7.22.09

I've ridden motorcycles for a long time. Lately, I've really wanted to get my kids on-board with me. I have a dream of week-long trips with my two girls, before they are too old or too cool to spend time with Dad.

To make this dream happen (as and a reason to buy another motorcycle) I bought, sight unseen, a 1977 Goldwing 1000 cc touring bike with a Velorex 562 sidecar off of Ebay. The bike looked good in the photos, had all the features I wanted/needed, had reasonably low mileage (for a 32 year-old bike), and (best of all) was located about 1000 miles away. The price was right and the timing of the purchase allowed an incredibly complex chain of event to unfold that resulted in the sale of three (or more) different motorcycles. Here is a photo of her in all her beauty.

Why, you may ask, is the distance the best feature of them all? If you ask this question, you are not a motorcycle rider! In my opinion, 1000 miles is just about the perfect distance to get familiar with a new bike and should be a reasonable three-day ride. Should be....

7.23.09

So with the purchase details worked out, a fly and ride was planned, with the return route taking the "long way" home from Minnesota, through Wisconsin, the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan, and back across northern Ohio. Right at 1000 miles riding distance, anticipated to take 18-20 hours riding time as I want to take it somewhat easy and enjoy the ride and the view.

Day 1 should be the most difficult due to the early flight out. I plan to leave Cleveland on a 6am flight (Thanks Meg!) to Chicago O'Hare, change planes and airlines, and get into Minneapolis at 9:15am. From there, a bus service takes me to Eau Clair, Wisconsin, about 1.5 hours away. Allowing time to finish the transaction and pick up temporary tags, I plan to be on the road by 2pm. The first night is in Escanaba, a smallish town on Little Bay de Noc in the western end of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, about 280 miles from where I start the day's journey. Expected arrival in Escanaba is 9pm, but I'm still not sure where the time zones change.

Day 2 takes me the rest of the way across the U.P. to the Mackinac bridge (have I mentioned I hate bridges?) and then south along the shore of lake Michigan to Muskegon. This will be the longest day at 400 miles, and probably 8 hours riding time. This is also the most pure day of the three. No airplanes, minimal highways, and hopefully lots of scenery. No issues but the damn bridge; 5 miles long and $3 to cross. Believe it or not, I planned the timing of the whole trip to hit the bridge at minimum traffic. If I'm on the road from Ecanaba at 8am, I should hit the bridge around 11am.

Day 3 is going home. This day's ride is superhighways all the way through Grand Rapids, Lancing, Ann Arbor, Toledo and home to Cleveland. Nothing interesting or exciting here, just get home to Meg and the girls. Should prove to be incredibly tiring, or at least it would be on my current bike, a Yamaha FZ1, rigged up as a pseudo-sport bike. We'll see if the Goldwing magic holds true for me.

Here is the route I plan to take for you to critque, emulate, or ignore.

So thats the plan. Lets see how it actually happens!

7.24.09

First minor hiccup. The shuttle from the airport to Eau Clair doesn't leave until 11:45am. So I'll have about 2 hours to sit at the airport and twitch, waiting on seeing the bike for the first time. There is a 9:10 shuttle, but my flight doesn't arrive until 9:13 so it will be tough to get to. If I land early, I'll try it. Otherwise its lunch in the airport.

I made the decision to send my riding gear ahead, rather than carrying it all on the plane. I had toyed with the idea of wearing all the gear on the plane, but thought that a little too weird, even for me. Since I ride these distances in basically an Aerostich catalog, I've got too much to carry on and fit into an overhead bin. Since I'm changing planes and airlines at O'Hare, I don't trust checking a bag either.

The route has had a slight change as well. On Day 3, I will be stopping at Lakeside instead of coming all the way home. Our good friend has a trailer at Lakeside and has offered it to us for the weekend. We have a JDRF fundraising scavanger hunt at Put-in-Bay the next day (Saturday) so it will make for a good time.

My only concern is that I'll be bringing a motorcycle-side car rig to a resort community with my kids. So now I need to research and buy at least one child-size motorcycle helmet before then.

Now, my riding friends and I have spent many hours discussing the merits of the various helmet styles, helmet certifications, and helmet manufacturers. The only common thread is that we wear helmets. And so will my girls.

Anyone have a youth helmet recommendation?

Electronic trip reporting

I'm a bit of a techno weenie (choice of bike aside) so here is my plan for filling reports from the road.

At each fuel stop (or pee stop, or eat stop, or whatever), I'll take a screen capture of my location from Google Maps Mobile. I will post that to the site, along with any observations at that point.

Of course, if I run into anything interesting, I'll stop and photograph it to post as well.

The only drawback to posting from the road is that the newer posts from the road will appear at the top of the page, rather than in chronological order at the bottom. I'll re-order them after the trip, but I can't figure out how to fix that remotely yet.

Here is an example of what those screen caps will look like. The little blue dot is me. I can zoom in or out to get a better perspective as need be, but the images will always be this size.

