Adventure Motorcycle Blog

Here comes a massive paragraph… On this trip I’ve come to cherish device battery life more than proper paragraph structure so I’m typing as quick as I can on this iPhone. I Woke up this morning in a gorgeous, heavily wooded United States National Forest next to the Chequqmegan Waters Flowage. Nope, not a clue to which town I was near. Guessing I got about 4 hours of sleep all night. Two things kept me up. The spot next to me had I’m guessing a 40 foot diesel pusher in it and they were boon docking off the grid. Once an hour for 15 minutes or so at a time something would kick on and make a weird high rpm noise. For those of you that have worked on jets be it fighters or heavies it sounded like the JFS firing up but quieter. No idea what that was, but is was annoying as hell. Then on the first night my air mattress failed about 5 minutes after I blew it up. That’s the one piece of gear I didn’t conduct redundant checks before heading out. As soon as it went flat I remembered it failed probably two nights before we wrapped up the big trip last year. My bad for not checking it. The campsite was rocky and had a fair amount of gravel. I couldn’t get any tent stakes in so the tent was free standing. I have bruising on the left and right rib cage from attempting to sleep on that.. oh joy. I brought an ultra light summer weight tent so pretty much zero padding between me and the ground. I still had an oil leak issue to deal with so I googled (rare to have cell coverage in the middle of nowhere but I did) common T7 oil issues and Yamaha dealers nearby.. so what does nearby mean when in the woods? Well, Tomahawk had one 47 miles away the there was another 53 miles away. To my surprise they were both open Monday. Most Power sports places are closed Sundays and Monday’s. They both opened at 9 so I broke down camp and then looked at the bike. I had quite a large amount of oil all over the back of the engine, a pool of oil on top of the skid plate (gut guard), all over the swingarm, down the center stand, on the back rim and a pool in the gravel below.. well, that wasn’t good. I checked the oil level window and it was down a hair but not bad enough I wouldn’t ride it. Once packed up I headed to Tomahawk 1 hr 15 minutes away and went to the Yamaha dealer. Long story short the tech pretty much said three weeks to get it fixed. I tried three other places and they all said two three week range. At that point I decided the trip was over and started thinking about how I could burn at least half a week up here since I was on vacation anyway. There was a place called “The Birches” on Boot Lake about 1 hr and 20 minutes away via main roads that I’ve been to multiple times over the years. I called the owner and due to a personal issue they were going to close down for the next few days so I couldn’t stay there. next I went to the Yamaha dealer in Minocqua which just happened to be next door to the laundromat. I talked to the senior tech and at first he told me they work on all Yamaha products but motorcycles -go figure. He then told me he just transferred up there from Madison where he was a motorcycle tech at the same dealership I use. He talked it over with his manager and parts person and they told me they would fix it. It was mostly side by sides, snowmobiles and watercraft. He told me it appeared the crank case gasket failed and needed replaced. Of course they didn’t have one so they ordered it and I should have it by Wednesday morning. After that I went next door and did some laundry. I had two choices, burn those nasty ass clothes or hit a laundromat. Oh it was bad lol. While I was waiting for all that to finish up I started looking for a campground and the first one that popped up was Patricia Lake Campground about two miles outside of Minocqua. After that went to Walmart and bought another micro camping air mattress and some other stuff. Then Headed to the campgrounds, signed in, bought a couple bundles of wood and setup camp. Oh, made a beer run to the gas station as well.. I mean, it’s not like I have a cooler. Tomorrow I’ll probably rent a paddle board and hit the lake. I also need to work some maintenance on the bike . Going to check every panel fastener and bolt I have access to. I built a tool kit to keep weight down for basic stuff. Anyways, the fire is getting low so I should go get another bundle of wood before it gets too dark .