This seldom-used blog was once more active, but was used mostly for what Facebook does now. But it is a handy place to make some links available to you without your having to type them in.

Ted Simon complimented by writing on his Jupiter Blog. I suppose that falls short of an endorsement, but it pleased me very much, nevertheless.

Before blogs, there were websites. I still maintain one, with a Motorcycle page here.

Yes, I suppose you could say I can upload photos: Ride pics for friends and family

I am an admin for an online motorcycle riders forum called Actual Riders. I took over the reins from one of the founders, and post there frequently. Sign up if you like, and I'll approve you. There are not many members, but there are enough active ones to make logging in worthwhile. The Chama trip described in the Smugmug gallery above was a group ride organized there.

Actual Riders

I posted a ride report there about a visit to the site of the Topaz War Relocation Center near Delta, Utah. It was part of a "Ghost Towns" topic. You can find it on Actual Riders, of course, but for your convenience I've copied and pasted the HTML in a blog post below.

Class B.

When Elzi proposed a Ghost Towns project, I soon thought of Topaz.

All I knew about the place was that it was one of the camps where the U.S. stashed a huge number of Japanese Americans right after the start of World War II, and that it was somewhere in Utah. I had no idea where in Utah, but thought it was somewhere in the southeast corner of the state. After the most cursory of searches, I discovered that the Topaz War Relocation Center was located a short distance west of Delta, Utah. I'd ridden to Delta a couple of times to have breakfast at the Rancher Café, so I was happy to learn that Topaz was well within reach.

Located at 39°24′40″N 112°46′20″W

I had it in my head that one of the barracks buildings had been preserved, but was soon set straight by friends who had been there. Nothing remains but foundations, gravel streets, debris, and a flagpole with some monuments. Finding the place on Google Earth was very intriguing, as you can see where the gravel tracks are that once were streets, and the concrete slabs that formed the foundations of the barracks and other buildings.

Andrew and I enjoyed the ride out to Delta, and lunch at the Rancher Café. It took a while to find Topaz because the scale of the street grid out there is so huge. Fortunately, there are signs directing you to the site once you get close, and signs like this one marking the corners.

I think when they say "NO motorcycles" they mean "NO dirt bikes tearing up the historic site and artifacts". Or at least I hope so.

Andrew had fun with some of the thousands of huge anthills that dot the site, and I had fun looking for foundations and other traces. We found these stoves sitting on one foundation:

There were bits of window screen, stovepipes, boards, lots of nails, fragments of bottles, bits of brick. It was all very interesting. It started to get dark, so we left for home. It got quite chilly before we reached Springville, and we stopped for hot chocolate in Nephi.

When I talked about our ride with a friend later that night, he described a flagpole and monuments to me, saying they were about a mile out in the middle of the site. Of course he turned out to be wrong about the location, but I headed out the next day to try to find them. I wandered the gravel tracks for a while, then finally decided to ride all the way around the site on the roads.

Finally, I found the flagpole and monuments, right on the road we had ridden to get there. We had just not ridden far enough, having been distracted by the corner marker sign. Of course it makes sense to make it visible from the "highway." Here's the "highway":

It was quite fun to zip long the "highway", which appeared to be a crumbling oil and gravel road with a layer of gravel on top. I had never ridden on gravel for so long, but there was no way we were walking or turning back.

Here is the flagpole, with the monuments:

Here is a map of the camp when it was in operation. Note that is a mile square!

I wish the buildings were still standing. The camp must have been impressive to see. "Ghost town" is such a fitting description.

The place is often described as a concentration camp, which is accurate even though the Nazis developed them in a different direction, for a far more sinister purpose, and on a larger scale. Topaz residents, after the camp had been in operation for a while, were allowed to leave for hikes and to hold jobs in nearby Delta.

The main plaque on the monuments reads:

Over 120,000 Japanese-Americans, two thirds of whom are U.S. citizens, are uprooted from their west coast homes and incarcerated by their own government. It is 1942, wartime hysteria is at a peak. They are imprisoned in ten inland concentration camps where they remain behind barbed wire, under suspicion and armed guards for up to 3 1/2 years. Topaz is one of the ten camps.

Without hearings or trials, this act of injustice is based solely on the color of their skin and the country of their origin. America's fear and distrust of these citizens-- precipitated by Japan's attack upon Pearl Harbor-- is placated.

Lost within this rush to judgement is the denial of constitutional rights, major losses of personal property and the labelling of its own citizens as enemy. Ironically, though this mass incarceration is spearheaded by thoughts of disloyalty, not a single case of espionage against the U.S. is ever discovered.