7.26.09 - Why I ride

I've had people ask why I'm doing this and why I ride motorcycles in general. I ran into this piece a few years back and it captures why I do this. This was written by Dave Karlotski. (Thanks Eric for the reference)


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 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 light that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than Pana-Vision and 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.

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.

7.26.09 - The other side

I think you all need to see a picture of the other side. Just so you know what's on the other side, so to speak.

And while I'm here, I'm looking for ride music suggestions. This is '70s tech though, no play lists for me, no sir. We're talking cassette. And, who loves ya, baby?

7.28.09 - Driving a sidecar rig and helmets

I've had several people pass on very good (and much appreciated) recommendations on getting used to riding (driving?) the bike-sidecar rig. In general, these can be summarized to

Take it slow in the beginning.

Add weight to the sidecar.

I'm resisting the urge to draw a parallel between this process and the process of getting older, but feel free to discuss among yourselves if you wish.

The "take it slow" part is handled through the choice of route for day 1. No squiggly lines on the map, no roads of any significant size, and a manageable length.

Adding weight to the sidecar is another issue. Obviously, I'm not interested in sending ahead something heavy, nor do I want to carry a bunch of weights on the plane. So that leaves picking up something heavy in Wisconsin.

Right now, I'm leaning toward one (or more) 40lb bags of dog food. Our dog will certainly eat it (remarkably fast in reality), the bags are pretty durable, and I can pack them where they fit best. I guess if it rains, the sidecar cover will keep the dogfood pretty dry.

I suppose if the dogfood route doesn't pan out, I could just pick up something else heavy to put in the sidecar. Like a Smart Car...
















On another note, I packed up the riding gear last night for its UPS trip north. As a result, I'm currently wearing my "backup" helmet. My normal lid is a Shoei X11 that I bought on kind of a whim as it was really on sale. My backup is a Suomy Spec 1R. Before the Shoei, I thought the Suomy was the end-all be-all of helmets. And in reality, its pretty nice. I like the lining better than the Shoei, it vents better than the Shoei, and I like the visor better than the Shoei.



But the Shoei just plain fits me.



And that is what this trip is about. Finding the right fit.

8.4.09 - Tools

With the help of some good people over at the Naked Goldwings forum, I have compiled a list of tools that will get sent with my riding gear. (I hope to send the package today as time is getting short).

I will have:

Zip ties
Full set of metric open end wrenches
Phillips screwdriver
Flat screwdriver
Torx/hex key wrench set
12" cresent wrench
Knife
Tire pressure gauge
Voltmeter
Roll of electrical tape
Roll of 10ga wire
Flashlight
10, 12, 14, and 17mm sockets, with driver and extension
18mm deep well socket

A few observations:

Here is at least part of the ballast I was looking for.

If I can't fix it with these tools, I probably can't fix it anyway!

The cost of sending these tools ahead will virtually guarantee that I will have no problems.

We used to have vinyl logos made for the longer motorcycle trips we made. It started with the standard dragon from Deal's gap and migrated to the dancing Russian for the 8-state run. This trip will definately need a zip tie as the icon.

8.7.09 - New Position Sending Approach

I'm now powered by iphone!

So here is the new and improved version of my tracking map. This map will be updated in real-time with my position as long as I remember to turn on the sending unit! HERE is a link to the map in a larger size that you won't need to keep refreshing to stay current.

The speed display shouldn't be a problem on this trip. On some of previous trips, I'm sure I would "forget" to turn on the sending unit every now and then.

Pretty cool stuff....


GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com

8.10.09 - T minus 2 days general update

Techie stuff first

The GPS tracking system works, as shown by my weekend test. It does show my position in pretty real time along with speed, heading, and altitude. Pretty cool. But, running the ap is REALLY hard on iPhone batteries though. I think I will just turn it on and off periodically during the upcoming trip. Either that or pick up a 12v addapter for the iPhone and run it continuously.

The backend of the tracking device gives me some very interesting data. It stores a maximum of 1000 data points, and since I'm updating every 2 minutes (or so), that is 33+ hours of ride time, or more than enough for the trip. So I am leaning toward the continuous approach, but it remains to be seen.

General life stuff

Meg and I went to a concert Friday night! Something we haven't done in nearly forever...

We saw Cage the Elephant open for Silvertone Pickups. Both groups were good. We went for Cage the Elephant on the recommendation of a friend and enjoyed them a lot. The headliner was also good, but they need to work on their overall stage presentation. They have a bass player, Niki Monniger, who is a technically excellent player. She has this sort of private school graduate personna, wearing dresses and high-heels, moving in a two-step square dance pattern on stage. With the lead singer/guitarist, they could have a great yin and yang thing going, but she needs to open up to make it work.

Took the FZ1 south Saturday morning. It now lives on Portsmouth Street and has a good new home. Uneventful trip down. Went down through Amish country to Zanesville and then highways through Columbus to Jackson. (This is where I'm not sure I want the continuous GPS data available to the general population, that FZ is FAST.)

Brought the kids back from summer camp on Sunday. Its good to be back together as a family again. I will have a whole other post about camp, lots more to come.