Day 3 – 9/4/2016
Lubec, ME to Lewiston, ME
~272 miles

After some early morning hotel room coffee, I prepared to head up the road to the nearby variety store for some oil. Checked under the bike and no huge puddle of oil, just the familiar indication of dripping over the course of the night. I hoped that it still wasn’t that bad and the oil level just just below the indicator window or something.

The store only carried car motor oil, no MC-specific stuff. I found some 10W-40 non-synthentic without the energy conservation logo (bad for my bike per Honda) and bought four quarts. Back in the hotel lot, emptied them one by one into the bike, expecting to see the oil level rise between the marks. Didn’t get there until starting quart #3. Yikes, a full change calls for just under 4 quarts – no wonder there was no big seepage over night! This pretty much decided the priority of the day – a parking lot oil and filter change was needed at this point, hopefully in Machias, but in Bangor if we had to go that far – I knew AutoZone had the filter, but I’d done some online research the previous night and got some other brand models of car filters that ST owners have used from standard parts places.

That done, we grabbed some continental breakfast in the motel office (homemade muffins) and sat out in front of the motel to eat and drink more coffee before heading out. Looked like another beautiful day weather-wise and the tropical storm Hermine forecast wasn’t looking too dire for the southern New England states anymore. We might hit some rain/wind at the end of our ride tomorrow, but that looked to be it.

Since Machias was so relatively close, I didn’t want to let the bike problems ruin our enjoyment of this area we’d never visited. So we we took a short cruise through Lubec, which didn’t take very long, as there are like two streets there 🙂 though very picturesque.

Here’s the bridge to Canada:

Loved this half-half flag at the Lubec boat ramp. Was thinking to use it as a tag photo, but forgot to get my bike in the pic!

We then headed back out to Quoddy Head to see the lighthouse in the daylight as well as get the obligatory photos with the “easternmost point” sign. We managed to hit it between groups of visitors and had the place to ourselves for 10 minutes or so. Really is a beautiful spot.

We once again enjoyed the twisty coastal road Rte 191 back to Machias (better in daylight!) and pulled in to the Advance Auto. Not a moment too soon, as after looking under the bike, it appeared that the oil seepage had started to get thrown up onto the rear tire! I found a good level place out in back of the store in the shade next to the building.

 

Looks like Burt (an older fella) pulled the short straw to man the store on Sundays, and the place was dead. After explaining what we needed, he showed me to everything I asked for: Mobil-1 oil (last 4 in stock!), K&N filter (last one in stock!), oil pan, funnel, strap filter wrench (second to last in stock). He even let me borrow a 1/2″ socket wrench off the shelf (for the filter wrench) since he didn’t have one in the back, “long as I didn’t get it dirty”. Burt was my new hero. I was ready to get this done and had everything I needed. Easy, right (?)

OK, drain the oil, Check.

Next, remove the old oil filter.

Umm…next, remove the old oil filter….
[Insert much cursing and vulgarities here]

Nope. I was able to get the strap around the filter and bear down pressure with the socket wrench, but that filter was NOT budging. I tried cleaning off the filter more to remove the lubrication from the oil. I went back inside and bought some sandpaper to line the inside of the strap to better grab the filter, no dice. I was making a hell of a dent in the filter so it was grabbing, but just wouldn’t move. Finally the strap on the filter wrench started tearing and finally broke – I think due to rubbing on the sharp bits of bike down there. Probably been there for an hour so far at that point. Burt had come out to watch the proceedings a couple times and so I went back in to brainstorm with him what I might use to remove the damn thing.

They had an impact socket (which I bought) and he lent me ball peen hammer,so I could try to drive a smaller socket onto the filter bolt head, but there was no way I could swing that hammer under the bike. He then suggested punching a screwdriver through the filter so I could use the leverage to turn it that way. That’s something I hadn’t heard of and sounded great to me at this point so I paid for a big flathead screwdriver to use for this.. I also bought the last strap filter wrench they had, thinking that I’d give it another try with a strap that hadn’t been exposed to all the oil that had been on the filter at the beginning.

Part of the standard oil change instructions is to remove the lower left cowling cover. I hadn’t done that yet since I was able to access the drain bolt and filter from the right side of the bike just fine. However, to get additional leverage, esp if I was going to punch a hole in the filter, I removed the cowling now. Gave the new filter wrench a try first and….finally YES, it moved a fraction! Home free at that point since I had broken whatever seal was gluing that filter to the engine. Got that bugger out of there and proceeded to complete the oil change.

Two hours after arrival in Machias, the oil and filter were changed (and seemed to be holding oil), tools were stored or returned back to Burt, and we were back on the road with much lighter attitude. My uneducated guess is that I probably over-tightened the filter on my last filter change and it took the track day to put enough heat and pressure on it to cause it to start weeping (?). Needless to say, the new filter was installed hand-tight plus an extra twist only. And now I have a 17mm and strap wrench added to my road toolkit as well.

I was now really looking forward to the BONE roads I had planned for today’s route. We hit that loop on Rte 187 through Jonesport that we skipped yesterday. Road was a bit cracked up, but included some nice corners and blueberry fields with views of the sea.

I had an outdated BONE waypoint for a restaurant called Tall Barney’s in Jonesport, but the place was abandoned and we moved on to seek a lunch stop. We found the North Street Cafe in Cherryfield and I think we were just so hungry at that point that we settled for what was right in front of us. Pretty rundown little place, but the food was OK, and there were other customers that arrived after us, so we didn’t feel completely spooked. Got chatted up by a local in the parking lot (a transplant from FL) who also rides and told me they’d been paving roads all around lately, including Rte 182 which we were about to hit after lunch. Good news indeed!

Sure enough Routes 182 and 180 (both BONE roads) didn’t disappoint. Miles of curvy new pavement around nice forest land and lakes. Just what the doctor ordered after a the stress we’d had so far on our “vacation”! We skirted Bangor to the south and paralleled the Penobscot River south on Rte 15, which turned out to be a pretty well traveled byway, til we reached the Penobscot Narrows bridge.

 

I pulled over at this point to re-assess our remaining route for the day, which had us riding westward for quite a while hitting a few BONE roads as far as Carthage, before turning south for our reserved hotel in Lewiston. ETA was like 9:30pm, so we made the call to cut off 100 miles, head directly for the hotel now, and get there right around nightfall. Punched in the Ramada Inn as the next waypoint and we followed the pink line west and south, out Rte 3 to I-95, running the last stretch on the slab. We Yelped a local place, Davinci’s Eatery, for take-out pizza, but ordered small pizzas as they didn’t deliver and so the food had to fit in my top case, which worked out fine. Actually looked like a pretty nice casual place to sit down and eat, so maybe next trip if there’s more time. I’m still trying to find garlic knots as delicious as Capone’s in Boone, NC from our trip south last year…Davinci’s didn’t cut it though the picture on Yelp certainly drew us in.

Another exhausting day, but didn’t seem as long as yesterday, since we had now eliminated the oil leak as a source of stress. We lost two hours and 100 miles of riding due to the maintenance stop, but there was no other choice in my mind at that point and so no regret. The roads will be waiting for us up here next time around.