One always wonders where, exactly, strange compulsions (such as deciding at 28 to become a motorcycler) come from. I'd never considered getting on a bike before; I'd only known one or two guys that ever had, among my buddies, and I'd never had much desire to try my hand at it. It always seemed like a strange antique way to get around - too risky for today's world, too impractical, and no doubt a bit too expensive for a junior scientist's salary.

I moved recently, out of Seattle into the suburbs up north, and after years of living within 5 miles of my job, suddenly I was commuting every day. No big deal. There's traffic, but give me a good CD to listen to and I don't much mind. And then one day, a few weeks ago, stuck for a moment in the leftmost lane on the way to work, someone cruised past me on an older BMW cycle in the carpool lane, and I happened to wonder to myself what it would be like to ride a cycle. When I got a free moment at work I did a quick web search, found a forum or two, and read a couple of posts, and then suddenly my lunch break was over, and something had taken hold in my mind.

I've started this log to keep a record of my thoughts and experiences through the process of learning to ride. I expect it will be a bit of a long journey, and if experience is any judge, by the time I'm a competant rider, I'll have mostly forgotten what it took to get there. Hopefully this will help me remember, and maybe it'll inspire someone else in a similar situation. I'm sure the various logs that I've read were a big part, for better or for worse, of why thoughts of getting a bike are suddenly occupying all my waking hours.

Posting is likely to be pretty light, all things considered - especially up until I get my bike. Anyway. We'll just have to see.

So we'll start this off the safe way, I suppose. I'm registered for a Basic Riders' Course in August. the 18th, 20th, and 21st. I promise I won't buy a motorcycle until after the class, when I ought to have at least the vaguest idea what I'm doing.

Reading David Hough's excellent Proficient Motorcycling last night, and in a section about the tremendous dangers intersections pose to riders, there was a picture of a chunk of Aurora Avenue, fairly close to my house. Intimidating shots of Seattle metro busses are scattered throughout the book, as well. Kinda brings it all home.

In other news, this weekend's task: get some protective gear. Helmet and gloves, at least - the rest will probably have to wait until after the MSC course.

The purchasing of Far Too Much Gear has begun. After checking into a couple of places 'round Seattle and Woodinville, I ended up with a mostly-red HJC CL-14 Switch helmet, and a pair of light Teknic Freeway gloves. Fitting for this stuff seems to be more of a trial than I expected; the gloves, of course, are just fine, but getting that perfect fit out of a helmet seemed a bit tougher. I didn't bother to try one of the Arais (at about $450+) or Shoeis (at about $400) that I saw either place, but I tried a variety of HJCs, Z1Rs, and a few other lower-priced models. Long story short, none of them fit quite right.

I assumed that a bit too tight is better than a bit too loose, when fitting lids, and ended up erring on that side. I wore the CL-14 around the shop for about a half hour (earning some annoyed stares from the salesdroids; I think I'll head somewhere else in the future) and it's just a tiny bit tight at the forehead. A bit more than a tiny bit tight on the cheeks; I look kind of like a chipmunk with the thing on. Salesdroids assured me that the cheekpads will break in a little bit. HJC also appears to sell replacement cheek pads in slightly smaller and larger sizes; maybe a set of the next size down will solve this problem.

The folks I've talked to, and the infosites I've read about helmet fitting, all say "It should be tight, but not TOO tight," which is about the least useful advice I've ever encountered. How tight is too tight? Ah well. Suppose I'll wear it and see. Better I guess wrong on a starter helmet than on a $500 street ninja model.

Also tried a pair of boots; the only pair I saw that wasn't a bigtime cowboy style was the Alpinestars Roam, and though I really liked the looks of 'em, my feet are a little bit narrow, so no dice. Boots will have to wait.

Leaning toward the FirstGear Kilimanjaro jacket right now, though it's pretty pricy. May end up settling for the Magnum. With any luck I can snag something cheap off eBay...

The Tourmaster Solution looks like it might be a good one... Cheaper than most, too. Excellent.

Tried out some more gear and butt-tested my first bike today. On the way home from work I stopped at a Honda / Kawasaki dealership and the salesperson pointed me straight at the Ninja display. The EX500 ("Almost the Littlest Ninja") actually felt pretty damn good. Nice straight back, no crouch, no feet-way-out-in-front or tucked-in-way tight... Only problem was it felt about an inch too short to be just right, on me. My knees were a bit bent when standing it on the ground. Then again, my ass is as yet untrained in the ways of the cycle; maybe that's normal.

Salesperson told me he'd actually send me away on a shiny new ZZR-600 if he felt I could be trusted to "handle it responsibly and not crank on that throttle," which concerns me a little bit, but hey, what do I know. I'll content myself with its little brother. If I can ever find one used...the EX250s are a dime a dozen around here, but I've only seen two EX500s for sale, a couple of weeks apart, and one of 'em was an '89 - a bit old for my tastes.

Jackets. That Kilimanjaro is a bit on the amazingly heavy side. Maybe lighter is good...I can always add a rainjacket over it.

Jacket and pants are in the mail. A Joe Rocket Comet jacket and matching Alter Ego pants. I really wanted to order from NewEnough, but they had the Alter Egos backordered through October, and I just couldn't wait that long. Motorcyclecloseouts.com had pretty much the same prices and no backorder, so I went with them instead.

I ordered a pair of narrower cheekpads and a mirrored visor for my helmet from NewEnough last week, and they were very quick and courteous in their dealings with me; I'd recommend them highly and hope to use 'em more in the future, but I'd really like to have the gear before my BRC.

That just leaves boots. I think I'll likely pick up a pair of the Solution boots on the way home, from the local Honda/Kawasaki dealer, and that'll be the end of the expensive part. All I need now is 1) some education, and 2) a bike. Oh, and several years of experience...

Boots done. Nothing more in the gear department. Bring on the class.

Wrong size for the jacket. Have to return it. Guess that means paying shipping, both ways, again. The trials and tribulations of ordering online. At least MotorcycleCloseouts will let you return stuff, unlike some other sites...

This means no jacket to wear for the MSC course this weekend. Probably for the best, it's supposed to be 80 degrees or so anyway.

Last night was the (first) classroom session of my Basic Riders' Course, and I've learned a valuable lession:

When you spend several weeks obsessing over motorcycling, reading all the books you can get your hands on, and so forth, taking a beginner's course can be extremely boring.

The classroom portion consisted (mostly) of class members taking it in turns to read from the (very basic) book, and then discussing things such as "What is a clutch?" and the like. Not exactly intellectually stimulating. Important, I know, to make sure everyone understands the basics, but a bit slow after the research I've been doing:

Me: "The clutch controls the connection between the engine and the rear wheel. You can use it to modulate the power delivered to the wheel and to prevent the engine from stalling when the bike is starting from a stop, and also to shift gears. The area where the clutch is partially engaged is called the friction zone and it's very important for low-speed maneuvering."
Instructor: "Well, that's good, but I was looking for 'It takes you in and out of gear.'"

The reading-aloud-from-the-book school of learning doesn't do much for me, anyway. But the on-the-bike part of the MSF course ought to be a lot of good, useful information for me, and that's tomorrow, bright and early.

In other news, it looks like I've found my bike-to-be: a 2001 Suzuki Bandit, beautiful metallic blue, in great shape. About 5000 miles, and this is the first owner. I'm very excited. If all goes to plan I will be picking her up on Monday. For some reason, after looking at the pictures of the bike, I'm inclined to name her Zoë.

Well, though the classroom was a bit slow, the cyclin' portion of the basic riders course was awesome. Lots of good experience - it's amazing how much faster 20mph feels on a bike than on, well, anything else. I passed. The instructors (Kelsi and Lee) were awesome. Hopefully, when and if I get to the point of an advanced rider course, I can track one of them down. Tomorrow, a license and a look at my first bike, the Bandit 600 I mentioned. If all goes well, my buddy and ex-sailing-student Josh will give her a look over and a test ride, and bring her back from Bellevue to my house - since I don't want my first experience on a twitchy little 600 to be mid-day traffic on I-90.

From reading, I'd kinda thought that the "look where you want the bike to go" thing was some sort of cheesy mnemonic to help keep your mind in focus, but it turns out it's pretty much a literal truth. I'm amazed what a difference it made to simply keep your head up and looking through your turn (for example) toward your next objective. The only points I lost on the riding test were exactly from that; I was focused on the end of the 135° turn rather than on the stop-gate beyond it, and so I swung wide at the end of the turn. Definitely something to keep firmly in mind when on these things.

My ride was a black Suzuki GZ250 and even that little guy had a fair bit of pickup. It wasn't perfectly sized for me, but it was pretty close. I picked it pretty much at random. The others were mostly little Nighthawks and Rebels. I guess with a learner bike it's pretty much irrelevant what you end up on, but I was glad I managed not to pick a 125...

Very excited. I want to go riding now but I can't see the bike until tomorrow, so...ah well. After nearly 12 hours over two days, I guess I could use a break.

Gentlemen and ladies, I'm proud to introduce you to Zoë. She's a 2001 Suzuki GSF600S Bandit, with 6,179 miles on her, and I think she's a beauty. The seller, a bike mechanic himself, bought her and a dualsport at around the same time, and has since found himself spending all his time on the dirt - not her strong suit, I gather. So she's been looking for a new home.

For right now, I couldn't tell you how she rides. My buddy Josh, a long-time rider, took her for a quick spin while the seller and I chatted about her, and when he came back he had a sort of a far-away look in his eyes. "Nice bike" he said.

That's high praise. There was a little more discussion to be done, but I handed over the fat envelopes of cash shortly. Josh got the keys, grinning like a madman, and I got back in my trashy ol' 1990 Volvo and slowly drove back home. When I got there, Josh was sprawled on my front porch, Zoë cooling down in the driveway, and I understand he beat me home by fifteen minutes. He said he ran across a group of four other riders on the freeway, and he just had to push it a bit.

And now after all that buildup, I have to wait until tomorrow to fax some paperwork back to the insurance company. I guess I can spend this evening in the driveway, making vroom-vroom noises. Tomorrow after work, though, it's going to be on.

Amazing. Took a bit over an hour this evening and ran Zoë around the neighborhood, dodging the occasional commuter and generally getting a feel for the bike. She's got a lot of power - at least, compared to what I was used to from the starter bikes at this weekend's course. I think the big tasks ahead are to concentrate on shifting smoothly - I tend to overrev when shifting, and it's annoying - and to really trust the lean when it comes to turning. I know for a fact that I'm nowhere near the limit of what the Bandit can do, in turns, as I'm leaning maybe 15 or 20 degrees. But we'll start slow and work our way up.

Only got her to about 45 tonight, on the longer straight stretches, and it seems perfectly comfy. As long as the tach stays relatively low she's very relaxed; the acceleration is impressive but not terrifying. I reved up to near 7k once though, by mistake, and she really wanted to take off. I get the feeling there's a long way to go on this bike, and I'm in no real hurry to get there.

This is so cool. I don't know if I've ever had this much fun. Feels a bit like skydiving did, but you can do it for hours at a time. Excellent.

N00b-O-Meter: 35.1 miles

Tonight was my first time in traffic - not real, I-5-at-rush-hour traffic, but two lanes on a side, and a few other cars here and there. It's true what they say: everyone else on the road IS crazy, and out to kill us. Lots of other riders, though, which was cool. One squid, one tattoo'ed old-skooler on a big Harley, and a bunch of sportbikers.

Shifting is a lot smoother than it was yesterday - focusing on sloooowly working the clutch instead of grabbing it - but the leaning bit still takes some getting used to. I think it may be about time to find a longer path; I've gone around this little 2.8 mile stretch quite a few times, by this point.

Filling the tank is not as hard as I'd been led to believe - and it's a whole lot easier on my wallet than my giant old steel-plate Volvo.

N00b-O-Meter: 69.9 miles

Well, everyone said I'd dump her eventually. I dropped Zoë today. Less than a block from my house, too. My daily ride consisted today of a cruise out to Fred Meyer to try and make some copies of the bike key - she only came with one, and I know I'll lose it sooner or later. At the end of my block, the street turns a bit downhill and also slopes off to the right. I came to a nice smooth stop, aimed for a right turn, took my foot off the brake, stuck it down to meet the road, and - ooooooh - it kept going down. The road was only an inch or two lower than it would have been on a flat surface, but that was enough. Zoë's heavy enough that once she starts to go, all I can do is slow her descent. I held her as best I could, and when she finally went down she dinged the engine cover, scraped the exhaust, and broke the plastic on my forward right turn signal. The real damage was to my pride.

A couple of nice folks across the street started yelling "Oh my god! Are you okay?" and I grudgingly admitted that I was fine, that I'd been stopped when I dropped her, and that the whole thing was very depressing. They helped me get the bike back on her feet and admonished me to "obey the speed limit" which I found a little bit odd...but hey, I'm a surly twenty-something in a mirrored helmet, I guess I could be a danger to society...

Really felt like just heading home, but I knew I needed to ride through it, so off I went, bitching to myself all the way about making such a bonehead, newbie move - and then remembering, wait, I am a newbie. I guess it's understandable, but it's depressing all the same. Zoë's not perfect anymore. The repairs are pretty easy - the ding will remain, I can't afford a new case cover right now - but it was just such a dumb thing to do.

Extra ironic and depressing fact: somewhere over the midwest, right now, headed to my door, is a pair of SW-MOTECH Engine Guards, which would of course have prevented any damage from this. Second ironic and depressing fact: the keys I had made, the goals of tonight's ride, don't fit the ignition.

Ah well. You win some, you lose some.

On the plus side, got into some (light) traffic on Highway 99, at speed. Not as bad as I'd feared. I do find it a bit unnerving how closely you have to watch everyone else. Riding at dusk isn't great; my headlight is very limited without the brights on. It's very easy to over-ride it, even at pretty low speeds. Shifting is much smoother, though, and so is my turning. I think I'm getting somewhere with this.

N00b-O-Meter: 89.6 miles

Decided I'd had enough of circling the block, and took Zoë to work today. I found an awesome route, as well, down Locust Way - full of Twisties Lite. Surface streets, pretty well wooded, lightly travelled, and with just enough exciting turns to have a really good time. It took me a bit longer than my usual to get to work, but I'll gladly take an hour of fun riding over a half hour of being cramped up on I-5, stuck in traffic half the way.

Nowhere near as bad as I'd expected, even on Lake City Way - three lanes on each side, pretty heavy traffic, and a lot of intersections. I just wish I could figure out a path that kept me on streets like Locust. So much fun. I never took her above 45, but there's space on that road to really wind her out, if I get the mind to.

Awesome.

N00b-O-Meter: forgot to check after I parked.

Okay, so it's much, much harder to pay attention at work when I know that Zoë's sitting in the garage right outside my office, waiting for me to ride away...and it's a beautiful day. 80 and sunny.

Just four more hours... :)

So zipping along down the freeway doesn't seem to be particularly difficult, compared to going slower but adding some curves into the mix. I figured traffic would be light on a Sunday afternoon, so I headed north out of Seattle with no particular destination in mind. A beautiful day for it; gathering clouds with patches of blue, that great smell before the rain, and yet the rain never came. On the way north no traffic at all, and I was free to run Zoë up and see how far she went. Actually, I gave up long before she did; I sensed a bit of disappointment from her that I never picked it up above 80. Ah well. In time, my dear, in time.

Ran about 70 miles out of town before my body started to question this whole motorcycling thing. The windblast at freeway speeds isn't trivial, and I've got a nice upright sitting position on this bike, which is also lacking any real windscreen. Winds were gusting to about 15 knots out there, as well, and between all that it was a bit tiring to stay out there. Also, my knees don't love their position; I think after the engine guards come in I ought to look into some freeway pegs. This will probably all come with experience; I figured for a first freeway run, I'd gotten a good one.

I got off at a rest area for a couple of minutes of leg stretching, bought a donut from some scouts or something, before heading back. The trip back wasn't as nice - traffic heading into the city had started to stack up in one of those inexplicable traffic jams which just appear and then disappear, with no evident cause. Anyway, about 5 miles of stop-and-go, and the rest of the trip was limited to about 55. I suppose I could have kept it at 80 if I was willing to weave, but I'm still a bit of a wimp out there.

N00b-O-Meter: 306.4 miles

Reading Lee Parks' Total Control: High-Performance Street Riding Techniques over the last few days, I've come across a few things I ought to be working on. First and most importantly, on just about every turn I'm making on the road, I tend to keep my body semi-vertical, out of line with the bike itself. I'm also generally providing steering input with both hands simultaneously. When I focus on it and think about relaxing my outside arm and letting the inside one provide the corrections I need, I notice much faster turns, but when I'm not actively thinking about it, both my arms tend to tense up a bit, and most of my turn initiation seems to come from body lean. Hopefully it's something that will come with practice. I feel I'm getting to the point where I don't need to force myself to pay close attention to the really fundamental things; braking and shifting, for example, are finally starting to be unconscious actions - though I do still overrev a bit when shifting. Haven't stalled her in a while, and no more drops, thank god. For the first little while I had to keep chanting to myself "I'm in third, I'm in third, I'm in third, [shift], I'm in fourth, I'm in fourth..." and that's starting to get unconscious as well.

The nice thing about not having to focus so much on all of these things is that it frees up a lot of my mind for situational awareness. On my first few commutes to work I was constantly being startled by cars passing me, because I hadn't really expanded my car-tracking to contain the area behind me. You really take your rear-view mirror for granted after driving cars for so long, and it's been a bit challenging to adapt to the side mirrors. Still, getting better.

It just gets more and more fun as I get comfortable at higher speeds. I ride the same route every day, and every day I take the turns just a tad faster... Some of my buddies are going hiking in the Cascades this weekend, and I'm planning to ride up with them and get my first experience on the mountain roads. Wish me luck. :)

N00b-O-Meter: 425.5 miles

Noticed on this morning's ride how much I rely on audible clues for input on the bike's performance. I was stuck at a stoplight behind a tricked-out pickup truck with massive glasspack mufflers, and when the light turned green and the truck started to accelerate, it made a hell of a racket. I, of course, stalled Zoë out as soon as I tried to get underway. Twice. I guess I didn't open the throttle fast enough, but without being able to hear the engine I didn't know. I wonder how one deals with this? In related news, I really need to tear the fairing apart and put vibration-damping tape and rubber washers on the various connectors in there. Fairing buzz between (about) 3500 and 4500 RPM is a real annoyance, especially since I do a lot of my riding at that speed.

A lot of Total Control focused on the mental aspects of motorcycle riding, with an emphasis on Eastern-inspired martial and meditation techniques. Parks relates what racers call "being in the Zone" to the Zen concept of mu shin, "no mind;" existing completly in the moment, reacting almost unconsciously, emptying your mind of all conscious thought, etc. Obviously it's easier said than done. My college Aikido training dealt with this concept a little bit, but I'm sad to say I was never very good at it - I have always been a bit too cerebral for my own good.

Tried to focus a bit on this concept today, and just by paying attention to where my thoughts were going, I have come to realize that my mind really isn't completely in the ride. I need to work on this. Even humming a little song to myself (which I often find myself doing) pulls a part of my mind away from analyzing the surrounding and situation, and until I have a much stronger riding instinct, I think this is a dangerous way to ride.

