Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Christmas Rides

Sam is home again for Christmas.  I have not been good getting photos or posting here since Italy, the reason may be another post, but I did get a few shots yesterday and today.

Yesterday I decided to work a bit and was designing a first floor plan for a new riverfront house (well Julington Creek is a big creek) when my friend Drew called to see if Sam and I would like to ride to Fernandina Beach to eat lunch at Tasty's, one of our favorite destination restaurants.  I had also planned to go to see La La Land with the family at 4:20, but thought we could squeeze in a ride.

I called Sam, who was at the beach after spending the night with friends.  He would head back and meet us at my house.  He was late.  Sarah got upset and decided that we would never make it for the movie so we abandoned that.  But the ride was great, if a bit different with afternoon fog along the coast.

I busted out the camera to take photos, but the lens wouldn't open so I assumed the battery was dead.  Instead, I found that I had left it in photo view mode, but missed some photos.

I did get a couple at Tasty's.

Drew, Tommy and Sam

Drew on his adventure R90S, Tommy getting on Drew's F800GS and Sam at my Honda NC700X

This morning Sam had offered to buy me breakfast at Everybody's in Baldwin.  That is a 18 mile ride west.  We usually take US 90, but it has been under construction for the past several months.  The workers do not know how to set up and operate a one lane detour, so we abandoned that road for the superhighway, I-10.

Sam backing out of the parking spot at Everybody's

I like riding so much that it wasn't a bother for me.

Over-the-shoulder shot of Sam on I-10

Another

And yet, another

Sam in the lead on the busy superhighway

Sunday, December 11, 2016

The Beautiful Razzo

You may notice that Rocket and Vanessa have gotten all stickered up.

But Razzo remains clean.

That is because it is so beautiful, looking not much different than when it was on the showroom floor 12 years ago.

It only had 6147 miles on it when I purchased it in late February, 2015.  Now the odometer is showing 20,200.

It has been sitting since July when it wouldn't start after I returned from competing the Scooter Cannonball Run.  I did that with Vanessa, when I had told Razzo that it would be the machine of choice.  Maybe sour grapes on its part.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to get it started and had it towed to ACE Vintage Motorcycle Repair, a local shop getting all of the scooter repair work since Boris moved.

Chris and Alex got it started, but when I got it home, it stopped running before I could turn it off.  I was a bit dumbfounded, but looked at the engine and found the lead wire had detached from the coil.  I hooked it up and took it for a ride and it did it again.  Then the spark plug cap detached from the spark plug.  Then I fixed this,installed a new plug and took a ride and had it stop along the way, starving for fuel at higher speeds.  There was very little fuel inside the fuel filter.  I thought that was strange.

I got it home that day, finding that it would keep running if I ran slower than usual.

So I rode it to ACE two weeks ago and left it with the boys, along with a new coil, newer carburetor, fuel pump and petcock.

They got it all put back together, but it came home very difficult to keep running when cold and hesitating at steady speeds.  I rode it to their shop on Saturday for their generous Christmas party, and found the exhaust gasket leaking.  So I changed that when I got home.

Today, I decided that it needed an Italian Tune-Up.  That is running it full throttle for a reasonable distance, in this case ten miles down I-10 and the return ten miles.  Then I adjusted the idle speed.  All of a sudden, most of the symptoms went away, leaving a well running scooter.

Tomorrow will tell me more, as it will involve a cold start after sitting all night.  Fingers crossed.

But it sure is pretty.



Tuesday, December 6, 2016

75,000

This past Sunday, while returning from a 7 Bridges Scooter Club ride to Micanopy, Rocket reached 75,000 miles.  That is a run much farther than I ever would have imagined when I bought it 11 years ago, and more miles than almost any other Granturismo.

While riding home, the Garmin was telling me that I had more than a mile further to get home than to reach the milestone.  I decided to get off of Roosevelt Boulevard (US17) so I could stop in an interesting place for the photo.  As I approached the Grand Avenue draw bridge, I was only .2 miles away and hoped I could reach Stinson Park.  One oddity of the adventure is that this was the park I was trying to reach when Rocket hit 50,000, but I miscalculated and settled on Bettes Circle.  This time I hit the mark exactly.

I am hoping to reach 100,000 in the next few years.  Because Rocket is running well now, I think we can make it.



Make it to the park.  This side of the road is actually called Baker Point Park.

They were all good.