Monday, June 23, 2008

Moto-Giro

Go read about Moto-Giro in the USA. This sounds like my speed, average of 25 MPH. I gotta do this. I'm looking for a small bike built before 1969 and I'm sure I'll find one someplace. I need a team - want to come along?

Getting ready to hit the road

In the last few days I have squeezed in some quality time working on the R100 that will carry me (and Ann in some places) on our July trip. I ordered and received a new sealed battery as mine was 5 years old and I was not interested in gather statistical data on failure of old Panasonic batteries in the desert of Colorado or Kansas. The starter had seen 150,000 miles so it to got swapped out. I added the brake light flasher (blinks 5 times when applying the brakes before staying on just to annoy drivers enough to hang up their cell phones) that I bought last summer and never could decide what bike to install it on. It was so easy I will order one for the Hawk and the R60. I got our local welder to fix a broken mounting tab on the rear rack mounts so my stuff will be safe and sound. He did a great job.

I removed the sidecar sub-frame so Ann can put her feet on both footpegs and I can turn to the right without dragging the sub-frame on the pavement like last year. I lock-tighted the right carb spigot into the head ending a slight air leak that allows the bike to idle smoothly again. New plugs installed and off for a ride before the rains hit us. It was great. The punch list is getting done.

I had a friend from church come over on his R60/2 (like my 1968 bike) and we played with toys in the garage and compared bikes. He has had his for over 30 years and has a lot of miles on it, including a 14,000 mile summer trip back in the day. It is good to see another person riding the old bikes. I should have taken a photo of him and the bike.

I am ready for the trip, the bike is almost ready, and the time is coming up for hitting the road. I will try and blog with photos and maybe even some audio.

Now, to replace the fork oil that was forced out by one of those huge potholes on US 40 in Baltimore two years ago .... Oh, and install headlight relays from the old fairing if I have time. And the driving lights ...

Where is my tent anyway? Don't forget the kitchen knife (I have 6 in the drawer that I have bought on each long trip as I always forget one) and this time I am taking a grapefruit spoon too as I love grapefruit for breakfast and they are not commonly available in restaurants. Got a corkscrew in every tankbag, so I won't forget that.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Getting anxious about the trip

For me there are two phases of planning . The first, I suspect, is shared by all persons getting ready to alter their daily routine and travel along unknown roads through new places in order to arrive at a desired destination. I look at the map. Actually, thanks to technologies at my fingertips, I looked at maps of various richnesses. There is the Road Atlas, trusted map of weight and the unique ability to be cut out, torn, written upon and folded. Tangible. I have several Road Atlas covers that contain fewer than the published pages because I have cut out pages in the past.

They are missing whole states. And one always looses the state on the back of the cut out page. I hate it when I forget and carry these tomes to the car only to discover that the state I need is missing. I must start marking the cover with the "Previously Cannibalized" symbol.

I like to stare at these paper maps and flip back and forth from state to state to try and align the roads as they pass from one page to another at state borders. But I don't travel like that. In a currently unpublished blog entry in the "I'm thinking about it" stage I describe my don't-ride-into-the-sun theorem: Plan to be going North-south at sunrise and sunset. Or better yet, get off and enjoy the environment where you are. There are natural laws that enhance the experience if you go with the flow rather than fighting it. It goes something like this: In the early morning, when challenged to go East, find good coffee and conversation until the sun is higher. In the evening, find substantial food and a good micro-climate to unwind while crazy people sear their eyeballs looking into a ball of flaming gases. (This axiom can be extended to 'Don't buy a house west of your place of employment' or 'Don't work normal hours' or both.)

While looking at the maps, think about where you will stop for the day and what opportunity you have to start the day going North or South. Or choose to start the day at 10am, or 5am and find thee a breakfast at sun-in-the-eyes time. More goes into road choice than shortness of path or speed of travel. Like finding those roads that go from no-where to no-where. A good rider once defined them as the invisible roads. There is not likely to be much traffic on them, and you can actually make good time (if they happen to align with your natural path of travel, which never happens!) and they are often scenic and LOW STRESS.

Low stress is the key for me. Why would I want to drive with people who are intent on getting somewhere? Crazy. Most states indicate such good roads with a special designation, like Scenic Highway. Good hint, except in Louisiana where a road is actually named Scenic Highway and it literally leads to the dump so you follow garbage trucks for miles through un-scenic areas of run down housing and petro-chemical plants. After this experience you understand why New Jersey is called the Garden State!

Non-riders do not realize that one of the special pleasures of riding motorbikes is using more than two senses in navigating the world in time and space. In addition to our eyes to see and our butts to sense our mass, we use our noses to sense smell (good and less-good) and use our skin to sense temperature and humidity. My most memorable smell experience was a couple of summers ago crossing Pennsylvania from west to east, about midnight, on PA 45, a two lane road through a farming area. My GPS screen glowed softly in the absolute darkness marking my progress as dots on a blank screen because the road I was on was not mathematically defined in its database. The road was straight but had rises and dips that made it interesting. Also, I think they have a deer education project in Pennsylvania as I saw not one dead beast in the many miles of that trip. So I was really relaxed, doing about 60mph on my old R60 and cresting a rise, descended into a valley that was filled with the smell of celery. Bam: I went from no smell to Strong Celery Smell. It was great. Likewise, these same rises and dips correspond to temperature changes that are recorded by the skin exposed on the face. Just a few degrees is very obvious as one descends the dip for a few seconds and then into warmer air on the rises. You don't get that in a car even with the windows open. So I look at these maps to see what might present itself along the way. Even in the mid-west, with what most imagine are just straight roads, look first for a river and then the roads that follow along the banks and a good experience is at hand.

