Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Sun, 31 Dec 2006

Christmas pictures

Just in case you want to see all the incriminating photos, I just posted the pictures I took during Christmas. Here are some of my favorite shots from the trip:

David, Fern and Barbara, waiting for the cable car in San Francisco

All of us posing for a group shot overlooking San Francisco Bay

Oooh, arty! Ghirardelli Square

The true meaning of Christmas: Half naked, well-defined men as store greeters

Yours truly as the Mousiest Santa

Making tamales

Post-prandial conversation

Recorder, recorder, cello

Posted at 14:28 permanent link category: /misc


Fri, 29 Dec 2006

The Box is Gone

With a mere two days before the deadline, The Box has finally been removed from my basement. Was I sad to see it go? Not really. And now there's a huge open space where it used to be. I almost feel all inspired to turn on the Hadio again and see what's out there. Almost.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you should probably read this.

Posted at 16:17 permanent link category: /misc


Wed, 20 Dec 2006

I'd like to tell you a little tale

So, I'm going to do my best to redact names here, because I'm not trying to defame anyone or anything.

Many years ago, I got interested in a particular hobby. Let's call it Ram Hadio. It was fun, and I was having a good time with it. I got involved with a particular group, which shall remain nameless. Sorry, not even spoonerized.

Anyway, I was hanging out with this group for a while, and ended up being a board member for a while, and then wasn't, but kept attending board meetings. All good. At some point, some pivotal equipment, which I shall call The Box, lost its home. It'd previously been living the Boxy equivalent of la dolce vita, in someone's basement.

Then, the owner of that place stopped owning that place any more, for reasons which don't matter for this story. So the The Box was cast loose, without a home. There was something of a panic, as The Box has some particular requirements for a home, it can't go just anywhere.

So, in a fit of civic-heartedness, I volunteered, "You can put it in my basement." My basement is set up about right for Boxy happiness, although it's really not ideal. That was about two years ago, give or take 6 months.

So, my house became the new home of The Box. It was kind of big, and took up more room than I liked, but I could live with it. After all, it was just a temporary home, while this organization scoped out new places to put The Box; places which would be more permanent and happy. So, The Box and I continued living peacefully, even though it wasn't in its happiest possible situation.

Every once in a while, the group would come to the conclusion that The Box, being a big and complicated thing, needed some work. Sometimes I'd work on it actively, sometimes I'd just let people in who knew what needed to be done. No real problem.

Every month (or as often as I could), I'd go to board meetings, and we'd discuss things, including the current state of The Box, and the search for a new Boxy home. There was always some small progress on the home-search, but never very much. Sometimes, we'd come up with sure winners, which would be dashed a month later, at the next meeting. In every case, it was evident that The Box would be moving as soon as it could.

So about 14 months ago, give or take a few months, I came into a board meeting, and said, "Hey! Due to some anticipated changes in my life, I need to get The Box out by January 1, 2007." Now, this was 14 months (more or less) in the future, so everyone said, "Great! Thanks for the advanced warning!" Smiles all around. We would speed up the search for a new Box-home, and it'd probably happen around Summer 2006. Cool.

Now, I'd known for a long time that this organization is not great at actually doing anything in chunks of time smaller than a month (between board meetings), which is why I gave them such a huge warning. I figured 14 doing-stuff chunks would be enough. They'll likely find a new Box-home, and I can proceed with my life free of Boxy intrusion. But I also had a little niggle at the back of my head. It said, "Heh. Heh. I bet you're gonna be shoving that Box out the door on January 1st, to sit in the snow, possibly conveying an impression of sadness." The Box, that is, not me, conveying the sadness. In any case.

Needless to say, I've set you up well. You know by now that The Box is still with me. Note the date at the top of this entry. Summer 2006 came and went, although with some very promising Box-homes on the horizon. But somehow, we never followed up, or they weren't as promising when we actually examined them in detail. Whatever the case, The Box is still a guest in my basement.

So, now, we've been through a mean, nasty winter storm, which knocked out power to most of the Seattle area for a week -- some parts are still without power. That's a terrible thing, and I'm sorry so many people are suffering. I had sent an email about a week before the storm to the President of this organization, and said, "Hey, I can't help but notice that January 1st, 2007 is rapidly approaching, and I won't be able to attend this last board meeting [to coordinate getting The Box out of my house]."

Two days ago, I got a reply from the President, more or less saying, "Hey, Ian, that was sure a nasty storm. Any chance we could push back that date a little bit? Just a wee bit, until the January meeting." Gee, it sure was a nasty storm, I'm right there with ya, Prez. But no. I told you fourteen months ago that 1/1/07 was the date. I'm sorry you lost your power, but, really, we shouldn't be in this position at all. It's going out the door as soon as I wake up on January 1st.

Oh, and did I mention? It's Christmas-time, which means that my time is all kinds of booked up from now until then. See, that's why I figured we'd be done with this in the Summer. 'Cause that whole Holiday Season? Bad time to be getting things done which don't relate directly to roasting chestnuts or hanging out with family. I mean, I'm sorry, and don't think you didn't get a little pang of guilt from me there, but if 14 months isn't enough warning, I don't know what is.

So now, I find myself in the enviable position of having to tell a public-service-minded organization they're out of luck. In a way, I set myself up for this by ever letting that adorable little Box into my basement in the first place. But in another way, I extended the Box's life by two years (or so) and gave my organization an excellent chance to find the perfect, shiny, Boxy home. I didn't even charge them rent, like the last Boxy home did (it wasn't much, but when your organization runs on under $1000 a year, everything counts).

Now, of course, I have grown weary of the organization, and their inability to do almost anything of consequence. I bade farewell to Ram Hadio a while ago, at least as an active hobby, and The Box is my last real attachment to it. When it's gone (whether it's collecting snow outside my door, or happily ensconced in the Boxy workshop, where it will (theoretically) be taken apart and rebuilt from the ground up by dedicated organizational volunteers), I doubt I'll think about it too much. All of which is a pity, since The Box and its organization once seemed to hold such promise.

Won't it be interesting to see what I post on this subject, come January 1st, 2007?

Posted at 15:21 permanent link category: /misc


And now, a word from our technician

If you've been having trouble viewing obairlann.net from your Linux machine, I've been rudely informed that my site is BROKEN and NON-COMPLIANT. However, in the midst of his rudeness, the bug reader who responded to my bug report did give a good workaround.