N00b-O-Meter: 471.1 miles

Five or six of my buddies went up into the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie national forest yesterday, up Highway 2 out of Seattle, aiming for a quick little hike up in the Cascades. I figured this would be a great opportunity to get some time in on a more exciting road, so I followed them up to the trailhead on the bike. It was pretty much the perfect day for riding - just chilly enough that the armor wasn't uncomfortable to wear, only light traffic, dry road... Perfect. Highway 2 is an undivided two-lane but with relatively recent smooth pavement, and so very nice for riding. We started off just before 10 in the morning, and arrived at the Skykomish ranger station around 11:20.

Highway 2 has a fair number of turns; none of the 90-degree switchbacks you'd see on the smaller mountain roads, but enough nice sweepers, grade changes, and the like to keep things real interesting. On the way up, I pretty much hung out about five seconds behind my buddy Bruce's Camry and just focused on trying to pick smooth lines through the turns. I've noticed in my city riding that I tend to adjust my course all the way through the turns (according to Parks' book, the Brits call that "fifty-pencing" the turns after the polygonal shape of the fifty P coins) and while that's fine at low speeds, I get the feeling that it's a bad habit to get into. Held a pretty consistant 55-60 all the way up.

After getting out of Seattle and the surrounding exurbs, it really turned into a great ride; there's a smell to a high evergreen forest that I really love. Wet foliage, slightly acrid pine scent, a bit of that ozone-smell of coming rain. Up past Monroe and Sultan, Highway 2 follows the banks of the Skykomish River, and makes for some amazing views. There's started to be some rainfall in the Cascades although Seattle has remained relatively dry, and the Skykomish was running high. Really a beautiful ride and one I'll have to revisit.

After reaching the ranger station, my buddies' two cars headed off to the trailhead, and I took a quick water break before turning Zoë around and heading back home. I kept seeing spots on the way up that were just begging for a picture, and telling myself that I'd pull off there on the way back down, but as soon as I was freed of following the other cars, I opened the throttle up and headed down at a bit of a higher speed, and running those turns at 70 was enough of a rush that I completely forgot about pulling off. Ah well.

On a couple of the turns on the descent back to Seattle I misjudged my entry speed, came in a bit fast, and about a third of the way in really started to wonder whether the tires were going to hold. I mean, I never dragged a knee or anything of that sort. Intellectually, I know I'm nowhere near the limits of my bike, and I'm sure I was planted solid every time, but all the same - there's a level of emotional response that kicks in when you realize that your line isn't quite right, and you're drifting a little bit toward the edge of the lane, and your gut reaction really is to scrub a little bit of speed with the brakes - it's very hard to override that, keep on accelerating, and add some lean. I think more faith in the bike than I currently possess is required, and I guess that just comes with experience. I hope, at least, it will come. The one single turn where I came out of it with my heart racing and the sure knowledge that any moment I'd feel the rear tire break free pounding through my mind really left me a bit shaken. But I held the turn and kept slowly rolling on the throttle, and I came out at 75 instead of the 70 I was aiming for, and everything was fine.

On the way down I saw probably a hundred bikers, alone or in small groups, along with one big contingent of Harley riders probably 25 strong. Lots of pickups with dualsports and dirtbikes in the back. I guess there was some Labor Day event up past Stevens Pass? The sailor in me is really coming to love the comraderie of the motorcycle community, the waving and all that. I'm still surprised by how many folks respond when I drop a hand to them.

This bike can do more than I give her credit for, I think. I just need to build up my faith in her. Slowly. :)

N00b-O-Meter: 608.4 miles

Yesterday was my first experience with rush-hour traffic - realized when I left home that I'd forgotten about a meeting that morning, and didn't have the hour I needed to have a leisurely cruise down Locust Way. That left I-5, right at 8:30 AM, heading into Seattle. Heavy traffic - enough that folks were weaving around a lot, but not enough to really slow the pace much below 65.

Heavy traffic freeway riding is very intimidating. Mostly, mentally fatiguing - constantly evaluating every vehicle on the road, and wondering "does he see me? does she see me?" The required 2-second following distance leaves a very large gap at freeway speeds, into which others tend to constantly merge, such that position is constantly being adjusted to accomodate new vehicles. And, of course, things happen quite a bit faster at those speeds. I got to work in about 20 minutes, safely, but I didn't enjoy myself at all. I'll take the longer, exciting run down Locust any day.

This morning I was stuck for some time behind a well-dressed 30-something woman in a newish black Jetta, putting on her makeup with both hands while driving and generally being a menace to everyone around her. I really wish sometimes that I had a "Hey, Idiot!" sign that would pop out from my fairing as needed... At least I was behind her, where I could see her and react to her idiocy. It's the thought of drivers like that behind me that's unnerving.

In other news, I've turned Comments on. If you're reading this, I'd appreciate it if you'd drop a note in the comments section - I'm curious if anyone is actually out there.

N00b-O-Meter: 713.3 miles

Well, a couple more days of freeway riding under my belt. Yesterday morning I learned that there's a window within which I should never try to get to work, when every lane on I-5 is stop-and-go, including the HOV lane (which cycles can use in Washington state). No fun at all. Nothing like standing, motionless, breathing diesel fumes and waiting for whatever the hell is holding up traffic to subside.

After work yesterday I had a few hours of rehearsal time with a group of my buddies that's singing at a friend's wedding, and by the time that was done it was late. I'd never ridden at night, and as I was growing hungry I got back on I-5 to head home. The freeway was pretty much empty, it being late evening, and though the wind was high and gusty, it was a much more enjoyable time than my previous freeway rides. Plenty of room to wind Zoë out a bit. Speeds feel much faster in the dark; I wonder if it's the lack of a good fixed horizon to orient on, and only the small area of your headlights rushing down at you? Regardless, night riding seemed very enjoyable - it was similar, somehow, to the experience of being on a small boat at sea, out of sight of the land. Your world seems to contract a bit - everything you can sense is right around you in the little bubble of your lights, and then just darkness out to infinity.

Well, not quite, but something like that. Taillights of all the other cars do seem to spoil the illusion, and it's really important to keep your perception active and have the warning you'd need to avoid a collision with whatever's out there... But you'll have to grant me my rare moments of poetic inspiration.

Yet again, more freeway this morning. I'm not at the point of weaving between lanes, dodging traffic, and driving 30 over the limit like some of the other sportbikers I've seen around here, and I don't plan to ever get to that point. But I'm starting to modify my feelings of utter terror on the superslab to merely feelings of concern, and that's a good thing. Confidence, within reason, seems like a hell of an important survival skill on a cycle.

N00b-O-Meter: 771.4 miles

No riding yesterday; Saturday was project day at Req's house. I've been thinking of installing a set of foglights on Zoë for a bit of increased night vision; I've no idea how much difference it will make, but it looked to be an easy project, a chance to get under the fairing and explore, etc. I didn't want to pay the $400 or so that most commercial cycle fog light kits are charging, so I went with the time-tested "buy cheap stuff and spend six hours soldering" strategy.

I got a pair of Navigator "Crystal-Rod" fog lights from Pep Boys for $25 or so. They were a lot smaller than the others, and had a nice solid black aluminum housing with a pretty small forward lens. They fit standard 55W halogen lamps. Mounting brackets were 3" corner braces from Home Depot, drilled out to fit on the upper engine guard mounting bolts - I still ought to pull these off and lacquer them black to fit with the guard and lights. Got a 12V relay to switch the fog lights, as I wanted them to trigger off the high beam circuit but not draw current from it.

As I wanted to keep all the assorted wiring under the seat, I tapped a short length of 14ga wire into the input end of the high-beam fuse and from there to the relay. Power to the relay straight from the battery, and from there power out to the lights. Ground for the relay and the lights came seperately back to the battery.

As the system's currently set up, the fog lights trigger only off the highbeams; if the brights are on, so're the fog lights, and only then. If I can find a good waterproof handlebar switch, I'd like to tap the low-beam fuse as well, and switch the relay trigger so it either triggers off the brights or the normal beams. As normal is always on, that'll basically let me switch the fogs independantly. Ought to be more useful. For right now, though, this works well.

While I was at it, I figured it was time to clean and lube the chain. I sprayed it down really well with Honda Contact/Brake Cleaner, and I guess I used a bit too much as almost all the can is gone this morning. Gave the stuff awhile to dry, 15 minutes or so, and then finished up with Honda Performance Chain Lube (the stuff in the red can). So that's another 600 miles before I have to worry about it.

Hopefully a longer ride this afternoon...

I'm feeling a little bit confused about this whole cycling thing. The part that's really getting to me is how confident I feel about the whole thing. I know that my primary weakness is still the crawling-speed maneuvering, but when I'm riding at speed - even just 10mph or so - the operation of the bike is already mostly transparent to me. Internalized, I guess. I'm not thinking through the steps of shifting, as a process, anymore, for example - I'm thinking "shift up" and the rest just happens. I feel like I'm really in control of my ride. I'm concentrating on the road and the other drivers and the environment around me, and I'm feeling pretty good about the whole thing. Occasionally I have a bit of a surge-y shift, or have to readjust my line a little while in a turn, but by and large I feel really good about this.

Now, I know I haven't mastered this thing - by a long shot - but I continue to wonder. Am I in control, or am I blind to what's really going on? Am I competant at this, or am I overconfident? Am I accurately assessing my skills? I'm just surprised by how much - well - less-difficult this seems, compared to what I expected.

Discussing this with my girlfriend (who is not a rider), her initial instinct is that the skills required of a cycler - mechanical intuition, wide perception, threat assessment and avoidance, balance, etc - are things that I've always found to be relatively strong suits. But I don't know. I don't want to get overconfident; I know that's the quick road to getting in over your head. But I don't want to sell myself short either. I want to be able to have a good, clear idea of what I can do, what my strengths and weaknesses are, what I need to work on and what I can be proud of. And I don't rightly know how to figure this out.

Anyone?

Ask anyone in the US what comes to mind when they think of Seattle, and I'll give good odds they'll either mention Nirvana, the Space Needle, or rain. (Or possibly, "those damn liberals" if you ask an angry Southerner.) It rains here. A lot. All the damn time. So you'd think that would mean Seattlites have an idea of how to drive in the rain. You'd be wrong, at least in the first week of rain after summer. It seems everyone spends the summer luxuriating in the beautiful warm weather, and when the sky goes grey again, everyone's forgotten the skills they hone in the other 9 months of the year.

Yes, today felt like the first day of winter - grey and cold, around 50 degrees, and drizzling when I got out this morning. I couldn't come up with a good excuse not to just go ahead and ride, though - if I won't ride in the rain, I won't be riding much at all, 'round here - and so I put the liners in my gear for the first time, pulled the cover off Zoë, and off I went. And despite what I expected, it wasn't that bad.

The primary problem, of course, is the difficulty of seeing and being seen. We don't have the torrential downpours you might find elsewhere; Seattle rain is more of 9-month-long drizzle, and so visibility isn't that bad. All the same, I was glad of my extra lights (which I've rewired to be always-on, rather than tied to the brights). There is the problem of rain beading up on your visor; quickly turning your head to one side and then the other can clear a lot of it off in the windstream, if you're moving fast. Traction didn't feel all that much affected, but then I didn't try an emergency stop or a peg-dragging corner, where I guess it would show up most strongly. Nevertheless, I left a grossly huge following distance on the highway and played it pretty safe.

Gear held up well. The Comet jacket, Freeway gloves, and Solution boots are more than waterproof enough for this kind of rain. The pants - well, they're not perfect. I noticed some definite leakage at a few points along one of the seams. They're also really cold, but tight enough that there's only room for longjohns or something under 'em if the liner's in. For a half-hour commute it's not a killer, but I'm pretty sure I'll need to look for something else for longer rides (HT Overpants from Firstgear come pretty highly recommended).

On the plus side, even though I got into work later than usual, there were plenty of cycle spots open in the parking lot. I guess a lot of the riders stick to the dry weather. Time will tell...

In totally unrelated news, I took my sailing GPS along on the ride to get an idea of how accurate my speedo is. I'd heard a lot of chatter that the Bandit's instrumentation is quite "optimistic," and it looks like it's true. At around-the-town speeds it's not off by much - 30 indicated is probably 28.5 true - but as you pick it up, the error gets magnified. 70 indicated is really around 63. I've heard that when you really push it, the error gets massive. Wonder why that is? It can't be that tough to make an accurate speedo...

Another beautiful day's ride today. Had practice with my real vocal group this morning - we're doing a very challenging winter concert and so there's a lot of work to be done, and the tenor section is very, very small. One of the three tenor 2's is me, and so there's no-one to hide behind when you don't know your part... Rode in this morning in heavy about-to-rain air, but it stayed dry all day. The freeway was pretty much empty at 8:30 on a Saturday morning.

After practice it was off to Seward Park in south Seattle for a friend's wedding reception, at which a group of my buddies was to sing a few songs. Certainly nothing serious. I rarely venture into the south end and I don't know the streets, so I tailed a buddy on the way down. South Seattle is a bit less affluent than most of the city, and the condition of the streets definitely shows it. Lots of bumps, jaggies, and potholes. Good practice in keeping my ab and back muscles tight, tying the weight of my body to my center rather than through my arms leaning on the handlebars bars, and keeping my elbows bent to absorb shocks. This position also makes it easier to isolate the inside arm in turns, rather than using both and opposing yourself. I know my standard riding position needs to incorporate more of this; I need to lean forward a bit more and not lock my arms, but it's a tough habit to break.

Played a bunch of volleyball in my motorcycle boots. They really make it hard to jump. It's not like I'm good at the game by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm a lot better in athletic shoes than I am in heavy waterproof leather boots.

On the ride home I scared a pedestrian. I am still berating myself for this. She had entered a crosswalk and I knew I had plenty of room to make my turn ahead of her, and I didn't even think about it; I just went. It was fine, of course, but I don't want to become the kind of rider who does things like that. Just because I can make it doesn't mean I should. Pausing and letting her finish her crossing would have cost me maybe 10 seconds. If I had misjudged my lean or my speed, her presence cut off half my maneuvering room - to say nothing of what would have happened if she'd sped up after I entered the turn. I didn't even realize that I was pissed off at myself for maybe three blocks.

That kind of put a damper on the good spirits of the rest of the ride. All the same, I convoyed for a good while on I5 with a Gold Wing rider and a Harley man, and near home saw another few groups of riders. One of these was a threesome; two on Hayabusas (black and red), and someone on what I think was one of the bigger Ninjas. Lot of riders out today. Everyone wants that one last ride before the rainy season comes, I suppose.

Tomorrow, if it's moderately pleasant, I think I'll take the Edmonds ferry to the Olympic Peninsula and do some riding out there.

No riding today, despite the beautiful weather. Ever since Zoë and I met, there's been a startling decline in the amount of housework that's been getting done. I have a long list of projects and nothing's happened on that list since late July. So, sadly, I spent the day running between home and Home Depot, cleaning and building and generally being productive. I guess the road trip will have to wait.

On the plus side, my Volvo still starts, after its month sitting motionlessly in my driveway.

So today I learned, quite clearly, the value of a 2-second following distance. I also learned that I'm going to try for a lot more, in the future. Cruising back home after work on I5, traffic was heavy but still movin' pretty well - 50 to 60. I had made my way over to the HOV lane and was toolin' along behind a white Lexus, just a touch over 2 seconds back. There was a smaller green SUV, I think a Toyota RAV4, behind me. Pavement was dry, visibility was perfect: there could be no better conditions.

Suddenly and inexplicably, the car ahead of the Lexus put on its brakes hard. Of course the Lexus followed suit. When I saw the first car slow I was off the throttle, covering the brakes and clutch, waiting to see whether this was a "tap the brake lights" or a real stop, and it turns out it was the real thing. I got on the brakes - no grabbing but a semi-smooth application of front and rear, started to slow, and had the distinct impression that it wasn't going to be enough. I wasn't thinking at this point, just reacting.

I then felt my rear tire do - something. I don't know if it was a rear skid or if the tire lifted; all I know is the rear felt like there was no resistance on it and the bike started to slew a bit to the right. I'd guess it had lifted, if I had to, from the feeling of the bike's center of gravity moving forward. I held the rear brake in case it was a skid and tried to keep everything balanced on the front as best I could. Came to a bit of an unsteady stop about 10' from the Lexus' bumper, and managed to avoid dropping the bike. I did stall it, though; hadn't gotten on the clutch, for better or for worse.

About this point I started to feel very frightened. In the matter of seconds in which I was doing anything, I was too busy to really fear, but the instant my feet touched down and stopped the bike I realized what a close call that had been. Got her started up again and got moving, dropped back 10 or fifteen seconds from the Lexus, and tried to calm myself down.

I think I need to find a way to practice some stops from higher speeds. I've never practiced an emergency stop above probably 30, and whether I did everything right or not, I didn't feel comfortable doing it. It's tough to find a place where I can get up to speed and then brake, though, without being a hazard to someone. Regardless, I see some more parking-lot time in my future.

Today, coming north through the U District on the way to I-5, some tool in a little blue Celica (I think) decided running a red light would be a good idea. He was to the right of me, heading west toward the express lanes to downtown. He actually came to a complete stop at the light, looked (right through me, actually), and then smoothly accelerated out into the intersection. He wasn't turning, just cutting straight across. I was moving at about 30-35, and had just entered the intersection when he moved.

I panicked. Too many things all at once: hit the horn, get on the brakes, get off the gas, and swerve. The horn did the trick; Idiot McToolenstein hit the brakes and threw up his arms in a clear "What the fuck, man? Why are you cutting me off?" gesture, to impress his girlfriend I think. The swerve and the braking at the same time, though, wasn't good. I felt the front tire lock for a terrifying fraction of a second. As soon as the weight transfer forward happened, it spun up again, but for a moment there I knew I was going to go down. From everything I've read, if you lock that tire, you're done. I'm still a little bit surprised that I rode out of there.

I swerved left aiming to cut in front of him, and assuming he'd hear my horn and at least not accelerate. I guess that was a safer decision than to aim behind him - but if he hadn't heard the horn, hadn't slowed, I think I would have gone right into his front quarter. The fact that I was on my brakes as well really limited me; I scrubbed a lot of speed but was still moving when I reached him. If I hadn't braked at all, I don't think it would have improved my options any; I couldn't go behind him without riding up onto the sidewalk, and there wasn't room to stop before reaching him... This time I know I did the right thing, although I should have separated the swerve from the braking; gotten off his line before slowing. I am positive that only luck saved me from a ride on the concrete, when the tire locked. Another half-second before coming hard on the front brake would have prevented it, I think.

I have no idea why he didn't see me, other than the general "motorcycles are invisible" thing. I wasn't speeding; there was plenty of light; no obstacles; no sunset; I had both headlights and both driving lights lit; I was in full reflective gear. I can't think of anything I could have done differently before he came out, and once he did I think I was pretty much out of options...

I hope this isn't something that happens every time. I haven't had a real "close call" since I started riding, and then all of a sudden I get yesterday's emergency-braking and today's situation. I've been searching and searching and I can't find anything I could have done differently.

This is worrying.

Nothing much to report this time, but I know my fervant fans will grow worried if I go to long without posting, especially given the events of the last two posts. Never fear, gentle readers, all is well.

