Doing a Pandemic ride around the southwest

[Clegg78]

So for my insurance, they covered me ... or said they would.  But none of the tow companies wanted to work with them.  It was a real bullshit game of the insurance company wanting a reasonable rate, and the tow companies wanting to gouge them...   all while i stood on the side of the road. I ended up calling a small tow shop on my own and just paying cash and am going to fight with the tow company later. 

 

BTW I am back home in Denver ,a nice 450mile cargo truck drive home.  No drama, just a long drive.   Bike is in the garage and tomorrow I go at it with buckets of hot water + HD Simple green (which is purple...) .  the parts for the bike should be in mid next week, but i want to get the damaged plate removed, and get the bike prepped to remove the exhaust and oil pan. 

 

 

[texscottyd]

Glad you’re home safe @Clegg78, and am really sorry to hear about the troubles you faced on your trip.   Hopefully you can get things patched up quickly, and get back out on the road to explore.  

[1moreroad]

22 hours ago, nhchris said:

Hummm. My wife insists we have  AAA roadside coverage on our car, and she claims it also applies go any other vech in the family or in which we happen to be riding.

I wonder if my bike is covered.  I'm gonna check after reading about your insurance clusterphuck.

AAA RV add on covers motorcycles. 

AAA Premiere includes trip interruption service if you're at least 100 miles from home.

AAA Membership benefits

 

[colorider]

Glad you made it back Joe!  
 

BTW, the “tool” arrived as promised!  Thanks much!!

 

Rod

[Clegg78]

So I spent the morning cleaning the bike up and pulling the damaged plate off.   The hole is nice and dead center in the sump.   The plate did a pretty good job it seems taking some hits, but in the end it was not able to save the sump.  I am actually curious if placing a small 2mm sheet of stainless steel between the plate and sump would be a good call.  The guard can take the direct hit and impact and the stainless steel can spread out the force across the entire sump. 

Besides for cleaning the bike in general, I cleaned both tires with simple green HD,  scrubbing them a few times around and rinsing off.  then rubbed them down wiht a shop rag with brake cleaner for one last time (and that pulled out what seems like the remaining oil).   the Tires feel like they are good to go right now... but who knows.  Going to take it easy at first. 

Otherwise the bike is in stellar shape and cleaner now than its been in a year

[Clegg78]

Also if you look at Givi's monster engine guard (Manual here: https://filestwistedthrottlecom.s3.amazonaws.com/Installation Instructions/Givi/GIVI.RP2139.pdf )

IT mounts to the frame or hard points on the engine, and has an extra pad/protection under the sump.  

[Clegg78]

5 hours ago, 1moreroad said:

AAA RV add on covers motorcycles. 

AAA Premiere includes trip interruption service if you're at least 100 miles from home.

AAA Membership benefits

 

Keep in mind that all this "roadside assistance" is predicated on tow companies actually wanting to come get you and working at AAA's or your insurance prices.   Which was my issue. 

[Clegg78]

And one last thing... it seems the hazards use a lot of juice, I had them running for ~ 1.5 - 2 hours and it tripped my Antigravity Lithium battery to go into protection mode and shut down!  Another reason to go to LED signals and plate light I guess

 

[BBB]

3 hours ago, Clegg78 said:

 

 

When I hit mine, not as spectacularly as you did, I managed to reshape the plate using a lump hammer. The brackets straightened easily, but I had to redrill one of the mounting holes.

 

[Clegg78]

I posted a blog entry with the full write up of the trip and has video of the incident that broke the bike as well: 

A Motorcycle Trip Cut Short : 2020 Strikes again. – Interwebs of Joe

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About a week ago I left on a motorcycle trip/adventure...

 

Edited September 22, 2020 by Clegg78

[Lone Wolf]

Wow. I would have taken the road at the same speed - no real warning the road had a "rock of doom".

Adversity builds strength, and knowledge for future survival.
I recently got the same Innovv K2 and it has been very stable, great that you captured the incident.

Edited September 22, 2020 by Lone Wolf

[Clegg78]

2 hours ago, Lone Wolf said:

Wow. I would have taken the road at the same speed - no real warning the road had a "rock of doom".

Adversity builds strength, and knowledge for future survival.
I recently got the same Innovv K2 and it has been very stable, great that you captured the incident.

Absolutely,  I've been kind of planning around a situation like this for a while, and I've broken down on the side of the road before with previous bikes.    This does bring some clarity to planning and preparation.   The joke with my friends and wife is that "if I would have dumped the bike and gotten hurt, this would have all been much easier... I would just hit the SOS button on my InReach and shit would be taken care of. "

It was kind of funny how in most other things I would "McGuyver" my way out of a situation to get to down.. but when I saw oil pouring out... I knew this was over right then and there. 

I am happy with the Innovv overall, I wish it had some better quality (I am running the high bitrate firmware, a 10 hour day fills up close to 180GB of data!).  But I cant argue with the form factor and consistency it has. 

[Clegg78]

So... I MAY try to finish most of my trip in the coming week(s) if the weather holds out... the bike should be back and on the road by this weekend... and there is a small chance I may try to head out over the weekend to hit up some of the stops I wanted to. 

[Clegg78]

I took some time to document trip planning and how to handle something like this in a calm and organized way.  I have a lot of training in this area from my other hobbies so I figure I'd share this after I heard some friends and other people talk about how situations like this are what keep them from doing adventures and such.   

Surviving being stranded : Lessons from the desert. – Interwebs of Joe

---

I wanted to catalog the various lessons, and thoughts I’ve had...

 

[betoney]

15 minutes ago, Clegg78 said:

I took some time to document trip planning and how to handle something like this in a calm and organized way.  I have a lot of training in this area from my other hobbies so I figure I'd share this after I heard some friends and other people talk about how situations like this are what keep them from doing adventures and such.

I don't have an SOS or a tracker but I at least always let someone know my exact route for each day.  I plan my trips out in advance on Google maps and break them down by each individual day instead of one whole route.  I email each days route map to family, if I will be gone 7 days, they get 7 individual map routes.