Wretched XS

[noodlenoggin]

I got nothin'.

I haven't done a gol' darn thing with the bike this month. It's just sat there in the garage looking bike-y. You can see it in the background of this pic:


Actually, I'm working on stripping an old Vista bicycle and making it into a beach cruiser...that's what's in the foreground. You can see how the ol' bike is poised for action in a prime garage location in this pic:


And Blues2Cruise was taunting "us Michigan folks" with some pics of their nice beaches and warm September weather... I don't have any recent pics handy, but here are a trio of photos I took last summer -- all on the grounds of the hospital where I work -- we're next to the old Michigan State Mental hospital which in pre-WWII days was its own self-contained community with a farm, a power plant, everything needed to be self-sufficient.


The resting site of Traverse Colantha Walker, champion cow.


One of the barns of the old State Hospital farm.


The main hospital building, "building 50." The hospital was closed in the 1980's, but in the past two years has been purchased by a developer and is being renovated into an apartment housing complex.

You may have noticed the same dark blue bomb of a sedan in those pics...I actually took them for Crown Victoria forum I'm on....

But this is the average northern Michigan scenery is like...

[blues2cruise]

It's nice and green with lots of trees. Nice. That cow must have been much loved.

ps...The entry about "needing" to do things was fantastic.

[noodlenoggin]

Thanks, Blues!

Here's a link to the Traverse City Pool of pics on Flickr.

[blues2cruise]

Traverse City looks like a very nice place. It's good to see that trees are a big part of the landscape.
Thanks for the pics.

[noodlenoggin]

Blues:

"...I just had the urge to sit on some bikes that aren't mine."

So, I've got yet another post about not riding my bike this year. I stopped off at a couple of bike dealers on the way home. Greeted with the "Hey there, anything I can help you with?" I answered with the above statement.

First dealer -- Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha. I sat on an R1, looked at the cruisers (not bad, not my cup of tea) but in general the store was full of dirtbikes and snowmobiles, and the street bikes were jammed together too closely to throw a leg over.



The bike that intrigued me the most was a Suzuki DR-Z 400 SM. I dunno, usually when I see something like a dual-purpose bike with street tires I make a crack about the IQ of the owner, but somehow up close this bike looks mean and purposeful.

Next I motored 1/3 mile up the road to the Harley, Buell, Kawasaki, Triumph, John Deere, Polaris dealer (we consolidate a lot here in Michigan.)



They have the new retro-looking Bonnevile T100 there. It just makes me think of my bike...probably because my XS is trying to be a Triumph Bonneville. Nice looking, but I couldn't imagine spending new-bike money for a bike like the one I have.



Sat on a black Ninja ZX-14. I've had the desire for more power than my elderly 650 puts out, and this thing just sweats power. Seemed pretty formidable for a sportbike, substantial, yet compared to the Speed Triple next to it:



the ZX-14 looks like it's made from tinfoil and duct-tape. The Speed Triple has some gorgeous details on it -- the way the exhaust snakes in front of the rear wheel is sensuous. The sweep of the passenger peg brackets is elegant. The most striking thing about it for me was realizing that the rear hub is hollow -- there's a 1" hole right through the center of it.



Sat on a Buell Lightning. Y'know, I really want to like the Buell bikes -- American motor on a sportbike, all that. When I sit on one, I just really don't like it. Seems top-heavy, and it's got such a steep rake that it feels like there's nothing in front of the handlebars, and I'm going to endo at a moment's notice.



Sat on a Softail Springer. I really like the way it looks, but the seat was uncomfortable -- smaller than my butt. Or maybe vice-versa.



And last was a Road King. Again, I really like the way it looks, substantial and 50's-ish (to my eyes anyway) and I like having the beefy pipes on either side of the rear wheel. First impression after swinging a leg over it is "wow, this is a BIG darn bike." It is...it just feels massive. Then I stood it up and all of a sudden it felt like it dropped about 200lbs -- just beautifully balanced with a reeeeally low center of gravity. It just made the biker in me say "oooooooh."

I remembered that my wife's cousin's girlfriend (my son's cousin's mommy?) works at the parts counter at this dealership. Yet again, I like the way it (she?) looks -- very shapely, um, headlights and a, um, saddle that looks really comfortable...however, she's more of a...well, "used" model, definitely not one-owner, and I don't really think I'd like to ride that, so I didn't bother throwing a leg over her.

And that was it...fun, relaxing, a bit melancholy because I haven't been able to ride this year, but something I needed to do, I guess.

(edit for the parts-counter-cousin-skanky-girlfriend)

[noodlenoggin]

What is the draw of 45 miles per hour?

