Travels of a Squid: Blair's beginning motorcyclist journal

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blair
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#21 Unread post by blair »

Saturday, 2005/05/21

105 degrees out there. Riding in it is interesting. It's okay while you're moving, but sitting at a stop is brutal, with heat coming off the pipes and the sun pounding down.

I'm going to start carrying some sort of seat cover to use when the bike is parked. Black leatherette + direct sun + high-pressure zone lensing = pain.

Arizona Summer heat won't stop me from riding, but I probably won't be cruising for fun at mid-day too often. It's kind of like sub-zero cold. You can go out in it to get from place to place, you just don't hang around in it too much.

----

After the ride I relubed my chain. The rollastand worked great, though I did have to reverse when it slewed to the edge on me once, which meant I had to roll it all the way through the half of the chain I'd already waxed to get to the part that still needed wax. Not hard though. It's stiffer than it looks, but I was able to roll the rear wheel with one hand, barely. It does beat rolling the whole bike around.

The chain wax I'm using gets kind of gunky when it dries, so I wiped a lot off the outside when it was half-dry. I'm pretty sure it's still down in the links doing its job though.

----

Turns out, it was 109 degrees (48C). It'll be hotter tomorrow, and I plan to go on a ride with a friend. Hooboy.
'93 Honda VT600CD Shadow VLX Deluxe

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blair
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#22 Unread post by blair »

Sunday, 2005/05/21

Last night, a buddy who rides invited me along on a 3-man run today, but never called even though he said he'd call either way. Have to find out tomorrow what went wrong. No biggie. The road isn't going anywhere.

----

New first: Took on a real freeway. Just a mile and a half of I-10, but unlike the piece of the 202 I ride every couple of days, this is a major cross-country canal. Nothing eventful. I never entered the main travel lanes (which were jammed and rocking), nobody tried to exit ahead of me, and the intervening on-ramp wasn't emptying into me, so it was an easy roll.

----

Doesn't seem that hot today. But who trusts a weatherman any more?

----

A while back I entered my Shadow's VIN in the signup form at Honda OwnerLink and it showed me a pretty exact picture of my bike, down to the color. It also told me that I've actually got the Deluxe version of the VLX, so I've just now updated my .sig here:
'93 Honda VT600CD Shadow VLX Deluxe

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Aggroton
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#23 Unread post by Aggroton »

i keep wanting to go on longer and longer and faster and faster rides...but reading your stuff helps me remember there is no haste. thanks again.
thats a sweet bike.

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#24 Unread post by blair »

Monday, 2005/05/23

Glad to know people are reading this. Anyone getting anything out of it is paying it off completely. Thanks to everyone for tuning in.

----

Today I tried topping-up my tires with one of my bicycle pumps. I thought it was going to be a huge ordeal. Turns out, it's easier than doing it to my bicycle tires.

My bicycle's tires will drop from 110 psi to about 95 over three days, and it takes about 5 hard pumps to get it back to spec.

My motorcycle's front tire was at 26 and I wanted it at the recommended 29, and it took about 5 <i>easy</i> pumps to get it there. And I don't expect it to drop more than a pound a week.

Sweet deal.

And, having the proper pressure in the tire actually made a noticeable difference, at low speed. Much less tendency for the front to want to wiggle when coming to a stop. I've been having to catch it two-footed or on the right foot quite a bit. Today, though, almost every stop was a straight roll to a graceful, left-footed touchdown.

I was expecting more difference at high speed, but the slight wobble I was getting on scored concrete highway is still there; so it's probably entirely due to the surface. So I don't have to worry about it because if it was going to be worse it would already have done so.

----

One thing helping on takeoffs is preloading the reaction force on the bike.

That is, I get a few pounds of torque into the friction zone with both feet down and holding the bike back, rather than trying to pick my feet up as soon as the bike tries to roll. What this does is give me a good acceleration instead of a weak one and much less time in the wobbly range at low speed. It's not a popping move, just a subtle delay.

----

I think I need to find an empty parking lot and practice regulation perimeter turns. I don't think I've actually done that on this bike. Too busy dealing with U-turns and S-turns and stop-and-go's. Getting the perimeter turns down will probably cure my tendency to crowd the left side of the lane when making right turns from a stop. Stopping angled almost halfway to the cross-street definitely helps, but I can't always manage or remember to do that.
'93 Honda VT600CD Shadow VLX Deluxe

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#25 Unread post by blair »

Tuesday, 2005/05/24

Nice, uneventful day.

Unless you count that I got in three sorties instead of my usual one or two; or that the last one was not in full daylight and I finally got to see what my lights looked like on the road.

I saw the sun was getting low, so I packed my clear shield in my saddlebag, and swapped it for my limo-tint shield after picking up my sub sandwich at Capriotti's*. Then I tooled home, playing with my high-/low-beam switch and finding it pathetically easy to remember to turn off my signal when the indicator is blinding me. No way will I forget my keys when I park after dark.

One odd thing: my headlight, front turn lights, and brake light are all on low all the time, and go high when I use them, which is normal; but, my rear turn lights are off unless I'm actually signalling. I'm not sure if that's right. I'll have to check it out. I want more rearward visibility, as the headlight obviates the front turn lights being on all the time. I almost suspect that the front and rear turn light harness connectors have been swapped somewhere down in the electrical tree.

Great sandwich, by the way. Cap's is an excellent sub shop, if you're lucky enough to have one near you; reminds me of real sub shops we'd go to when I was a kid, like Dub's Subs in Rockville, Md.; they're nothing like the faux-food Subway/Quizno's/Cousins/Blimpie's franchises that clog the sub market these days.

----

Lesson learned: if you leave the fuel valve in the ON position overnight, your garage reeks of gasoline in the morning.