This problem affects Linux kernels 2.6.17 and forward, and will presumably affect all future kernels until I fix my BROKEN router.

But I'm over the rudeness.

Anyway, what you do is add a new option to your default route spec. A basic example goes like this:

route add default gw 192.168.1.1 window 65535

You'll obviously want to change your default gateway IP from 192.168.1.1 to whatever it's supposed to be (note that's your gateway's IP, not your machine's IP -- run "route -n" first and see what 0.0.0.0 points at if you're not sure). The tricky bit is that "window 65535" bit, which apparently limits something or other so that my FEEBLE and BRAINDEAD router can gum the packets sufficiently to swallow them.

It worked for my laptop at work, running kernel 2.6.19.1. If you're not familiar with making low-level changes to this kind of thing, you might want to avoid doing it, but rest assured that it does seem to work.

Posted at 13:39 permanent link category: /misc


Mon, 18 Dec 2006

You wanna know who killed the electric car?

Electric car makers did.

I just did some cruising on the net, and confirmed a few suspicions on the ZAP! Xebra:

...And so on. sigh.

Most of this is from xebraworld.com, which is nominally an enthusiast's site.

Now that I reflect on it from a little tiny bit of distance, it doesn't make much sense for me to drop $12k (or more, I haven't heard back from the dealership on what "other" charges like shipping, paperwork, dealer prep, etc. may be tacked on) on what amounts to a glorified golf cart. Granted, it's electric. Cool. But with a regulated top speed of around 32 MPH, it's not safe for the missions I have in mind, which require at least 35, and preferrably 40 or 50 MPH.

Having spent some time figuring out what exactly they're selling for their twelve thousand dollars, it's not really a winning proposition, at least for me. Too many problems, with a too-basic system, for too much money. I keep thinking to myself, "I could build something better for cheaper, and I'd have fun doing it." Not precisely true, in that I don't yet know how to weld, but given a year or so, I'd probably come up with a better vehicle for less total expenditure.

Each owner's site I've looked at so far has included the same third-world sounding description of squeaks and rattles (which sometimes correspond to major components trying to fall off the vehicle), and lots of little niggles which could have been prevented by spending another dollar or two in construction, or designing something better. Not encouraging.

The troubleshooting guide, which I flipped through, suggests some problems so fundamental as to make me question the assemblers' ability to do anything right. Did the parts get assembled in the right order? Did the welder bother cleaning anything, or just kind of weld over whatever corrosion was on the frame parts? What quality of components are in critical locations, like interconnect cables and cutoff switches?

So, overall, I don't think I'm willing to consider such a questionable expense. There are too many open questions about quality, and it's apparent that marketing at ZAP! is not too concerned about truth (which is the point of marketing, but they're usually closer to reality than this).

All of which is a pity, of course. I had high hopes for the Xebra, but what I know now suggests that they're charging too much for too little.

Posted at 16:32 permanent link category: /gadgets


Sat, 16 Dec 2006

ZAP! Xebra review in place

I've got the review of the Xebra PK in place now:

2007 ZAP! Xebra PK review

Enjoy, and have fun looking at the pretty pictures. In particular, I'm fond of the picture with me standing next to the thing. It's miniscule.

Posted at 18:02 permanent link category: /gadgets


The electrical test-drive

I went in to the Green Car Company today, and ended up test-driving three different cars.

The first was the ZAP! Xebra PK, my primary motivation for going there. First impression? Tiny! That truck, despite what it looks like in every picture I've come across, only comes up to my chest. It's miniscule.

That tininess extends to the cabin. I could just fit in, with the seat rammed all the way back, and even then my shoulder and hair were brushing the walls. The pedals are weirdly offset, with the gas pedal about were you'd expect a brake pedal to be in relation to the seat, and the big brake pedal shoved hard to the left wall. It definitely encourages "two-foot" driving despite the automatic nature of the beast.

In a quick (~1 mile) test drive, I got to accelerate on the flat, round a few corners, and try going up a moderate grade. Acceleration on the flat is fine, a bit less than what you'd expect from a truly basic economy car. Corners were non-events, apparently due to the positioning of the batteries below the truck bed. No noticeable body roll, but I wasn't pushing anything. Acceleration up the grade was pretty lame. It hit an indicated 18 MPH, and stayed there until the hill flattened out. This was with myself (about 220 lbs) and the salesman (maybe 180-220 lbs) in the cab, and nothing in the bed.

Part of our circuit took us over some speed bumps, and the steepest bump there caused some hard part at the front of the vehicle to touch down with a bonk. I would guess it was the lower suspension mount, but I didn't take a close look under the nose of the thing. The sedan model did the same thing (even being very gentle over the bump), so I assume it's typical of the design rather than particular to that unit.

The salesman, who I can now only think of as Smilin' Jim (his name is Jim something, but he was definitely a salesman, and not a granola-eatin' hippie) said the Xebras currently come with 300A controllers, but that they were looking into replacing them with 450A controllers. That would definitely help with acceleration, and with getting up hills, but it could seriously impact range if you've got a heavy foot.

He said that as equipped, the Xebras don't have regenerative braking, but that with a new controller, they could have regen. I don't know if this is true, and he admitted to me that he wasn't super savvy about the tech side of things. It'd be worth more investigation. He also said that the top speed (40 MPH, more or less) was controlled by a governor, but said that he didn't know where the governor was. If it's not in the motor controller, I'd be very surprised. It probably doesn't make a lot of sense to get rid of the governor, though, as going faster would seriously compromise range.

The Xebra sedan was about the same experience as the truck, but the seating was more comfortable. Since there wasn't a vertical wall right behind the driver's seat, it could be scooted much further back, and there wasn't a curved-in section to hit my shoulder. If I were looking at one of these as a single-person transport, I'd pick the sedan (it's also cheaper). The biggest problem I had with the sedan was that the parking brake was situated on the left, next to the door, and was nearly impossible to reach.

Smilin' Jim looked over at me at one point, and said (shortly after I'd described my sidecar rig to him), "You know, one downside of this is that you'll have to get a motorcycle license." I looked at him like he was crazy, since he'd commented on the fact that I rode a motorcycle in to the shop when I walked in, and we had just been discussing the way I don't have any cars. He had to understand that I already had a license.

"I have a motorcycle license," I said.

