Mic's Adventure

The Motorcycle Adventures and Projects of Mic

Archive for category The Breeze

Weekend Wrap-up: High’s, Low’s, and Somewhere In Between

Feb 22

Posted by Mic in The Breeze | 1 Comment

As February gets closer to its end, mother nature decided to throw us a curve ball. Instead of the typical rainy weeks of misery we tend to get around here this time of year, she gave us one beautiful week, and an absolutely gorgeous weekend.

Mid 50 temperatures, clear, cloudless skies, and beautiful snow capped mountains surrounding us. It really has been a wonderful time so far this year with our weather.

My weekend started early, due to putting in my 40 hours earlier in the week, and getting Friday off because of this.

Friday ended up being a great day.

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Weekend Wrap-Up: My First 500 Miles with Sara

Feb 17

Posted by Mic in The Breeze | 2 Comments

Breakfast in Napavine. Sarah waits outside.

Breakfast in Napavine. Sara waits outside.

So I am a few days late writing my weekend wrap-up, due to being overwhelmed with work.

The weekend was mixed with some parts of joy and some parts of frustration.

It ended up being a beautiful ride down on Saturday, minus the monsoon I rode through in Olympia. All I can say is thank god for my TourMaster Defender 2-piece Rainsuit!  It kept me completely dry through the whole ordeal.

After stopping in Napavine to top off the fuel tank, and grab some breakfast at BK, I pushed on down to Vancouver to meet up with GusGus, my co-rider for our Arctic Expedition Trip.

After Vancouver, I pushed on down the Columbia River Gorge towards Hood River.  The one thing I absolutely hate about The Gorge, is the wind.  Fighting wind gusts of over 40mph really can fatigue you, especially the neck.

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And I call her “Sara”

Feb 10

Posted by Mic in The Breeze | 3 Comments

My 2008 KLR650 that I call Sara

Yesterday I picked up the bike that will carry me to the Arctic Circle and beyond this summer.

I call her Sara, as it is a name that is adventurous, and so it fits well with her intentions.

This bike, I have been interested in since last fall when a buddy of mine told me about it. It belonged to a friend of his, and I had always thought it was a pretty dang nice setup.  I really didn’t know how good of a setup it was until I went and took a peek at it on Sunday.

I have to say, that I am happy that I purchased it.  Not only was it an excellent deal, but the fact is, after I test rode a couple different KLR’s over the weekend, and got a feel for how well they handle, and how well balanced they actually feel underneath you, I was hooked.

Not to mention, the KLR has a huge fan base, with an extremely large selection of aftermarket bits and pieces.  It really surprise’s me just how much time and dedication is put into these bikes.  The loyalty that the community that rides these, have into the bikes is pretty amazing.  It reminds me a lot of the XT225 community which has very little aftermarket manufacture support, so the community stepped up and fabricated for it.

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A Productive Weekend (Well, kind of)

Feb 8

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New Oversized Footpegs

What a weekend!

The Weekend started on an up beat when I got home from work on Friday and my oversized footpegs were in the mail waiting for me.

The XT225 does not have a huge amount of aftermarket support, and one of the area’s that it really shows is in the footpegs.

A gentleman in Arizona makes these oversized pegs, and while I am ecstatic that I got them, I’m a bit sad that this is one of the final sets he will manufacture.

As you can see from the picture to the left, they are much larger than the stock pegs. Also, the stock pegs have rounded serrations on them, where as the new ones are pointed, given them much better bite into the sole of your boot.

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Facebook and Twitter Pages!

Feb 1

Posted by Mic in The Breeze | No Comments

Throwing these out there… Way out there…

Become a Fan of Mic’s Adventure on Facebook!

Follow me on Twitter!

A Quick Update

Jan 29

Posted by Mic in The Breeze | 1 Comment

Well the week sure seemed to go by fast!

I haven’t put up any updates in 5 days, so figured I’d throw some up.

