Cannonball day one: San Francisco, CA to Lee Vining, CA

The first day of the Cannonball was long and challenging, but successful. I had trouble posting last night because of poor Internet and AT&T wireless service in Lee Vining. I also spent a good bit of time wrenching on the bike, but let's start at the beginning. We all met up at Ocean Beach Thursday morning, even Rocket made it in the nick of time, having slept somewhere off of I-5 on his way down from Vancouver. We had a nice ride to Alice's, where some of us had a bite to eat. After that, the ride began in earnest. I took a shortcut to the freeway to save time on the way to our first checkpoint, the James Lick Observatory on top of Mt. Hamilton, but somehow Oz managed to make it there quicker, going down Skyline and Highway 9. I was pushing my bike pretty hard, and coming down the back side of Mt. Hamilton, I felt my rear brake suddenly get weak, then nothing at all - the lever went all the way to the grip without any resistance! I used my front brake to slow down, but as I came to a stop, it started to get really weak too! I barely managed to keep my bike up on the gravel shoulder, it took every ounce of strength and willpower to keep it from tipping over. Not with the brand new paint job, oh no!!My initial thought was that one of my brake lines had gone, but when I looked, nothing was leaking. It turned out that I had been leaning on the brakes so hard going up and down the mountain that I had cooked them! After giving them time to cool off, they were fine again, thankfully. What a way to start a 10-day, 3300+ mile trip!

Riding through the central valley went pretty well and I made decent time. I met up with a few of the other riders at a construction zone east of Turlock. One of the guys mentioned that my topcase was sagging quite a bit. I hadn't noticed it, but the hinge pin came out of one side of the rack, tilting that side up in the air and bending the other side in the process. I suspect the rough roads coming gown from Mt. Hamilton must have done a number on it, especially with the 3/4 full 4-gallon spare tank inside the topcase. Although it was loose, it seemed stable enough to press on. However, I was staring to remember how much wrenching I had to do on the last Cannonball two years ago, and I hoped this one wouldn't be a repeat.

The ride through Yosemite was gorgeous as one would expect, I'd love to take a longer vacation there by scooter someday. My fuel situation started getting critical though, because my spare tank was listing backwards and there was probably 1/2 gallon inside that wasn't able to flow into the main tank, and there's no gas in Yosemite. With a little creative leaning and braking on downhills though, I was able to get enough to trickle down and make it the rest of the way to Lee Vining. Whew!

I unpacked, downloaded the day's pictures and video onto my laptop, then went for a bite to eat at Nicely's diner across the street. A tasty salmon steak hit the spot, then I went back to my bike to see what I could do abou the rack. One of the clips that hold the hinge pin in place was missing, and the nearest hardware store was over 1/2 hour away, so much for a quick fix. I ended up taking off the tank and topcase, then took the rack apart by removing the hinge pin. I bent the one side of the rack back into shape by wedging it into a crevice on the dumpster in the parking lot and applying a little brute force. Then, I cut two sections of rubber hose, slipped them over the hinge pin, and slipped ttwo small clamps over the hose. I reattached the rack and hinge pin, and used the clamps and hose to keep the hinge pin in place, and voilà! A solution as good as anything Macguyver could have come up with! It gets dark early in Lee Vining, so putting tv tank and topcase back on were a chore by flashlight, but I got it done, then gassed up and got ready for the next day's ride.

I'll pos more about today's ride later, but for now I need to get a bite to eat