"But I mean a class 3 motorcycle license," he said knowingly. He's plainly caught motorcycle people out with this before. I just looked at him like he was crazy again, and said, "I have a three-wheeler license, if that's what you mean." He had a little head-slap moment and said, "Oh, of course! The sidecar..." Ah, Jim.

Finally, I drove a SMART car, which was a blast. Very much more refined than the Xebras, I could easily see getting a SMART as an all-round car, if I were rich and very specifically wanted a highly-efficient two-seater. At $25k for the basic model, and $30k for the convertible, they're beyond what I want. Way cooler than a Toyota Echo, but of course nearly double the price.

The SMART accelerates very well, and Smilin' Jim said they get 40-50 MPG in-city, and 60ish on the freeway. That's pretty damned good, for a boxy little car with a 700cc motor. (It doesn't sound big, but my 250cc motorcycle has trouble topping 50 MPG in-city, and gets 60ish in real-world freeway driving.) The SMART also has ABS and airbags, so it's actually got a lot going for it when compared to a motorcycle. Of course, it's not actually a motorcycle, so it's a bit of a ridiculous comparison.

Anyway, after I was all done, I asked if I could test-drive the Meyers whatever-they-call it (nee Corbin Sparrow), and Smilin' Jim lost a bit of the smile (but not too much) and said, "I'm sorry, but it's not licensed for single-driver right now." I gave him the "huh?" look, and he explained, "Because I can't go with you," as if that cleared it all up. "Oh, ok," I said, since the answer was obviously "No. Go 'way kid, you bother me," no matter how I might have tried phrasing it. (I noticed on the way out that the Xebra PK we'd taken out had no license plate whatsoever, so Smilin' Jim obviously wasn't too worried about legality.) No worries, he'd been very accomodating. I know I'm not going to get a Corbin Sparrow, although they're very cool, and I'm glad to see that another company picked them up.

So, bottom line, I liked the Zap! cars. I'm going to write up a more formal review which will appear on my main page sooner or later, with pictures. I'm only going to review the truck model, with perhaps a smattering of comparisons with the sedan model.

Posted at 15:30 permanent link category: /gadgets


Mon, 11 Dec 2006

Electric truckiness

Ok, this is just cool:

ZAP Xebra pickup truck

I'm going to have to head over to the Green Car Company soon and look at one. That's a truck I could get into.

Posted at 17:13 permanent link category: /gadgets


Photographic serendipity

I was over at my friend Jesse's house for dinner last night, and happed to grab the camera in time to take this picture:

I thought it turned out pretty well. That's Jesse, his girlfriend Katie, and my girlfriend Kristin.

Posted at 11:44 permanent link category: /misc


Sun, 10 Dec 2006

The agony of progress

Some time this morning, probably around 6:30, the power supply on my web server went buh-bye. I noticed later, after I'd gotten up, when I couldn't get to anything on ye olde Intarnette (my web server is also my name server, ah the joys of multitasking).

With minimal grunting and swearing, I dislodged the server from the rack, and opened it up. Nothing was obviously wrong, so my first guess was the power supply. Fortunately, my first guess was right, and swapping in a spare power supply got everything up and working again.

Of course, I couldn't leave it at that. The spare power supply I have is an el-cheapo, and I didn't really want to leave it in this computer that will be running 24/7 for the next several years, if all goes right. I headed out into the pouring rain, and dropped into the local computer store, where I picked up a "nice" supply (ie, one which has a recognizable brand name, and might even use actual bearings on their fans).

I got it back, and went to hook it up, but there were two things obviously wrong: first, the device itself was clattering ominously, and I first thought that one of the fans had disgorged all its ball bearings; second, the connector which hooks to the motherboard was a different style, and I didn't think it would work. So, I bundled it all back up, and plowed back through the rain. The rattling was probably loose silica gel beads, but I figured if I was going to spend $65 on something, it should probably be nearly perfect.

The store didn't give me any trouble about the exchange, and showed me how to modify the power supply's plug to work with my older hardware. Back to home, watching the rain soak into my riding suit (which seems to have lost any pretensions of waterproofness in the outer fabric).

I plugged it all together, and it worked on the first try. Delighted, I put everything back together, and laboriously loaded it back into the rack. I flipped the switch, and nothing happened. Well, something happened, but it wasn't good: the monitor just showed a series of flickering lines, as if the vertical hold were out of whack.

Grr. So, I pulled all the cables, and unbolted it from the rack, sliding it back out again. Off came the cover. The only thing which looked likely was a power pin which had worked itself out of a connector, so I shoved that back together, and powered it on. Success! Well, hopefully.

Fortunately, when it all went back together in the rack, it continued working. I did have to stop half-way through, though, since I was approaching the point of just kicking the computer until it was in tiny pieces.

So, finally, around 3 o'clock today, obairlann.net came back up. Sorry for the outage, those of you who are mysteriously addicted to my bizarre little corner of the intarweb.

Posted at 18:28 permanent link category: /misc


Fri, 08 Dec 2006

Dear god, not another novel!

My meteoric rise to novel-ness the first time was pretty encouraging, although the novel I came up with had some distinct shortfalls. It was, actually, encouraging enough that I decided to do it again.

I don't have the vast wordcount goal that I had last time, approaching this one a bit differently. I'm not trying to get it done in a month, I'm just trying to get it written at a goodly clip. In two writing sessions so far, I've got nearly 4700 words done, so it's going at about the same pace as the first one.

The idea this time is to take my friend Web's Rocketmen idea, and build a novel around it. This occurred to me as being a great subject for a novel when I was half-way through the last one, and I decided I might as well get started on it now.

So, I'm off again. If you'd like to keep up with me (spelling errors, weak descriptions, missing plot and all), give this link a reload every couple of days. As always, keep in mind that this is pure first-draft, and it's probably worth less than you're paying for it.

The other story hasn't been forgotten, just in case you were wondering. I've done a complete first-pass edit, and have started a second pass. Then the month ran out, and I'm following the advice I generally hear bandied about, which is to leave it for at least 6 weeks before I start trying to edit it. I'm not terribly impressed with the first story, but after I've got it edited and as good as it's going to get without major work, I'll probably post it over on dangerpants.com for all and sundry to mock.

Posted at 10:27 permanent link category: /misc


Thu, 30 Nov 2006

Frequaintaince

A friend of mine asked a question today, which boils down to "what do you call someone who's not as familiar as a friend, but not as distant as an acquaintance?"