Actually, right after I got my bike back from the shop a couple of weeks ago, it happened that night, too, even though I'd turned the valve off. But I had been talking earlier with the guys at the shop, and gathered that they typically never turn the fuel valve off. I usually do, but forgot last night, so this morning the place stank. So now I have cause and effect and remedy. I'm adding turning it off to the list of compulsions I'll be developing to be a better motorcyclist. That will probably save me some gas as well. I presume it drips slowly into the carb and evaporates. Doesn't seem to affect starting the bike. Might affect exploding my house, though.
'93 Honda VT600CD Shadow VLX Deluxe

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#26 Unread post by blair »

Wednesday, 2005/05/25

Not once but twice today oblivious a-holes tried to kill me on the road.

First, this idiot blows past my left in a pickup truck, then slams on his brakes. He's doing it because a rescue wagon is leaving the fire station on the left and turning in front of us, but he's blocked my view and made himself the most dangerous thing in the area, so while I'm focussed on what he's going to screw up next, I almost run into the paramedics instead. Can you read that police report? "Fully protected motorcyclist dies in rear-end collision with giant red emergency vehicle with flashing lights." And no mention of the cretin that caused it, because he'd have bolted like the pusillanimous waste of a beaded seatcover that he is.

Two miles later, another moron in a pickup ignores my signal and flies by on my left, then drops out of that lane into a left-turn lane, then without slowing pulls back into the travel lane, just as I hit the line. All I wanted to do was catch up to him, tear his sorry California tag off the back of his bucket, and shove it up his "O Ring" until it blocked his vision.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHH!

I hate riding pissed-off. At least lunch was tasty and the waitress hot, and I ran into a good buddy when I checked in at work, so the rest of the afternoon had a little pleasantness behind it.

----

Oh, and my ponytail turns 20 today.

20 years ago today, the lady at the stylist butchered my mohawk, and I haven't gotten a haircut since.

So now I'm in a quandry: do I cut it off because it's getting old and thin? or do I keep it because it goes so perfectly with the whole motorcycle thing?

No doubt some woman will make the decision for me...

----

The day's oblivious a-hole count shot up to double digits this eveniing.

For no reason other than inexperience, I ventured out into the teeth of the rush-hour curve to grab some dinner.

In a 300-Hp car, I don't notice these tools much, but on my 39-Hp bike they stick out like water-filled potholes. About half of the gorks on the road during rush hour are definitely people who don't drive much at any other time. And for some reason the entire lot of them seem to think that my rear tire doesn't exist nor that I have brakes, because they persistently cut behind me within inches when I was maneuvering near turns or intersections. And the number of criminals who poached the left lane when I had signalled for it and waited for a clear gap to change into is an epidemic.

I'm considering writing my legislators and requesting someone introduce a bill legalizing the self-defense killing of anyone who fails to give a motorcyclist a whole lane to travel in and a two-second gap both front and back as a buffer zone.

It's a reasonable request. This kind of behavior is what causes collisions, and a huge fraction of collisions with motorcycles are fatal. It's no less dangerous than drunken driving, and should likewise be considered as vehicular homicide when it occurs, rather than an "accident".

It's no accident. It's the selfish result of unsafe decisions made by the driver of the car without respect to the safety being maintained by the motorcyclist.

And having to rubberneck to keep an eye on these sources of danger reduces the motorcyclist's ability to maintain control.

Bring your torches and pitchforks and meet up at my house; we ride at midnight!

----

But then, dinner was good and the bartender was hot and for some reason The Vine trains its staff to flirt with the customers even though most of the customers are 30-60 years older than they are and can't see past their beers...but it makes for a fun time.

So you get it where you can take it and let the garbage fall away on the ride home, against the madding flow and therefore calm and free like a motorcycle ride should be.

----

Anyone else both annoyed and amused by the profanity filter on this site? Not least because it's not applied to previews and you only find the unintelligible bowdlerizations when you come back much later?
Last edited by blair on Wed May 25, 2005 4:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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#27 Unread post by Aggroton »

apperently thats why billy lane carries a hammer on his bike...
thats a sweet bike.

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#28 Unread post by blair »

Thursday, 2005/05/26

My First Thousand Miles
---------------------------

Just as I putted down the street towards my driveway, my bike's trip-meter, which I'd zeroed when the bike was delivered, rolled over from 999.9 to 000.0.

I've been riding my bike exactly one month (April 27th to today).

----

Had a decent ride today. Usual altercations, nothing I couldn't get over with a judgmental shake of the head.

But I passed a lot of accidents being cleaned up. Three big ones. For one they'd strung yellow tape all the way across 8 lanes of boulevard. At another, the cars that had collided somewhere near the center-turn lane were at opposite curbs, and there was most of a headlight assembly nearly half a mile up the road, nowhere near any other debris. I'm not sure if it was from that crash, but if it was, someone must've hit it and dribbled it all that way. Or, more likely given the fairly good condition of it, maybe it landed on their hood or roof and didn't fall off for a while.

I was keeping my eyes peeled all afternoon, that's for sure.
'93 Honda VT600CD Shadow VLX Deluxe

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#29 Unread post by cb360 »

Love the diary. I showed it to my wife who just started. I didn't know you could reply to these things! Anyway, I've read the whole thing. Good job - keep it up.
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#30 Unread post by Gummiente »

cb360 wrote:Anyway, I've read the whole thing. Good job - keep it up.
I'll second that - nice job! Your adventures are eerily similar to my first year of riding in the lunatic cage driver infested city of Montreal. Still not sure how I managed to survive it. :?
:canada: Mike :gummiente:
It isn't WHAT you ride,
It's THAT you ride

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