucks went by, hold on tight because you were going to get a big push over then a great pull up the road. There was always that 1% that scares the bejesus out of you. When you go this slow, you have a lot of time to look at a lot of things and see a lot that you never see in a car. With the motor doing the work, there is a lot more time to look. I walked two hills about 2 miles long or it seemed that far. I would start up the hill, bike in high gear, pedaling for all I’m worth. The odometer would go 24 – 23 – 22 – 18 – 16 – pull in the clutch and stop. It was pushing time. Push to a marker on the side of the road and rest. Push to a marker along side or the fence and rest. Push to a marker on the fence and rest. Are you getting all this? Starting up the hill I had overheated the motor so it was time for the wrenches when I got to the top. I had to tighten the head. You could tell when you were going to have to do this by the smell of smoke from the motor. Some hills were not so steep and you could have the motor help you over the top. I would still have to tighten the head if I stopped. A tank of gas was good for over 50 miles. I used less than 1-1/2 gallons for the 140.4 miles. There was road construction down to one lane. All of those cars and trucks passed me and when I got there, they were waiting for me. I passed them back by riding on the side of the road. I did get a little chuckle out of that. OK, I would have laughed out loud but there was no one to hear me. There was a strong head wind all the way except when I was pushing up the hills. Then it was just HOT. I stopped in the shade when there was some. Yes, a highlight to the trip – the Astoria Bridge. I put the last gas out of the can into the bike. I didn’t want to run out on the bridge. I started up the ramp and with my help made it all the way to the construction (painting). At the top the flag man waved me through. Yea, I didn’t have to stop. With a strong head wind on the bridge, the motor would barely push me along. I was thinking, “Don’t stop now, wait until the other side where there is room to pull off.” Painting on the other end and they waved me through too. Yea! Yea! I was doing good. Tunnel – so I stopped and let a car and trailer through, then I went for it. No problem. Very, very narrow in this tunnel. I made it through the town of Chinook and on the other side of the town where there was a wide fog lane, the motor just stopped. Only fifteen more miles to go. You remember what Myran said, don’t you? This is not a complex motor. There is a carburetor and it has gas, spark, and the spark plug is hanging from a wire that needs to go back in the threaded hole in the head. Yes, yes, I grabbed it with my fingers. It was not cold; it was not even close to warm. It was very HOT and I did not hold it very long. It pulled the little wrinkled things and I put in a new one that I could only get 2/3 of the way in. It was working and I didn’t have to pedal. Yea! I didn’t stop to look at the gas that would take more to get going and there was no place to get more on this road. When I got to camp, there was a little in the tank. My hands and butt needed this to end. My back didn’t do too well either. It was a great ride, but ONCE is all I ever want to do it. I arrived a day early at our family camp out at Ocean Park, WA. where we have two wooded lots for tent camping. I figured my total ride time was 7 hours 14 minutes or an average of 19.32 miles per hour. Seventeen people at the camp out this year – three people couldn’t make it. We have been camping on these two lots for 38 years. It used to be just my family, now it’s the kids and their families and friends too. I took the entire luggage off my bike and rode it to get gas and a bag of oysters, and put 3 dozen oysters in the basket. What is a guy to do when in Oysterville? Well, you eat oysters. You just find a way. I had to buy a lighter at the store to start the fire and cook the oysters. There were pliers to take the oysters off the fire and a screw driver to open them. Now is that not genius or what? Yes, it cost money for an oyster pick. Does CHEAP still come to mind? Soon the other families started to arrive for the three day weekend. The kids (ranging in age from 14, to 5 months) played in the sand, and the older ones also tried their luck skim boarding. It was just three unbelievable days on the beach - Very little wind, sun, and blue skies. The highlight of the camp out was Matt (son-in-law) playing his guitar in the evening. Everyone sings Bob the Builder, Slide Girl, Pub with No Beer, Rockin’ in a Wooden Boat, and a lot of really good beer drinking songs. But, no one drinks any beer, just hard stuff. On the drive home we had seafood pizza, beer, and fresh baked, hot macadamia nut cookie with ice cream. If you want to be Byranized on this ride, don’t call Byran. I really did enjoy doing this ride, but it was a lot harder to do than a person would think or dream. The bike ended up with 171.7 miles. You have to do tenths because you might be walking a lot of them. My next adventure will be a week later – Walk around Mt. Hood – 42 miles counter clockwise to unwind last year’s clockwise walk. Things will be different on this walk. There will be training and my pack will be 32 lbs. not 40 lbs like last year. www.mrbontheside.blogspot.com So I did manage to print this story on one piece of paper and a picture. Am I cheep or what?