Indeed, the 442nd RCT and 100th Battalion, composed entirely of young Japanese-American boys (many of whom volunteer from internment camps), suffer major war casualties and go on to become the U.S. Army's most highly-decorated combat unit in its history.

Topaz is closed in October of 1945. The memory of Topaz remains a tribute to a people whose faith and loyalty was steadfast--while America's had faltered.

It wasn't until the days after our visits to the site that the words, and the phenomena they described, began to sink in. Imagine that you have been hauled off to a concentration camp in the middle of nowhere, losing your home, your job, your business, your friends and everything else. All because of your country of origin, or perhaps your parents' country of origin. You are stuffed in a barracks full of strangers, and watched over by armed guards as if you had just personally bombed Pearl Harbor. So what do you do? You volunteer to fight in a horrific war on behalf of the country that imprisoned you, and do so with such valor and skill that your unit is the most decorated in the Army.

Makes you think.

Here it is, weeks into spring, and it is cold and raining and snowing. I was working inside tonight, and heard a train go by. The tracks are a few blocks away-- far enough so the trains don't wake us up, but close enough to hear them clearly. From the sound, I could tell it was raining outside. How? I could not tell you. Do the wet streets, houses, and trees reflect the sound differently? Do the air chimes on the locomotives get rainwater in them? The sound seems somehow more lonesome, more plaintive, more distant. It is sort of the opposite of hot summer nights where I grew up, when the sounds of the trains in town carried to our house so much better, so they sounded a lot closer. You heard them, and sound reminded you that it was summer, glorious summer, with its freedom from school and cares.

It is a lovely fall day here. I am taking a sick day because of a dentist appointment later in the day. We have to take sick time in one-day increments, so instead of leaving early, I have a day to run errands.

Since it is such a nice day, I took the bike. It has been running well lately, with intermittent bouts of three or two cylinders, but I feel like I can solve whatever the problem is, so I'm not under a black could of dread about it. I put in new plugs since the Canada ride, and have found that the spark plug wires can be replaced with no problem (if I can find the wire, that is). If I need to replace a coil, I know where to get at least one, and I'll bet I can find used ones on eBay or new ones elsewhere.

For some reason, taking corners is especially fun today. Intoxicating. Could be that I have not ridden enough lately, or that I'm happy to have the bike running (mostly) well, or that I can sense that the nice days are finite in number. In any event, I'll get as much riding in as I can.

Had a wonderful lunch at Sensuous Sandwich, which is grounds for happiness all by itself.

It is probably not healthy to like motorcycling as much as I do.

Now I "get" the whole adventure riding thing. At least to some extent.

My son, now 13, bugged me for a dirt bike for years, and I finally got him a KL250 almost a year ago. I taught him to ride, and of course rode the thing myself, but I didn't have a clue what a dirt bike was all about until I went tearing around the field behind our house... through the weeds, over the ditches, in and out of the stump holes, dodging the trees. What a complete kick in the pants!

But Andrew is now ready for something more fun and challenging than a closed circuit in a field, and we'll be traveling next spring and summer to my family's ranch in California, or a few places here in Utah that he can ride until he gets his license. But the ride I hope to take with him once he gets his license is part of the Trans-America Trail (TAT), which I learned about thanks to some outstanding ride reports by Mark Sampson.

TAT 2004

TAT 2006 New Year's Day

TAT 2006 Western Sections

I've shown Andrew bits and pieces of it, but have archived the 2004 and 2006 reports so I can show them to him (no Internet access where he is staying right now). I am sure he will be very enthusiastic about the prospect of a ride.

I am now figuring out what bike to buy for this sort of ride, and think a KLR650 would be about right. It also would fit into the other uses I'd put it to.


Here's a link to the Trans-America Trail site:

Trans-America Trail

My son, Andrew, now 13, loves motorcycles. The KL250 I bought him a while ago has made him happy, but is so far having a rough life. Here's a pic of the boy and the bike. Note the handlebars, if you can find them in the pic. He was still riding the bike like that when I hauled it to the shop because of a huge fuel leak and a stripped kickstarter shaft.

I spent some time working on my bike. First priority was getting it started to warm it up, charge the battery, freshen the gas in the carbs, and drive out the moisture.

It would not crank. Dead battery. I figured it was my bad, not having it on a battery tender, though it had not been that long since I ran the bike. Anyway, I stuck the charger on the battery and went about other errands for a hour or so.