I suggested "frequaintance." It's got parts of "friend," "frequent" and "acquaintance." In terms of neologisms, it's pretty much perfect.

Remember, you heard it here first.

[later]

Damn! I guess you didn't hear it here first: Pink Fish Media: New Words. Oh well, at least I came up with it without knowing someone else had already done so. And the timing is surprisingly close. Maybe it's just something in the air.

Posted at 16:55 permanent link category: /misc


Wed, 29 Nov 2006

Airplane building thoughts, a couple months on

So, the last time I said anything about the idea of building an airplane, it was pretty negative. I had a comprehensive awakening to the horrible situation we're in, as a society, regarding energy usage. It sounded pretty negative, and it pretty much was negative.

I had a thought, a month or two ago, which amounted to, "if I ever want to do it, now is the best time." The logic goes like this: building an airplane isn't very resource-intensive, but flying it is. Since the goal of building an airplane, at least in part, is to fly it, building an airplane is therefore an exercise in using gasoline. If I'm going to do something which uses gasoline, it's going to cost more the later I do it (assuming that oil is going to get more scarce and therefore expensive, which seems reasonable).

If it's going to cost more the longer I push it back, then it makes the most sense to do it as soon as possible. That assumes I really want to do it, but it's an acceptable assumption.

Only now, a month or two after I had that series of thoughts, I'm no longer so certain I want to build an airplane. It still sounds interesting, but the idea no longer maintains that obsessive hold on me that it did a few months ago. Now, with the benefit of some space, it seems a bit crazy. Not crazy like I couldn't do it, but crazy like, "why would I want to?"

So now, I'm not sure. Flying has gone back to its holding position of being something I'm intellectually interested in, but something which doesn't really call to me in any sort of visceral way. I passed a few months without even thinking about airplanes or flying. Then I thought to myself, "Hey, I haven't been flying lately, maybe I should fix that," but it didn't really sound all that appealing.

I think I've again reached that place where flying doesn't matter any more. I'm glad I know how to fly, I'm glad I could go back to it, but I can't really get excited about it. It's expensive, and it's a lot of work. I can't use it to travel because it's so very dependent upon weather. I don't find myself craving it for fun.

I guess, until something changes, I'm done with flying.

Posted at 18:12 permanent link category: /aviation


Snow pix

I figured some of my handful of readers would be interested in seeing the snow conditions chez Ian:

That's snow that fell two days ago, and hasn't shifted since. Amazing! It's very rare for snow in Seattle to last for more than 24 hours. Of course, even now, the temperature is all the way up to 27° F, from a low of 17° last night. It's practically balmy!

That shot of the road, by the way, is why I've been spending a lot of time working from home rather than clambering aboard the sidecar rig and going for a little slip-n-slide. It's inch-thick ice, not the slush it kind of appears to be. The roads are much more passable further south, but getting there would entail far too large an exposure to morons in SUVs who think four wheel drive exempts them from the laws of physics.

Tonight's forecast:

TONIGHT...SNOW CHANGING TO RAIN BY MIDNIGHT. BREEZY. SNOW ACCUMULATION
OF 1 TO 2 INCHES BEFORE THE CHANGE TO RAIN. LOWS IN THE UPPER 20S TO
MID 30S. SOUTH WIND 15 TO 25 MPH.

Sounds like a fine night to stay in watching silly videos.

Posted at 12:00 permanent link category: /misc


Tue, 28 Nov 2006

Weather observations

The weather lately has been pretty odd. This month was .08 inches away from being the wettest month ever recorded in Seattle. Suddenly this last Sunday, it started snowing, and tonight we're supposed to get down to 16° F (-9° C). There was a winter storm warning for last night, and we got about 3 inches of snow at my house.

Now, I looked over at the barometer, and it's gone mad! Well, kind of. Yesterday, I saw it get down into the low 29.6s. Now, it's up at 30.34 inches. That's a huge swing, and if I recall anything from my meterology training, that should be clearing out all the clouds for tonight. It's gonna get cold without those clouds holding in any warmth!

Kind of a crazy November, it must be said.

Posted at 19:31 permanent link category: /misc


Mon, 27 Nov 2006

Snow! On a sidecar!

It started snowing pretty hard last night, to the point that there was two and a half inches of snow on my deck. I went to bed certain I would work from home today, which I did. Sort of. I discovered half-way through the day that the one critical app I needed to use simply wouldn't work from home, over a slow VPN line.

So, I saddled up the sidecar rig, and headed out. The roads were effectively clear when I left today, and I felt a bit silly driving my big moto-behemoth down the clear roads. I should have ridden a bicycle! Oh well.

I had an errand downtown this evening, and got back out to the sidecar at about 7. Suddenly, having the big, stable sidecar rig was looking pretty good. Snow was heaving down out of the sky at quite a pace. Even downtown, it was starting to stick, which meant that 100 blocks to the north (where I live), it would certainly be sticking, probably on the road in a fairly unsafe manner.

I got myself rolling, snow flitting past me like confetti. No problems so far. I rolled out of downtown and onto Aurora, a major street, somewhere between a four-lane suburban road and a freeway. Still no problems... but, what's that? The engine stumbled a bit, and I rolled on the throttle to clear it. Phew. No, it's stumbling again.

Oh, right, carb ice. That is, conditions were right such that ice was probably accumulating around the intake of the engine, slowly choking off the flow of air and fuel, gradually reducing power. In airplanes, there's an easy way to fix that -- you pull the lever marked "carb heat" and wait until the scary stumbling stops. On a motorcycle, there is no such thing, so I did the next best thing, and resolutely pressed forward.

Fortunately, my intended route (Kristin had reported that going up hills around my house was a total mess as people slid out on the ice) took me off the major street a few hundred yards before a solid-looking wall of traffic started. I traversed my carefully-plotted, hill-free route. Still not bad, and the engine had stopped stumbling. Hooray for small favors.

At 80th, I suddenly found a Taco Del Mar burrito incredibly enticing, so I peered up the hill, and decided it was worth it. I turned up 80th, and up probably the steepest hill in that area. No problem.

Burrito successfully in hand, I turned into another wall of traffic on Greenwood Ave, and dropped down into residential streets again. I wasn't moving fast (there was slush on the road, and I couldn't tell if it was really slush, or rapidly freezing into ice), but I probably got home way faster than if I'd stuck to main roads.