Beautiful rides today. Had to venture into the city for a scientific meeting in the morning, and then back to the UW around noon. The nice thing about the freeway at noon, here, is that there ain't nobody else there. After all the traffic-riding I'm used to on I5, it was a joy to see four lanes of empty road. Heading home from work now, and hoping to beat the Friday rush.

With luck I can get out of the city this weekend, hopefully to the Peninsula. I've got me a copy of Destination Highways Washington and there's a bunch of suggested rides in there that have me pretty stoked about getting away and trying someplace new.

Today's trip was a smashing success. I left home later than I'd planned this morning, around 11, after doing some last-minute foglight bulb changes - the halogens are blowing out, like, every couple of days, which is a hassle at $9 a bulb. Yesterday I spent a couple hours wrenching; changed the oil and oil filter, and the spark plugs. Changing the plugs actually made a really big difference in Zoë's power output; she idles much more smoothly and power comes on quicker when I open her up. Anyway, all good stuff.

It was a perfect day. I'm really wondering when the winter's going to show up; today was warm and cloudless. The trip plan was the Edmonds-Kingston ferry over to the Olympic Peninsula, then follow Hwy 104 to Hwy 101, turn south to Quilcene, and ride the well-recommended section of 101 between Quilcene and Hoodsport (DH22 if you're following along in your copy of Destination Highways Washington). Taking a bike onto the ferries up here is awesome. You just show up, give the man your $5.80, go straight to the head of the line, and off you go. In a car, on a summer Sunday, you can expect to wait two hours in line. Here's a bunch of us bikers heading West on the ferry this morning:

That part of 101 starts (at the north end) winding through the Olympic National Forest; heavily wooded evergreens and steep mini-mountains. As you head south out of the Quilcene range, 101 works its way to the edge of Hood Canal, a good-sized estuary of Puget Sound a couple of miles wide according to my map - big enough that the Navy has a ballistic missile sub base here. Great vistas out over the Canal and up into the mountains.

Anyway, a wonderful ride. Traffic was pretty light and I made good time. The only annoying part about this trip is the irrational speed limit changes all over the place. I almost blundered past a lurking state patrolman coming through the town of Eldon, but a nice Harley rider coming the other way flashed his brights at me in warning, and by the time I reached the officer I was safely below the limit.

Ate lunch in Hoodsport at the scenic Model T Pub & Eatery, which was much more a pub than an eatery - the waitress sadly informed me that she couldn't get me a burger because "the hamburger machine was broken" - but good nonetheless. My options at this point were to retrace my steps, or take a different and much less interesting and longer route south through Shelton and Olympia, back to I5. I turned around.

Destination Highways lists, in addition to their Destination Highways, a large number of shorter routes they call Twisted Edges. There happened to be one of these routes coming off 104 at Quilcene and heading back to the Hood Canal Bridge (DH22 TE-B, Dabob Rd - Coyle Rd - Thorndyte Rd - S Point Rd) and I threw that into the mix for the way back. Talk about remote. This route heads through a very heavily wooded part of the Toandos Peninsula that's given over mostly to tree farms for the paper industry, and along these roads you can go some time between seeing any cars. Also, twisty as hell. Major elevation changes, 10-mph s-curves, the works. I'll file this route as something I need to hit again.

I am always amazed by the folks I meet riding around. There was an older couple on a giant Kawasaki version of the Gold Wing, that had come most recently from Indiana. A large contingent of Christian Harley riders, a bunch of other Suzuki pilots on several Hayabusas, Gixxers, and an SV1000S. Chatted on the ferry with one Harley rider about the little bell (about a half-inch long) he had affixed to his frame; he told me it warded off evil spirits from making his bike break down. I asked if it worked, and he replied that he hadn't broken down yet, so he reckoned so. Apparently you can't buy those; you have to have a mentor gift gift one to you. Cool tradition.

I'd stopped at one point to take a picture, and during that time three groups of riders passed me, and the lead rider in each group gestured to me "are you okay? do you need help?" If my car was on the side of the road, I know not one driver in a hundred would think to stop and help. Riders really are a whole different breed.

All in all, about 140 miles today, and a really great time. If you're in the area, ride this route, it's awesome. And come to think of it, send me an email, and I'll come ride it again.

(and here's the best named river in Washington State: the Hamma Hamma. Please Hamma, don't hurt 'em!)

So the zipper on my Joe Rocket jacket is already starting to fail. I guess the teeth are getting misaligned or something of the sort. I basically need a pair of pliers to get it all the way up or all the way down, which is pretty depressing. It still works, it's just a hassle to get the thing on or off. Guess I'll be looking to Firstgear when it's time for a new one.

In other news, a green Land Rover tried to merge into me on the freeway this morning. Not a big deal at all; he obviously wasn't looking for me, but I was looking for him. Saw him moving into my lane, dumped some throttle on and I was gone. The HOV lane is really nice that way; since there's no traffic to your left, you can stay far over on the edge of the lane and only have to keep an eye on one side of you. That gives you a lot of maneuvering room if someone tries something stupid, and you've got the shoulder as an escape route if you need it. Being in the middle lane of the freeway is a much more stressful environment; I'll take the HOV anyday. Plus, of course, it's faster.

Here is a very interesting analysis of proper emergency braking technique carried out by some very determined Canadians. It's nice to see some actual data, rather than the usual assumptions of what works and what doesn't. I do wonder why they built a giant wooden box on the back of their test bike to hold a full-sized G4 Mac when they could easily have used a little laptop, but I guess they do things differently up north. Check it out.

Well, it looks like the rain's a'comin'. The weather forecast calls for rain pretty much every day for the next 10. Rain, and gusty winds. Today's ride in was a bit challenging as the crosswinds pushed me around in my lane a fair bit. I'm still working on adjusting my riding position, trying to add just enough crouch to get my forearms horizontal and relaxed, scoot myself back and up in the seat, and get my crotch off the tank, and hopefully getting this stance issue resolved will help a bit in reducing my windage. I'm also beginning to look into getting a new pair of riding pants for the wet weather; the AlterEgo's are really quite uncomfortable with the liner in, as it's non-breathable, and there's no room for a layer of street clothes underneath if the liner's in place. NewEnough has the Firstgear HT Overpants on sale, so that's something.

In other (non-moto) news, I shaved my head yesterday. Was planning to just trim my hair back, but as I was prepping the clippers I happened to notice the razor sitting next to 'em, and just decided to see what would happen. It was a lot harder than I expected, and I cut the hell out of myself. Turns out wearing a helmet on a shorn head is really uncomfortable, so I had to break down and get myself a headscarf. It's black with red kanji on it - it was that or a giant American flag (no) or red or blue flames (no) or an eagle clutching some arrows over a Harley logo (no!). I can't tell whether I look like a total poser, or a dangerous, dangerous man.

Probably the former, actually.

Looks like the ride home is going to be an exciting one. The 520 Bridge wind-sensor is reporting gusts upwards of 30kts from the southwest. It may be an evening to stay off I-5 and take the long way home. It's raining, too, so double the excitement.

After all that buildup, it turned out that while the wind over Lake Washington was howling away, inshore it was just another breeze. No problems, no worries.

Very little riding this weekend; the winter has officially started. Real rain, rather than the mizzle (mist plus drizzle is mizzle, fo' shizzle!) that we normally get 'round here. Saturday was all housework and a delicious sushi dinner; Sunday, i just took a quick run out to do a few errands. Nothing particularly fun. Instead, I've been boning up on my technical knowledge; I just got a bunch more books to study.

Kevin Cameron's Sportbike Performance Handbook is amazingly technical. I never thought I'd describe a book as being maybe too technical, but this one just might be. It's all very interesting and I know a whole lot more about the engineering challenges behind designing carbs and exhaust systems and the difference between horizontal and vertical fuel mixing inside cylinders and the like, but I don't think most of this is going to affect the way I ride or maintain my bike. If you're looking for a broad understanding of the physics behind cycles and their engines, well, this is a good place to start. The author has a good, sort of subtle sense of humor that pops out surprisingly in the middle of a long and complex technical overview, and clearly knows his stuff. Just don't get discouraged when he spends two pages explaining how spark at 33° BTDC is superior to spark at 25°.

Evans Brasfield's 101 Sportbike Performance Projects is aimed much more squarely at the layman. The "projects" range from checking that your lights work to swapping out your entire brake system for a mad sexy aftermarket package. The pictures are great and the writing is clear, although Brasfield doesn't seem to go into quite as much detail as to why these modifications work as I would like. Nevertheless, this book is a great compilation of modifications and maintenance tasks, and though much of it is aimed at the higher-end tuner set, at least some of the book will be of great use to me. Used in combination with Cameron's book, it's much easier to understand the reasoning behind some of the projects, especially in the engine and exhaust sections.

The final book for this set of mini-reviews is Keith Code's Soft Science of Road Racing Motorcycles and I can't contribute much to this one, just yet. I've only read one page, as I started too late at night to really get into it. Seems to be aimed quite clearly at beginning racers, but hopefully there's enough general riding tips in there that I can get something out of it.

I am sorry to report that I can't in good faith recommend Soft Science of Road Racing Motorcycles. Again I try, and again I fail to get through it. I guess I was expecting a lot more, well, science, given the name, but it seems to focus on the premise that you have to THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE DOING OR IT WON'T WORK. Well, at the risk of sounding pedantic: no shit, Sherlock. I have heard lots of positive things about Code's other books, and he's clearly a very well-respected riding instructor, but this book just doesn't seem valuable to me.

Try as I might, I just can't manage to get my mind around inside-arm-only steering corrections. I'm still doing a lot of my maneuvering by shifting my weight ("body english") and I know it's not very effective, and my countersteering usually seems to take the form of pulling with my outside arm, rather than pushing with the inside. When I consciously remind myself to do it right, I have a much crisper turn response; I just need to internalize this process, so that I'll do it right when I really need it. I'm making progress refining my riding position; scooting my ass back to the rear of the seat and keeping my upper body canted forward, so that my arms can relax a little bit. It's not quite there, but it's getting better.

A nice day today - a bit of a surprise. No rain!

Well, now that I've had a real exposure to it, I think it's safe to say that rain kinda sucks. Late-ish work day today; I got out around 6:15 and headed to the bike. This time of year, it's full dark by then, and the rain was coming down pretty seriously - seriously, at least, for Seattle, but it'd been going on long enough that there was a fair bit of water on the roadway. Traffic was slow and fairly heavy on I5, and you could see the rainbow sheen of oil or gas or whatever in the center-track of the lane. Real good incentive to stay at one of the edges, in the wheeltracks where the water was lessened.

I made the journey home without incident, but with a fair bit of discomfort. Vision is pretty difficult in heavy rain at night, with the water beading up on your visor and the anemic low-beam on Zoë, and I found myself trying to wipe it clear about every 20 seconds with the palm of my glove. I need to look into whether there's some sort of plastic treatment that'll keep the rain from sticking, or something. Drivers were doing their usual clueless tailgating; I had one tool in a Civic right up on me for some time. I guess he objected to my long following distance, but there was no way for me to let him pass, and flashing my brake lights only got him back about a car length. I was very glad when a space opened up for me to pull aside and let him go.

I saw another rider on a Harley see an open space in traffic, roll on the throttle hard to get into it, and lose the back wheel immediately in a skid. He managed not to lose the bike as well; wish I'd seen exactly what he did, but the wheel snapped back to center without tossing him off, so I guess what he did was right. A few other riders were around as well, everyone being really cautious and leaving a lot of space, but I couldn't help but feel really vulnerable. I didn't feel the bike act much differently than usual in the rain, but then I don't have a good sense of just how much grip I have when it's wet, and I'm not sure how to figure that out.

And to think we've got another six months or so of this...damn, I miss the summer.

(Yes, I know it's a trashy reference in the title of this post. Name the song and you get a cookie, and then you get to feel terrible for recognizing it.)

Had to get in my car yesterday for a groceries run, as there's really no space on the bike for bags and bags of mango mochi and the like. I really only drive once a week, now, for errands where I'll need lots of storage space, and it's always odd to start the car and just drive off. No warming-up time, no TCLOCS check, no gear to put on... I find that my riding is a positive thing in terms of safety in the Volvo; the scanning for dangers and keeping aware of my surroundings translates straight across. I do have to remind myself not to wander in the lane for best visibility, as I already fill the whole thing, and not to try for quick acceleration or braking, as the Volvo can't do either very well.

I have noticed a very unusual psychological change, though - when I'm in the car with the windows rolled up and the radio on, or talking to my passenger or (God forbid) on a cell phone, I really have to constantly remind myself that I'm hurtling down the road and not sitting quietly at home. I miss the feedback I get from the engine and the windblast and the noise of the road, and subconsciously I think that's what keeps me grounded and aware on the bike. Seeing the pavement hurtling past me is much less visceral than hearing my passage. When I roll down the windows and get a chance to hear the world around me, I'm much more in tune with it.

On my ride on the Olympic Peninsula a few weeks ago, I briefly tried wearing a pair of foam earplugs, as lots of folks have told me that not doing so can lead to hearing damage. I found that though I could still hear fairly clearly, the muted sounds that came through the plugs weren't enough to trigger that sense of speed and urgency that I normally have. After putting them in I only rode about a mile before I realized I just wasn't in the ride, wasn't paying the kind of attention to the road that I needed to, and I wasn't feeling safe. I pulled the plugs and instantly I was right there again. I find it strange that so much seems to stem from the sound of the ride.

I'm sure I could train myself to ride with the plugs in, but I'm not sure if I ought to. I really feel so much safer without them. Clearly there's some instinctual alertness that's getting triggered, here, and it seems foolish not to make use of it.

Had to come in to work tonight (yes, a full week with overtime, and then back in on Sunday night - sucks) and it was really blowing out there. Wind buffeting me back and forth across the lane. I actually had to suck it up and try for a sportbiker crouch to get behind the mostly-decorative windscreen, and that really didn't help much.

Spent most of the afternoon putting up a polypropylene shed-thing - basically a fabric awning car-cover with walls - to keep Zoë in when it rains. It's so ghetto. I really wish we could put a garage in, or something - I really don't get much of a kick out of that giant gray tarp, 10'10'x8', out in front of my house. At least I can change my oil in the rain, though.

A woman in a white panel van was reading the newspaper while merging onto I5 this morning. She had it all spread out over the steering wheel and up into the windshield. Needless to say I gave her a nice wide berth.

This weekend's exciting plan: Mount St Helens. A little group of riders from Sport-Touring.net is heading down that way on Sunday, and I plan to tag along as the resident newbie. The folks there have been very welcoming and are under no illusions as to my skill level, and so hopefully this will be a good mentoring experience rather than a "keep up with the Hayabusa riders" type of trip. At least, that's going to be my plan.

Our destination is Johnston Ridge, on the west side of the mountain, as it's supposed to be a bit of a less technical, easier route than the eastern side. Meeting first at Beth's Cafe in Seattle, which seems a bit of a sketchy place - hopefully the good kind of sketchy. Reading the message board linked on their website, one of the posts consisted of "you should all hurry down to the cafe, there's a chick at the next table over giving free blowjobs." And they have 6- and 12-egg omelettes. Umm...

I've a bit of concern about the group aspect of this thing - well, honestly, I don't have much concern about it, but it seems the general wisdom consists of "don't go on a group ride, all you newbies." I guess the tendancy is for new riders to really fixate on the rider in front of you, to the exclusion of all else, and to end up getting in over their heads. Riding too fast and too close would seem to lead to that. I think the focus for these sorts of things needs to be on riding your own ride, as they say - none of the pretty-but risky staggered formation 5' behind the other fellow's bumper for me. I'm confidant that if I approach this as "going for a ride that happens to be headed for the same place as others," rather than "going on a ride with others," I'll be fine and have a good time. I believe we'll probably end up a very loose federation of solo bikers, rather than a long train, and that's a good thing.

Plus it will be very nice to meet some other riders in my area. I've never been out with any other riders, and while I love the solitude of being on a bike alone with the road, I'd like to give the other side of the coin a try. This will definitely be a longer ride than any single day I've had to this point, and it ought to be a real good time.

Hopefully I can get myself a digital camera before the ride and get some good pictures - my old cam seems to have given up the ghost. After four years of service, though, it's not too surprising.

proposed route, as best as I can figure:

Everyone can stop sending emails and leaving comments telling me to wear earplugs. I've gotten the message. Ear plugs are apparently good, going deaf is apparently bad, and I'll give 'em another try this weekend.

I am so sore.

Today's ride to Mount St. Helens was pretty damn amazing. I got out of the house around 7:30 this morning; roads were moist from last night's rain and nobody else was on 'em. Breakfast at Beth's (I didn't chance the 12-egg omelette, thank god) and we were off and on the roads by nine. A couple of S-T.N members who couldn't make the ride met us for breakfast as well. From Beth's it was onto I5 and south to meet up with some more folks from the south Sound area. I was by far the newest rider here; the sheer amount of experience in this group was staggering. I wish I could have spent more of the ride watching others and learning how they rode, but I was too busy keeping the shiny side up.

The group stretched itself out pretty quickly, as folks set their own paces, but reconvened at various turnoff points to make sure no-one got lost. This was a perfect atmosphere for a group ride; I don't think anyone was getting pushed beyond their comfort zone. I tried to make a point of keeping a nice big bubble of empty space around me and focusing on my own ride, and I think it worked fairly well.

I've already forgotten the exact route we took down to the mountain; I believe the majority of it was down rte 7. A little chunk of that route, near Alder Lake, was composed of just nutty little twisties. I've never before ridden a road with real S-curves, the kind where you need to flick the bike over the instant you come out of the first turn and drop right into the second, and they were a blast. With the exception of that area, the ride down was pretty straightforward - mostly 2-lane roads with a 50 or 55 limit. Go ahead, ask me if this crew rode at the speed limit. :)

Johnston Ridge itself was an absolutely perfect ride. Long sweepers, a lot of elevation gain (up to 3800, I believe), and what would have been amazing vistas out over the wasteland around Mt St Helens, if the fog wasn't here. The fog was the most startling part of this ride. I'd be whipping around a turn at 70 or 75, catch a glimpse of a bank of fog just above me, climb into it, and suddenly visibility was 15' in front of my bike. It was all I could do sometimes to pick out the fog line and stay on my course. I cut my speed down pretty hard in the fog, but all the same it was quite uncomfortable at times and I was glad to be out of it.

Coming out of the first heavy fogbank was the most breathtaking part of this ride. It had been gray and rainy all morning, and to emerge from that fogbank into bright (if not clear) sky and a view for miles down and out from the ridge was one of those moments that reminds you how wonderful it is to be alive.

After reaching the Ridge we took a quick break for group photos, hot coffee/chocolate/chai from the odd little trolley that served as a cafe, and stretching of legs. By this point (around 2 PM I believe) I was starting to feel pretty tired, sore, and cold, and a warm drink and quick little walk was a great thing. We started our descent shortly thereafter, heading for a pub in Toledo that supposedly had fine burgers to offer to tired bikers.

