The planning starts again ...

Last year the plan was the Four Corners region (yes, it DOES deserve capitalization) which had been a long ago shelved trip plan. It was very mature compared to my usual style of choosing a direction and a date to be back and letting it fall as it does. Not that I don't spend cold, wintery days looking and marking up maps. It is just that I don't follow them too much. Last year I left my pile of maps on the coffee table at home. Didn't notice 'til I got to Denver, 1500 miles down the road.

I have several ideas that have been rattling around for a long time, and have to decide which would be best for this summer trip that will celebrate my entry to my 61st year consuming resources.

Here are some of the 'back-burner' trip plans:

1) Ride Your Bike to France ®. This trip involves getting to France without airfare, cruise ships or even tramp steamers. Most of you have heard the details (as I understand them) so I will not reveal the top-secret routing info that the CIA might pick up from analysis of my blog. My folder is thick enough! But Ride Your Bike to France is doable. Issues include that fact that it may be cold and wet up there. And it is a long distance between gas stations. I can speak French with a southern accent.

2) Ride and experience the Civil Rights trail. This appeals to me as I was involved in the civil rights struggle (as much as a white kid can be) and I have great respect for the actions and sacrifices made by thousands of civil rights activists that were the visable, glowing light fueled by more than a century of struggle by black people and other minorities.

There are interesting and documented sites in all the Southeast states and I would work in some time in the Mississippi Delta, Oxford Mississippi with a stop in Greenville for a non-vegetarian meal at Doe's Eat Place, and the Barber Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham. I have wanted to do this ride for years. Issues include it being really hot in this area in July and a lot of civil rights events are memorialized in cities. I hate cities on a bike, but I can park the thing and take public transportation, sitting anywhere I want on the bus, thanks to those who came before. Or walk.

3) Tour and experience the 'outer banks' of Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. This is a fascinating area and, in between tourist areas, there are great small towns and cultures that are the targets of my adventures. It would be a low mileage trip, and I have friends along the way that I don't get to see often enough. The seafood would make me happy. Issues include camping in hot, humid, biting insect areas. It might be nice to do it on a small dual-sport bike, which I do not own.

4) Fall back to Plan A: Ride the bike to Kent's birthday party and leave Baton Rouge with no particular plan other than end up at Mid-Ohio for Vintage Motorcycle days at the end of the month. Maybe visit some on-line friends from the Slash 2 list (for older BMW bikes) or visit university campuses and meet other emergency planners. I know that sounds like work, but it would be fun for me. Two of the campuses I want to visit are Harvard and U.C. Davis. Sounds like a coast to coast trip.

Then I need to decide which bike to ride. I am thinking that it is time to take the old R60 on a leg stretching ride. That picture isn't of my bike, I found it on the net, and it looks cleaner than my bike!

But I may get one of the Ascots running and see how they are for more than 50 miles at a time. I will have to build some good racks for sure, and invest some time in making a better seat. I have been riding one as I fix it and it is a great feeling bike on short rides. Again, this is not my bike, but mine once looked like that, I guess...


So how about participating in the process and make some suggestions on the route. Time period is from about the 5th of July in Baton Rouge or Virginia to the 23rd of July when I should be in Ohio.

And this posts marks the return of the oldbikerider special feature called Lessons Learned:

Go watch this video and see if you enjoy this music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrhgk8Fa_QE

(it is not your ears, it is not in your - or any - language. And it NOT Enya!)

Interesting reading on the Web

I have been reading the following things and found them appealing. Maybe you will like them too. The Peace Corp member story involves Kenscoff, Haiti, a place where we once lived. I can't imagine an internet cafe in Kenscoff.

Cross Country on a $50 bike tells the story of 5 college friends that did what we all want to do in one way or another and excited a bunch of old guys who never did ....




Molly, a Peace Corp member, tells about her time in Haiti. Reading her story, I relived some of our first impressions of culture of Haiti, and the wonderful people of Haiti.



I stumbled onto her travel-log while researching the altitude of Kenscoff to make a comment on the Mama to Mama blog that supports Konbit Sante in Cap-Haitien, Haiti. Yeah, click on the link, you want to know about this.

What causes me to finally make a post?

I haven't written anything for this blog in some time. Motorcycle weather is not so good in the mountains of Virginia, and so many things are going on.

So what motivation do I have?

Is it that the elections are finally over and the house phone no longer rings with phony polls and 'very important messages' from people we don't know who mysteriously don't listen to a word we say?

Is it the broken pipe in the ceiling that trashed our bathroom and we can't seem to find anyone to come fix the damage?

Is it the new job that is enjoyable in a strange kind of way?

No, it is none of those things. Is there a new (or old) motorcycle that has caught my eye? Nope.

I just read that Mr. Obama is rumored to fulfill my life-long dream of ending the communist-plot- to-overthrow-the-USA boon-doggle called daylight savings time! I am so happy! Just think of the huge cost of 305,734,109 (as of 11/24/08 at 7:14 EST) Americans setting 2.1 (avg digital clocks per person) freakin' electronic clocks twice a year. Add to this that there is no standard way to set these abominations. Add to that the cost of people being late or early because some of these things never do get set back or forward. And keep in mind that when this plot was hatched we didn't even have digital devices! We had watches and wind up clocks. Think of the broken finger nails pulling out those tiny winding stems and broken table clocks from messing with the innards of wind-up table and big old clocks. Filing off ALL your nails so they match is a real time waster now replaced by stick-on nails and the internet.

Lets do the math: 305 million people X 2.1 devices equals 640 million devices times 3 minutes per device equals 1,920,000,000 minutes equals 32,000,000 hours or 1,333,333 days or 3653 years. This happens twice a year, so we are talking about 7306 person/years each year.* That is a lot of productivity wasted. And that is only for the US, some other countries do it as well.

When William Willett came up with this modern version of the scheme it was not well received. Not until the first world war fogged sensibility did the idea see widespread adoption. Too bad William died in 1915 before it happened. Germany and its WWI allies adopted it first in 1916, then Russia in 1917 and finally the US got sucked in in 1918.

So my cheer is "Ninety Years is enough!" Let's get rid of this thing.

Other people don't like it either:

In the New York Times Adam Hochschild laments his personal pain in So Many Clocks, So Little Time.

How do YOU feel about this vital matter?

* I made up the 2.1 digital clocks per person. It is accurate for our two person household if you count a dog as .4 person and a cat as .1 person. They don't use clocks much as far as we can tell. The rest of the figures were made up by Al Gore, inventor of the internet. Ann did the math on a laptop whose RTC was probably under the influence of DST. Oh, and the three minutes per device? In your dreams ....