Tonight I installed a Happy-Trail centerstand and also bolted a surplus ammunition can to the bash plate:



There's just enough room for the suspension to have full travel and still not rub the front wheel against the case. Going for a ride tomorrow to double check it ;-)

Didn't quite make it to Copper Canyon, but had a good time anway. Dave got a flat tire (doing about 60mph) about 50 miles into Mexico. After that, we discovered that we both desparately needed new front brakes and figured that finding pads in Mexico was not going to be too easy.

Instead, we headed back to the US and rode around Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado for a total of ten days. There's pics over here, including some hilites:

So, been a while since I posted anything... beat the crap out of myself and the bike a couple times since the last post. Almost got the hang of things now.

I'm going to the HU Meeting in Copper Canyon in a few days... that should really be a good time, and a good test of long-range rides with the bike.

In preparation for that, I've done some modifications to the bike:

• Replaced the rear shock with a new one from the F1 guys that build diesel bikes for the military. $115 for a new shock isn't bad, and the original one has about 30,000 miles on it and was pretty spent.
  
  
• Wired in a 12v adapter and mounted a Duchin Dash. Now I can run my GPS off something other than AA batteries.
  
  
• Replaced the ageing battery with a new YTX14AHL-BS (the sealed equivalent of the regular battery)
  
  
• Did the T-mod.
  
  
• Mounted a piece of plexi-glass over the headlight to keep rocks at bay.
  

Hopefully that'll be enough to get me there and back in one piece... I'll have lots of pictures to post after that. Heh.

A friend and I rode to Alamosa last weekend to see the UFO Watchtower in Hooper. While we didn't see any aliens, I did get to see some aligators at the Colorado Gators farm.







And I got to play with them, too.

Went camping last weekend near Redfeather (about 40 miles west of Ft. Collins). What a fun time. There's tons of fire roads, trails and other fun stuff out there. Morning at 10,000 feet can be a little cold, even in early august:



But it quickly warms up. Later that day I banged into some rocks and trees:

Just ordered a dashboard from this guy. Pretty nice looking, and it'll be nice to stick a clock and other stuff on there.

I received my Sidi Discovery boots the other day. Ordered them from Alaska Leather and it took two weeks for USPS priority mail to get to colorado, and they sent the wrong size boots. Nobody else on the planet seems to have them in stock -- everyone's back ordered to the factory in Italy, and they won't tell when they are going to have more. Sigh. Barb and the other people at Alaska Leather have been really cool about it, and are sending the correct set via FedEx. Woo! They said shipping with USPS can be really erratic, like packages sent out in the same load can arrive over a week apart. Oh well.

Going to be riding around the Redfeather Lakes area this weekend and doing some camping. Should be a good time.

Today I mounted the Happy-Trail SU rack and the Pelican cases today. Total time was maybe three hours or so. I had to make a run to the hardware store, as the bolts provided to mount the rack to the rear luggage rack were about a centimeter too short. Other than that, I didn't have any problems mounting them.





I also picked up a set of Wolfman tank panniers the other day. Colorado Powersport had them for $40, I guess they were on sale. Anyway, I like them so far, though the mounting is a little weak (they are not made specifically for the KLR).