The descent was very much like the climb, although the fog seemed to have gotten worse. I was quite a bit surprised at just how much power Zoë lost as we gained elevation, and feeling that power return as we headed down made it a challenge to keep my speed under control. I stayed pretty much at the back of the pack - the sweep and one other were behind me - hoping to inconvenience the least number of riders with my staunch refusal to go 140 mph. :)

After the aforementioned burger (good, but no Red Mill) we headed back to I5 and turned north. As much fun as the Alder twisties were on the way down, I wouldn't have wanted to face them again after such a long day, and I think everyone was in a hurry to get home. About an hour and a half on the slab found me back at my door, 11 hours and 45 minutes after I left. I wasn't able to hang with the pack on the ride home, but that's probably for the best, given their predilection for highway speed well beyond my meager skills.

I think today was one of those paradigm shifts, a quantum leap in riding skill. I rode pretty hard today, and at some points in the Alder twisties I was well beyond any riding I'd done before. I wasn't dragging knees or anything of the sort, but I know I was leaned a lot further at higher speed than I'm used to, and you never know if you can do something until you try it. I knew my technique was right (for the most part) and I knew intellectually that at the speed I was riding, I could flick the bike over and get through the turn safely, but that didn't stop me from some real uneasiness when I finally tried it. I have a much better idea of how Zoë handles sharper turns and wet pavement than I did before, and I feel a lot more comfortable with her than I did yesterday.

My back and legs are tremendously sore. My gear has been weighed in the balance and found wanting; my "waterproof" gloves were soaked through in an hour, the new Firstgear pants leak in the crotch, and my Rocket jacket had a puddle under it when I hung it up at lunch. My boots held up well, though, so that's something. I rode with earplugs today (for the first time) and all of you who were harassing me about it can rest easy; it's a good thing, I feel comfortable with them, and I'll stick to 'em in the future. They were pretty distracting for the first half hour, but after that it wasn't a problem.

Total distance traveled today: just under 400 miles.

All in all I feel great. The S-T.N folks were wonderful hosts to this poor newbie, and I feel like I've really learned a lot. Hopefully the next ride will be soon - and with luck there'll be plenty of 'em once the weather finally gets nice again!

Pics. I don't have many - I didn't want to stop and take 'em on the ride, given that I was already the resident slowpoke - but here's a shot of the crew assembled in a McDonalds parking lot:

...and here's some of the crew at the summit:

...and I also stitched together a panorama shot of the view from the Johnston Ridge visitor's center. I apologise for the bad colormatching, but I lose at Photoshop. It's huge, so you'll have to click here to see it.

Zoë was feeling a little squirrely yesterday; it felt like she just wanted to be flicked over. It took very little shifting of weight or movement of the bars to start her leaning, and I honestly felt a bit uncomfortable. This morning I checked her tire pressure, and both were just a touch low (about 30 PSI rather than the recommended 33 for the front tire, and 32 instead of 36 on the rear). I topped her up this morning (and now am probably a bit high, given that I have to ride to the gas station to add pressure) and she feels much more stable. I'm quite surprised that such a small difference in pressure leads to such a dramatic change in handling. Today I need to look into buying a cheap pressure pump; topping up at home would be so much easier, and I wouldn't have to guess at how much to add to a warm tire.

Lots of fog on I5 this morning; nothing like the pea-souper at St Helens on Sunday, but still heavy enough to slow traffic to a crawl. Every day I ride I'm grateful for the HOV lane, and the cutting in half of my commute that it leads to.

This was posted on S-T.N this morning; originally from a column in Car magazine by Mark Walton. I like it, so I stole it. I think we all tend to break out the resigned head-shake on some occasions - like the BMW X5 driver merging from behind me onto the freeway yesterday evening, who decided that we could share the lane. I ended up riding along right next to her, about two feet from her drivers-side window, amazed as she seemed to intentionally ignore me - it's tough to miss a bright red-armored guy a couple of feet from your head. Soon as there was space to gun it and get away, I did, but at 15 mph that took a little while. Until then I was torn - should I just wave at her? Should I reach out and tap her window? She wasn't even on a cell phone; just an idiot.

"Bikers are a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites. And I should know - I'm a biker myself. Now, I know that car enthusiasts are a bit tribal, and you're all starting to feel suspicious about a car journalist who's turned to The Dark Side, but don't worry, I still prefer four wheels to two.

Bikes aren't in my blood, you see. But riding a bike for my daily commute does combat the frustrations of rush hour traffic, it saves time, and also gives me great insight into the mind of a biker. A bit like an undercover agent spying on the Russians.

And I've concluded that bikers are unbelievably arrogant. Honestly, they behave as though they were the living embodiment of the Highway Code itself, the Knights Templar of Road Users, with all the high-minded moral superiority of a bike-riding Pope Anyone who infringes the rules receives that dread verdict, the slow shake of the head as they ride past As a car driver, nothing cuts you down to size quite like a biker, cruising past, shaking his head in that resigned, contemptuous way:'You pathetic steering-wheel hugging worm'

And I'm not talking life-or-death situations - I know bikers have a right to feel mortal out there; they have a right to get angry with idiots who pull out in front of them.

No, I'm talking about a biker riding up the centre of a dual carriageway, in between slow-moving traffic, shaking his head at a woman because she didn't leave him a big enough gap to ride through.

Or there's the driver who safely changes lanes on a motorway, but then forgets to turn his indicator off. Bikers hate these small misdemeanors. I've followed bikers up a motorway and watched their helmets shake non-stop for miles, disgusted by all the filthy low-life drivers they have to endure

So why does all this bother me? Well here's the bizarre thing - when I ride a bike, I'm like that too. I get on the bike and suddenly I'm like the old AA patrolman, with his cap and goggles, his perfect hand signals and stiff upper lip. The vehicles we drive definitely affect our characters.

Anyway - and this is my final point - when I'm on my bike feeling smug, I don't shake my head at car drivers for their infringements. Partly because bikers are far from perfect themselves (terrible lane discipline, and I hate the way they hange their heels on the footpegs so they almost drag their toes on the ground); but also because tomorrow I'll be driving a car and other bikers will be riding past shaking their heads at me. And when they do, I'll want to wind down my window and shout,'Oi! I'm one of you!' But I won't, because that would probably make me swerve all over the road, provoking yet more crushing rebukes

But in the same way, when I'm on a bike and I see another rider shaking his head, I think,'Hang on, you're one of us too.' That guy in front in his black leathers, sitting astride his CGDBX-RR 1000 with a back tire like a Formula 1 car's and exhausts like howitzers, he's on his way home now, where he'll climb into his Nissan Almera, pull out of his drive and chug all the way down the street with his indicator still blinking.

So what I'm saying is, we're all guilty, aren't we? Deep down, we're all the same. It's just that some of us like to dress in tight leather cat suits and wear lime green, pointy toed boots, that's all.

Riding home on the freeway on Friday night, after a lateish night at work, I was lucky enough to find myself faced with a dry night, open road, and an opportunity for a smooth ride rather than a stop-and-go traffic fest. I remember my early freeway rides, just a few months ago, and a very distinct feeling that while 55 was a comfortable speed, 65 was terrifying and unsafe. I remember being so concerned by the fairing vibration on Zoë that I'd short-shift her to keep the RPMs below 5K; I needed 6th gear just to keep up on the freeway, that way. It took a very slow hand on the throttle to keep below that magic rev number, and she really didn't feel like she had much in the way of guts, down that low.

It's amazing how much of a difference the last month has made. With my posture a bit improved, earplugs, experience, and a little bit of faith in Zoë, I find myself at 85 on the freeway, feeling totally relaxed, gliding along in the midrange of the tachometer. I've yet to find the need to redline it, but between 8000 and 8500 rpm that engine really comes alive, the bike settles into a comfortable cruise, and I feel right at home. Now that I've had the chance to lean her over in a turn at speed, I know how she can move if I need her to, and that calms me on the freeway. Ever since I started adding emergency stop practice to my daily ride - if there's no-one behind me, I e-stop for yellow lights when I can - I feel a lot more secure in my braking, and I spend a lot less mental effort on "omigod what will happen if that guy stops?!?!" and can free my mind up to really understand the road, see everyone around me, know my escape routes, and try to be at one with the whole experience. Honestly, I'm feeling really, really good.

Riding has a really strange learning curve; it seems like it alternates between being really steep and being almost flat. In the flat spots, you can't help but think "Wow, this is easy! I've learned all there is to learn!", and then a few days or a week later, the curve takes off again, and you realize how much there still is that you haven't even thought about. Keeping a diary, log, or whatever has been very interesting to me; I can look back at the posts from my first days and remember when shifting was a task that didn't always work and 45 was a speed that felt on the edge of control, and it makes me proud to see what strides I've made, limited as they are.

Here's to another steep slope on the learning curve, right around the corner.

I pretty much spent the entirety of my California trip missing my bike. All that nice, warm sunshine - in November! - and the twisty little roads up in the hills above Santa Barbara were really calling to me. Especially when I thought of Zoë, shivering under her gray tarp in the cold and wet of a Northwest winter. Surprisingly I didn't see many bikers at all in SB; a couple Harley riders and one fellow on a Gixxer, but other than that it was big BMW X5s and Escalades, all the time. I guess the demographics of Santa Barbara are basically older, wealthy folks, not exactly the target audience of the sportbike market. Ah well. That means more road for me.

I'm starting to think about a longer trip; I've realized I'm sitting on a good chunk of vacation time at my work, and if I don't start using it, it'll start to disappear. Next May, the S-T.n folks on the Left Coast are planning a meet-up somewhere in Northern California, and I've been toying with the idea of cruising on down for that, and then just keeping going all the way down the coast. I've been offered places to stay as far south as San Diego, and I think that would be a hell of a trip. Probably worth at least two weeks on the road, getting there and back without spending the whole ride on the slab. If I can plan it right, the trip down should be with some of the other S-T.n'ers; Seattle to the meetup with the northwest folks, and then maybe I'll tag along with some Californians for the rest of the run south. The return would almost certainly be solo, though, and might be a lot more slab time... We'll see whether I can actually make it work. I'm not certain I've got the chops for a 1300-mile (one way!) ride just yet, but maybe in six months I'll be ready.

On the plus side, the ski resorts around Seattle are starting to open. Time to break out the snowboard...

I finally bit the bullet and picked up a carb synchronization tool. True to form, I stuck with the cheapest one I could find - for the uninitiated, this is a quartet of long, thin rigid plastic cylinders fixed to a backplate marked in centimeters, a reservior of mercury in which the tubes sit, and a set of flexible tubes to connect each cylinder to a carb vaccum port. Basically, it's four really long thermometers that you hook up to your engine. The suction generated by the vacuum port on the carb draws the mercury up the cylinder, and the goal is to even out the suction on each carb such that each mercury column is the same height. Apparently this is important for fuel economy, power, and idle performance.

This was a bit of a more in-depth operation than, say, changing the oil (open oil port, drain oil, close oil port, fill with new oil). To expose the carbs enough to hook all this good stuff up, you need to remove the seat (easy), and then the rear bodywork panels (a bit fiddly, but not too bad), followed by the fuel tank. Getting the tank off isn't a problem, but figuring out where to put it afterwards such that you can get to the carbs but the tank can still feed them fuel is a challenge. Suzukis also feature fuel petcocks that connect to the vacuum port on one of the carbs, and won't properly feed without that connection unless you remember to set the petcock to the PRIME position - which, naturally, I forgot until well into the operation, after I'd removed the handle from the petcock. I also stuck a box fan in front of the bike to help cool the engine, since it would be running yet stationary for some time.

Once everything's hooked up properly, one starts the engine and lets it come up to normal operating temperature. Then it's time for the actual synch procedure, which - like most maintenance I've tried my hand at - isn't hard, per se, but is a bit of a learning experience the first time through. Carbs 3 and 4 are first synched to each other, than 1 and 2, and then finally the individual pairs are synched.

They were, of course, grossly out of tune when I first started Zoë up. After about 15 minutes of examining the mercury, making a small change to one of the set-screws, and repeating, I had them at a pretty even keel across the board. I'd like to think that the engine sounded smoother when I was finished than I had before, but honestly I don't have the slightest idea if I accomplished anything. Strangely, I did find that when at idle the carbs were each drawing exactly the same, but when I throttled up to ~3500 RPM, carbs 1 and 4 looked to be drawing harder than 2 and 3. I tried adjusting 1 and 4 down so that they'd synch up at speed, but couldn't seem to get it just right, so in the end I just stuck with the instructions and dialed everything for an even idle. Hopefully that's the correct approach.

Other minor tasks today: setting the appropriate chain tension again and actually getting the right torque on the axle nut, now that I've got a torque wrench. I wanted to really go hardcore and adjust the valves, but I'm lacking feeler gauges, and I guess there's some O-rings that need to be replaced if one takes off the valve cover. All in all, given the terrible conditions in which I do my wrenching (no garage, for starters), I think this was enough for today.

Some pics:

Here's as close as I come to a garage. It's mighty cold out there, but at least it's dry. Of course, one of these days, the wind's going to blow real hard, and my garage is going to fly off into the neighbors' yard, but what can ya do?

There's Zoë with her tank all cockeyed, looking like some strange superbike. The white thing hanging from the left handlebar is the synch tool, and you can see the vacuum hoses leading from it to the engine. Also note that the rear bodywork is all removed.

More of the same, from above. See how well-organized my tools are? :)

And that, right there, is some fine, fine carb-synchronizin', my friends.

In and out of Seattle twice today on the bike. Cold, but no rain, which is a step up, and enough space on the freeway to have a good time. It's amazing just how slow 65 feels these days.

Thursday night some of the ST-n folks got together to watch a video from our Mt St Helens ride a few weeks back. I've now finally gotten a chance to examine the riding style of the other, skilled folks who were along, and to compare it with the footage that was taken of yours truly. While I'm pretty happy with my current skill level, given the amount of time I've been riding, it's clear that I've got a long way still to go. The most startling thing to me is my perception of lean angle. I remember tearing around some of those corners, feeling like I was leaned over 45 degrees, and seeing myself on the tape barely 10 degrees off vertical is a good wake-up call. Also, I notice that I tend to keep my body somewhat vertical in the turns, rather than leaning with the bike. This is something I need to address, especially as my speed picks up. Hopefully a track day will be of use in the future; Sound RIDER! had an article on track days in this week's issue, so I finally have an idea where to look for more info.

It's high time for another longer ride, but I don't know if the weather's going to cooperate with me. Next weekend is snowboard time, anyway. Which is also very nice.

This weekend, Zoë was the lucky recipient of a variety of mods, installed in traditional ghetto style by your humble narrator. In brief, I added heated grips, a standard 12v accessory socket, and a small XM Radio head unit. The XM was just something I wanted to try out, but the heated grips have been more and more necessary over the last few weeks. Today there was snow on the ground when I woke up. It was gone by noon, but still, it's getting quite a bit colder here than I like, and every little bit against hypothermia is a good thing.

Anyway. The heated grips (from Dual-Star) were the first to go on. I wired them up the boring normal way, with a three-position switch for HI-OFF-LOW, as described in the installation manual that came with them. The more swanky among you would no doubt use their Heat-Troller for fully adjustable grips, but I figured I'd try it the simple way first, and it should be an easy matter to wire a Heat-Troller in if I decide I need it.

I was unable to get the existing grips off without destroying them; luckily, I'd anticipated that and picked up a pair of cheap new grips at Everett Powersports last week. Getting the new grips on over the heat elements was easy; remember to rub the inside of the grips and the outside of the elements with a thin solution of soapy water, and you'll do fine. Then give a good 24 hours for the water to all evaporate away, or you'll have grips that slide around on you. I didn't epoxy them into place, as some would recommend; they seem pretty damn well fixed by friction alone, and the bar ends help to hold them as well.

The control switch was simply zip-tied to a fairing support strut on the left side of the bike; it's well hidden but easy to get to. The power for the grips comes from the wiring I ran for my aux lighting; the total draw of aux lights and heat elements on hi is well under the 10A rating of the inline fuse I used, and the relay was rated to 30A, so no worries. I did have to run another ground line back to the battery, which is starting to look like a snake's nest of wires, but what can ya do?

The grips are amazing. Even just a little heat goes a long way. I've only used them on LOW so far, and they were plenty warm enough for me.

Here you can see the switch for the heated grips. Surprisingly, this mounting method seems very secure and stable. Probably not such a good option on most bikes though.

The 12v socket was a cheap model from my local autoparts store; I chose it because it claimed to be "all-weather" and had a spring-loaded door to cover the socket when not in use. Another very simple mod; I just ziptied the switch to the frame on the right side of the bike, above the engine. When something's plugged into the socket, it does stick out about an inch from the side of the bike, but it's forward of my knee and out of the way. Wires ran along the frame underneath the tank and back to the battery. Since I want to be able to run this socket whether the bike is on or off, I ran it straight to the battery, and of course added an inline fuse on the positive wire. This'll let me run my GPS or XM radio off battery power, and give me a way to top up my cell on longer trips if necessary.

The socket (with the cover closed) is dead center in this picture. You can also see the new front turn signals I installed last week and never wrote about, replacing the stock signals that I cracked in my first-week drop.

The XM is another cheapie; I guess they're clearing out obsolete models to make room for shiny new ones, so I managed to find a Roady2 reciever for $14 at Staples. It's pretty much a self-contained unit, about 4"x2.5", with external ports for an antenna, headphones, and a power jack. It's an elegant little thing; there are, of course, some design elements that can be improved (and have been, in the updated model) but for my purposes, it's more than enough.

I thought about picking up a Hoon Hardware RoadyHolder to mount the thing, but felt a little squeamish about paying three times as much for the mounting hardware as for the radio itself. It seemed like a good mounting scheme, though, and so I decided to hit Home Depot, wander the aisles, and see what I could adapt. It turned out that some braces used for framing were very close to the size I wanted; all I had to do was drill a few holes in one, bend it from its usual 90 degree angle to about 70, and I was good to go.

The bracket is mounted to the top plate of my front brake fluid reservoir; I drilled holes through the bracket to line up with the reservoir securing screws, removed the screws, put the bracket in place, and screwed them back in. I then affixed the car-mounting adaptor that came with the Roady to the bracket, and dropped the Roady in.

The Roady's antenna is a small magnetic thing, about an inch square, on the end of about 15' of antenna wire. I routed it back inside the tail section and affixed it to the frame under the rear end of the seat. It seems that even with the seat in place, and me on the bike, the reception is crystal clear, though the diagnostic menu says I'm really only getting ground reception rather than sat reception. Ah well; long as I get the music, I'm good.

Here's the XM mounted and active. The top plug is the power adaptor, which runs down to the socket on the right side of the frame. The bottom plug is the antenna. In between is the space for my headphones, which will run straight to the unit. I hope to make an inline volume control I can plug the 'phones into, as the unit doesn't really have a volume dial of its own; also, unless I remember to unplug before getting off the bike, I'm apt to pull something off, so having a longer lead on the 'phones might be beneficial.

One thing to keep in mind: the Roady2 is not at all waterproof. When it's raining, I'll have to stick a Ziploc bag over it, or something. Ah well. Ghetto engineering can only take me so far.

I was chatting with a friend and ex-sailing student of mine a few days ago, and it turns out that she had been thinking of getting into motorcycling this last year. She took and passed the MSF course and spent awhile looking at used bikes in the area, before finally deciding that now wasn't the time. I told her a bit about my experience and directed her to this blog, thinking she might be interested to see how I'd gone about it. When next we chatted, she asked me "so exactly when did you buy your bike?"

