After turning off highway 1, everything was enveloped in low lying clouds, as the morning sun was slowly melting the moisture in the redwood forest. We reached Happy Camp and turned onto Grayback Road, hoping to cross into Oregon. Somewhere around 4000 ft elevation it became snowed in. Technically speaking it was passable for our bikes, even though they handled like the loaded pigs they became, and not like the nimble steeds they were just a week ago. I studied the topo map (the pass would be at almost 5000 ft), sent a drone out to take a look if there was more snow (of course there was plenty more), and declared that we’d have to turn around. Even if we could slowly make our way up the steep slopes through the wet snow, it would take many hours, probably into the night. A discussion ensued, and we proceeded to try a few alternative routes, via unpaved forest roads. The forest roads were great, except to our disappointment, they were also snowed in. Sometimes as low as 3400 ft. I did not see that one coming.
We ended up taking the low elevation roads to Hornbrook, where we stayed for a night with fellow adventurers, Mark and Tracy, chatting about all sorts of things, as one does. Always a highlight.
In the morning we topped up the oil on our bikes (our host graciously provided some from his stash), and decided that perhaps we should keep speeds below 70 mph to reduce the stress on our little engines. This is all very great in theory, but in practice, we got distracted and forgot the put the oil cap back on Alex’s bike. 20 minutes later we stopped for unrelated reasons, and I was about to laugh at what a greasy little pig Alex’s bike is, and then I realized why and just let out an expletive.
Riding without an oil cap with whatever remaining oil there was spilling all over would not be a wise choice. Alex took my bike to go to the nearest town in search of parts and oil, while I stayed with the injured steed and called nearby Yamaha shops to check if they had the OEM cap. Nobody had the part in stock, but hey, they could order it for me, there was one in a warehouse in California.
Alex had more luck. While following Google Maps’ directions to a motorcycle shop that did not actually exist, he found what turned out to be an electric racing motorcycles maker, Lightfighter Racing. There he met Ryder, who went all out trying to help out. Ryder managed to find a bolt with the exact thread size needed, and made clever modifications with a mix of plumbers and electrical tape to make sure everything fits just right and does not leak.
After getting back to the trail and installing the new cap bolt, Alex suggested we take advantage of the nearby larger town of Medford to take care of some other bike needs, like changing oil and filter in my bike and a new front tire (how was it so worn already, I barely went anywhere?). We also realized that the spilled oil rendered the rear brake pads completely useless, but thankfully we had spares and replaced those as well. Ironically, the Yamaha dealer was not super useful in any of that, but the folks at Kawasaki and Honda of Medford installed my front tire while we did the rest of the work in their parking lot. While we can do a roadside tire replacement ourselves, we much prefer to let professionals do it when we have that option. That they agreed to do it right away instead of asking us to make an appointment three days in the future is so appreciated.
And so we did not make it to Oregon Caves, again. But we made it to a local Mexican joint where we treated ourselves to fajitas. Their aguas frescas were on point, so all in all, we were quite enjoying ourselves. My mind was slowing down gradually and I was beginning to learn to make even shorter term plans and keep peace when they too, inevitably change.
