a couple weeks ago, to celebrate having medical insurance again, i decided to take a long ride with isabella up the pacific coast highway. i conveniently forgot my camera, but since is the 5th time i've went up/down the CA-1, i have pictures to spare.



it's a great ride, with lots of twisties north of san simeon, especially in big sur. there's nothing like an unobstructed view of the pacific ocean from the cliffs of the california coast. it does get a little iffy at times, as there was one portion of the highway that was all gravel (trust me, it's a bitch on a motorcycle), and on one section, i got hit with a cloud of fine dust from a construction vehicle on the side of the road. also, near hearst castle, it got super windy. i remember my 3000 lb car being blown around when i drove, so imagine the wind while doing 60 mph on a naked 400 lb motorcycle. the ride is also relatively sparse on cops, as on two occasions, me and a lamborghini, then me and a CBR managed to average > 100 mph for at least 40 minutes each. by the way, i totally smoked the lamborghini...when we hit traffic hahahaha.


by far though, the most annoying thing about doing the ride is the tiny gas tank that my bike has. most motorcycles have at best, a light which turns on when you're low on gas. no estimate on how many miles you have left, no gauge telling you how many gallons you got left, just a light which turns on in the middle of nowhere, with no gas stations in sight. at ~100 miles, my light turns on, but i managed to squeeze 120 miles while crouched down, drafting behind (ironically) a bigass sunoco tanker. for the round trip, it took me 10 gas station stops to make the 700 mile trek from marina del rey to monterey (and back).



all in all, the PCH is a great ride, highly recommended.

i've gotten to know isabella on a much closer level recently. i know how to push all the right buttons, when to speed up, when to slow down. i really have the feel of her. but every so often, it's difficult to get to some of her harder to reach parts. i had tried everything, from all different angles, but i still couldn't apply the right amount of pressure to the right place. what i needed was something to help me reach that spot. fingers, screwing, hammering, those weren't the right tools for the job. what i needed was:

i made that tool when i was having difficulty getting enough torque to loosen my bike's chain tension. i needed some slack on my chain because i wanted to upgrade my front sprocket from it's stock 15 tooth to a 14 tooth. reducing the tooth count on the front sprocket of your bike takes a bit off your top end, but increases your acceleration. after acquiring some gearhead experience points changing my first flat tire (not my car), i figured i might as well go with this upgrade that i had planned for a while.

the thing about my S2R is that adjusting the chain tension is kinda complicated. i think due to the single sided swingarm on the ducati monsters, the rear axis hub is mounted in an eccentric. in the blue circled area in the shop diagram below, you can see that there's an inscribed cylinder inside of the hub, so that it does not rotate around the center. when your wheel is in this, rotating the eccentric moves the wheel backwards and forwards, tightening, or loosening the chain.


the notched portion in the blue circled area above corresponds to the blue circled area in the picture to the left. as you can see, it's extremely difficult to reach. i actually had started and stopped this upgrade several times, because i lacked the proper tools to perform this upgrade. first i had lacked the C-spanner wrench to hook onto those notches when spinning the rear wheel. then i lacked a torque wrench to properly tighten the rear bolts in read. last time i had tightened some of the front sprocket bolts too tightly and i had some trouble shifting from 5th to 6th. the last time, i wasn't able to get enough torque with the C-spanner by itself, hence the creation of the tool above. the longer lever arm gives you more leverage, enough to spin the rear wheel a lot easier.

the upgrade feel like a world of difference. out of box, i hear ducatis are geared tall for emissions and noise laws. so i tended to have to slip the clutch while riding at low speeds. even though it's wet, the clutch is still somewhat heavy, so your wrists become fatigued after long stretches. with less teeth, things are lots smoother when going slow, giving a much tighter ride. i liked the feel of it so much after testing it out that i never bothered putting on some of the mud guards and other things that keep dirt off the chain.