It turns out that probably within a week of when I bought Zoë, this friend of mine had also test-ridden her - or had her husband, the experienced rider in the family, take a test ride. I guess it wasn't exactly what they were looking for; Zoë went back home with her original owner, and shortly thereafter I came along. I don't know if Zoë was too tall, too torque-y, too shiny and nice, or what; I just know she wasn't exactly what my friend was looking for.

It's funny. It's a small world out there. And in a way, this feels a little bit like meeting your girlfriend's ex-boyfriend; I know Zoë's been with people before me, but dammit, that doesn't mean I want to think too much about it. She tells me she's only got eyes for me now, and I trust her not to lie about something like that... :)

My odometer rolled over the 10,000-mile mark on the commute to work this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings my long-abandoned n00b-O-Meter to something in the neighborhood of 3,832 miles. Funny, it really doesn't seem like it's been that long. I'm not at all thinking of selling Zoë, because I love her and I know I've a tremendous amount still to learn on her, but I have found myself eyeing bikes more often these days, thinking about what's next when it's truly time to move on... Maybe sometime late next year? But then again, of course, maybe never. Zoë seems to do everything I want from a bike, and she's so much hotter than the fully-faired sportbikes I see 'round here, tarted up like two-dollar whores with their Type R decals and fake-carbon panels.

Finally rode to work again today. There's still some snow on the ground up in Lynnwood and Everett, but the roads are all clear and dry. Temps are hanging out in the high 30s and low 40s, so no more snow is falling, and while it's not exactly summer riding weather, at least it's dry. I hadn't been on the bike in over a week, but she started right up and ran like a champ.

I can't say enough good things about my heated grips. My only complaint is that they're slightly too warm, even on the low setting. I've always been more tolerant of cold than of heat (hence the college in Minnesota...) and every couple of minutes I need to open my hands and let the icy air cool my palms. It's not a problem, really, but maybe one of these days I'll pick up the variable-setting Heat-Troller option and wire it in. Or I'll just stick a resistor inline with the grip heaters...

Even after only one week's break, I felt a bit of a confidence loss this morning, but it only lasted until the end of the first block. I guess some of this skill-development is sticking. :)

In other news, my girlfriend's birthday was a little bit ago, and her gift from me was a MSF Basic Rider's Course. She's stoked to try this addiction that's stolen her boyfriend from her; I'm happy that she'll have a great time and learn a bit how to behave when it's time to take her on pillion, and who knows? Maybe she'll get hooked and end up with a little Ninja of her own in the garage, so Zoë won't be so lonely on these cold winter nights.

Coming home from work tonight, traffic was fairly heavy; the freeway was at 20 miles an hour across all lanes. I was in the HOV lane, as befit my motorcyclist VIP status, but it didn't make any difference speed-wise. Conditions held that way for the first 20 minutes of the ride, and then just north of the Lake Forest Park exit, the road suddenly opened up. I gave Zoë the throttle and settled at a comfortable 70-75 mph. The speed limit here was 60, so I wasn't exactly lagging behind traffic.

Looked behind me, and there was a large black SUV coming up fast on me. He settled in literally feet from my rear wheel - maybe five, maybe ten, but far too close for our speed. Within seconds of getting there, the SUV driver turned on his brights, as I apparently wasn't quick enough to get out of the way. My first thought - "my speed is fine, if they want to pass and they're being a dick about it they can damn well change lanes" - would have been my final decision in a car, but I realized my vulnerability on the bike, accelerated to find a gap to the right, and pulled out of the lane. The SUV driver surged angrily ahead, running it up to maybe 90 in his haste to get past, and once he was well past I merged back into the HOV lane.

Without even thinking about it, I flicked my brights at him after merging back. He'd been a tremendous asshole, and I wanted to let him know it. In a car this would have been fine, but it was a big mistake on the bike. The SUV driver stepped hard on the brakes, dropping speed fast, down to maybe 40 mph. I am glad I was paying very close attention, and that traffic was light; it was no problem to scrub my speed and I never even came close to him. I don't know whether his intention was to cause a collision, or just to say "you were too slow, how does it feel?" but either way, when he realized that I was stopping as well, he accelerated away.

This is where I surprised myself. It was the hardest thing in the world to hold my slow speed, let the fucker go, and not do anything about it. I've never been an aggressive person, and so I never thought I'd have a problem slowing down and letting some asshole "win," but it was terribly difficult. When he dropped his speed my first instinct was to leave the lane and pass him, get out and away at a speed he couldn't match, but I realized I didn't want someone like that behind me, and I didn't know what he'd do. I know it was safer to let him go, but all the same, it was a real task to swallow my pride and leave it alone.

This is instructive to learn. I've always known that we can't pick fights with cagers, because we'll lose every damn time, but I never imagined that I'd have any difficulty walking away from one. I think knowing that, understanding my first reaction ahead of time, will make it a lot easier in the future - but what I still need to figure out is the reason behind my reaction. God knows I've had idiots try to get me to race off a light before, and I've never bitten; what was it about this tool that made it so personal?

...oh, and I need to stop flicking my brights at folks when they do something stupid, dangerous, or that I just plain don't approve of. You never know who's behind the wheel - are they off their meds? did their wife just leave 'em? did they just get laid off? do they fancy themselves gangstas? I really don't want to find out the answer to this question the hard way.

I've been reading David Hough's More Proficient Motorcycling: Mastering The Ride recently. It's quite similar to his first book, but focuses more on practical exercises to improve your motorcycling skills instead of the wide overview of motorcycling in general. Highly recommended; the exercises are a lot less detailed than those detailed in Parks' Total Control but are still quite useful, and the wealth of other information that Hough provides is great.

One of the focuses of an early chapter is what Hough calls "wimp-o-phobia;" the conscious / subconscious reaction we have when someone passes us, cuts us off, rides faster than us, or takes any sort of action that would imply that we're not as skilled as they are. I'd like to say that as a scientist, a "man of reason," I'm immune to this sort of thing, but it's clearly not the case. I would direct the reader's attention to my recent encounter with road rage as an example of letting my pride get in the way of a safe ride.

And while I certainly wouldn't classify it as quite the same thing, I did notice a bit of a similar reaction on the Mt St Helens ride two months ago - occasionally I did find myself pushing a bit past my percieved limits in order to keep up. It was nothing crazy, and it certainly wasn't the fault of the very talented and polite riders who were along with me - everyone was very clearly oriented on riding their own ride. But all the same, I remember entering a few corners where I was a little concerned by the end. I remember coming out of one particularly hairy S-curve in the Alder Lake twisties, and telling myself "I do not need to ride this way." I think it's instructive to keep in mind one's tendancy to push a little bit harder, the maybe-subconscious desire to be "one of the guys" instead of "that newbie who can't keep up." Maybe being mindful of this tendancy will help to keep it in check before the fact, rather than having to talk myself down when I find it starting to affect me.

As if there was any question, Hough ends (or nearly ends) the book with The Ten Commandments of Motorcycling. The very first one:

Perfect your roadcraft. Good roadcraft means being less stressed as well as avoiding awkward or dangerous situations. Be courteous and acknowledge courtesy to you. Never be provoked.

Words to remember, I think. I clearly still have a lot of work to do in this department...

Another oil change this afternoon. This time I managed to avoid spilling oil all over the damn place, too. I tend to change oil and oil filters a bit more frequently than the manual suggests; I don't know whether it does any good or not, but I figure it can't hurt. Tried another oil in an attempt to save a few bucks; last time I used Mobil-1 MX4T, at $11.95 a quart from the motorcycle dealership. Unarguably it's great stuff, but almost $50 just for the oil doesn't thrill me. At the recommendation of a Bandit-riding tech at another motorcycle store, I picked up 4L of Castrol ActEvo 10w40 for $18.95 total. According to the service folks, it's great stuff; I'm moderatly skeptical as it's not a fully synthetic oil, but what do I know?

I was due for a chain lubing today also, and of course you can't lube a cold chain effectively, so that meant a ride. It was severely cold today, just a bit above freezing when I headed out, but clear and dry. I headed back down the route I used to take to work before feeling comfortable on the freeway, along Locust Way, to see if the twisties were more fun now that I've got a vague idea of how to corner properly.

They were.

I saw a surprising amount of bikes on that little route. I guess I'm not the only one who knows about it. It's not exactly a "hidden gem" of a road, but it's a whole lot more fun than I-5 and it runs straight down to Lake City Way, so it is a good way to get into town. I spent most of the ride focusing on the cornering drills from Hough's book, and going back to the Basic Riders' Course instructions (slow, look, lean, roll), trying to smooth out my turns and pick appropriate lines. As usual, I feel better now than I did before, but I've still got a long way to go...

Hopefully one of these weekends I can get away for a longer ride again. I miss the warm (or at least not-freezing) fall days. This spring I'm going to really rack up the miles, I think.

Last night there was some pretty serious fog goin' on; heavy, thick, and opaque. Visibility was very limited. Not a big deal; slow down, leave lots of following distance, spend a lot of time wiping off your visor, and you'll be fine.

This morning, however, the dark side of the fog appeared: when I got up, my thermometer showed 29 degrees, and the fog had frozen into a thin layer of ice all over everything. There are parts of the road where it's been worn away by passing tires, but there are still patches of ice all over the place. I intended to take the Volvo to work, but noticed that there were some Very Bad Things happening under the hood before I'd gone a mile, and turned back.

Forced to try the bike, I took it very slow and easy, but still encountered an ice-driven rear wheel skid. I think the layers on the road are mostly ok, but I had to pull off to check something in my tailbag, and as soon as I reached the shoulder I felt the rear wheel lock up under braking and start to skid. I babied it down to a stop with a very light brake, realized that I should maybe just give the roads an hour or so to thaw, and headed back home.

Lessons learned:

1. Ice is not a good thing.
2. I really need to either fix my car or get a new (well, used) one to replace it.
3. At very low speeds, if you release the rear brake during a skid, you don't get flung into a deadly high-side, the way you supposedly do if you lock the rear at speed and then come off the brake. Still, I'd recommend not trying Lesson 3 at home, kids, and I'll try not to do THAT again as well.

It continues. The last two days have been cage days. Very icy in the morning, even enough to skid the Volvo, and so far too much for me on the bike. It had damn well better start warming up soon, I need my moto fix!

It's been hellaciously cold all week. I've basically been stuck in the Volvo, while Zoë languished in her tent. Last night I took her into the city to meet some friends for dinner, which wasn't exactly comfortable as the temperature dropped right quick after the sun went down, and the ride back to Lynnwood was in air just above freezing. I'm starting to seriously consider a Gerbing or Widder 'lectric vest...

Today, though, it was a little bit warmer, in the low 40s, and with clear skies and sun, I couldn't resist taking the bike out. Lots of errands to do this morning, but I finally got everything taken care of around 3pm and had some time to just ride. I broke out my long-neglected copy of Destination Highways Washington and looked for interesting, short roads in the Everett/Lynnwood area, and found what they call SEA TE-F (Lowell-Larimer Rd - Marsh Rd). This is a short section of two-lane shoulderless road, winding through the "farmburbs" just south of Everett. The west side of the road rises into low hills which cut the road off from I-5, just a few miles to the west; the east side of the road drops down to the plain cut by the Snohomish river and countless little creeks, and in the distance the Cascades tower over everything, well-snowcapped and lit by the last of the daylight.

By the time I got to the road, the light was just starting to fade into early evening. Temperatures were beginning to fall off, but my heated grips kept the chill at bay for a while. There was still a bit of snow along the edges of the road, and a few patches of gleaming white ice here and there, which I managed to avoid. The Lowell-Larimer section of the ride wasn't all that twisty, but the poor condition of the road and presence of ice kept me slow and on my toes. Not many other cars around, which was a plus. The final section, Marsh Road, heads straight east through the fields to meet up with Rte. 9, and has a couple of quick and exciting 15-mph turns to challenge the unwary.

All in all, though, this route wasn't anywhere near as interesting as the short ride on the Olympic Peninsula that I took from this book back in September. I wandered about until I found my way back home, and then realizing that I hadn't had any particularly challenging or exciting twisties, I decided to hit good ol' Locust Way as the sun finished setting. As usual, Locust was a good place to work on my form and practice my lines, as it's only very slightly twisty - just enough to make you work, not enough to make you work hard.

It looks like this cold-and-dry snap is over. Forecast calls for rain and higher temps for at least the next few days. While I won't welcome the rain, getting out of this thirty-degree weather will be nice.

Warmer today, and since the rains started again, the last remnants of snow are all gone. I took the bike today, and learned (again) the discomfort of leaking raingear. As always, my Firstgear overpants leak in the crotch - an artifact of the seating position on my bike, where the downslope of the tank and position of my legs forms a little depression where water collects and seeps through the zipper. When I got out of my gear at work, after a half hour in pretty light rain, I looked like I'd long since abandoned bladder control. The jacket's all right on the inside, so that's what counts, but the outer layer gets so waterlogged that the whole thing adds about 10 pounds.

I'm starting to think that by next winter I need to just suck up the tremendous price and buy myself an Aerostich Roadcrafter suit. The internet is full of glowing reviews of this suit; not as abrasion resistant as a full suit of leathers, but close; almost entirely waterproof; comfortable in just about any conditions; about 15 pockets; high quality; the best customer service in the world. Of course, I'll look exactly like a Power Ranger, instead of just a little bit, in my neon-blue jumpsuit, but what can ya do?

Also, I found a pretty damn good deal on another XM Radio unit today; actually, about the best possible deal, as it was free. It's the Audiovox XR9/XCS9. I picked it up as it is a cradle-mount unit, rather than having individual wires plug straight into it, which should be less of a hassle when mounting. It has a better screen as well. It's also a bit bigger than the Roady, though, and looks a little out of place on the bike - and the buttons look a lot tougher to work with gloves on. I'm not yet sure which one I'll end up using, but for the price you can't go wrong. The real reason I picked it up, though, was that its power adaptor and antenna are exactly the same as the Roady's. I was intending to buy an adaptor and antenna seperately so that I could use the unit both on the bike and in the car, without having to un-wire everything to transfer it over, but the cheapest adaptor I could find was $10 and the cheapest antenna, $29. Free for both is a much better price. :)

We are warned constantly that diesel fuel, oil, and all that good stuff is slippery as hell. We are told to watch for it on the roads, avoid it when possible, and keep the bike vertical and the speed constant when forced to ride over the stuff. We are told that if we don't do these things, we will lose traction and crash dramatically.

This is true. Please remember it in the future, O gentle readers.

Your humble narrator encountered a nice, large oilslick this morning coming in to work. There is a building near the UW Hospital that's under construction - a Genomics facility, I believe - and there's a constant stream of trucks involved in that construction. One of them today was obviously in need of some maintenance, as it had spread oil over most of the lane. I noticed it, realized there was no way to avoid it other than the sidewalk, and steeled myself to pass over it. And then, of course, realized that I was half a block from an intersection, the light was red, and there was traffic in it. No choice but to try and stop on the oil.

This is a challenging task. I was luckily not going too quickly. Knowing that the front brake was off-limits, I brought Zoë to a stop with the rear only. The real wheel locked and skidded when my speed dropped low enough, and despite what I've been told, I feathered the brake and let the wheel spin back up. At crawling speeds I'm not worried about a high-side; I am worried about skidding the rear 90 degrees from my line of travel, though.

All ended well, and the shiny side stayed up, though the pedestrians on the sidewalk were no doubt treated to an interesting sight. I'm just glad that I didn't encounter this on a steep downhill grade; I wonder what could have been done in that situation?

I just finished The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles by Melissa Holbrook Pierson. This is a book that every rider of a philosophical bent should certainly read. This book is part historical investigation into the early days of motorcycling, part travelogue, part paen to the Moto Guzzi (of which Pierson is an utter devotee), and very well written. Pierson's prose is very inventive and humorous, self-deprecating at times, and well informed. I get the impression that she's a quietly competant rider, rather than a brilliant, race-winning one, and you won't find tips for perfecting your lines or installing an aftermarket exhaust here, but you will find a wonderful exposition of what it is that draws us to our bikes, to the feelings that dwell in our minds on the back of our bikes, in the rain, at night, at speed.

I'd recommend it highly, and I'll be passing it on to my girlfriend tonight, to hopefully explain (in part) what I feel when I'm riding, in words more beautiful than those I can manage.

Today - all day - was Valve Adjustment Day. I was significantly overdue for it, from a milage standpoint, as a valve adjustment was called for at 7500 miles, and Zoë's just over 10k now, but I figure: better late than never. It seemed like a pretty time-consuming and technically demanding task, and so I called on the infinite knowledge of the S-T.n folks, as well as my Suzuki and Haynes service manuals, and figured I could probably slog my way through it.

The time-consuming part of this service is not the valve adjustment itself, but rather the disassembly required to get the valves exposed. In short, the seat, fuel tank, spark plugs, "breather," left-side fairing mount, and a variety of assorted hoses need to be removed and set aside before the valve cover can be taken off. Getting the cover off is also extremely challenging, as long as the engine's within the frame, as clearance is extremely limited - it tends to catch up on the cam chain assembly, and took some finagling to get removed.

Here's a pic of Zoë sans seat, tank, and rear side panels.

...and once the parts are all off, they should be set aside in a safe and relatively clean place, as the task is only beginning... Here you can see the valve cover to the left; its bolts have been replaced so none of them go missing. Above is the tank, with vent hoses still trailing from it; fuel and vac hoses were disconnected and remained on the bike. The aluminum box in the middle is the breather, which bolts on to the top of the valve cover; I had to remove it in order to get the valve cover out of the frame. Plugs are lined up at the top of the shot, in cylinder order.

Here's a shot of the innards of the engine, beneath the valve cover. You can see the dual camshafts, one on each side of the shot, and the cam chain running left to right near the middle. The #1 and #2 cylinders are shown, #1 closest to the camera. The spring-lookin' things to the left of the cylinders are the exhaust valves for #1 and #2; the intake valves are hidden by the camshaft in the right of the shot.

More valve porn. This is from the other side of the bike; you're looking at the #4 and #3 cylinders here. #4 is closest to the camera. Intake valves are apparent on the left side of the shot, and the exhaust valves are on the right.

(at least I hope I identified the intake valves vs the exhaust valves correctly, or this adjustment was a very, very bad idea.)

After exposing the valves for adjustment, the cover needs to be taken off the signal generator, on the right side of the bike. Here is a shot inside the signal generator. Using a large (19mm) wrench, one rotates the cams using the big nut inside the signal generator until the cams are properly aligned to allow valve adjustment. At a given cam position, you can adjust either #1 Intake and Exhaust / #2 Intake / #3 Exhaust, or #2 Exhaust / #3 Intake / #4 Intake and Exhaust, so the cam is set, the valves in a given set are checked, and then the cam is advanced and the other set adjusted.

On the Bandit motor, the intake and exhaust valves are set to different values; .004 - .006" for intake, and .007" - .009" for exhaust. The actual adjustment procedure is pretty straightforward; measure the valve gap with an appropriately-sized feeler gauge, and if adjustment is necessary, loosen the locknut with an 8mm wrench and set the setscrew with the Ghetto Valve Adjustment Tool (a square-drive screw in the end of a dowel, made by yours truly because no local shop had the Suzuki tool in stock). Adjust, re-tighten, check, and move to the next valve. The only reason this was time-consuming was that I adjusted all 16 of them, and then repeated it because I wanted to make sure...and found that I'd adjusted every one too loose. No idea how that happened. So I repeated it twice more to be certain, and torqued down all the locknuts tight. I hear it's bad news if one comes loose when the engine's running.

