Day 13

 Day 13 was a rest day, sorta. We did not ride the motorcycle at all today but instead Ken, Rene' and I went to a recreational area and hiked Hulls Trail. There are a number of trails and you can walk or hike for ever, but we did 6 miles. That was about the limit for my ankle. I did some testing with the 360 camera and some not so spectacular footage is attached here. I think the most important part of the test was the voice activation, which if it works while I am riding will be a game changer. Up to now I would have to stop the bike and reach over, balancing the bike with Rene' and all the gear to turn on the camera and to get it to record. I found it much too inconvenient to do, so I didn't. If I can now yell to it "record now" and it start recording then I can include more of it's video footage. The only thing I have to change on it is the auto off from 3 minutes to a much longer time. 

The other thing I would like to solve is the file transfer from a Android tablet to this Windows Laptop. You would think it would be easy and they even make it sound easy with "easy file transfer", but don't let it fool you, I haven't succeeded yet with it. You ever notice the directions on line never match what is happening in front of you. I believe the reason is the directions are from years ago and they screw with the applications every time they need to justify their jobs with another update. The updates screw everything up so they need to do a patch or another update. If I can get the files to transfer I can extract files from my dash cameras and use that footage.

The bike is operating as it should with the exception of the rear tire is going to have to be replaced much sooner than I expected. The bike currently has 4315 miles on it and there is not likely 1000 miles left on the rear tire. The front has maybe 3 to 5000 left. My original plan was to have the tires changed in Alaska with the oil change. Now I will replace both tires at the rally, like I seem to do at each rally. I don't think the tires on the bike are factory tires and I believe the previous owner had them put on. Poor choice on his part. I will go with the Dunlop tires. I have a set on my 09 GS and they still look great after 6000 miles, handle great in the rain and I don't recall any road snake issues. The current tires on this GSA are horrible with road snakes.

We will have the bike fully loaded except for fuel we will get after we leave. The plan is to leave between 0630 and 0700 for the 318 mile trip which will take about 7 hours. We will meet with our AirBnB host at around 1400 and then run over to the rally and see if I can get the tires changed first thing. That way we can do some of the rides I have planned like down to Crater Lake.