Gifts!

A couple of gifts from my friends:
- Dainese back protector

- Dainese neck wind stopper

- Speedy rain shoe protector

Perfect for the Teruel trip coming up!

Route of the Dams

Today took an interesting new route with a friend which ended at Buendia before turning around. Found the route over at wikiloc, http://www.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=627462

It took us about 4 hours to get to Buendia through the backroads, which took us thorugh excellent views of Autumn leaves,  a couple of water dams (Bolarque, entrepenas, buendia) and abandoned (but beautiful) castles, churches and restored factory buildings. On the way back, due to a timing issue with a previous appointment, we had to rush and

It has been raining for the past couple of days, and with that the discovery of the off terrain capabilities of the bike. Two hours into the route, we arrived at a construction detour that stopped us from reaching a turn to a new road. A stretch of 300m stopped us from reaching where we were supposed to go. Instead of taking the detour, we decided to go through the construction road. A few meters in and we found the road had been cmpletely digged up leaving a 10 meter hole. Alongside was a dirt road used by the construction vehicles which we decided to take - immediately we were bogged down by clay.  It was extremely difficult to pass as the front wheel would get blocked by clay and not rotate and the back wheel had no adherence to the soft, but sticky substance.   After a while we went through the clay road back to the regular road on the tarmac, only to reach another hole one curve later, this one with no side way of passing. We had to backtrack all the way to the original detour, including the difficult clay.

Conclusion. The stock Bridgestone Battlewings are excellent onroad tyres, but have ZERO off-road capabilities

At Buendia, we had the bonus of going through a dirt road to see the "Cabezas de Buendia", stone carved statues.   
www.rutadelascaras.com

Navigation was done mainly through the MotionX iPhone application, and worked without a hitch. The only improvement that needs to be done is waterproofing of the device, today tried covering it with a plastic zip-lock bag, but I lose visibility on the screen.
Here's what the route looks like:

This map was created using GPS Visualizer's do-it-yourself geographic utilities.

Please wait while the map data loads...

Tracks:

Statistics:
Time (including stops): 5:08
Avg speed: 59,4
Max speed: NA
Distance: 306kms

BMW F800GS - Something to check for failure. The kickstand

Today had a strange problem with the bike.

Arriving at work,tried putting the bike on the kickstand and it just toppled over as the kickstand didn't have the "strength" to hold it.

 

The root cause was the loss of one of the two screws that hold the left foot peg and kickstand in place. No major harm done as I was able to put the bike on the center stand, and after a visit to the local dealer got an extra screw. However it raises concerns, the first being if this assembly was to fall off (it was only held in place by one very loose screw) I could have had a serious accident if this hit the rear wheel and the second that it is poor engineering to have such a "stressed" attachment, which holds he weight of the bike, held in place by two screws even without a nut! Even stranger is that I had tightened these a couple of days before!