The Ochocos: Mitchell

After fifteen miles on U.S. 26, we rolled into Mitchell, OR - population 125.  There was one restaurant open, so we chose that one!

No, that's not a masked bandit escaping from the dining room after helping himself to the cash register drawer - though it does kind of fit the Old West feel of the area.  He was our waiter!  While more relaxed than in the Portland area, central Oregon did still have some COVID regulations in place.  Outdoor seating only, for one, and masks for restaurant employees.

No problems here.  As you all know, I always prefer dining "al fresco" anyway.

One of the benefits is positioning yourself so you can gaze upon your iron steed while you wait for your food - yet another first for me and the Ural!

Here, Dan asks our masked waiter some pertinent questions about the menu, and we quickly settled on a couple of promising options.  Once our orders were in, a fella across the patio struck up a conversation with us about - you guessed it, our motorcycles.

But we'd arrived before the normal dinner rush, so our wait wasn't long.  Dan's is a curry and rice dish.  Mine is - well, it's pretty apparent what mine is.  They were both delicious!

The next priority was to find the lodging establishment Dan had booked us.  It was supposed to be up on that hillside across the highway.  Hmmm, can't see it from here.  Good shot of Michell's main drag though.  It was really starting to get busy by this time!

The Skyhook Motel was not hard to find.  And indeed, it was positioned high up on the ridge, with a commanding view of the valley and town below.  The proprietor however, was absent.  She'd left a nice note on the office door though - personally addressed to Dan, and instructing us to make ourselves at home in Suite Number 3.  She'd been invited to dinner - at the place we'd just left!

After unloading the bikes and changing out of our traveling gear, we headed back to the parking area to perform some daily maintenance.

Dan lubricated his chain - something that for the very first time in my decades of riding, I did not have to do.  The Ural is shaft drive - no chain!

I did check my oil - in three places.  Since I'd just tripled the three-wheeler's single day mileage record, I checked the motor oil, the transmission oil, and the final drive oil.  A bit to my surprise, all were still well within range.  The motor had burned a little, but much less than my KLR 650 did, even when it was brand new.

Finally, the gas station had indeed been closed (as I feared in my last blog post) so I was excited to try my new "D" cell powered fuel transfer pump.  Sliding it into the jerrycan that is mounted on the other side of the car, I was able to extend the hose all the way to the bike's tank and refill it, without having to remove the can from its holder and pour the gas in with a funnel.  Very nice!  No stress, no mess.

Should have gotten a photo though.  Next time.

The Ochocos: Off Pavement Testing

This was not the Ural's first time off the blacktop, but hopefully it would be the longest to date, by far.  In fact, by the time we reached Twin Pillars Trailhead, about six miles into the Ochoco National Forest, it had already tripled its previous record.

Dan's bike, a Triumph Street Twin, is (as its name suggests) designed to stick to hard surfaces.  It's a standard, upright riding position motorcycle, however, so it can handle some pretty rough stuff, in the hands of an experienced pilot - and Dan is certainly that!

So far, the gravel had been wide and smooth, but a tad loose in places.  We pulled over here to check that our loads were still secure, have a snack, and consult the Forest Service map I'd brought along.

Dan seemed to agree that my ride is quite photogenic.  So I snapped a picture here of him and his bike, snapping a picture of me and mine!

Circling  Mill Creek Wilderness, I spotted something that deserved a pause in our progress, and pulled over to grab my camera.  Dan, following far enough behind to stay out of my dust, soon pulled up beside me.

This is also a good time to point out my custom leather cross bar pad cover!  Another good friend of mine, Rich, who lives not far from me in the rural farmlands surrounding Tillamook, made it by hand, tooling it with a compass motif, with mountains on one side and my initials on the other.  The pewter pin depicting the Western Hemisphere was my contribution.  It suits the Ural's style much better than the gaudy plastic cover that it replaced!

I'm not sure if this is Twin Pillars (and the other one is hidden?) Forked Horn Butte, or something else entirely.  But this northwestern portion of the Ochocos is known for its towering rock outcrops.  We'd seen Steins Pillar before reaching the traihead in the first photo, but for some reason I didn't get a picture.  Regardless, they're fairly unique in Oregon, and fun to try and spot as you're traveling along.

I don't recall why we stopped in this particular spot - perhaps simply because it was a beautiful stretch of forest road.  When Dan dismounted, however, he immediately noticed that one of his extra fuel bottles was hanging from its tether, having worked its way out of the steel clamp that had previously held it securely.