I was wondering this morning, and not for the first time, why 45mph is sooo popular. It seems like everyone's doing it, and I don't get it. It's not the speed limit, yet it's not exactly slow enough to see the sights, either. It's nothing. It's like making the statement "I don't really want to go where I'm going."

Today it was raining on my drive to work...people were going 45. Why? I dunno, it wasn't raining hard, the roads in Michigan don't get slippery when it rains, visibility was fine...everybody just slowed down 10 miles per hour. Basically, I have a personal problem with that. When I'm going somewhere, I want to get there -- without dawdling, without dallying, without holding up M37. I don't really speed, either. I used to, but I slowed down when I got a Jeep that pulled down a whopping twelve miles per gallon. I would call my driving Agressive-but-Not-Fast. Actually I'd call it "assertive." My little rectangle of road is MY road, dangit.

It gets frustrating on my bike, too. Sorry, long build up to a not-very-interesting story follows...

I lived in Lafayette, Indiana for five years, (from 1996-2001) but my bike was in storage up here in Michigan for a couple of those, say from late 1995 until mid-late 1997 when we sold my late mother's farm. At that time I loaded up a U-Haul with a bunch of stuff, including my motorcycle, and made the eight hour drive down to Indiana.

Since most of you probably don't have the misfortune of being familiar with Lafayette, Indiana, I suppose I have to describe. Lafayette is in northwest Indiana, about a half-hour east of the Illinois border and about two hours south of the Michigan border, right on the I65 freeway that runs from Chicago to Indianapolis. Northwest Indiana is an ugly wasteland of absolute flatness, corn and soybean fields right to the edge of the road, and two-lane country roads. Lafayette itself is an ugly, dirty factory town -- I counted at least 16 factories on the map -- and seems to follow the edict of "If we can't farm it, subdivide it...if we can't subdivide it, pave it." Houses are routinely built 10 feet from each other. The entire town always smells like one of the two AE Staley corn processing plants that bracket Lafayette, and the smell is a barely describable mixture of burnt peanuts and sauerkraut. If we were lucky, we'd smell hot aluminum from the Alcoa ingot-smelting factory instead of AE Staley.

And the drivers are the most maddiningly stupid, slow, inattentive, ignorant, impatient, distracted, bunch of nincompoops I've yet had to deal with. Sorry if I sound like I'm sugarcoating. In the five years I lived there, I seriously believed that I was going to be put in the hospital by one of them, and I am to this day surprised that I was not.

So, the bike. Right. It would have been the spring of '98 when I pulled the cover off the bike and made it run for the first time in two years. I can spare you the procedural details but once it was running, it was pretty obvious that the carbs were fairly gummed up. The motor was popping and spitting, and vibrating more than a parallel twin normally vibrates, and there was no such thing as "idle." I had to keep blipping the throttle to keep the motor alive, but it was really nothing that a good run through the country wouldn't cure. "Blowing the squirrels out," is what I called it.

And so I set out. Our apartment was downtown, so I had to putt up 7th street, cross a pair of 1-ways, go through the downtown to 9th street, and take 9th street out of town. The whole way picture it as "pop pop, spit, vroom" as I rode at 25mph in town, and "bvroom, bvroom, bvrooooom" at every red light. At last, and it took 20 minutes or so, I had gone the 3 miles across town and was on 9th street, headed out. And I was behind someone. And they were going 45.

Now, all the bike and I REALLY needed was to get some WOT time when accelerating, and get the bike over 3000 rpm at cruise...you know, heat the motor up, burn out the cobwebs, that kind of thing. Nope. Forty-five...more popping and spitting, lots of turbulence off the car in front of me, and a steady stream of oncoming traffic to prevent passing -- until...YES! I could pass! And I did! "BWAAAAAA....aaaa...pop...spit....DAMMIT!" -- because another Hoosier simply pulled out in front of me. And went 45.

And so it went. No matter what road I was on, no matter how far out in the godforsaken cornfields I was, I could NOT get away from people going 45 in front of me. I pulled back into our driveway after an hour or so on the road -- bike running no better than when I started -- frustrated to the gills, and fuming about spending an hour eating a bunch of Hoosiers' turbulence, exhaust gas and tossed cigarette butts.

It was, I can say, the very first time I'd ever gone for a motorcycle ride and come back MORE stressed than before I left.

[noodlenoggin]

Gad, I'm pathetic.

Last night I went out in the garage and sat on the bike and made "vroom vroom" noises.


I used to be disdainful of the protection provided by the thin, plastic visor on my helmet...I figured it kept the wind out, deflected bugs, but would be useless if a rock or something hit it. It was, after all, like 1/16" thick, and plastic fer god sakes.