When I got back, the bike seemed like it wanted to start, but the battery could not crank it for long. The charger would quickly charge it back up for another go, so I suspected the battery, which looked fairly new, might have a problem. Who knows what the previous owner might have done. Though well-intentioned, "Dick" has proven himself capable of huge blunders in motorcycle maintenance. So I took the battery out to have a look.

Sure enough, it was very low on electrolyte. I've been spoiled by decades of driving cars with maintenance-free batteries. When I was a kid working in my Dad's gas stationi, battery water was one thing I'd check. We had a cool automatic filler pitcher thing that would add the right amount of distilled water. You'd stick its snout into each cell until the gurgling stopped. Then you'd tell the customer you topped off the battery, and that a few of the cells were low, and they'd look a bit surprised, and thank me. Then they'd stop at our station again the next time they came through town.

I wish they had those things for motorcycle batteries. I did have a 20 oz Coke bottle full of deionized water in the other storage shed, so I went to get it. Of course it was frozen solid. What was I thinking? I set it in front of a small electric heater, but adding 1500 W to a flow of air at 10° F does not warm it much. I tried doing the same using my car heater, but it was slow going. Still, after fifteen minutes, I had enough water melted to top off a couple of cells.

Then I noticed another 20 oz Coke bottle full of water sitting in the same storage unit/shop as my bike. It appeared to still be liquid. I figured that being in the same building as the office might have kept the unit warmer, or maybe the roof was a darker color. I contemplated all this as I held the bottle in my hand, and gave it an idle slosh.

There is a phenomenon called supercooling that happens to liquids. You can cool a liquid or solution way below it's freezing point or below the point where the solute should start crystallizing out, but nothing happens, because the liquid does not know how to freeze or the solute does not know how to crystallize. Then you give it a nucleus to start from, like a tiny ice crystal or a seed crystal, and it will suddenly solidify.

That's what happened when I sloshed the bottle. In about five seconds I was holding a bottle of ice. Awesome to watch.

I found a blow-dryer that I use to pre-heat motorcycles on really cold days so they will start, and used it to melt some more water. Got the battery topped off, and charged it for a couple hours while I went ofter parts and did some shopping with my son/biker buddy.

Once I got back, the bike started right up. I could tell the starter needed fresh oil from the sound it made, but otherwise the bike seemed happy to be running. I let it run, make beautiful music, and get warm while my son ran around knocking icicles off raingutters around the storage facility.

It's amazing how cold complicates things. All I needed was water, and it took an hour to get enough to top off a battery. I could have driven to a stupid store (a nice, warm stupid store) and bought some in less time, were I not so stubborn. Reminded me of Jack London's "To Build a Fire."

I was just reading a friend's blog, and she related a conversation she had had with a motorcycle shop mechanic wherein he asked her what she called her bike.

It struck me that many people name their motorcycles, but I did not have a name for mine. Since I had brought the poor thing back from the dead, "Phoenix" came to mind, but then I realized that would remind most people of the city. Phoenix the city is no big deal to me, but then I remembered that in the Harry Potter books, Albus Dumbledore has a phoenix. I did a Google search on phoenix and Dumbledore, and found out by visiting this site (was reminded) that his phoenix's name is Fawkes. I suspect this is a reference to Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night in England.

So, I thought, Fawkes it is. But then I read that phoenixes are crimson in color, and that they have healing powers. So much the better! My red motorcycle with its therapeutic effects deserves the name even more than I thought.

One other fact is that the tail of a phoenix is golden in color, and hot to the touch. So I need to have the mufflers gold plated.

A friend and philosopher once asked me if the child within me was doing OK. I replied with something about still sliding down bannisters and handrails whenever I have the chance.

But that is only the playful aspect of the child.

I spent a lot of time this week with a three year old (going on four) grandnephew of mine. He reminded me that there are lots more admirable traits of a child. Here are some other admirable qualities I observed in my nephew:

Curiosity is a big one. Guileless affection is another heartwarming one. Acceptance of people as they are, no matter their age, size, appearance.. Unselfconsciousness. Generosity. Willingness to help.

An example of his helpfulness was his willingness to help me mow my mother's lawn. It took three times as long to do the job with his help, but it was ten times more enjoyable.

I need to keep this list around so I can make sure the child within me is alive and well. I suggest you do the same with your own list.

I have an eleven-year-old son who loves motorcycling. He's been riding with me since his feet could reach the passenger pegs. The return to life of my KZ750 has given Andrew a chance to ride again. He called me yesterday at work and wanted to know if he could go for a motorcycle ride with me on the freeway. He's so far only ridden on local streets and roads, and seemed worried a couple of days ago when he thought we were heading for the freeway on the bike. We talked about it, and thought the best thing to do would be to go for a short, exit to exit trip on the freeway so he could see what it is like.