This was Dan's first attempt at carrying extra gas on his Triumph, so he was still working out the kinks.  Concerned that there might not be a station in the tiny town we were heading for, we'd agreed that bringing some extra fuel would be prudent.  I'd put about two gallons in the steel jerrycan mounted to the sidecar, back at our last fill-up in Prineville.

It only took a few minutes with a screw driver to remount the bottle - this time, in an even more secure position.  And it was never an issue again.

I took the time to reposition the little pack I'd strapped on to the back of my seat before leaving home.  It had worked fine on the highway, but kept sliding around on the rougher roads.  I'd need a better system eventually, but for now, it was more of an annoyance, than a major concern.

This was also close to the high point, geographically, of our first day.  According to Dan's GPS, we made it up to around 5,500 feet.  Prior to this trip, the Ural's max was only about 1,600, so we were smashing records in every category!  The highest point in Russia's Ural Mountains is only 6,217 (according to Wikipedia) so we may have been approaching its design limits.

By mid afternoon, we'd completed the "off-road" portion of the day (about 30 miles), and merged with Forest Road 27.  As the yellow sign there warned, it proved to be about five miles of incredibly twisty and steep good pavement, all the way back down to State Highway 26.  It was a blast on the three-wheeler, but a tough work out.  I learned to lean my body over to the inside as far as I could - before entering each tight curve.  If I waited until the g-forces began to build, by mid corner it would be nearly impossible to counteract the centrifugal force.  At that point, if I couldn't get my body sufficiently leaned, I'd have to slam on the brakes to avoid either running off the road to the outside, or tipping one of my rig's wheels into the air.

Does that not sound like fun?!

The Ochocos: Just Getting Warmed Up!

The Ural was loaded and ready by 6:00.  The hope was to make it through Portland before morning traffic got too bad.  This would be its first overnight journey.  More significantly, it would be my first attempt at piloting the new three-wheeler all day, for multiple days!  The issue is that it takes considerably more effort to muscle around corners than a two-wheeler.  Upper arm strength has never been my forte, so a large part of the purpose of this trip was to determine if my plan for a two-week trip to the Arctic was at all feasible.

No, it's not red.  But for some unknown reason, it normally appears more red than orange in photos.  Either way, it looks rather fetching, I think.

Another objective of the trip was to continue what has now become an annual outing with my good friend Dan, whom I met while living in Utah nearly two decades ago.  We met up at his place, just south of the city, and immediately headed up the pass near Mount Hood.

A third reason for this mini adventure was to confirm that the relatively low horsepower, outdated motor could really handle 10 hours or so of highway operation - not to mention all the other systems of this rather mechanically complicated vehicle.

By the time we reached this rest area at the top, only 150 miles from home, it looked like that last objective was already being met - and not in a positive way!

The Ural climbed the mountain fairly strongly, albeit not quite at the speed of a lot of the traffic.  As soon as I pulled into the parking lot, however, it began to sputter and the engine light came on!  Thinking perhaps it had overheated, and hoping to avoid permanent damage, I immediately turned off the motor.

After stretching our legs a bit, and grabbing a drink and a snack, I switched it on again.  But the menacing red light remained.  It was idling better though, so I pulled away and Dan followed.  I didn't make it far.

Just before turning onto the highway, it died completely.  I was able to coast off to the side, and Dan and I began to assess the situation.  The last thing I had told my wife was that I wasn't really worried about the bike.  If it broke down and I couldn't figure it out, Dan would.  And if he couldn't, that's what tow trucks are for.

Fortunately, the middle scenario is what played out up on that mountain.  Once we figured out that the right cylinder was not firing (due to an observed temperature difference between the two exhaust pipes) Dan noticed a rubber grommet that had gotten wedged under the throttle cable, preventing proper delivery of fuel to that cylinder.  I'm pointing it out in the above photo.

Once that tiny piece of rubber was freed, slid up the cable, and reattached to the end of the threaded mount, the engine fired up again and ran much better!  It wasn't quite perfect, but perfection had never really been a design goal of the Russians who first copied the pre-war BMW motor to put into their sidecar rigs back in 1941.  This particular one is brand new, and a few improvements have been made over the decades since then.  But it is still primarily an old-tech design.

What the Ural lacks in modern performance, it makes up for in style and character.  At least that's what the brochure says!  By the end of this two-day, 600-mile trip, I'll probably have my own opinion fairly well formed.

This time, we both pulled out successfully onto the highway and began our descent into central Oregon.  Going down was certainly easier on the motor, and full posted limit speeds were certainly achievable.  The trick was keeping it on the road.  The faster it goes, the harder it is to turn!