I did the measurement by sticking in the appropriate-sized feeler gauge - I used .005" and .008" for intake and exhaust, respectively - tightening the locknut down, and then adjusting to juuuust a bit of pressure on the gauge. I'm not sure if this was the right way to do it or not, but when I went back to check after the fact I checked both the size I originally set it to, and a slightly larger gauge (.008" / .010"). As long as the original size still fit and the larger one did not, I called it good. If there is another method, I'd love to hear about it.

All that was left was to put everything back in reverse order. I sprayed down the valve cover with contact cleaner to make sure there weren't any little bits of gravel waiting to work their magic on the inside of my engine, spread some liquid gasket on the appropriate junction points, and buttoned everything back up.

She runs. I have no idea whether I made anything better; pretty much all the valves were too tight, initially, and now they're spot-on. When I lit her up after the adjustment, she went right into a very smooth idle, where normally I'd have to use some choke to get her running. She also used to hang at higher RPMs for a moment after coming off the throttle, when in neutral; in my short run this evening, I didn't see that, so I'm hopeful that I've tuned her a little bit better than she was. But that remains to be seen.

While this was a time-consuming task (probably 5-6 hours all told), it wasn't a particularly hard one. If you've got a valve adjustment coming up, give it a shot! I feel a lot more comfortable about exactly what's going on inside the mill now than I did before.

When I'm on the bike, I try to empty my mind of distractions and focus on the ride. For the most part I'm pretty good at it; obviously I still need some work, but the majority of the time I'm riding I'm not paying much attention to anything but the ride. I feel this is a pretty important thing to minimize risk.

But occasionally I'm ambushed by some really sticky thought; something important I forgot to do, or a complicated problem at work, or whatever, and I can't for the life of me get it out of my head. I can push it away briefly, but it always seems to come crawling back. I really don't feel comfortable when I'm distracted like that; I know my reflexes are pretty good, and my instincts are right more often than not, but I'd rather not trust my safety on two wheels entirely to them.

This mental focus is something that still needs my attention.

Today I managed to avoid my first "performance award" on the bike. For those not in the know, that's another term for "speeding ticket." Coming in to work this morning on I-5, right around the King County - Snohomish County border, I got lasered or radared by a police officer hanging out on a freeway overpass, with a pursuit car waiting on the other side. A classic setup, and one that I'd warned myself about literally minutes before - I see cars pulled over right around there every day. As soon as I got under the overpass, I saw a car merging onto the freeway, and suspected I was busted; the lights came on as soon as he got close to me.

At this point I wasn't angry, or sad, or anything - I knew I'd been speeding, and I figured I'd earned it. No real hurry; I got calmly to the shoulder, signaling each merge, and stopped the bike. Pulled off my gloves and helmet, and then tried to stow the earphones for my XM; I'm still not entirely certain whether it's legal to ride with them in. Then I waited.

The officer was younger than I am. He didn't come out swinging, just politely asked for license "and registration, if you've got it on you." Asked me how fast I was going, and I stammered something about how my speedo was indicating 72 but that probably equated to 68 in the real world. Yeah, I know, real smooth, especially since the speedo was actually indicating closer to 80 (74 true, give or take). He obviously wasn't buying it, and I don't blame him. He mentioned that he'd clocked me at 75, and I expressed some surprise.

He took my ID to his car, and did whatever it is cops do when they're deciding whether to write you a ticket or not - background checks of some sort, I'm sure. I spent a few sketchy minutes standing by the bike waiting, with freeway traffic hurtling past, before he came back, "suggested" that I keep it to 60 in the future, and reversed his way back up the shoulder into ambush position. I headed on to work a very shaky man.

First note to self: do not hop right back on the bike after getting stopped. My riding was, frankly, bad on the way to work - I was twitchy and anything but smooth on the bars, as well as distracted. I didn't even think to pull over and take a break, I was so distracted. I think that I was enough in the ride to handle whatever came at me, but I am glad that nothing tested that guess.

Second note: listen to instincts. I knew that there were cops waiting at that overpass, because there always are. I warned myself to keep my speed down, but the speed of traffic was at just over 70, and I feel very uncomfortable going at the same speed as everyone else and disappearing into their blind spots.

I'd earned a ticket today, and I'm just a lucky fellow that the officer let me off with a warning. I don't know what I did to get let off - was it the quick and safe pulling-over? the full armor and reflective gear? the non-race-lookin' bike? the fact that I'm a tax-paying middle-class property owner? I've got no idea. I'd hope not to test this question too much in the future, though.

Someone posted this on the ST-n forums, and it's beautiful. So I stole it. As usual.

edited: I've been informed by Doug of Forty Years on Two Wheels that this essay was originally written by Dave Karlotski, and can be found here. Also, it's actually called "Season of the Bike." So now you know.

Season of the Bike, by Dave Karlotski

There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.

Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you're changed forever.

The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right next to your sex and weight as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition. But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price.

A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time, entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.

On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than Pana-Vision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard.

Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar.

But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed. At 30 miles per hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony.

Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it's as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it. A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul.

It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane.

Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It's a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it's a conduit of grace, it's a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.

I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a handful of bikes over half a dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery.

Learning to ride was one of the best things I've done.

Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The air- conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep." Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.

In between posts detailing the minutiae of mechanical adjustments on my bike and others railing against drivers who terrify me with their incompetance, I sometimes forget to express the feelings that occur to me when I'm out for a ride and everything goes right. When the rain's holding itself at bay for a while, and the traffic's light, and the road's just twisty enough to be exciting, and it's warm enough that I can feel my fingers and toes after the first 10 minutes, and I don't get pulled over, and I'm free to just run the tach up and experience the ride.

I really love this sport. I think I even love it when I'm not out on that kind of a ride, when I'm stuck in the gridlock and the drizzly, cold winter and the moments of terror, but when everything's going right, riding a motorcycle is an amazing experience.

I'm sometimes reminded of one sailing trip about six months ago, on a 40-something foot square-rigged ketch, when I climbed the foremast and planted myself at the crosstree where the big square sails are set. We were under power when I climbed up, heading back to Seattle through Agate Pass, and sheltered from the wind by the back of Bainbridge Island, but when we emerged from the pass the wind came in from the south, and the skipper unfurled her three big crimson and white foresails, white main, and red mizzen, and the boat heeled as the wind filled in and she found her pace. There I was, 50' from the deck, my feet on a swaying rope ladder with wooden rungs, and my arm crooked over the yardarm, all alone in the whole world. The motion of the deck is amplified by the length of the mast, and as the boat moved through the waves my perch swung through a wide arc, and there was no sound but the rushing of the wind and the metal-on-metal clanging of assorted rigging, the snap of the sails and the splashing as the bow moved through the water.

That same sense of danger held knowingly at bay, of exhilarating speed, of being solely responsible for your own safety, and of being seperate from everyone and everything else is a feeling that recurs time and again on my bike. I think it satisfies some deep-seated desire for adventure that we don't often see fulfilled in our sanitary, mostly safe, engineered world. I'm glad I've discovered this sport, and I hope to pursue it for a long time to come.

So in a hurry out the door yesterday, I set my helmet down in a plastic-covered bed in the hospital while I adjusted my jacket armor. The plastic was slippery, the bed was at a tiny bit of an angle, and off it went; THUNK! four feet down to the hard hospital floor. There's no apparent damage, but the conventional wisdom is that if you drop your helmet, you need to replace it, as the foam interior may have compressed under the impact.

I wish there was some way to tell for sure whether anything's happened; it wasn't a hard impact, but it may have been hard enough. I'm not looking forward to the expense of a new lid, but it's my melon we're talking about protecting, so I suppose I'll bite the bullet and replace it. By and large I've been happy with this helmet (an HJC) but I've heard really good things about some of the Scorpions. Maybe I'll see how they feel...

It's been some time since my last post - sorry, dear readers.

I replaced my helmet with a new Scorpion EXO-700 and I couldn't be happier. This helmet is, quite simply, better. The fit is better, it's quieter, it has a no-fog visor that actually works, the ventilation is awesome, and it feels a lot more sturdy. It is slightly heavier than the HJC, but not enough to make a difference. I'd highly recommend it. There was some news awhile back about an EXO-700 failing a randomly-administered impact and penetration test but apparently neither DOT nor Snell chose to withdraw their endorsement of the helmet or issue a recall; I'm therefore only very slightly concerned. Still, I kinda wish no-one had told me that piece of news, or that they'd told me before I bought the EXO...

There have recently been a couple of little "snapshots" of the things that make motorcycling a wonderful experience. Last Friday, riding home from a party hosted by a couple of riding friends, I found myself on I5 in a thick fog. Visibility was fine, but the lights of the cars ahead of me were blurred and haloed by the fog, and the freeway was mostly empty, and Pink Floyd's Echoes was playing on the XM. If you're not familiar with Floyd you may not understand the powerful sense of otherworldliness that this song can engender, but between that and the fog and the speed, I felt very alone, and very free.

...and yesterday, after merging from I5 to 525 on my way home, I found myself in the right lane with a newer Lexus sedan in the left. I glanced over and saw an adorable little blond girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, with her face pressed up against the inside of the back-seat window, staring in rapt attention at me. I waved to her, and she returned it with a wide smile. I guess some of us fall in love with motorcycles earlier than others.

It's clear that I've been doing this for a little while, now; the daily trials and tribulations of a commuting motorcyclists are starting to not faze me so much. Case in point: yesterday, on my ride home from work, a city bus decided to merge into my lane. I was in the far left (carpool) lane, and this big articulated bus started a merge without signalling as I was passing him. I'd been watching, I was ready, and I got on the horn, shifted to the far left edge of my lane, and got ready to avoid either by accelerating or, more likely, pulling just out of the lane into the breakdown lane. It turned out the driver just hadn't seen me; he looked when he heard the horn and aborted his merge until I was past.

The interesting thing, for me, was the fact that my heart rate didn't even pick up. The problem was solved in seconds, and the ride went on. This is a common problem we face, and though it can be highly dangerous, perception of the traffic around us and being ready to act at all times can pretty much deal with it.

I took Jen out for her first rides on the back of the bike this weekend; on Saturday, a quick jaunt around on some of the slightly-twisty roads around here, then back home on the freeway. Maybe about a half hour out, all told. I rode as carefully and as smoothly as I could, paid close attention to being gentle and even on the brakes, and generally tried to make her feel as comfortable as possible on the back, and when we got back home, Jen's first comment was something along the lines of "Wow, that was awesome!" Her second, of course, was "Could you go any faster next time?" Heh, heh, heh. Yes. Yes I can. :)

Sunday morning we rode out for brunch at a little cafe in Edmonds, and I was able to ride a little bit more aggressively; at least, not slowing to 15 before every corner, adding a little bit of lean, and generally riding a bit closer to my usual style (which, admittedly, isn't very hardcore). Good times. I like having her along, although Zoë definitely labors a bit more with another person on the back.

I feel like a lot of the agility that I take for granted is gone; the bike is much more difficult to turn, taking a lot more pressure on the bars. Front brake authority seems to fade as well; I have to use a lo t more of the rear. And it's a real challenge to keep my arms bent when decelerating; a lot of Jen's weight is transferred to me, and it's difficult to hold both of us up with my abs and back alone. Locking my arms against the bars helps, but of course that makes it very difficult to make fine steering adjustments.

And, of course, the acceleration I'm used to is gone. I think the best excuse I've yet seen for a bigger bike, for more horsepower at the rear wheel, is the challenge of taking a passenger. Maybe I do need that Speed Triple after all. :)

Today, a group of S-T.n folks decided to take advantage of the holiday and head out for a winter's ride. It was a relatively cold day in the mid-to-high 30s, but clear and (for the most part) dry. The seven of us met up at the Mukilteo ferry dock this morning around 9:30 for the ride to Whidbey Island. The plan was to cover the length of Whidbey, then head back to the mainland near Anacortes and back down into Seattle. This worked out, for me, to be about 130 miles, give or take, and no doubt more for the folks coming from Seattle and south of there.

On the ferry ride over, there was a single State Trooper sent up front with us bikers, and I thought it was an interesting picture: we've got you surrounded, Officer!

Whidbey Island is pretty lightly developed; the only good-sized community on the island is the town of Oak Harbor, which surrounds a naval air station operating one of the few Prowler squadrons still around. Most of the ride, then, was through agricultural and rural areas, along a two-lane undivided road, and there was an unfortunate amount of car traffic slowing us up. Large sections of Hwy. 525 on the island are marked with double-yellows, even when there's clear view in all directions and plenty of room to pass; I'm convinced they did it just to piss us off. Anyway, we made pretty good time. The group stayed pretty close together, rather than rubber-banding out as on the Mt St Helens ride, with the notable exception of Montyburns on his Bandit 1200, who had to pull off and warm his tragically frigid hands. I think we sold him on heated grips with this ride.

Near the north end of Whidbey, as we approached Deception Pass and the bridge to Fidalgo Island, a light dusting of snow began to fall. It was a very surreal experience, tearing along clear roads in a convoy of cyclists, warm and dry inside my gear, and watching snow drift down to disintegrate on my visor. We stopped at a restaurant on Fidalgo that one of our number had been to before, but they were renovating their kitchen and couldn't serve much food. We decided to try anyway, which was a mistake: the food was pretty damn bad, served on paper plates with plastic silverware, and the kitchen-renovators were hard at work with their powertools. It was described by one of us as "like having a picnic in a construction zone."

After lunch we headed back to the mainland, and were guided back towards Seattle along an interesting and terribly-confusing series of two-lane roads, rather than slabbing it down along I5. I am confidant that I couldn't retrace that path if I needed to, so I'm glad at least one of the others knew it well. I guessed at the route shown above for this second leg, and though I'd guess I'm pretty close, I certainly wouldn't swear to it.

I felt very good about my riding today; it certainly wasn't as technically challenging as parts of the St Helens ride, but there were some very nice sweepers and a few sharper corners. I know the others could probably have taken them quite a bit faster, but I get the sense that no-one was riding at 10/10ths, myself included. I've clearly been learning quite a lot in the months since my last group ride, and feel a lot more comfortable on the road with others. As usual, Zoë was the smallest bike on the road, but she kept up just fine.

New Gear Report: I picked up a Gerbing heated vest yesterday, in anticipation of a cold ride today, and I am positively sold. I wired it to the battery last night, and added a rheostat for fine temperature control, and with the vest and grips running, today's weather was no problem. The Gerbing doesn't just make you not-cold, though - it seems to give that same beautiful sensation of bone-deep heat as lying in front of a roaring fire. It's a wonderful addition to my gear, and I'm sure will make winter riding much more comfortable.

The vest I chose has a tall heated collar which comes to my chin, and that keeps my neck nice and warm, and keeps some of the cold wind off my face as well. It's slightly loose, which isn't optimum; I'm not sure if I should have a smaller size or not, but it does seem to keep me very comfortable. We'll see; maybe it can be altered if needed. I wore it today over a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt and was more than satisfied.

I was on vacation in Lake Tahoe this last weekend, snowboarding and hanging out with a bunch of old high school friends, and on the way back I happened to notice a group of folks who looked like riders: Alpinstars backpacks, Ducati hats, and various gear of the sort. We chatted a bit in the airport, I mentioned something about track days, and one of them suggested I look into the Northeast Sportbike Association. Turns out NESBA has a number of upcoming track days in the Seattle area, and better than that, has an intro program that's free!

I, of course, signed up for the first session I could make, which will be July 15th. Apparently what you get for your hard-earned $0 is a classroom/lecture session, and two 20-minute sessions on the track. The paying customers get all day, but the first two sessions ought to be a hint as to whether this is the sort of thing I'd be interested in doing, and it's generally possible to "upgrade" after those two sessions if it seems like fun. I'll wager it will be, but there's never anything wrong with free.

Reading more about this and chatting with others, I'm really looking forward to it very much. I think it'll be a great opportunity to push my skills a little bit, and to maybe get some advice from more experienced riders. I kinda wish I could get a chance to do this before the Massive West Coast May Ride, but my schedule is pretty tight before that point. If I do end up enjoying the track day and joining NESBA, there are a bunch of track times every year that I might want to take advantage of.

In other news, I've been planning and scheming for some time about a long ride this spring, and the majority of the planning has now been completed. I have arranged for just under three weeks off work to ride down the coast this May, visit friends, and check out some of the more interesting roads I can find. I've so far been planning mostly the southbound leg of the trip, which will involve catching the Sport-Touring.net West Coast Regional Meet in Fortuna, hanging out with an ex-girlfriend in Oregon, dropping by Santa Barbara to see my parents and friends, three or four days in San Diego with a long-lost elementary school buddy that I'm dying to see, and the exciting roads down the left edge of the country. There's a lot to see and a lot of very exciting roads, along which the route is still very much in flux, but I've picked up a lot of good suggestions from ST-n and other sites scattered across the web.

The trip back is something I've barely considered. I'm on the fence as to whether I should come back along the same (or at least a similar) path, or whether I should branch out a bit and return up through Nevada and Idaho. The desert's got some beautiful scenery (and some nice, long, straight roads to play with the top end a bit) but it'll be hotter than hell in late May, and I've always been a forests-and-oceans kind of guy. Honestly I may not even decide until I'm on the road, but we'll wait and see.

I may be able to get a riding cam setup by then, depending on finances, and I think it'd be extremely cool to put together a little video of the trip... In my head, I've already got a lot of the music picked out.

Today Zoë got a long-awaited washing. Not much worth describing here, except that I bought one of those spray-on-and-rinse-off Wundercleaners, and it's crap. She's really not that much cleaner than she was beforehand. Next time, something that requires some scrubbing will be tried. Anyway, I'm not much of a neatfreak; I just want a bit of the road dust off, and the hose may be enough for that.

Cleaning included cleaning the chain. Since all instructions on chain care say that it should be "warmed up" with a ride after cleaning but before re-lubing, I broke out my Destination Highways book and found a quick little run nearby; more of what the book calls "Twisted Edges," which are shorter than the titular Highways but kind of fun. For those following around at home, the route shown below is what the book refers to as SEA TE-G and SEA TE-H.

Some nice curves here, the occasional surprise where the suggested 15mph limit really meant it, but mostly an easy meander along the Snohomish River, through farmland and very rural surroundings. I noticed an interesting dichotomy between sprawling new houses, built no doubt for folks from Seattle looking to run to the exurbs and buy a nice big place, and the small and run-down places that no doubt stood there long before dot-coms and Redmond money, when the farms were still the moneymaker in the area.

Not much traffic at all, and not a single police sighting, for which I'm grateful. I still ride rather slowly and conservatively for fear of tickets, and even 10 over feels creeping on these roads, where I know I could be comfortable quite a bit higher. I spent the time instead focusing on smooth braking technique, and smooth throttle-to-brake transitions. Zoë is a little choppy in the low end of the rev range, but I find it a lot easier to be smooth up around 5500-6500 RPM and try to hold her in that band. That's not really the "powerband" per se, as the juice keeps coming on up to about 11k, but it's a comfortable place to ride.