First off, I’m working on the new XT225 Resource Section. So far, it’s coming out rather well. I have it broke up into Parts, Modifications, and Manufactures, and then narrowed down to Part Area, such as Drive, Controls, Wheels, etc.

This will make it much easier for you to search for the item you need, instead of going through the long mess of a list I currently have.

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Changes to Life’s a Breeze

Jan 24

Posted by Mic in The Breeze | No Comments

Today I went ahead and executed some changes with Life’s a Breeze.

As of today, the old URL of http://mic.phrozen-phaze.com has been retired. All of the old links however, will still continue to automatically return to the original articles that they had previously went to.

Phrozen-Phaze is an old Domain I’ve owned for several years, that has taken on many shapes.

For a lot of years, it was my own personal blog.

But this website became so much more in the last several months. I had originally put it together to mainly write about my motorcycle projects. Then I decided to expand it to cover the planning stages of my trip, and then I started to post my ramblings of my research and my reviews, and rides, and it just continued to grow content wise, and I realized I was enjoying it.

What started out as a website to share my projects, slowly turned into a website sharing my adventure, and so with that I decided to change it to a new URL. http://micsadventure.com

The XT225 Resource Page gets a good amount of traffic, becoming one of the top searches for XT related information. This section will be revamped soon with an entirely new format. Easier to navigate, easier to find the info you are in search of. How-To’s, Part’s Diagrams, Part Information, etc. I plan on building this section out, in hopes that it will continue to offer those who are in need of information can easily find it.

Other sections will get revamped and changed as well. I have already started to add more navigation in them, but I plan on changing the overall look and feel.

And last of all, I will be retiring my blog title of “Life’s a Breeze”. Don’t get me wrong, as the title is everything I believe in about this site, but although Life is a Breeze, it is the Adventure that we must face as it whips us around life, and this site is about mine, in hopes that it will entertain, educate, and assist with those who are in search of knowledge and adventure of their own.

With that said,

Welcome to My Adventure,

Mic

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My Old Friend and other little weekend ramblings

Jan 24

Posted by Mic in The Breeze | 2 Comments

So here it is Sunday morning as I start to write my weekend summary, even though the weekend isn’t completely finished yet.

My original plans this weekend, was to do some more exploring of the Forest Road I had explored a little of last weekend, but my weekends plans were cut short when on Thursday night I broke a rear spoke on the way to meet up a buddy of mine for Super Bike Night at Paddy Coynes in Seattle.

So instead of spending Friday out and about, it was spent running to Eastside Motosports and ordering myself a set of rear spokes.

Hopefully they come in this week, as this coming weekend looks like it will be clear and warm all weekend.  This should provide a couple of really good days to go do some riding.

I should eventually purchase a set for the front as well, considering if this happens again with the front I’ll be going through this whole waiting game again.  But for the time being, I’ll just order the rear set.

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Upcoming Changes!

Jan 15

Posted by Mic in The Breeze | 1 Comment

Over the next week, I will be making some changes to the site.

First off, I will be overhauling the Adventure section as I ramp up to start some getting myself out and about over the weekends.

The section will be broken up into the following area’s.

Arctic Expedition 2010 – Self explanatory. This section will handle all updates up until the point of departure, then the complete ride report and photo galleries once completed. The idea though, is after the year is over, and the following year’s big ride is planned, this will be moved into an “archive”.

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The Heart of a 9-Year Old: Restoring a Link to the Past

Dec 2

Posted by Mic in General, My Old Friend: The Rebirth of an XT, Projects, The Breeze, The Heart of a 9-Year Old: Restoring a Link to the Past | 1 Comment

It amazes me, how there are certain times in your life, that you can remember almost photographically.  I’m not talking about short moments in time, but full days of events.

One of those days for me, was sometime in December of 1989. I believe I remember this day, for a series of events that would transpire that would ultimately stick in my mind.

I don’t remember the exact date, but I do know it was December. My father and I jumped in the pickup truck that morning, snow still on the ground, and drove into the Tri-Cities. Read the rest of this entry »

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