Posted by Bohica on November 24, 2000 at 08:13:48:
Posted by Frank on November 19, 2000 at 21:31:08:
My wife and I rode the Savage in the Love Ride 17. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Love Ride, it's the biggest motorcycle charity ride in the world. It's held in Southern California every November and the ride is for Muscular Dystrophy and LA's Read-by-Nine. This year over 25,000 bikers showed up. The ride starts at Glendale Harley Davidson dealership and ends at Castaic Lake fifty miles north of LA. Yes, it's 95% Harley but all brands are welcom. In fact, there were a lot more sport bikes this year than the last time I participated. Here is an account of our ride for general interest reading:
The day before the ride, I went over my '97 Suzi. I checked the belt and tires, changed the oil and basically went about tightening various bolts and nuts. I found that many of the crankcase bolts (the 8mm ones that hold the cases together) were a little loose. Every ten thousand miles or so, they tend to loosen up. Anyway, I got a wild hair mid-morning and decided I'd check out the local Salvage shop and scrounge for a new set of foot pegs. The rubber on my left footpeg has begun to fray after 70,000 miles. I drove down in family cage and asked the owner of the shop if he had any Savage footpegs laying around. He said "follow me" and let to the back of the salvage shed. In the back row, on shelves eigt feet high and twenty feet long, were bins and bins of used footpegs. He told me to take as much time as I wanted and look though the huge pile of rubber. I looked through some of the bins but after about fifteen minutes, I grew tired of searching. What were the odds of finding a match anyway? Besides, most of the pegs were badly worn anyway. I couldn't help but to wonder about the history of these thousands of footpegs from every kind of bike imaginable. How many came from accidents? Lives forever changed. Finally I gave up and walked back to the ding counter and front office surrounded by wrecked and stripped bikes, the equivalent of a motorcycle graveyard and struck up a conversation with the owner. He was shocked at how many miles my little Savage had with no problems or rebuilds. He said the Savage in known to give up at around 20K especially the cam and chain. He also said the starter tends to go out early. He had a Savage belt for 50$ and it was in good shape. I thought about buying it but didn't one at the moment. I had replaced my belt around 50K. I thanked him and was on my way out when I spotted a pair of brand new crome footpegs still in bubble wrap. They were beautiful. I mentioned these to him, so he pulled them out and said I could have them for 20 bucks. They were designed for a Suzuki Intruder 1400. But would they fit? I could tell the ends were too thick to slide into the existing slots on the Savage. I always get myself into trouble with decisions like this. I always start thinking of ways to make things fit. The problem is, it usually takes more effort and cost than it's worth. With a day before the Love Ride, could I get them to fit? So, I bought them anyway and left. As it turned out it turned out to be a lot of work. After getting them home and measuring how much metal I would have to cut off the ends that fit onto the Savage and realizing that the bolt hole was too small, I drove down to the old steel plants in Fontana, Ca. I found a welding shop that worked on big earth movers. I started asking around and a old salty guy that had too many years around welding shops pointed me to guy inside doing some machining work on a lathe. Perfect! I thought. I approached him hoping to avoid any trouble with supervisors. This guy (tattoos all up and down his neck and arms, some were prison tattoos)was very helpfull but not too efficient. He was a little nervous about getting in trouble too. He drilled out the peg holes nicely but ground down the metal on the ends of the pegs pretty roughly. As it turned out a big burly dude walked up to him. I was standing about 10 feet away (carefull not to get too close to the equipment)so could not hear what he was saying to "ex-con Joe" but from what I saw it wasn't pleasant. Then this guy walked over to me and looked me up and down. I'm not too tall, but I've been told I don't look too meek either. With my biker jeans and t-shirt, sporting my biker chain and goatee, I guess he decided not to throw me out. Instead he said that they don't do "favors" for people and this is not a public shop. I knew I was out of place and was just looking for a cheap way to get some machining done so I was totally apolegetic and said I was on my way and did not want to get this guy in trouble. "Burly walked away and I took the pegs back and slipped the guy ten bucks for his trouble. The bummer was that the pegs had not been ground down enough and it was now up to me to figure something else out. I drove back to my neiborhood hardware store and puchased a metal cutting blade for my skill saw. I went home and my brother-in-law was over. He was in the mood to help me out so set out grinding the rest of the metal. I held the saw while he cut. After going through two blades at four bucks a piece, we finnally got the new pegs installed just before the sun set. Man they looked nice. They are twice as wide as the stock pegs, all crome with rubber strips to traction. They are adjustable to swivel at whatever angle your comfortable at.
With that out of the way, I cleaned the bike (showing up on a Savage around 20,000 or so Harleys is bad enough, but to have a dirty Savage is out of the question! By then it was around ten o'clock at night and we had fifty miles to travel at 5 am the next morning. Registration was at six in Glendale and I live in Rancho Cucamonga so my wife and I got our gear together. I have large capacity saddle bags aboard which is good because we were planning to spend the night a castaic after the ride. We packed a overnight essentials (women tend to have more essentials than men) along with extra under clothes. We planned to just wear our outer clothes for both days. No body cares at a biker event right? It also just happened that the weather here is usually balmy Southern California decided to give us a taste of Mid-West Winter. I check the weather channel web site. The overnight temperature was predicted to be in the upper 30's! That's downright cold on a bike as far as I'm concerned. Since I ride daily, year-round) I knew I could take 100 miles of riding broken up in two 50 mile stints using layered clothing but I was worried my Wife was a differnt matter. She has riden many times with me in the past but never in 30 degree weather. She has her own leather biker jacket and boots. So, we pulled out our thermals and sweatshirs. MY neigber (a shadow rider) donated his winter riding gloves to her. My gloves are not insulated but manage with them pretty well in cool weather. We went to bet hoping it would not rain. We woke a 4 am on Sunday, November 12 got showered and dressed. While the coffee was perculating I stepped outside to cold dark starry sky. Not a cloud in site. The thermometer on the back porch said 38 degrees. I rolled the bike out, loaded our gear and filled the coffee thermos. I wanted to wear my half-helmet as this was a biker event. I normally wear a full-face when commuting. (it's too dangerous not to on LA freeways). I had been debating because of the cold to continue wearing the full-face but at the last minute decided to tough it out and wear the half. I tied a scarf over my face. I started the Savage on full choke and quickly put it of half choke. She quickly settled down to her usually thoaty dependable idle (after market pipe ya know). Her valve train is a litte noisy at idke but once she's off in gear the pipe noise takes over. I climbed on board and set the passenger pegs. As all of you know the Savage does not have exceptional passenger accomodations. Gold Wing passengers would cringe! My wife climb on and I pulled in the clutch, slammed her into first and away we went into the COLD early morning. We headed west down Baseline road for the sixteen miles of surface street to the freeway. The street was quiet with the first light of this beautiful Sunday morning showing in my rear-view mirrors. Then the cold settled in......
I have to go now but I'll post my Love Ride Story Part II tonight. Hope it's not too boring.