I tried to retrace my steps on the way back without looking at my maps, and so managed to get lost in a warren of rural roads. I eventually guessed my way back to Hwy 2, which drops back into I5, and followed that home. All in all, a nice 50-mile ride on a lazy grey Sunday.

These rides always leave me hungry for longer trips. Soon...

Not the best week for my riding, folks. No, nobody got hurt, but I've been off the bike since Saturday and it looks like that's going to continue at least through this weekend.

Saturday, it was time to replace my aging (and ailing) chain and sprockets, as the chain could be easily pulled aft to expose most of a tooth on the rear sprocket. That's generally the sign that the chain has stretched too much for healthy use, and I've heard enough horror stories about what happens when a chain fails that I wasn't going to take any chances. Stopped by a dealer in Seattle who sold me a pair of shiny sprockets, a nice new X-ring chain, and a Motion Pro riveting/chain breaking tool, and I was off home to wrench.

First thing I noticed was that my rear tire was a lot further along in the wear department than I'd thought. Surprised I hadn't noticed it before, I resolved not to ride on it until it was replaced. I immediately got an order out for a new set of tires: Metzler Z6s which are pretty well thought of among Bandit riders. I won't be able to mount these myself, but the mounting cost at my local dealers isn't bad.

First, breaking the front sprocket loose. The service manuals suggest putting the bike in gear, having an assistant stand on the rear brake, and going to work with a breaker bar, as the torque on the countershaft sprocket nut is huge. I learned on assorted Bandit forums that a better way to do it is to leave the transmission in neutral and slip a 2x4 through the rear wheel above the swingarm; this way there's no stress on the gears, and the 2x4 holds the wheel and chain very securely. I popped the countershaft sprocket off, removed the rear wheel to change the rear sprocket, then broke the chain and removed it. Breaking the chain was very simple: using a heavyduty cut-off wheel and my handy Dremel, I ground the head off one of the rivets, and then pushed it out using the Motion Pro tool. Easy.

Installing the new sprockets was likewise simple. Installing the chain went smoothly until it was time to rivet the master link into place; I assembled everything, set up the tool, and went to work. It took a surprising amount of torque on the tool to get the rivets properly set; I twisted, and suddenly, with a muted "whump" sound, the tool split in two right along the center. That disturbed me; it was a hundred-dollar tool, and I wasn't particularly cranking on it. It's going back to the dealer as soon as I have time, assuming I still have the reciept, which I'm pretty sure I don't... As it is, though, the tool is useless, and I'm not even certain the chain is fully seated.

Then it was time to tighten everything down and go for a ride to warm the new chain. Chain tensioners adjusted, everything in place, I bolted the rear caliper to its mounting bracket and went to attach the torque arm to it. For some reason, the torque arm was offset from the caliper by about a quarter inch. Uh-oh.

I removed the rear wheel again, verified that every part was there, in order, and in place, and reassembled. Still offset. I was able to get it into place with a bit of tension, but I don't believe there's supposed to be any tension. Now I was getting very worried, so I posted my problem to a couple of message boards in the hopes of getting some hints.

At this point, my only working hypotheses are that the torque arm is somehow bent, or that the problem is the deeply-worn status of my rear brake pad. Pad is going to get replaced anyway, and when that happens and the tires go on, we'll see if the problem's resolved. If not, I guess I'll have to take it to a shop and see what they make of it.

In other (unrelated) news, I've got a replacement rear shock on the way as well, parted out from an '05 Hayabusa. It's generally understood that the Bandit shocks are weak, and that replacing them is a quick and cheap way to improve your ride. Busa shocks are pretty much a drop-in replacement on second-generation Bandits, so this ought to be an easy mod. I haven't yet figured out what if anything I can do about the front suspension, but I'd like to get Zoë in the best order I can before my West Coast ride and the track day shortly thereafter.

Right now, though, I just want to ride. I've been driving all this week, and it looks like I won't get the tires on until early next week at the earliest. Very sad - it's been absolutely perfect, beautiful riding weather around here.

Turns out the Metzlers I ordered late on Monday didn't get processed until Tuesday, and then they were out of stock on one of them, and so they weren't shipped until yesterday. Soooooo, no tires until next Monday, which means no riding this weekend. Very sad for me. I ordered from Southwest Moto Tires, and yesterday I wrote them to inqure about the order. I guess my email was a little too formal and I must have sounded like I was complaining, because their reply was perhaps a bit too confrontational for my taste. That said, their prices are great, and the folks on the forums I read have been extremely satisfied with their service, so I'm not going to worry about it.

I've also got a ScottOiler in the mail. I've heard really good things about this particular automatic chain-lubing device in terms of prolonging chain life, and it looks relatively easy to install. Anything that will make my upcoming trip easier would be great, and not having to lube the chain after every day of riding will be nice.

I guess (if everything goes to plan) that I'll be able to ride again next Wednesday, at the earliest...

Point The First: The fine folks at Aurora Suzuki, where I picked up my chain and sprocket and chain riveting tool, were kind enough to take back the shattered tool and give me a shiny new one, despite my lack of any reciept or proof that I'd even bought it there. They told me "If this one breaks too, just bring it back here, we'll take care of you." Big kudos for the excellent service. To reward them for their kindness, I bought four quarts of ActEvo 10w40, and a filter, and a set of pads for the rear brake.

Point The Second: I have not been paying attention to the status of my rear brake pads. I thought maybe it was about time to replace them, thought they might be implicated somehow in the rear caliper problems I'd been having, so I bought and installed a new set. The originals were much further gone than I'd expected: the friction pad material was completely gone, and the rear pads were well into the metal-on-metal action. Maybe that's the reason I've been having some sensitivity problems with the rear brake; I expect metal-to-metal binds up much quicker. Anyway, the replacement was easy and quick, and I now have thick new pads. Luckily I got to it before the rear disc was heavily grooved; I think it's okay to keep. I recall that discs are a lot more expensive than pads.

Point The Third: Oil and oil filter change this weekend along with the new pads. Nothing to report. Oil changes have never been hard, and this was no exception.

Point The Fourth: Zoë is down at Lynnwood Cycle Barn, waiting for her new Metzlers to be installed. Riding her there tonight, the new pad on the rear brake felt completely different than the previous situation; very loose. I was able to brake properly, and modulate my pressure on the rear much more effectively. New pads are good. I know my front pads still have some life in them, but I've been watching those much more closely than the rear. New sprockets and chain seem to work wonderfully; no lash on deceleration, and nice smooth power when I roll on. Still, I've been off the bike for a long time, and I need to get out on a longer ride and get back into the swing of it.

I'm really looking forward to getting the Z6s on and seeing how differently the Zoë handles than she did on the Bridgestones she shipped with. I'm sure they were fine tires when they were installed (back in '00 or '01) but it is definitely time for a new set. When she comes back, I've got a Scottoiler to install, and then - this weekend - I need to get some miles under my belt.

The work is pretty much all done. Zoë is turning into an amazing amalgamation of parts, a Frankenbandit, but so far the net outcome seems to be very much a positive one.

First, a report on the Z6s: they are a night-and-day difference from the battered old stock Bridgestones that were on the bike before. They feel like they absorb a lot of the road chatter that I used to notice; they feel very solid. My braking distance is down, my corners feel tighter, and even in the rain they seem very stable and secure. Some folks get good life out of these, 10K miles or so, and others burn through them in 5; I'm waiting to see how long they last, but from a performance standpoint they are a definite upgrade.

Yesterday I installed the Hayabusa shock, helped by the fine folks at the Maximum-Suzuki forums. For a second-gen Bandit like mine, this is a very simple exchange; remove the stock shock and bolt the 'Busa shock in. The 'Busa shock is a bit larger, though, as seen in the picture below, and clearance is tight. In order to make room for the big reservoir (or whatever it is) at the top end of the shock, one of the two small plastic tabs needs to be ground off of the airbox cover. Not a big deal, though getting everything disassembled enough to reach the airbox with my Dremel was a bit of a task. Here are the two shocks, for comparison: the shiny 'Busa shock is on top, and the old stock shock is below.

On the upside, the ride with the new shock is significantly cleaner. The front end still bounces pretty hard for bumps in the road, but the rear feels a lot more planted, a lot smoother. I'm not an experienced enough rider that I can really explain the difference, but I feel more in control. Additionally, and somewhat strangely, it feels like the bike is easier to drop into a turn, and also a bit less stable in crosswind. I expect this is an artifact of the downside of this mod; the 'Busa shock is about an inch longer than the stock. That means the rear of the bike is now an inch higher; I would be willing to bet that this has changed the rake and trail geometry of the front end a bit. Also, the centerstand no longer lifts the rear wheel clear of the ground. When stopped, it's a bit more work to balance the bike, and walking it around is less convenient than it used to be. I can still stand flat-footed, but it's a close thing. I may need to investigate the possibility of getting some different dogbones to bring the rear back down to its pre-Busa shock level. I am not 100% positive that I like the new handling; I certainly like the plusher ride, but I intend to do some long tours, and the old pokey Bandit may be less tiring to ride for hours at a time than the new, more spirited one.

I also installed my Scottoiler. This was another simple project; the reservoir itself is in my tailsection, under the seat. I didn't bother with pictures of this, as I basically followed the manufacturer's instructions to the letter. There's nothing I can say about this product until I've got lots of miles on it, but I am looking forward to automating my chain maintenance - especially now that the centerstand won't get the rear wheel off the ground...

I took her out for a quick hundred-mile spin just to get a sense for how everything's working together, and everything seems right nice. My only concern is the ride height, and, of course, the lack of any adjustments for the stock front forks, but addressing that problem will be a very expensive thing to do. We'll have to wait and see.

Well. Today was my ERC, up at the Everett range, in a parking lot at the Boeing production facility. 12 students. Of those 12, 10 were on V-twin cruisers, about two-thirds Harley and one-third metric. Then there was a nice older fellow on a Honda ST1300, and Zoë and I. The short version: today's course was very good for my self-esteem, and a reassuring reminder that I have in fact been learning quite a lot since I started riding.

The majority of the exercises were very simple, and similar to the BRC tasks: quick stops, cornering, swerving, the U-Turn Box, and slaloming through cones. There was one exercise that we didn't see before; the Kidney Bean, a set of linked curves that formed the general shape of a kidney, and I suppose would be challenging to a freeway-only rider. However, since I've made a point of looking for curvy roads, it was a particularly easy one. With the exception of one turn in the U-Turn Box, I felt very comfortable all day long, very relaxed, and very secure in my riding.

After the class, one of the instructors came up to me and mentioned "Thanks so much for coming; you are AWESOME on that bike." I was very surprised to hear that; I don't know whether it's a comment on my riding skill, or on the fact that it's got to be much easier to throw my light, agile little Bandit around than the half-ton Harleys. Whatever the reason, though, I'm glad for the compliment. I was also asked to consider signing up as a RiderCoach; those classes are fun, and I'm certainly interested in learning more. We'll see.

There were a couple of colors-wearing Badass Harley Riders(tm) in the class; I don't rightly know why 1%ers would be taking an ERC, so I assume their colors were just a normal motorcycle club, despite the skulls, chains, and "FUCK OFF" patches. One of them weighed about 350 pounds, absolutely looked the part of the huge scary 1%er, and had a bunch of stickers on his lid; most were generally offensive and not very funny, but right at the back center, he had a big sticker that said "I BEAT ANOREXIA." That, right there, is some seriously funny shit, my friends.

In other news, the helmet cam is operational. I will write more tomorrow if I get a chance to get some pics of the install, but I wired it all up and took it for a quick ride-test tonight. The quality of night-time video is very low, but that's to be expected; I didn't buy a camera that is intended for low light. I'll take it out for a real ride-test tomorrow and see whether it works better in the daylight. The last issue remaining with the camera is the mounting strategy; it looks like the best approach would be to pick up a few more R.A.M. Mount pieces and affix it around the frame. Right now, I only have a single RAM that I'd intended to be for my GPS; I've modified it to mount the cam on my handlebars, looking past the tach and speedo and through the windscreen. Until I can get better mounting hardware (maybe a RAM ball sized for my front fork?) this will have to do.

...so at one point in yesterday's class we were discussing cornering. The instructor asked the group "How do you judge proper corner entry speed?" and one of the Harley riders piped right up with "Proper entry speed is usually posted." As the lone semi-sportbiker there, I felt obliged to jump in with "HALF of the entry speed is usually posted." Always worth a good laugh, I find.

I did need to get some jabs in at them in exchange for all the crotchrocket jokes - the best of all was Giant Scary Harley Dude casting aspersions on us "Jap bike riders" for drinking too much when we ride and getting into wrecks.

Pot, it's for you. It's the kettle calling.

In other news, there are a couple of ride groups from Sport-Touring.net going out today. I was hoping to go along on one of 'em, but the site is down and I can't get to my messages to find the meet-up locations. I swear, that is the absolute best riding community around, but that site's uptime is abysmal. Steps are in progress to get it migrated to a new, more reliable host, and I'll certainly be kicking a contribution to the admin when that happens. It would be a damn shame if that site lost its users for such a simple reason as unreliability.

Sunday was beautiful. I had finished all the wiring and setup on my bulletcam on Saturday night, and figured it was time for a real break-in ride, so off I went. Near on 200 miles total, and all of it on secondary highways - nice and twisty, and unfortunately, a lot of other riders (and cagers) appeared to have the same idea. Traffic was a lot heavier than I'd have liked. All the same, a good ride.

I'll post more details after I get home and can jimmy up a route map, and hopefully within a couple of days I can post a link to the video, once I edit it down from the two hours of footage I've got to a more reasonable 10 minutes or so.

In other news, it's finally gotten warm enough to break out the mesh jacket. Nice.

Ladies and gentlemen, my first ride movie is live. The upload process seems to have really killed the vid quality; I may have to try and find a better way to distribute the vids, but this is a good one for starters. Check it out if you're into it.

The vid's just over 13 minutes long, and for a first attempt ever at video editing, I'm moderately proud of it.

So I think I'm going to give instructing at the MSF classes a shot. Apparently there's a state-run training program. Prior to enrolling in that program, you're required to attend and assist at four Basic Riders' Courses; then the program, which gives you your instructor's certification; and then the teaching part. Once all the instruction is out of the way, you get paid a couple hundred bucks for teaching a weekend class. It's not enough to make me rich, but I generally enojy teaching (witness my several years of teaching sailing classes), it'll help me keep my skills sharp, and a couple hundred bucks is certainly better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Also, it would seem that instructing allows bikes and bike gear to be a writeoff on one's taxes, which is most excellent indeed. [smirk]

So, anyway, right after the Great West Coast Ride, I'll start assisting at classes. The training program is in September or October, and then I guess I could start teaching. Apparently an instructor is generally obliged to teach a class a month, in order for the instructing company to get their money's worth from them. That should be doable.

It always amazes me how much kids love bikes. On the way to work this morning (a beautiful day for it, as well - sunny and warm enough for the Teknic mesh jacket) I passed three schoolbuses full of kids on their way to some sort of Event. There was a nice gap in traffic, so I had some space, and came past them at a fairly good speed differential. As I passed, just about every window seemed to hold a little kid, waving at me in rapt attention, eyes gleaming. I waved back to them - such is the responsibility of an upstanding young citizen such as myself - and couldn't help but imagine their thoughts, watching me and Zoë on the road, maybe dreaming of riding off into the distance on their own someday.

Or maybe just hoping I'd get smashed by the next available Hummer. You never know.

Those of you not in "the community" may not be aware of the bitching that goes on about those who ride a bike different than yours. The big division seems to be between Harley riders (and to a lesser extent, cruiser riders as a whole) and sportbikers. Yours truly basically falls into the latter camp, though the Bandit's not really a sportbike...

I can't say for sure what Harley folks think about us. I've never had the "When're you gonna git a REAL BIKE?" speech, but I know lots of folks have, and I know the riders on good ol' American iron do tend to turn their noses up at us on occasion. I do know for a fact that we sportbikers tend to bitch a lot about Harleys; mostly at their inarguably lower performance, higher cost, and the "poser" label we attach to a number of their riders. A lot of the bitching sort of smacks of jealousy, though; "that mean ol' Harley rider didn't wave back to me!" And of course, there's a fair number of us who do our share of posing as well, but there ya have it.

Anyway. I did a bunch of wrenching on the Bandit yesterday in preparation for the Great May West Coast Ride. I guess when I reinstalled the tank I managed to put a kink into the air-vent hose, such that when I rode for a bit and fuel got depleted, pressure dropped in the tank enough to prevent fuel from feeding. Anyway, long story short, the bike died on the freeway - fuel starvation. Luckily I was in the far left lane and was able to stumble to the shoulder before the engine died completely. Trying to figure out the problem, I had the bike up on its centerstand, my helmet on the ground next to it, the engine off, and was obviously trying to figure something out.

In the time it took me to realize what was wrong and figure out a work-around, I was passed by quite a few bikes; traffic was pretty slow, right around 35mph in the fast lane. Of the bikes that passed me, not a one of the sportbikers paid the slightest attention; well, one did throw me a jaunty salute and rev it, as if to say "if your bike wasn't fucked, I'd race ya, bro!" Three different Harleys, however, yelled out to me, pulled off to offer help, etc.

Thanks, guys.

Just a quick reminder that whatever you're riding, the other guy's a fellow rider too. CBXXXX1500R-RR or Ultra-Wide-Dyna-Custom Classic, whatever. We have our little cliques, we all ride for different reasons, but we're all out there riding. You know what? That makes us brothers.

So wave to everyone. Stop to help anyone who needs it. One day it'll be you on the edge of the road, and you never know who'll help you out.

also: welcome to all the new viewers. I presume I can direct my thanks to the Motorcycle Bloggers International site, but I'm glad to see y'all. Keep on stopping by and I promise I'll keep on writing.

This Thursday, stupid-early in the morning, I plan to leave on the Great West Coast Motorcycle Adventure. My final destination is San Diego, though I'll be stopping on the way to hit the West Coast Regional Meet that sport-touring.net puts on in Fortuna, CA. I'll try and post some projected route maps when I get home tonight.

Yesterday I did a dry-run packing my bike. For luggage, I have the Cortech Sport sadllebags and the matching Sport tailbag, as well as a little tankbag, also from Cortech. The tankbag is already filled with the electronics I'll be bringing along; the video setup, my digital camera, my GPS, and my iPod (yes, I have one now. Don't hate me). There should be room in there for my wallet and cell phone, and that's about it.

That leaves the tail and saddlebags for everything else a boy could need for almost three weeks on the road. Packing light will be required. I don't have the storage space to take more than one riding jacket, which is a real problem; do I take the mesh, and hope it doesn't rain, or the textile, and pray it never gets above 70 degrees? In southern California, in May, neither of those are gambles I'd like to take. I do have room for both sets of riding pants, though, which is good.

Tentative plan, for the southbound leg:
Day 1 (Thurs) - Seattle WA to Eugene OR
Day 2 (Fri) - Eugene OR to Fortuna CA
Day 3 (Sat) - Fortuna-area rides with the S-T.n crew
Day 4 (Sun) - Fortuna CA to Half Moon Bay CA (or somewhere nearby)
Day 5 (Mon) - Half Moon Bay CA to Santa Barbara CA
Day 6 (Tues) - Santa Barbara CA to San Diego CA

Then I hang out with my peeps in SD until Saturday, head back to Santa Barbara to spend a couple of days with my parents, and start the northward trek. I'll decide on that route later.