So when I retired my last helmet, I decided to test it. I got out a claw hammer and thought I was going to shatter that silly little face-shield. I drew back, paused -- muscles rippling in the sun -- and swung the hammer down, dead-center on the visor.

And it bounced off. Made a little circular dent, it did. I was impressed enough to unleash another half-dozen Thor-like blows on the hapless visor. Each made a little dent -- discolored the plastic (gee, think it's Lexan, maybe?) from clear to white.

So I switched to the claw-side of the hammer and whaled away for a bit. More dents. That's all. I can say that one could be hit in the face-shield with a rock, and it may rock your head back -- heck, it may take you clean off of your bike -- but it's not going to shatter that visor and hurt your face.

But then, maybe everyone else already knew that.

[sv-wolf]

Got to say this noodle: cagers aside, your blog is a lovely 45 mph cruise, no stress, no strain and there's loads of interesting 'scenery' on the way. For someone not riding this year ( ) it gives off a great whiff of bikes and biking. Loving it. Keep that throttle wrist comfortably down and keep 'em coming.

[CNF2002]

Here's your neighbors: peeking out the window watching you sit on your bike making "vroom vroom" noises one night, then bashing the heck out of a helmet the next night.

A great idea for Halloween: when the little munchkins ring the doorbell, fire up the engine and race into the driveway with a hockey mask and a machete!

[noodlenoggin]

The family, she is a-gettin' large.

That's right, we're now a family of SIX, no longer a family of four. Monday, Nov. 6, 2006, my wife delivered twin girls at 2:04 and 2:05pm, via C-section. Elouise Martha was 5lbs, 13oz, and Allison Lucile was 5lbs, 1oz.

If that was all that had happened this week, it'd be a busy and stressful and tiring week. But it wasn't.

Monday, Nov.6, 2006, at 1:59pm...my older kids' school called me at the hospital -- while my wife was on the OR table -- and informed my that my kids were sick, throwing up; that I needed to come get them. So, I went into the OR, watched my girls come out, and listened to the beautiful stereo screaming of two-minute-old babies, waited in recovery and cried like a little girl until my wife and babies were in recovery...then rushed the 20miles home to get my sick kids and spend the night wiping runny butts and catching puke in a bowl.

Then Wednesday, I caught the same flu bug and spent the entire night in the bathroom. I slept until noon Thursday and felt better, if lighter, and not much like sitting down.

Friday, my wife and one of my twins got to come home -- did I forget to mention that on Monday after I ran out, Allison developed a problem breathing and was put in NICU -- Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for non-hospital people. By Tuesday, she cleared the fluid from her lungs that caused the problem, but she remains in NICU until she can eat on her own, and eat enough to gain weight.

Oh, yes, and on the way home Friday evening, with my wife, my son, my daughter, and my 4-day-old baby in the Volvo, we stopped at Walgreen's to get a prescription, and were waiting in the parking lot for it to be filled, and the Volvo popped the lower radiator hose off, and drained 2 gallons of antifreeze on the parking lot while we sat there idling. By the time we arranged for a wrecker and a rental car, and the wrecker came and the guy fixed the car, and I sent away the rental car and we got on our way...I felt like we were living at Walgreen's. Did I mention it was sleeting during all this? It was. With thunder and lightning. But we made it home.

Once home, the sleet turned to snow, with thunder and lightning, and we lost power at home -- but for only about 3 seconds; long enough to throw up our hands in the dark and say "what NOW?!"

All this is around and about the staggering amount of work I've been doing getting my two kids dressed and fed and on school buses, and to preschool...and the dishes, laundry and housework that never stops...and the two 40-mile round trips per day to the hospital...and the emails and photo uploads and phone calls that an event like this requires, and it's been one helluva week.

But we have one of our daughters home, and my older kids have really taken to her, and to both of the twins, actually -- they've seen her in NICU, where she's really doing well. She's out of her incubator (baby fish-tank for you non-hospital people) and in a normal crib, and she's making huge strides in the eating department now that she's getting freshly pumped dairy products from Mom. Both girls are content babies, and pleasant, and cute, if I do say so myself. I've got the next month or so off from my hateable job to pick up the slack and support a mom healing from an operation while she supports a couple of cute new parasites. I've been elated, I've been exhausted, I've been sick, I've been irrational, and I've been near fainting ( that one from being in OR, watching gushes of red "stuff" pouring on the floor. ) I can't wait to have both new daughters home, even the house is an asylum with just one of 'em home. I'm really looking forward to a few months from now when things are really settled and all this insanity will be mostly a thing of the past -- even if I am still only sleeping 3 hours per night.

Cheers!