On the way, around 90-somethingth, I looked to the right, down a very slight hill, and spied a presumably-4WD truck nose-first into a ditch. I found myself chuckling inside my helmet. I despise those drivers who seem to think that four wheel drive somehow equates with perfect traction on snow or ice. Really, really not the case. I wasn't happy at the truck driver's bad luck, but I hoped he (for it was almost certainly a man) learned a little lesson. Those drivers are incredibly dangerous for everyone else, since they also seem to think that 4WD equals perfect traction for braking, too.

A few minutes later, and I was home. No problem. One wheel drive, three-wheeled sidecar-thing vehicle beats 4WD truck! I didn't ever slip, unless I was intending to (I really had to restrain myself from trying out a 360° bat-turn on the slippery road). I did one brake test to determine how much braking traction I had (not much) and a couple of throttle-goosings to see how much acceleration traction I had (about the same, maybe less). So I stuck with about 15 MPH (25 MPH speed limit normally on this residential street) as a maximum speed, and slowed for intersections.

If only everyone else would be so careful.

Posted at 20:13 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sun, 19 Nov 2006

The writerly pastime

I've been getting positive responses to this whole crazy "novel in a month" thing. I'm not exactly surprised, but it's encouraging, and far better than the other sort of response: "Why would you waste your time on something like that? Are you a crazyperson?"

The editing has gone well so far, although I'm only up to chapter 15 or so (out of 70-some). I'm just doing a first pass right now, embellishing a lot of passages which look pretty in my mind, but come across as fairly bland (or "require imagination on the part of the reader") in the text. I've got some ideas for other story bits to insert, to flesh out the world a bit more, but I think those are going to wait until the first editing pass is done.

This might take a while.

Probably the biggest problem I'm running into with the novel is the mental block which says, "every published novel I've ever read has been in someone else's voice; this novel is in my voice, therefore it's not publishable." Of course, that's completely ridiculous when confronted as a logical argument, but it's pretty compelling as an emotional one.

I find myself faced with a fair amount of slack time at the holidays this year, and I'm thinking about writing another novel. Mostly it's a matter of technology -- the laptop on which I can do editing has a whopping half-hour battery life or something. On the other hand, the ancient "laptop" on which I do composition lasts something like 15-20 hours on a charge. That argument alone is fairly compelling.

I was thinking about writing a story around the Rocketmen mythos my friend Web came up with. It seems like a ripe hunting ground for ideas and storylines. I'll have to see whether that turns into anything or not. It would certainly be cool to have two two-week novels under my belt.

Posted at 11:24 permanent link category: /misc


Thu, 16 Nov 2006

Aerostich repair

In an odd twist, I found myself repairing someone else's Aerostich suit today. I was pedalling frantically up the hill under Aurora on my way home, and when I got to the top, I found the rider of the R1100GS who'd passed me a minute earlier. Something looked amiss, so I stopped and asked if all was ok.

He turned around, and after a brief establishment of motorcycling cred, demonstrated that his main zipper had separated, and didn't want to move towards unzipping. We talked back and forth, and eventually he stepped out of a boot, and got his leg free of the stuck zipper. We worked out a method by which the slider could slowly be worked up the zipper, and had it sorted out in about 20 minutes.

It was just an interesting moment. It always makes me happy to help out someone who's kind of stuck. I'm sure that with a bit of thought, he would have figured it out, but the process might have taken longer, and it's much easier when you've got someone else to hold the flashlight.

We ended up chatting about other stuff, and I mentioned my novelling adventures. Steve, if you're reading this, click on the "All" category above, and scroll down a bit.

So, huzzah for bikers helping bikers. Pass it on, and all that.

Posted at 18:38 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Tue, 14 Nov 2006

Pants Down!

If you've been around me at social, gameplaying occasions, you've probably had me try to force this lovely game down your craw. It's called Pants Down, or Hosenabe in the original Swiss-German.

It's fun. It's easy to learn. It's not that easy to play well, like all good games.

Anyway, I've finally gotten off my kiester, and written up the rules, fact-checked by our own Swiss exchange student from years ago.

Rules for playing Hosenabe

Posted at 19:57 permanent link category: /misc


Sun, 12 Nov 2006

Literary "accomplishments"

[NaNoWriMo 2006 Winner] I think it's official, I'm now a ridiculously speedy novelist. At 9:30 tonight (or thereabouts), I passed the 50,000 word mark, hitting 50,909. The story's not done yet, but it's pretty close. The final battle's been won, the heroes have escaped, and now there's just the wrapping-up to do, and the inevitable, cheezy setup for the next story in the series.

That is, if you've been keeping track, 50,909 words in 11 days, 21.5 hours. 285.5 hours. Averaging 178.3 words per hour, 4279.6 words per day. Average wordlength is 5.77 characters per word.

Other interesting stats: I went through three sets of batteries on the Model 102 (the last one persevering only about 1 hour for some reason, despite being fully charged). 99% of the book was written on the Model 102, with minor editing happening on other computers. Rewriting and editing will not be happening on the 102, thank you very much. That thing is painful to edit with.

My average writing session length was probably around 3 hours. I seemed to hit about 1,000 words per hour, although I'd guess it went as low as 700 wph, and as high as 1,500. I definitely write better in multi-hour sessions than I do in short bursts, although more than 2 hours and I start getting antsy for some physical movement.

I guess I'm going to spend the rest of the month doing some rewriting and horrible, horrible embellishment. Oh yes, there will be adjectives. Adjectives aplenty. Editors will cringe from my very presence, sensing the horror all a-churn in my brain.

Posted at 21:53 permanent link category: /misc


Thu, 09 Nov 2006

Buh-bye, flat tires

I am pleased to report that, since installing the new Velox rim tape, I have had zero (0) flat tires. Hooray!

Of course, now that I've posted this, I'll get down to the bike tonight to find both tires flat, my patch kit glue dried up, and the spare tube eaten by mice. Who like rubber.

Posted at 17:07 permanent link category: /bicycle


Wed, 08 Nov 2006

Congratulations Democrats! Now don't screw it up

It felt like the first pleasant news in years as I woke up this morning to hear that the House of Representatives will be controlled by the Democrats come January. Pleasant, of course, until I remembered that the Democrats are politicians too, and they're just as likely to pull all the stupid politician tricks that make me aspire to some day live in a mythical land where there are no politics.

