{"id":228,"date":"2010-09-04T11:16:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-04T16:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kylegabriel.com\/travel\/2010\/09\/2-con-amigos-en-la-playa.html"},"modified":"2022-11-12T15:59:02","modified_gmt":"2022-11-12T20:59:02","slug":"2-con-amigos-en-la-playa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kylegabriel.com\/travel\/2010\/09\/2-con-amigos-en-la-playa.html","title":{"rendered":"2: Con Amigos en la Playa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Palm Beach County tax collector was my last stop leaving Boca Raton to renew my moto registration, and by high noon on the 1st I had safely made it to Stuart, FL. The previous day had me worried I might not get on the road this day. After putting new tread on my rear wheel in the morning hours of the 31st, the four vaccines I had taken the 30th began inciting a formidable immune response. Inflammation left me run-down, red-skinned, head aching, and with mild pain coursing through my joints. A sushi dinner that night, at Fuji Dragon, rejuvenated me and the next morning I was feeling top-notch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

It was a swelteringly hot morning as I set off. I was glad it was such a short trip on the highway slab. I soon got some Thai noodle dinner in my stomach with my friend Sean, and was off to another friend’s house before heading to the beach to call it a night. As I hoped, Max was able to hook me up with a 2-gigabyte DDR2 stick of ram to replace the 1 gig in my laptop. Garmin’s Mapsource (software for working with maps and tracks for my GPS) or Windows7 was faulting because of a lack of available ram. This new hardware was faster and of higher capacity. It was just the thing to get the Weee-PC working at a usable speed. The cool evening with refreshing rainstorms persuaded me to drive an extra 20 mile loop that night before arriving at the beach. I managed to get a few hours sleep between being woken by the no-see-ums, aka the vertebrate-blood-sucking flys of the Family Ceratopogonidae<\/a>. Like this night, they sometimes storm the beach with full force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I woke up rather early at 7:30 on the 2nd, from the sun and the unrelenting biting flys. I found breakfast at the local supermarket then had a peculiar thing happen to my bike before I left. As it does sometimes, the engine let loose a cringetacular clunk-crack as I hit the starter. Unlike previous times, though, I noticed popping coming from the exhaust while at idle. I took the opportunity to bring it under Max’s carport and check out this mysterious condition as well as suss out a gnarly speed wobble I noticed happening in the 30-40 mph range, since hitting the road the previous day. I adjusted every suspension setting I could to the owner’s manual recommendation for maximum payload, except the left fork’s rebound adjuster. It was seized; and with a lack of proper tools and knowledge of shocks I would leave that job to a professional. A quick test ride revealed the wobble was greatly reduced, but still remained. With the one shock rebound not a likely cause, it was most likely due to the unbalance of luggage. I’ll be taking the fork to be serviced at WMR Competition Performance<\/a> on the 7th with new fork oil and whatever replacement parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    One problem was mostly sussed, but the cause of the popping had been eluding me. I found it only coming from the left exhaust- the rear cylinder. After reading many helpful posts on Orange Crush<\/a> and messing with the remote idle screw adjusters for far too long, I gave up until later. I managed to make it less apparent by enrichening the rear cylinder’s fuel mixture, but I was still not satisfied with the way it was running. A few hours later I took off the seat with a hunch, and sure enough, found a silicone vacuum cap and zip tie missing from the rear cylinder’s vacuum line (used for synchronizing the carburetors with a vacuum gauge). It was nowhere to be found, presumably gone from vibration or a backfire that happened as I started it in the morning. Instead or risking another vacuum cap and zip tie, I secured screws tightly in each hose. I started it up and that old familiar purr was back! That night, Sean and I lured some amigos out to the House of Refuge<\/a> Beach with promises of fire and beer. Hopefully we did not disappoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sunset on the St. Lucie River at the House of Refuge (Stuart, FL 9\/2\/2010)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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