Monday, August 30, 2010

Leaning-off in a left-hander

Right leg wrapped around; joining centripital force to keep you but inches from the ground.

Right arm pulling, left pushing.

Push/pull eases to equilibrium as the asphalt straightens; not without your legs and torso returning weight to your right peg.

Head, shoulders, waist complete half an arc demanded by the ess, whose second half awaits as you mirror these actions.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Pelicans pelicans pelicans...

Hard bags turn a bike into something useful. Sure, there are a bunch of soft bag solutions out there that can join forces to create a Voltron-esque container to store your belongings. But in my opinion? Soft bags suck. They aren't really lockable, they are annoying as hell to fiddle with when you're looking for something you packed toward the bottom. And before you know it, you've deformed your pack job to the point where you need to start all over again. UGH!!!! With a hard bag, you just smoosh everything back in and latch it. No deformation.

sprsprtlgg

If I'm stuck on a bike without hard luggage, I consider myself to be using an inadequate tool of transportation. So it was with great pleasure today that I was able to place my Almax chain, backpack, and lunch into a Pelican 1550 (as opposed to a Joe Rocket tail bag that was hardly up to the task).

When I bought the ZX, the seller gave me one of those slick seat cowls that match the contours of the bike and replace the pillion seat. So I unbolted the frame from the cowl and reattached it to one of Megan's Pelican saddle bags. Much to Megan's satisfaction, this gave us the excuse to finally buy a matching orange Pelican and now her bike looks more presentable in all its VT colors!

That black Pelican 1550 started out on the SV650S, was moved to the SV650, and now has its home on the rear of the ZX. The bottom of the case is starting to look like Swiss cheese, but it's still holding strong and here's hoping it serves me well on the 636!

Monday, August 23, 2010

Trailer, 2010

Usually I get the trailer back in action in the Spring, but this year took a different course and here I am spinning the trailer up in August. Better late than never, yeah?


IMG_4910

Every year brings a different list than the last, and this one included a license plate/tail light bracket that sheared, a failed right-hand tail light, and some rewiring. That's in addition to the yearly repacking of the wheel bearings. It appears the Harbor Freight trailer mediocrity exists outside my social circle:

How to fix Harbor Freight’s 48 x 96″ 1150lb trailer with 12″ wheels

James's post above is priceless - I'm sure I'll be referring to that a few more times. Thanks to the broken pieces of information on the blogs, forums, and parts suppliers that lace our intertubes, we continue to hobble along with HF Model 90154.

September will see us down in the Smokies for our 2010 taste of the twisties. And I'll be damned if Old Red isn't the 1st thing I see every time I check the rear view.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Wednesday thoughts...

Tat tags?

not.interested.

What's a tat? Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot that all motorcyclists have tattoos. Well, since they do, of course they will like sheet metal cut into recognizable shapes! How ...creative.

Moving right along, I've been testing this new GPS logger application on my WebOS-based phone. I dig! I'm thinking it will prove useful in the future for capturing awesome routes I stumble upon (more on this in a future post).

While I was sitting at a red light today, thinking about the logger recording my whereabouts, I spotted a sedan with a big 'ol Papa John's wart half attached to the rear passenger side window. It was a knarly thing with its tentacles reaching in through the cracked-open window and two big, nasty suction cups holding it on from the outside. Oh yeah, and a tail wrapped around the frame that came to an end with a cigarette lighter connector. Ugly.

get_it_OFF!!!!

I'm sure PJ figured that this was a great idea - get the name out there so people will call in for orders. That's a shame, because when I see it, these are the things that come to mind:


  • Wow, PJ's too cheap to buy delivery mobiles and lets employees rack up the miles on their own machines.

  • That's the ugliest contraption I've even seen.

  • Let me get 2 lanes away from that thing before it falls on me.

  • I wonder if that cord can even reach the cigarette lighter.

  • Do those appendages have to be DOT approved?



Those are probably not the kind of negative, doubtful thoughts you want your name to inspire. Hell, after writing this post, Papa John's is embedded in my head as a big nasty thing that finds and attaches itself to your car when you're not watching. Look out!!!