So I have this message for you, Democrats: you'd better follow through on all this idle chatter about building concensus working on bipartisan solutions. And don't go thinking this gives you any ground from which to pitch weird lefty non-issues like gay marriage.

We have important things to worry about in this country, and gay marriage, stem cell research and a thousand other "hot issues" are not among them. What we need are healthcare coverage for everyone, wildly reformed education (how about paying teachers commensurate with their impact on society?), wildly reformed foreign policy (like, let's stop being the World Police, how about?), civil rights reform and re-establishment and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of environmental protection (Kyoto protocol ring any bells?). Sorry for the parenthetical rants, but it's not clear to me that when I say anything obvious, a politician will actually understand my meaning.

And if I hear anyone going around spouting off that old saw that "if we weren't in Iraq, we could be spending all that money on other things!" I'm going to start smacking people. "All that money" only exists because it's paying for the war. No one's going to spend that level of cash on anything else, because they don't want to. So quit it with the weird financial logic. There are many, many fine reasons to stop spending $100,000 every second, or whatever ridiculous level it's currently at:

What are not good reasons to stop spending all that cash in Iraq, I hear you say? "So we can spend it on other things" is the ripest one I've heard, but I'm sure there are others. That money, all those billions of dollars we're spending, is going to cost us many times over, and I'm sure we'll still be paying it off 100 years from now. I don't have any math backing that up, but unless something drastic happens, that extra trillion dollars (or two or three, however much it ends up being by the time we can actually get ourselves extricated) will still be costing us interest for the lifetime of any child born today.

Finally, what I said before, about keeping your "bipartisan" promises? Yeah, not kidding about that. If you want to see another term, if you want to see any support at all, you'd best work with everyone. Compromise is hard. I'm not going to be 100% pleased with your solutions. If I'm 100% pleased, it means you did something wrong, because somewhere, there's my opposite, who's going to be 100% displeased. Overall, I should only be happy about 50% of the time, or you're doing it wrong. Always keep that in mind: compromise means you'll probably end up only partially pleased with the agreement.

At least now, I'm a little bit less worried about an uncontested W'08 campaign.

Posted at 09:30 permanent link category: /misc


Tue, 07 Nov 2006

Go vote! (Aka, "Already disenfranchised")

I went down to my local polling-place today, in the morning this time. My new bicycling habits may have any number of upsides, but lots of energy in the evening isn't one of them.

I finally found my registration card after a minute's fumbling, and handed it to the poll worker. As she was finding my name in the book, I looked over at the vote scanner (King County uses Scantron style ballots, which look disturbingly similar to SAT tests, with the little bubbles you fill in). There was a woman standing over it, with the machine pulled partially out of its housing. Someone had just approached with a vote sheet, and she instructed him to "just put it in the slot there," which I later learned is where absentee and provisional ballots go. The woman in front of me looked up and said, "would you like to vote electronically, or by paper?" Without considering the implications of the broken scanner, I said, "paper please."

I don't understand why more voting districts don't use the Scantron type of ballot. It's electronically countable, verifiable, and leaves a clear paper trail. I guess its major downside is that you have to print the ballots days beforehand, and last-minute changes are impossible. Scantron (or whoever makes King Co.'s scanners) may also charge a lot for printing for all I know, but it seems to solve a lot of the complaints with the Diebold machines. There's no way I'm going to accidentally fill out the bubble next to the candidate I don't want.

In any case, I filled out my ballot, even filling in the unopposed races, thinking to myself, "how crappy would it be to lose an unopposed race because no one bothered to fill in the little bubble?" Once I got it all filled out, I took it back, and slid it into the Memory Hole.

I stopped on the way out, and asked the head poll worker (who'd been hovering over the non-functional machine before) what was going on. It came out that she'd received a bad memory card for the scanner, and was awaiting a new one. "It's been over two hours, so I'm expecting it any minute," she said.

I asked what happened to the ballots which didn't get immediately scanned. "Well, they'll go into the Uncounted Ballots bag, and be counted at the county elections office." "Presumably counted," I corrected her, since she'd earlier admitted that no one had told her what actually happened with the Memory Hole ballots. "Right, but we just have to trust in the system. Every year, I've seen improvements in the process." She paused. "And that's a good thing," she cracked a grin.

I thanked her for the explanation, and she thanked me for stopping to ask. I think she was surprised to see anyone was interested enough to care about the process.

And I care enough to worry that my vote really won't count, this time around.

Posted at 10:16 permanent link category: /misc


Mon, 06 Nov 2006

The writingest weekend

Like some kind of incandescent word-cannon, I managed to get over 12,500 words down this weekend. Ponder that for a moment. Twelve thousand, 500 words, averaging about 5.8 characters in length. It's kind of astounding.

Of course, that came at a price. I seem to average 1,000 to 1,500 words per hour, so I spent around 12 hours sitting on my butt, typing into an ancient laptop. Saturday saw about 8,800 words down, and Sunday about 3,700. By the end of Saturday, I'd barely left my chair, much less my house. I was ready to do almost anything that involved being not in my house any more. We had dinner downtown, at a favorite pub, Paddy Coynes. It was good to be out.

The story is progressing well enough, but I have a feeling I may be doing it wrong. That's not a concern for this month, of course, since the whole point is to spew words at a furious rate, and nothing else.

At the risk of selling myself short (or long, I suppose), I'll give you a glimpse into the story. Note that all names are subject to revision, I haven't found myself feeling particularly inspired about any of the names I've come up with. We follow the adventures of Jura Cortan, human freight captain, who has tried unsuccessfully to escape from crime for his entire life. The setting is a galaxy distant from our own, so I wouldn't have to worry about any research -- this is purely me makin' stuff up. It may or may not be long, long ago. That's really of no concern right now.

For a mental image of Jura, picture a guy from an old Kung Fu movie, one of the ones with long, braided black hair. Now cross that image with Han Solo from a certain popular movie series. That's kind of what Jura looks like. Sort of.

The story starts with Jura taking his latest job, a simple passenger transport, moving a young woman from the Kalinar system to the Borot system. She can only afford half the fee now, with the other half to be delivered by her presumably-rich uncle on Borot III. Riiight. As I'm sure you can imagine, this setup allows for a lot of (mis-)adventures to happen, and they do.

