On the way to Wallace that night we stopped at the Walmart in Smelterville for groceries. As we pulled into the parking lot at 10:30pm, a guy walked over to us from his hood-up truck. It was a cold night and he asked if we had jumper cables. I did and pulled nose to nose to his truck. John, Daniel, and Carolyn went inside to buy food for the weekend. I helped the guy charge both batteries of his diesel and eventually it started. In Wallace, we dropped John, Daniel, and their new bike off at their house. At our house we unloaded everything, then I patched the walls of the bathroom so I could prep the walls for painting the next day and then we sacked out.
John approaching Slate Creek Saddle
On Friday morning I brushed on two coats of grout sealer on the tile joints in the bathroom. I sanded the patches on the walls and applied another coat. I ran a bead of silicone around the tiles and tub joints. John and Daniel showed up with their bikes. John got Daniel started on installing bark busters on the new Kawasaki. Then John and I took off on a ride up Placer Creek. We turned up Dry Gulch to Slate Creek Saddle. From there, we jumped on Trail 16.
Trail 16 and Bad Tom Mountain
Trail 16 is an ATV trail that runs for miles along the spine of various mountains. John and I rode this section last 4th of July, but ran into a lot of snow.
John on Trail 16
No snow today, though. It was dry and dusty.
Fall colors
This was the first time John got to ride his bike after he had it de-smogged and new sprockets installed. Everything worked fine.
Top of Bad Tom Mountain
We turned off Trail 16 up a steep climb to the top of Bad Tom Mountain. After a rest and photos, we zipped back down to Trail 16, wrapped around Striped Peak, and then dropped out of the mountains on a trail down McFarren Canyon to the town of Osburn. We rode through town and I had that sixth sense feeling of the fuzz. I turned my head and a cop car with its lights on was following us. I pulled over but John kept on going. An older policeman got out of his car and told me to slow it down through town. While my dirt bike doesn't have a speedometer, John's does and I'm sure we were under the 35 mph limit. He said, "I told that other guy (pointing to John speeding away) yesterday to slow it down." I told him he must be confusing us with someone else because we just got in town last night. He was cool, but said we couldn't ride dirt bikes on the main road. I said, "Really? I was here for ATV week and we were allowed to ride through town." He said, "ATVs... they're a whole different ball of wax." He told us next time to take the back roads through the neighborhoods instead of riding on the main road. He never asked for identification, insurance, or registrations and let me go. Nice guy!
Installed!
Back home Daniel had just about wrapped up installing the bark busters. He did a nice job. John took Daniel to a big gravel lot on the edge of town so Daniel could practice riding and complete the one hour of engine break-in. While they were gone, I kept working on the bathroom. When they returned, they changed the engine oil and filter. I washed the walls of the bathroom with a TSP solution. I also worked on installing a winch on my ATV.
Old mine ruins at Gem
When they were done changing the oil, we loaded my motorcycle and Daniel's in the truck and headed up Burke Canyon to Gem. John followed us on his motorcycle. When we unloaded the bikes, Daniel noticed his bike was leaking oil. He found the o-ring for the oil filter had been pinched by the cover. We laid the bike on its side on a 5 gallon bucket and removed the oil filter cover. John poked the broken o-ring pieces back into place and reinstalled the cover. He started the bike and it didn't seem to leak so we were ready to ride. We headed up a dirt road to West Grouse Peak. The sun was going down and it was cold in the shadows and doubly so in the deep dark folds of the mountain.
Far away view of Stevens Peak
We climbed and climbed and climbed and from the top of West Grouse Mountain we got a view of Stevens Peak. The sun was about to go behind the mountains to the west so we didn't dawdle. We turned around and headed back down the mountain.
Daniel on the way down
There were traces of snow near the top of the mountain. Daniel cautiously kept it in first gear and we only went about 10 mph.
Custer and Tiger Peaks in the distance
We were racing the sun to get back to the truck before the sun dropped behind the mountains and it went from cold to really cold. Since Daniel stayed in first gear the whole time, I told him he should ride the bike like he stole it. At the bottom we loaded the bikes back in the truck and drove down the canyon to the house. Carolyn had made a batch of taco soup. We were starved.
Bathroom wall paint
On Saturday morning I got up early and painted two coats of gray on the bathroom walls. Bead board (a piece is standing up on the right) will cover the lower part of the walls. I had hoped to paint the ceiling, but I was a day behind my plan. The rough edge around the ceiling is part of the molding that holds the walls in place. That'll be masked off and painted white as part of the ceiling. We still have to paint the window and door frames as well.
Bathroom baseboards
I cut and installed the baseboards for the bead board. The baseboards have a slot in the top where the individual bead boards slip in to make a finished look. We listened to the morning broadcast of GenCon and then John and I took off on another ride, with the destination of Gold Hill and perhaps exploring the single track to Stevens Peak. We rode up the steep, rocky and rutted Red Oak Gulch and then up and down along the backbone of the ridge. I was following John up a relatively steep hill when all of a sudden he fell over on his left side. What happened?!? Then I saw the snag of a tree sticking out into the road. John had run right into it. Fortunately it was sticking out into the trail pointing uphill. John was ok. His jersey was ripped but underneath he was wearing KTM armor and that was unscathed. He got back on his bike and started it and noticed gas was dripping on the ground. I examined the leak and found the feed tube from the tank was slightly loose. It was secured by a non-adjustable clamp. We had no choice but to ride out with gas constantly dripping. A quarter mile ahead we dropped down a trail that took us to the back side of Moon Pass. From there we rode up and over the pass and back down to Wallace and directly to the auto parts store. John bought a fifty cent hose clamp and we fixed his bike at home.