In the second phase of planning I progress to the digital, virtual map, that cannot be cut out and folded. But, with the advent of Google Earth and the like, I can actually see the terrain, and the density of buildings, driveway cuts, and super-walmarts. This is a great planning tool that allows me to avoid these areas except in the middle of the night. In addition to the great on-line mapping products from Google, Mapquest and others, I use a product from DemonicOfRedmond called 'Streets and Trips' that allows careful planning and, at the click of a button, tells me where construction is planned along my proposed route. (Side note: My main reason for not ditching the Windows world for a Mac or better yet, a linux laptop, is that there are no mapping programs for either platform. Obviously Mac and linux users don't care for this style of navigation).

You can click on two maps of my plan for this summer in the upper left of my main blog page under Summer Trip 2008 . When I actually travel I use an old, primitive GPS for stats and a record of what path I did take, and paper maps that I faithfully collect from state welcome stations and police. I mark them up and save them as artifacts that researchers can examine in 300 years and wonder "What was this guy thinking?"

Do not be deceived! All this planning does NOT relate to the path I take during the actual ride, but only is done to enhance my time while not riding. Once I get on the bike I just wing it and go on whatever road looks good at the moment. I have been known to ride the same road twice. I mean, if the road is really nice, I might turn around and ride back some miles and repeat it again. How many car drivers would do that?

It might not be the road itself that calls for a re-ride. The blog entry picture posted called "Book Cover Photo" was the result of two passes through the greater Onward metropolitan area. The photo was taken in the southerly direction on a north-bound leg of a trip from Baton Rouge to the Mississippi Delta. Food places get my attention too. I stayed for several hours in Lewisburg, a small town in Pennsylvania, in order to eat at another little cafe that looked good. Truth be told, I ate in three places in that town. First a cafe (good homemade bread and chicken salad), then a bakery down the street that had good deserts and later on a coffee shop of the older kind where nothing in a cup was over $1.25 and the fatted caf was not yet known. In between I walked the streets of the five block downtown, visited the post office lobby to see if my picture was up yet, repacked some of my gear and talked to a few "My dad had a bike that once" folks.

I'll write an entry on finding good food in places you have never been. I do have a formula that has been repeatable and yields high value and many smiles. Keep tuned, it proves that lawyers are useful!

So take a look at the maps, tell me if there are cool places I am missing along the way. And if you live along the way, let me know and we can have a cup of joe together. I might be arriving at midnight, but it will be worth it.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Back in the Day

Back in the day, BMW sought to penetrate the college market with civilized and reliable motorbikes. This postcard was part of a market effort to build that image. That aside, my friend Peter was likely one of only a handful of American people in that demographic enjoying a BMW bike. I caught the fever as well and soon had my own BMW in 1970. I say my own, but these bikes were shared between us. I rode Peter's bike often and he rode mine as well. His was stolen in New York City, but I inherited his Craven bags when I got mine.

Mine was bought from an old guy in Altus Oklahoma. He might have actually not been that old, but compared to me he was an old timer. I would go, from time to time, to a roadhouse where true shit-kicking music was played, young men acted out ritual stupid behavior and much beer was consumed while a country band played upon a stage for the listening pleasure of the crowd. Only one person sat at the bar, as I remember, and it was this old guy who rode a BMW to the bar. And he did not drink beer, he drank Cognac. For all I know he brought his own bottle. I always greeted him when I entered and my last words, carefully timed at a break in the deafening music were to him. Every conversation ended with "... and that bike is yours for the right price."

So more than a year after leaving Altus and getting settled in Denver, I took a trip, helmet in hand, to that forlorn part of Oklahoma via a bus to OK City and hitch hiked to that bar (a story in its own right) and arrived in town in the middle of the night, pocket stuffed with money to make the bike mine. Bar closed at 4 AM. I crashed someplace and waited until evening to find the old guy. Just as I had hoped, there was the bike parked in the exact spot I was used to seeing it. I looked it over by the night of a neon Bud sign, and entered the bar. Just as I hadn't missed a week of conversation the old guy said "Hi," and I took up a table as far from the stage as possible. During a break I walked up to him, had some small talk, asked how the bike was doing and judging that he was sober enough to remember the sale in the morning, popped the question.

"How much would it take to ride away on that bike right now? "

The answer was a little more than my expectation, so I removed the short stack of hundred dollar bills I had planned to invest in his retirement. He glanced at it as if it were a poker wager and indicate in body language more than words that we could do business. He said he's go home and get the title at mid-night when he normally left (didn't want to tip off his wife that something was going down) and meet me there in 'a while' to consummate the deal.

He did and we did. It turned out he lived a very short distance from the bar, about ten minutes was all it took to go and find it and return. The bar tender and another inebriated patron witnessed the signing and we went out under the light of neon to exchange keys, manuals and a few extra parts he offered with the bike. I offered him a ride home and he said he'd walk or get a ride with someone else. I started up the bike and rode to the trailer of a Air Force buddy and knocked on his door at 1 AM. He was actually happy to see me. That is a friend.

Next morning I was off for Denver. I'll post the one picture I have of that trip soon. You'll like my 'do.