A goodbye to my friend Jessi Combs— educator, welder and fabricator, land speed record holder, motorcycle builder, TV show host, off-road racer, Queen of the Hammers, beautiful, bad ass, intelligent woman.
Goodbye Jessi Combs- Legend, Leader, Lady
The One Moto Snow Road Trip (Pt 2)
Getting to the One Show (the1moto.com) this year was a bit more difficult than in the past- partially because I moved to San Diego and partially because it snowed like crazy. The first portion of my road trip was easy peasy– driving the Purple Prius Eater (my Tacoma) to San Francisco from San Diego went shockingly well. The next leg started out with rain, and ended with Pandora’s Box looking like a Ducati popsicle.
If you want to see pictures from the first leg of the road trip check here.
Going through the first pass was much less sketchy than expected, it started getting crappy out at pretty much the same moment we saw the “Welcome to Oregon” sign. Yes, welcome indeed. After dropping out of the mountains to Ashland and Medford we were greeted with cold, light snowflakes, but nothing really exciting.
Then we went through Grant’s Pass, which was also much more clear than usual… after that is where it started getting interesting.
We passed through Roseburg and things got nasty. Portland gets a little snow most winters, but it promptly melts. Not in February, and usually not in such force. I was getting progress reports from other people road tripping up from SoCal and texts from friends in Portland telling me what we had to look forward to.
A twenty car pileup on I5 near Eugene, no snow plows out yet, people flipping trailers and more horror stories. I was like a nervous Chihuahua, my whole body tensed from stress. If anything happened to my Monster now, I honestly don’t know what I’d do. Perhaps just lose my shit and have a full on break down. I’d probably have to be committed.
The first time we stopped for gas the Monster was getting a tid bit frosty.
Talk about depressing… I couldn’t help but feel like a bad mother.
Time to test out all the finishes…
When we stopped again in Salem, the freezing had progressed quite a bit to say the least. Hey look, an early liquid cooled Monster!
Like some sort of ice sculpture, except way more painful to look at.
We arrived at my house in Portland at 2:30a Friday after our looooong drive all Thursday. Over 15 hours in transit- that’s what happens when you end up doing about 35 mph on the freeway through all of Oregon.
Jensen (Asphalt & Rubber editor) and I broke the Monster free from the snow’s icy fingers by giving it a good push… the wheel wells completely encased in ice proved tricky.
The moment it was in the garage I put a heat lamp on it and started gathering defrost tools.
Then a flood light and hairdryer were brought into the mix.
Yeah, this will take a while.
Snow and ice was everywhere.
Little by little I removed packed ice and snow slush. Even finding the spark plugs was a challenge.
At about 5:20 am Pandora was finally released from her ice shroud, I wiped the heavy grime off some of her most precious bits and crashed hard in my bed. When I moved from Portland a few months ago I left my room in my house basically exactly how it was when I lived here, minus some clothes and my computer. It came in handy this weekend for sure… kind of weird being home, especially having snowpocalypse happen the One Show weekend.
The next day, in the blizzardy fluff of snow, we loaded the bike back onto the trailer and hauled it the fiveish miles to the show in SE Portland. I bought a 24 pack of shammy cloths and quick-detailer and went to town after I got all checked in and rolled the bike into the photo line. It took me another hour and a half to get her completely clean, all the nooks and crannies infiltrated and spotless.
The photo line was long, but so worth it. It was awesome to finally meet Michael Schmidt (mesphoto.com), a photographer who’s work I’ve followed for years. To have him photograph the Monster was very awesome and unexpected.
So stoked.
It was stressful and sketchy, but we made it! I am overjoyed to have had by Monster in the show. After all these years of slow going progress, I really wanted the folks who helped me the most see it finally complete. Thank you everyone.
I got done with everything just in time to take a bunch of photos with my DSLR, which I’ll upload and post later with a comprehensive review of the show. Did my best to cover all the awesomness of the event (that is a big challenge, it has much awesome) while still enjoying myself.
Stay tuned for photo gallery, video, and magazine articles!
Make sure to check out-
- The One Moto Show 2013 (MotoLady article)
- The One Moto Show 2012 (MotoLady article)
- The One Motorcycle Show website
- The1Moto instagram
- instagram photos tagged #the1moto
☣
Posted on February 10, 2014 in Blog, Events, Motorcycles by Alicia Mariah Elfving