Turning on the GoPro
In the afternoon Carolyn and I went on an ATV ride. I needed to test my machine to see if the cooling system had really been fixed, otherwise I'd need to trailer it back to Redmond. Earlier I asked Carolyn if she wanted to ride up West Grouse Mountain and explore the trails beyond, perhaps making it to Mullan, or ride up to Slate Creek Saddle and ride the infamous section of Trail 16. She pondered it for a while and chose Trail 16. Carolyn and I ended up riding the exact same route John and I rode yesterday. Just before the exciting part of Trail 16, I turned on the GoPro camera attached to my front rack. The next several photos are simply still frames grabbed from the GoPro video.
Along Trail 16
From the GoPro's field of view, Trail 16 appears like a wide easy road. However this section is visible on the right in the photo below. Every year one or more ATVs manage to go off the trail and roll hundreds of feet down the mountain. Apparently there's a guy in town with a thousand foot winch cable that charges an arm and a leg to recover these vehicles.
Trail 16 and Bad Tom Mountain
The following pictures are taken from portions of the trail in this photo.
Fall season on Trail 16
Just below Bad Tom Mountain
View from the trail
Carolyn showing proper technique
Carolyn is leaning into the mountain on this off-camber section of the trail. She normally likes to follow closely behind and watch how I negotiate obstacles, but it was so dusty today she had to follow far behind to let the dust cloud settle.
Carolyn in a cloud of dust
Trail 16
We turned up the steep trail to the top of Bad Tom Mountain. This is the view of the trail we had just negotiated along the ridge.
Long shadows on Bad Tom Mountain
Carolyn commented, "Last ride of the season. Sniff."
Dusty Carolyn
The weather all weekend was spectacular, though brisk. Carolyn does not like to be cold. She's wearing several layers with ski pants and jersey on top. She was covered with dust from following me.
Trail 16 crossing Striped Peak
Once around Striped Peak, we rode to the Lost Lake trail before dropping a long way down to McFarren Gulch. Carolyn rode lead and I followed in the dust. We rode the back way through Osburn to avoid the cops. We drove the machines into the backyard. Carolyn planned to wash them before putting them away for the winter while the boys headed off to the priesthood session in Pinehurst. I was about to jump in the shower when I looked at my phone and saw the last text message from John read, "But he's ok". Uh oh.
Daniel's bike off the road
While Carolyn and I went on our ATV ride, John planned to take Daniel up Placer Creek to a relatively flat dirt road where Daniel could practice riding. On the way up the road John was in the lead. He looked back at one point and Daniel was no longer following. John headed back down the road and found Daniel had somehow not negotiated a curve and went off the road into the riprap below. John and Daniel couldn't get the bike out by themselves so they both rode on John's bike back to their house.
Looking back down the missed curve
We did it!
We connected a tow strap to the handlebars and with Carolyn and John pulling from the road and me pushing down below, we got the bike back up on the road. Of course, this was just the time when several trucks went by. They all stopped to offer help, but when they saw we were doing fine, they all had comments like, "Those things work a lot better when you ride 'em on the road". The bike was ok, except for a slightly bent left handlebar. We ended up missing the meeting. Later that night we picked up John and a still sore Daniel and went out to eat.
Allison's flea market radio
When we were last in Wallace for Labor Day weekend, Allison came home from the flea market under the elevated highway with a $2 radio and said, "Dad, fix this." I plugged it in and let it warm up, but no sound came out. Turning the tuning knob didn't change the station pointer. Looking through the back, I could see tubes light up. I brought it back to Redmond to take a look.
Debugging the radio
This radio is of the "All American Five" design. The radio has five tubes, no power transformer, no grounded plug, and the chassis is connected directly to the hot-side of the wall's power, depending upon which way the plug is inserted. Every manufacturer made radios of this design in the 50's and 60's. It's surprising more people weren't electrocuted by them. All of them suffer from two design flaws. The first is the chassis is hot if the plug is inserted one way. If the plug is flipped over and inserted the other way and the switch is off, the chassis is still hot because all of the tube's filaments are connected in series and powered directly by the 120v wall current. The on/off switch is in the neutral line which means if you touch the metal chassis and a ground, wall current will still flow through the filaments, through your body, to the ground. In any case, I had to figure out what was wrong with the radio first, before making it safe. I paid three bucks online for a schematic of the radio. Then I tested the tubes. Tubes last practically indefinitely, unless something else goes wrong to cause them to fail. All the tubes tested fine except for the 35W4 rectifier tube. I replaced that tube and the radio still didn't work. I took a few quick voltage measurements and there was no output from that new rectifier tube. I turned off the radio and tested the most likely culprit, the filter capacitors. Yep, both of them were shorted. That explains why the tube burned out in the first place. In the photo above, I clipped in new filter capacitors, turned on the radio, and it worked. I added the new filter capacitors under the chassis and then fixed the radio to make it safer. I moved the power switch so it switched the hot line. I replaced the plug with a GFCI plug. This forces the plug to only be inserted the safe way, with the neutral connected to the chassis and adds protection in case someone did get shocked. I also replaced the broken dial cord. Finally, I tuned all the RF transformers for maximum output and put it back together -- took about an hour from start to finish. The radio is now sitting on Allison's dresser in Wallace.
Gypsy is packed up and ready to go
On Sunday morning Carolyn made blueberry pancakes. John and Daniel came over and we listened to conference. Carolyn made her special tomato soup for lunch and then we listened to the final session of conference. After that, John and Daniel rushed home and packed up, shut down their house, and got ready to go. We did the same. At 3:30pm we picked them up and drove to the Spokane airport and dropped them off. Then we drove the rest of the way home. We were late enough in the evening that we weren't affected by traffic over Snoqualmie Pass. It was a fun fall weekend in Wallace. It easily could have been the last weekend in 2012 with nice weather.
