Ashland, Oregon is home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which means that in the off-season the downtown is a little over-swanky and there are a lot of stores with Shakespeare puns or references for names. Seems nice enough. Kinda small.

Best road trip story of the road trip:

So I’ve been having some electrical problems with the bike. First noticed it coming out of San Francisco. Lower deck of the bridge, they said turn your lights on, I did, and then when I came out of the bridge the bike died. On I-80. Luckily enough, I glided to a stop *directly* in front of a CalTrans tow truck helping someone else, he gave me a jump and I kept on from there.

In Ukiah I realized I just couldn’t run the bike with lights on or it’d die. Fine enough, it ran okay with the lights on and I’d just drive it in the daytime. In Eureka I had a mechanic check the battery - it was low, and the voltage didn’t change when I revved it, so it seemed like the charging system was dead. So he charged it up, and I thought I’d just take it up through the daytime until I got to Portland, which had enough of a vintage scene that someone might actually have parts and expertise for a ‘68 Honda.

So I’m heading from Ashville to Eugene today, and of course instead of taking the straight route up I-5 through populated territory, I take the scenic route that crosses the mountains east then heads north through a huge forest and then crosses the mountains back west.

Daytime, lights off, I’m driving through the forest, and the engine starts to fade out. 13 miles after I gassed up, so not that. So I kick it down to 4th, and get a bit further. 3rd, 2nd, and then it conks out and I can’t even kickstart it. And I’m like “well, shit”.

So the last civilization I saw was 13 miles ago, and the sign says 12 to the next place, so I start pushing. Drop it into second on a downhill but it doesn’t even try to turn over. But then this pickup truck towing a trailer passes me and pulls over to the side, and when I get there this guy waves me over. His name is Graham, and he’s a 30-year-old fireman who’s going my way towards Bend to pick up his brother and old chief to go deer hunting in Montana, and he offers to give me a lift out of the forest. He doesn’t have a ramp, but lifting together we manage to git-r-done the thing up into the bed ('cause he’s a fireman), where he has some tiedown ropes ('cause every guy between 12 and 40 north of San Francisco seems to drive dirt bikes).

So we head down the road and he makes some calls to a friend in Bend to ask about mechanic, and the friend tells him this guy they knew in high school lives in Bend and works on motorcycles and is, in fact, listed on couchsurfing.com as someone who puts up motorcyclists for the night for free, so he drops me off there. Eventually. On the way, we have some good discussions on the way, he tells me about firefighting and the story behind each roadside cross we pass, I tell him about ridiculous politics back in LA.

So I get to the dude’s house, his name is Keith, and he’s friendly in your standard gruff bike mechanic way, we pop the seat and check the battery… and it’s fully charged. But the thing won’t start, headlight won’t come on. We check a lot of things, then finally think to check the ignition fuse, turns out that’s blown. So we pop in a new fuse, and the thing runs fine. We even test the voltage across the battery terminals and when I rev it it goes up to 13, which means it’s charging. So the alternator’s working.

He actually tweaks a lot of little things I hadn’t even noticed, gives me some advice about what to do with my oil leaks and some other things. So I ask him, you think this’ll make it to Eugene, and also you know the best way? And he’s like well I dunno, wouldn’t recommend it this time of night (it’s like 830 at this point), but I prepaid for two nights at a hotel there so he gives me a bunch of 20v fuses to take with me.

So the route from Bend to Oregon is about 120 miles over a mountain pass. I get gas and a Subway sandwich and layer my clothes up at the last stop before the run. Like Jersey, all the gas stations are full service, only for motorcycles they don’t actually handle the pumping, which means that someone just comes out, swipes my credit card through the pump, and then watches me pump gas, which is kind of weird. So there’s this guy there shooting the shit with the attendant, and then he asks about the bike, and I tell him I’m heading to Eugene, and he’s all “aw dang, this time of night?” and insists on buying me a coffee.

So I go about 80 miles just fine, and my light’s brighter than I remember it being and the throttle’s more responsive too. And then it starts to die just like it did earlier, and I’m like “yep, this is happening”.

So I try switching fuses again and okay, it starts, but only lasts like 30 seconds. Through trial and error I realize that it’s not that, it’s that I just leave the bike to sit, it’ll work again, and I can run it forever, but only about 1 minute of lights for every 5 minutes of sitting. And that’s not going to help much.

So then I remember that I have two keychain AA flashlights and a handful of zip-ties in my backpack.

So I strap the flashlights onto the bike, and together in the middle of the pitch-black wilderness they’re just enough to see the white and yellow lane lines, and I drive at about 35 the rest of the way to Eugene like that, saving my headlight for when there’s a car coming. At some point I actually *do* blow another fuse and have to replace it.

Eventually close enough to the city I can’t keep the lights up for everyone, and everyone I pass is telling me my light is out, and I’m like yeah, I know. And eventually some undercover cop or one of those rapey fake cops, 'cause he’s got lights in a '90s Isuzu with a Reagan sticker on the back flashes me over and same as everyone, he’s like “your light is out” and I’m like “oh man, I know” and tell him the story, and he puts on his lights and escorts me to the motel I made reservations at, where I showed up at 1:30 AM.

So maybe the regulator’s shot? That’s the only thing left, and I guess it might explain why the same problem could both drain the battery (too low voltage to charge properly?) *and* blow a 20v fuse (too high voltage)? Or something’s acting as a capacitor that shouldn’t be, which might explain why I can make the bike work again by leaving it to sit (and discharge).

Or gremlins.

(COMMENT: 10/26/11: 11 out of 18 paragraphs here begin with “so”)