I told him I was going to be looking at the carburetors on the bike, to see if I could figure out why the engine sometimes acts like the throttle is open when it is not. I suspected an air leak between the carbs and the engine, but had so far been unsuccessful in finding one. So my plan was to run the engine with the airbox off and look down the carb throats to see if I could see anything odd happening, then take the manifolds off and inspect them. I am leaving for California later today, and I didn't want to burn out a valve because the mixture was too lean. I told Andrew that he could either come help me with the carbs, the go for a ride, or wait until I was done and go for a ride with me then. He really wanted to help with the carbs, saying they are cool to work on. He'd helped me work on them before, back in February when I was first getting the bike back on the road.

So we arrived at the storage unit/shop, and I popped off the gas tank, making sure Andrew saw how I did it. I asked if he remembered how the carbs came off, and he said he did, so I asked him to remove them. At that point, I started working on something else; I forget what. I could not have been working on whatever it was for more than ten minutes, when he had the carbs out and was trying to figure out how to unhook the throttle cable. He spilled some fuel on the floor, and was therefore concerned about what he was doing, so I showed him how to unhook the cable. You have to loosen the nuts on the end of the cable in a counterintuitive fashion, so I was not surprised that he needed a bit of help. I held the throttles open with my finger on the lever, and he got the cable end out just fine. I was amazed that he had remembered so much of what he had seen months earlier and applied it so well.

We got the airbox out (had to unbolt the electrical panel to do it) and put the carbs back in. Andrew helped with the cable again. I could see no odd behavior by looking in through the throats, so we took the carbs off again, then unbolted all the rubber connectors (sometimes called manifolds, even though the are all one-to-one). This involved the use of an impact screwdriver, which Andrew learned to use. We inspected them for holes or cracks. We found none. Hmmm.

So, we put the airbox back in and started to reinstall the carburetors. We found the task of positioning the boots that connect the carbs to the airbox to be very frustrating. We found the locator notches that make sure the boots' offset was in the right direction, but could not get the ends that went in the airbox to keep from getting pushed in and breaking the seal. We tried having them in place then using a piece of cardboard to keep the carbs from snagging them, but they got pushed in anyway. We used screwdrivers to try and pry them out. Finally, Andrew realized that he could stick his hand inside the airbox and push the boots out into position. Too easy! We got them all into position pretty quickly after that.

When he started to tighten the clamps on the engine end of the carbs, however, he noticed that it wasn't working. Tightening the clamps pushed out the carbs. We soon figured out that the clamps had not been loosened enough prior to installation of the carbs, so the carbs were not fully inserted into the manifolds. Some of the clamps were also hitting other parts of the bike. He realized that had contributed to the difficulty we were having with the boots and the airbox. While he tightened all the clamps, I bled the rear brake and got it working again.

Besides his remarkable skill in working on the bike, he has also developed a professional mechanic's flair for complaining about the difficulty of a job and the amount of time expended on it. I know he loves doing it, and feels great when something is accomplished. But he also enjoyed talking about how long it took and how much longer it would have taken if he hadn't thought of reaching into the airbox to push the boots out.

I put the fuel tank in place, and Andrew hooked the hoses up properly. We got the bike all back together, washed our hands, and headed out on the freeway for lunch at the Sensuous Sandwich. The traffic headed in to the Stadium of Fire was ridiculous, so we went to the Center Street shop instead of the University Parkway one. This was better, anyway, because the girls there know me and spoil me. I had a coupon for a free foot long sandwich, so Andrew had one six-incher and I had the other. He had a Sensuous, and the young lady who took my order suggested one that she really liked that was not on the menu. She was almost raving about it. This is one of my favorite ways to pick a sandwich-- trying the favorite sandwich of whoever takes my order. The staff at the shop eat a lot of sandwiches, so they try a lot of different sandwiches and know which ones are wonderful. The sandwich I had was just heavenly. I saved the bag (with all the ingredients marked on it) for later reference.

Andrew liked his sandwich, too, and he also liked his first freeway experience on a motorcycle. He said it was cool. I also asked him about taking curves on a motorcycle, and at present he prefers to take them with not too much lean. That's OK; he'll grow to like low turns. I told him he was a natural-born motorcycle mechanic, which made him happy, and I thanked him for his help, which had been surprisingly valuable.