Only now, about 50% through my wordcount, I'm kind of done with that storyline. I found a way to continue it, but it feels like story #1 has wrapped up, and now we're starting on story #2. I don't know that that's the proper novelistic way to do things. It'll do, but it makes me wonder if #1 can be expanded to a full novel, or if the final product can make the two stories a bit more tightly integrated.

As I mentioned before, you can follow along with the numbers at this site. If you're feeling especially daring (or curious, I guess), you can read what I've got so far here, spelling errors and all. That'll get updated on a somewhat random basis, usually in the late evening, and there should be more every day if I'm writing like I'm supposed to. Consider yourself warned, it may be terrible.

Posted at 09:58 permanent link category: /misc


Sat, 04 Nov 2006

The new light

My new bicycle headlight arrived yesterday. I excitedly tore open the packaging, although there was trepidation there as well -- the package made an ominous rattling noise as I'd picked it up, suggesting the pieces inside weren't very well secured.

Indeed, the box, once opened, revealed a confused jumble of pieces sitting apprarently at random among the cardboard cutouts intended to hold things in place. Fortunately, nothing appeared to be broken, and I was able to plug the light into its battery and play a little bit.

Before I got to the point of plugging everything in, I examined the retail box, which listed a bunch of information about the light. In particular, it listed the available modes for the three different models of light (CygoLite Dualcross LiIon, 300, 200). As I'd understood it, the different models differed only in battery and charger options. The LiIon model used the smaller, lighter (but more expensive) LiIon technology. The 300 featured a smart charger and larger, heavier NiMH battery. The 200 model featured an overnight (aka, "dumb") charger and the NiMH battery. Other than that, as I understood it, all three lights were the same.

Imagine my surprise and dismay when I saw spelled out on the box that, in fact, they were not the same. In fact, according to the box, the 300 and LiIon shared the same feature set (aside from the battery, of course), but the 200 offered an inferior feature set -- specifically, no flashing modes. Of course, I'd gotten the 200 as being cheapest, since I already own several smart chargers; paying for yet another one seemed silly.

Now, I wasn't married to the flashing modes, and hadn't necessarily intended to use them, but it would have been nice, particularly during the day, when a brighter flasher up front would have helped. Indeed, the little comparison chart showed that the 200 model lacked the four "special" modes (fast flash, slow flash, walking (aka "very dim") and SOS flash). I could care less about SOS, but the slow flash and walking light sounded quite useful.

I loaded up the Cygolite website, and examined the comparison chart. I could have sworn that it showed the features being identically but for battery and charger.. Ah, yes, there it was. The feature chart shown on the website and that on the product box were different. I was gearing myself up to write a very unhappy letter.

Before unleashing any electronic vitriol, however, I tried powering on the light, as I alluded to earlier. I was pleased to find that the light behaved as I expected, entering the flashing modes just as the 300 model had last week at REI. Oh good!

So, I got the battery charged (I was interested to see that it was mostly charged as I got it -- had I charged it the recommended 9-10 hours, it would have overheated), and I'm ready to go.

Of course, I spent the entire day writing and not riding my bicycle through the pouring rain, so I don't have any kind of real-world report yet.

Posted at 21:13 permanent link category: /bicycle


Many words

It feels odd to be writing on a modern laptop. I'm doing all my novel writing on a Tandy Model 102, built in 1988 or so.

So far, by the only measure that matters (ie, word count), I'm doing really well. I would hardly call it a fabulous novel, but it's moving right along. When that website updates tonight at midnight, my number will increase by at least 4979, which is my current wordcount for the day, and the day is only about half over. I may write yet more.

The Model 102 lends itself to this particular endeavor for a number of important reasons. First of all, it runs for around 20 hours on a set of AA batteries. Then there's the fact that it's so old, it has absolutely zero internet access (although it does have a 300 baud modem). Even if it did have internet access, there's very little I could do.

This all means "no distractions." No flipping back to a web browser every few minutes, to "just check on something." Google has got to be one of the biggest time-wasters in the universe. It's a good time-waster, and very useful, but very distracting when trying to concentrate on something else.

For another thing, the laptop is so old that the term "slow" is kind of a misnomer. The screen updates at 600 baud (there's literally a serial connection between the screen controller and the main computer). I can type faster than it will display, particularly when it has to laboriously delete a word and redraw it when the word gets long enough to wrap to the next line. Editing in the middle of text is painful, since each changed character necessitates that all following lines be redrawn. This strongly encourages one to just leave well enough alone.

Anyway, it's a gambit which is paying off pretty well. I had no idea I'd write so much so quickly. Of course, now that I've set such a high bar for myself, I can't let it slide. Fortunately, it doesn't seem like it'll be a problem, but we'll see what weeks two and three bring.

Posted at 15:00 permanent link category: /misc


Wed, 01 Nov 2006

Note to self
The sidecar brake caliper is from a Grimeca (most likely) flat tracker motorcycle from the late 60s or early 70s. Aaron got the pads and his rebuild kit from Omars, perhaps.

Posted at 12:11 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Tue, 31 Oct 2006

Novelling madness

Yes, I will in fact be up at midnight tonight, getting in my word count for the day. Hopefully I can get a bit of a jump on it. Plus, you know, hanging out with friends and competing to see who can get to 1666 words first.

Posted at 16:49 permanent link category: /misc


Score one for Eton

So, earlier this year, I bought myself a Grundig FR-200 to keep at work. It's a radio which can be powered by a hand crank, making it an excellent emergency-preparedness item. I actually ended up cranking the thing for about 2 minutes almost every day, and listening to the news in the afternoon.

Yesterday, I went to crank it up again, and to my surprise, it almost immediately went POP, and cranking was suddenly interrupted every 1/5th revolution by a little grunty feeling. Clearly I had popped a tooth off one of the dynamo gears. Oh well, I thought to myself, that was fun while it lasted.

Then, today, I remembered that this had happened, and did a little bit of searching around, to see if I could locate a parts list, and maybe figure out what the specs were on the gears. I thought perhaps I could find a replacement, since nylon gears tend to be relatively standardized.

I came across the manual for the radio, and there, on page 7, I was reminded that the radio has a 1 year warranty! Ah-hah! I called the listed support number, and got the grumpiest-sounding guy I've encountered in a long time on the phone. "Uh-huh, this happens from time to time," he grumbled. "Try not to crank it for ten minutes." He took my name and address, and said he'd be sending me a new set of crank gears. Woot! That was surprisingly easy!