I'm on the road, folks. I'll try to drop some updates occasionally, but if not, look for a big-ass trip report in a couple of weeks.

See ya!

well folks, the Great West Coast Motorcycle Trip is at an end. I rolled into my driveway at 1:30 AM last night, after the longest and least-fun session on a bike ever (San Francisco to Lynnwood in one long slog) and though I miss being on the road, I'm glad to be home.

I need to get my journals and logs and pictures and video in order, and then there'll be a trip report here. Hopefully it won't take me too long to get it all worked out.

I finally got out for a reasonable ride again, this last Sunday. I joined a few other riders from sport-touring.net on an excursion to Mount Baker, a suitably awesome ride. The plan was to meet up at the crack of dawn (well, 7:45) in Arlington, and then follow Hwy 9 up to Mount Baker; I realized halfway to Arlington that I'd taken my registration out of its underseat home when I was cleaning up the bike the day before, and went back to get it. That cost me 15 minutes, and when I reached the meetup spot, the other riders had left.

I decided to press on and hope to catch up, and luckily I recognized the somewhat-unusual Triumph Speed Triple piloted by one of my fellow riders parked outside a little cafe in the town of Acme, Washington. Fritz, Damon, and Danny were inside getting breakfast, and I gladly joined them; I'd an energy bar in my tankbag but hadn't had a chance to eat anything reasonable that morning.

From Acme we headed straight on up the mountain. Hwy 9, especially north of its junction with the North Cascades Highway (Hwy 20), is a ton of fun; not technical, per se, but a lot of nice easy corners and plenty of space to go fast. There were tons of other riders on the road, various packs of cruisers and sportbikers, most of whom we jumped past as soon as we got the chance.

The final ascent towards the summit and Artist's Ridge was significantly more challenging. Lots of switchbacks and hairpins marked at 15mph, some of which really meant exactly 15. The tightness of the turns, combined with the steep uphill grade, often meant taking them in 1st gear; most of the last few miles was in 1st and 2nd. Some gravel and small rocks on the road at times, and snow on both sides even in August. Good practice with looking clear through the turns, as the penalty for failure was made abundantly clear by the large dropoff on one side of the road.

Great fun times. I find I'm still a little more cautious than necessary when passing, and that hampers my ability to keep up with my fellow riders on occasion, but I was very comfortable at this group's pace when traffic wasn't heavy. The cornering experience I got through the Great West Coast Trip has apparently paid off, and I feel quite at home in the more technical parts of the road. All in all, a great time.

Here's the route:

a shot of the nice road leading up to the summit:

and a shot of Zoë and Fritz' Speed Triple at the top:

I also brought the camera setup along, and made a quick little movie. Here 'tis:

In other news, Zoë is on the market. More to come on that in a few.

J and I spent this weekend down in Southern California visiting friends (much love, as usual, to Samantha and Paul), but before we left I put Zoë up on Craigslist Seattle.  It's an odd feeling; I've never sold a vehicle before and never bought one before the Bandit, but I suspect it's beyond that.  Probably an artifact of giving my bike a name; Zoë feels somehow like a partner in the whole process of learning to be a rider, rather than just a vehicle.  I've never had an attachment to a car, of course; a car is an appliance to me.  I suppose I think of Zoë a bit the way I do a sailboat.  A boat isn't just a conveyance; boats have always had souls to the sailors who crew them, and names and personalities.  For this bike, at least, I tend to have a similar sort of feeling.

I wonder whether whatever I replace her with will get a name, or whether it will just be a vehicle?  Time will tell. 

Anyway.  Since I listed her, I've had two inquiries.  Both of them have seemed extremely interested but dropped out prior to seeing the bike; one was a long distance away, and so getting up to Seattle was challenging, and the other appears to have run afoul of a girlfriend who doesn't support the buying-a-bike plan.  So I suppose my intentions are to keep Zoë listed on Craigslist for another week or two, and maybe put her up on eBay or Cycletrader or the local classifieds as well.  Those all cost money, but greater circulation can't hurt.  I'd prefer to sell her private-party if I can, simply because there's generally a lot more cash to be made with a sale than with a trade-in.  If nothing moves in a couple of weeks, though, I will have to suck it up and go see what the dealers in the area are offering.

In terms of replacing her, my Next Bike Target at this point appears to be a Suzuki V-Strom 1000.  I can't say that bike speaks to me in exactly the way the sexier sportbikes out there do, but the Strom seems a good match for what I want to do with a bike, and there are a number of 'em available used in or around Seattle at the moment.  I will have to be financing some fraction of the purchase-price of the next bike; I've already handled that, and have the check in my hot little hands, but I don't intend to move on that until I've found Zoë a new owner.  I don't want to be sitting on two bikes, and if I can't swing a private-party sale for the Bandit, I don't want to burn my bridges for trade-in by having already bought another bike. 

With any luck, I'll be able to work something out in the relatively near future.  I'm supposed to ride down to central Oregon on the last weekend of this month to meet up with some relatives, and I'd really prefer to have a nice touring-worthy bike to break in on that trip.  We'll see...

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with a bittersweet heart that I announce the sale of my first motorcycle, Zo�. I posted her on Craigslist a week and a half ago, and recieved a number of inquiries. Most of those inquiries, in true Craigslist fashion, were folks who didn't follow through, but the first individual who actually came to see the bike decided that she was what he was looking for, and so as of this morning I'm bikeless and a couple thousand bucks richer. Hopefully both of those conditions are only temporary. Her new owner, Dave, is a crewman on board a Navy destroyer based out of Everett, and I trust he'll provide her with a good home.

This week I intend to look strongly into the V-Strom option; there are a few up on Craigslist and one that I know of at a local dealer. Since all the dealers are closed on Sunday and Monday 'round here, I'll take a look at the dealer bike on Tuesday and then see about the Craigslist options. Hopefully I'll be riding again by the weekend, which is good as I was supposed to head down to Oregon to meet some family there. No bike, no ride... Hopefully this can be made to work out. I feel kind of naked without a bike out front, for some reason.

Since I didn't check first whether it was okay to post a picture, I took the liberty of adding an Evil Face-Obscuring Black Bar to the shot below, as the final papers are being signed.

G'bye, Zo�. Thanks for the fun times.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present my new ride. She's a 2004 Suzuki V-Strom 1000, in my favorite of all colors, with a hair over 15,000 miles on the clock. She's been immaculately kept, as far as I (and the service manager of a local Suzuki dealer) can tell, and she's about as different from the Bandit as is possible.

From the few miles I've put on her already (from the seller to my house, and then again back down to the seller 2-up with Jen to pick up my car), I've noticed a number of differences from Zo� that will take some getting used to.

The good:

* Torque. Oh, dear lord, the torque. In the normal semi-legal speed range, pretty much regardless of gear, when you twist the throttle, this bike goes. I've yet to mess with really hammering it, but I can feel the front wheel getting light every time I accelerate.
* The seating position is great for me. Very comfortable, and very high off the ground - it's nice to look SUV drivers in the eye. This feels like a comfortable-all-day bike; more so even than the Bandit was.
* The engine makes quite a lot of power, but it seems to be very usable power with a nice linear power curve. It doesn't sneak up on you, but it seems like there's always plenty there.
* Put a passenger on the back, and the handling characteristics of the bike barely change at all. None of the wallowing mushiness that I'm used to.
* Adjustable preload on the front suspension! And you can adjust preload on the rear by just turning a knob, rather than hammering for three minutes on the adjuster rings under the seat!
* A fuel gauge!
* On just the low beam, the Strom's headlights put out more light than the Bandit did on highbeam with driving lights running too. Love it for night riding - I can actually see.
* Nice storage in the Givis, and they pop right off when they're not needed.
* Room under the seat for the camera, when I get my video rig set up on this bike.
* Great mirrors. I can actually see directly behind me; I never could on the Bandit.
* According to Jen, very comfortable passenger accomodations.
* Fuel injection. Turn key, start bike, ride off. As opposed to the Bandit, which was cold-blooded as all hell and needed constant fiddling with the choke for the first 5 minutes of a ride.

And, of course, the bad:

* The dreaded wind buffeting. Pretty much every V-Strom forum makes mention of the really nasty turbulent airstream that comes over the very oddly-designed windscreen and beats you about the head at freeway speeds. It's annoying. It's really, really annoying. At first I thought something was wrong with the engine, I was getting shaken around so much; then I ducked behind the screen and suddenly everything was great. Obviously a new, better windscreen will be on my list ASAP.
* Low-end stumble. There's a real shudder / stumble / popping at around 3k RPM, regardless of gear. This is another known issue with this engine; I find mention of it all over the boards, and apparently it's an easy fix. Most dealers can remap the engine with a programming box, and the Strom forums have the appropriate change to make to fix this issue. Alternately, one can plug a Power Commander into the bike, but I'm not really interested in super high end tuning. If I can deal with the stumble, I'll be happy.
* The brakes are actually surprisingly anemic. I'm sure it'll just take some getting used to, but they're smaller equipment than those on Zo�. Which surprises me, because even though the bikes weigh about the same, the Strom is quite a bit taller and carries its weight higher off the ground.

And then there's plenty that's just different. The overall character of the two engines, and the sound and feel of the bikes, are massively different, for starters. The Strom feels like it's going quite a bit slower, at any given speed, than the Bandit would, and it picks up speed quite a lot quicker in normal riding. The mirrors and bars feel a lot closer to my face; I feel like I'm perched on top of the bike, rather than being down in the seat, I suppose because of the fully upright seating position. When taking corners, I have noticed that the Strom leans quite a long way into the turn before it actually starts to change direction; I wonder if that's an artifact of the bike itself, or the tires that are on it, or just a simple question of height? I haven't a good sense of its handling in twisties yet, but I'm sure I'll get a chance to figure that out.

She appears to be completely stock, with the exception of the two Givi saddlebags. The list of things that I need to modify, change, and add is beginning to develop in my mind, but at the moment I'm content to ride her and finish my thinking. I know for sure that she gets a set of heated grips (DualStars again), a set of engine/case guards, some modification to the windscreen, a top box (another Givi), and a Scottoiler. I'm giving serious thought to a centerstand, though I've less need for it with the Scottoiler installed. I'm not a crazy tuner type, so I'll probably stick with the stock exhaust for the forseeable future.

Anyway, that's all for the moment. I'm very excited to be riding again (yes, I know it's only been a few days) and I'm quite looking forward to learning the ins and outs of this new and very different bike. I haven't felt inspired with a name yet, although Kaylee is in the running (bonus points to those who'd get that reference).

I strongly suspect that if I'd test ridden this bike, I might not have bought it. I also strongly suspect that this is a very good bike for me, once I become comfortable with the differences. I am certainly not unhappy with it at all, just startled at how different this bike is. I suppose I expected that all bikes are pretty much alike, having only ridden the Bandit, and am learning - not surprisingly - that there are nuances I'd never considered.

This coming weekend I'll be riding the Strom down to visit family in central Oregon. Should be plenty of time for self-analysis and bike analysis on that ride.

Folks, it's finally happened. My first crash. I didn't get around to posting until now as it's been a hectic couple of days, but I went down on the freeway Tuesday morning on the way to work. Here's my sport-touring.net forum post about it.

The rainy season is just starting in Seattle, and so we're lucky enough to have the roads covered in that nice oil-and-grease-and-assorted-crap slime that wreaks havoc on traction. Traffic was heavy coming in to work on I5 this morning, stop-and-go with a top speed of around 30mph. I'm still not 100% certain of what happened to take me down, but there weren't any other vehicles involved. I was a fair distance back from the car in front of me, on the far left edge of the far left lane, slowing from about 25-30mph, and I lost the front end completely. I was braking only very lightly, so I can only assume that I managed to find a hidden patch of oil or whatever.

...and I'm hoping that I'll be over the shock of the whole thing by the time I have to ride home today.

Now, two days later, I'm feeling totally fine except for my left foot, which either has the world's most severe strain or the world's most minor break. I've an appointment to see a doctor tomorrow about it. Kaylee has been in her shed unridden and I've been in the car. There are new tires somewhere in the mail, and when they show up I'll think about getting back on. At the moment, justified or not, I've no confidence in the current tires and really don't feel comfortable riding on them.

Further updates as my mind gets around all this. I know it won't be the end of my riding career, but I suspect I still have some thinking to do to put all of this in its place.

Crappy cameraphone pic of broken turn signal and fairing rash:

Crappy cameraphone pic of broken mirror and bar end:

Sadly, I find there just ain't that much to blog about these days. I ride every day, in the rain or not, and sometimes drivers try to kill me, and sometimes not. Riding, as a whole, is just a part of my everyday life. There are trips, and the occasional fun event, but the daily commuting doesn't make for much newsworthiness.

Anyway. In my last entry I added a picture of an Impressive Tuning Box. One of the VStrom forums thht I'm a member of (vstrom.info, if you're curious) has a loaner program. Sign onto a thread, and when it's your turn, a Yoshimura Fuel Injection Tuning Unit (aka Yosh Box) will show up in your mail along with easy-to-follow instructions and the address of the next person.

Inside, this box is just a set of variable resistors, but it's sufficient to make slight changes in the fuel map of stock Suzuki bikes. Sort of a poor man's Power Commander. In about 10 minutes of futzing around, I reset my idle fuel maps to +2%, and the Strom's low-throttle roughness and weakness at 2000 RPM has been almost entirely cured. 6th is now a usable gear at freeway speeds (instead of "not even worth using until above 90mph"), and there's a lot more power down low. The bike will now not stall ever; idle throttle with the clutch released is enough to pull slowly forward from a stop. All in all, a great upgrade for zero cost. To do better I'd need a Power Commander, and though that's certainly a better answer, it also costs $300. For me, this is more than enough.

I'd still like to remove the secondary throttle valves, as I hear that gives a great benefit to low-end torque on the Vstrom 1000, but I haven't had the need to take the tank off. If I ever do, I'll be sure to remove those valves when I'm inside.

Weather in Seattle has entered the Worst Part of the Year; it's alternating between dry-and-stupidly-cold, and sort-of-cold-but-raining-heavily. I'm really looking forward to when it starts pulling out of this, probably around May...

As of this week, early June, Seattle is still having some heavy rainfall.  I was caught in two (smallish) storms early this week, and in both cases my pants soaked through immediately.  Realizing that mild rainstorms in Seattle are a far different thing than the terrifying midwest summer storms that I might be lucky enough to experience in the next week, I finally bit the bullet and dropped money on a real waterproof riding suit - the Phantom, from Olympia Motorsports.  Locally, I was only able to find a source for the hi-viz (read: instant migraine) color; nobody stocked the black "charcoal," and I just can't bring myself to wear something brighter than the sun in my daily commute. The closest source I could find with a charcoal suit in stock was down south of Portland, at BMW of Western Oregon.  I remember that being a very nice dealership that we stopped by on the way down to Fortuna, so I called and talked with their parts folks for a bit adn decided to go with that suit.  Saving me the (long) ride down to pick it up, they sent it out UPS Next-Day Air (at less than the cost of the tax had I bought it locally), and I stayed home this morning to sign for the suit.

When I hadn't seen anyone by noon, I called BMWOR to try and figure out if anything had gone wrong, and they did a little bit of digging before calling me back to inform me that UPS had neglected to ship the suit, it was still in Eugene, and furthermore that UPS had backdated their logs to claim that it was the BMW shop's fault.  Long and short of it was, there was no way my suit would arrive today, and I had scheduled the trip tomorrow to begin bright and early in the morning. 

In my previous dealings with shippers they've not been very accomodating when something goes wrong, but perhaps they take the word of a manager at a BMW dealership as being more important than that of a surly 30-year-old scientist, because I soon heard back from Lin at BMWOR that they'd arranged for the suit to be picked up, by me, at the Redmond UPS center, tomorrow at 9.  So I'll ride there in my old gear, with Jen following, unpack and change into my new PHantom in the parking lot, and then send my old gear back home with Jen and hit the road.  Assuming the suit fits, this may still work.

If not...well, after the money and the hassle of trying to get this all together, I'd rather not spend much time dwelling on the "not."

While waiting in vain for the UPS truck, though, I did manage to wire my GPS to my bike's electrical system, so I don't have to go through a pack of AA batteries every day I ride.  That's something.

In summary:  a big shout-out to Lin and BMWOR, and a big fuck-you to UPS for screwing this up and lying about it.  With luck, everything will come together in the end.  The bike is almost packed, the new tent will work well, and I'm hopeful that I can get on the road tomorrow morning without anything else going tits-up in the process. 

Photos have been edited, commented, and uploaded.  This time I also bothered to delete the photos that were shit, instead of just dropping the entire contents of my memory card on you, gentle reader.  See how I care for you?

Anyway.  You can find the photos from this trip here. 

I rode home today behind someone on a Boss Hoss. For those not in the know, this is a gigantic fucking motorcycle powered by a liquid-cooled V8 automotive engine, and it weighs 1100 pounds.

Dry.

I had no idea just how freaking huge these things are until I saw it on the road.  The rear tire looks like it's off a truck.  And more importantly, I don't think they lean; at least, the rider I was following never leaned any.  The engine sounded right nice, but somehow, I'm guessing this is very much not the bike for me.

So I spent this previous weekend up in British Columbia (again), this time in the company of my good friend Colleen and a bunch of folks from ADVRider.  In contrast to most of my longer trips, which tend to be 90% pavement and 10% dirt, this trip was very heavily biased toward dirt and gravel riding, and was very challenging for me.  I considered myself a fairly competant dirt rider, though new to it, but these roads were well beyond anything I've experienced before and at some points I was definitely outside my comfort zone.  The Strom was dropped a number of times on one particular section of very nasty road (marked "EXT. ROUGH / 4WD ONLY" on the map, which should have been a hint to avoid it) and though it escaped without any damage other than scuffs to the Givi bags, it was still quite a harrowing experience.

The road in question involved 45-degree scree and boulder slopes, crossings of relatively deep streams, and other adventurous things which were more difficult on the mostly-street VStrom 1000 than they might have been on a bike better suited to this sort of thing, like a KLR.  The various mods I've made to the bike - removing secondaries, changing the gearing for crazy acceleration, etc - didn't really help it out in the back-of-beyond, either.  Ah well.  Colleen tells me that adventure is "adversity recounted at leisure" and I'm inclined to agree.  That doesn't mean I feel like seeking said adversity out in the future, though...

Check out Colleen's ride report of the trip at her website here. My pictures are also posted on my Flickr page for any interested parties.

In other news, at the beginning of this trip I noticed that my recently-installed crash bars from Pat Walsh Designs had failed.  Several welds had given way under normal operating conditions.  I emailed Pat when I returned from the trip and I need to give him credit for outstanding customer service and standing behind his product very honorably, as he's having me send the bars back at his expense to figure out what went wrong, as well as offering me a refund of my money or a brand new set of bars.  This kind of customer service is rare in my experience.  I haven't decided whether I intend to replace the bars with another set of his design, but given my treatment I would be happy to do business with him in the future.

Click here to access my satellite tracker thingie.