So, thumbs up to Eton (the parent company of Grundig) for standing behind their warranty based only on a punter's word as to purchase date -- no grilling for receipts, or warranty cards, or anything. Most excellent.

Now, of course, I have to figure out how to replace the gear cluster. One problem at a time.

Posted at 16:05 permanent link category: /gadgets


Mon, 30 Oct 2006

Not a winning business strategy

So, I found a website selling the Cygolite headlight I want to get. I go through all the rigamarole and BS of creating an account (since there is no other way). I get to the point of checking out, and type in all my vital, wallet-draining details. I hit ye olde submit button, and it pops up a little window saying, "you can't pay with a credit card. Select another payment method."

I'll give you one guess as to whether alternate payment methods are listed on this website. You'd be right if you guessed "none."

Ohhhh-kaaay. It's now hard to believe this business is actually, well, in business.

Posted at 22:49 permanent link category: /bicycle


Headlight review-ish

I got myself over to REI tonight to look at a couple of bicycle headlights I'm considering as successors to the current headlight's throne. I was going to do a simple write-up in here, but decided to do it full-on style (sort of) as a proper review.

My review of a couple of LED headlights

Enjoy!

Posted at 21:57 permanent link category: /bicycle


Ice cream headache

The temperature on my little gizmo said 33.3° F. That is, about 1° C. I biked in anyway, wearing more layers than I really needed.

Unfortunately, what I neglected to really cover was my head. My ears were freezing by the time I arrived, and I felt the distinctive taut feeling of an ice cream headache developing. It's mostly gone now, fortunately.

So, proof I can ride in quite cold circumstances, at least. Even with the cold, I was still too warm (in a way) when I arrived. I still have some work to do on appropriate levels of insulation.

Posted at 09:39 permanent link category: /bicycle


Thu, 26 Oct 2006

Addendum

My brother called and told me that my bad-wobbly feeling on the motorcycle sounded exactly like having underinflated tires. Definitely, but I'd already checked that, making sure the tires were inflated properly. That was my first thought too. We'll see soon if it was the shock or not. Hopefully one turn of preload will do the trick.

The down-side to all this bicycling is that it's harder to motivate myself to work on the motorcycle when it needs it, and when I do make a change, I'm not riding frequently enough to always tell the difference.

Posted at 20:38 permanent link category: /misc


Halloween surprises

If you think you're going to see me at a Halloween party in the next few days, please don't click on the following link. Anyone else, I'm pretty happy with how my costume turned out:

What I'm copying

My take on it

Yeah, should be fun. I've really got to do something about being able to see without glasses, it screws up a lot of costume ideas for me.

Posted at 20:36 permanent link category: /misc


Wed, 25 Oct 2006

That "not so fresh" feeling

No, not that. It's when you're riding around on a motorcycle, and at every turn the tires feel uncertain, like maybe they'll just start sliding for the heck of it.

I noticed it on the Ninja 250 a few weeks ago, roughly coincident with two events: adjusting the rear shock, and suddenly riding a bicycle a lot more. So, I'm not actually sure of the cause, but I'm guessing it's the shock.

I just got in from adjusting it to have more preload (making the spring a bit stiffer). It's a small adjustment, just one turn of the ring (my previous adjustment was to loosen the preload by two turns, since the ride was too harsh). Hopefully it'll be a good compromise between harsh ride and vague tires. If necessary, I'll go right back to the harsh ride I had before, it was vastly preferrable to feeling as if the tires might slide at any moment.

Posted at 19:34 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Tue, 24 Oct 2006

Cautious optimism

It's too soon to say for sure, but I've gone 2 days on the new bicycle rim tape with no flats. That beats the odds, but not by much. I'll have to see at the end of the week how many flats I've had to deal with (hopefully zero!).

Posted at 10:10 permanent link category: /bicycle


Fri, 20 Oct 2006

Flat stats

I just sat down to figure out how the math works out.

I bought the new bike on September 16th. I put the new tires (and therefore new tubes) on a week or so later, and was done on the 26th. Today is the 20th of October, which makes it 24 days since September 26th.

In that time, I've had 7 flat tires. I've had an average of one flat every 3.4 days. If you only consider days I've ridden the bike (three days a week for the last 4 weeks, or 12 days), I've had just more than a flat every other day.

I sure hope new rim tape solves the problem.

Posted at 10:48 permanent link category: /bicycle


#7

Yep, flat number 7 occurred on the way into work today. Front tire, with the nick in a suspicious location, about the same spot I saw on a previous flat. I'm developing a theory that I need to replace my rim tape. It's certainly cheap enough. I'm certainly sufficiently tired of flat tires.

Posted at 09:50 permanent link category: /bicycle


Thu, 19 Oct 2006

Now that wasn't so hard, was it

You know how you have these tasks which you put off forever, figuring they're going to be the most difficult thing in the world? I keep running into them and trumping them (which is good, I guess). The sidecar wheel was one of them, last night. Way easier than I'd feared.

Along the same lines, I finally sat down, and found and read the documentation on how to get SpamAssassin running on my server. For some reason, I'd convinced myself that it was very difficult. Not, as it happens, the case.

In five minutes of searching, I found the write up (hey, right there in the main documentation, where I'd never tried looking...), and within half an hour, it was all working like it's supposed to. Now I'm sitting here, anxious for once that some spammer should target me a little bit. It's kind of a weird feeling.

Another one of those "you never seem to get to it" things is a serious writing project. I've done some writing, of which the non-awful stuff is available over on dangerpants.com. There will be more shortly, since I have story which I'm going to read at a Halloween party, and which will be published there once I've had my little debut.

Anyway, I just sent email to my friend Brian, asserting my intention to write a novel in 30 days. I've watched friends do it for a couple of years, and it doesn't seem like such a difficult task; I've just never tried. I've got two rough ideas bouncing around my head, one a sci-fi story, which mostly exists as a couple of scenes, and the other the world and characters introduced in Devon vs. the Agents.

Either one seems likely. I tried writing a sci-fi story in the past, and it became a real slog, as I had to define a whole world as I wrote the short story; I'd want to do a bit of background work before I started on another sci-fi story. The Devon story seemed to flow right out of me, almost without effort. This recommends it for a 50k-words-inna-month type project. I'll have to see what I feel like as November 1st gets nearer. Despite the higher initial workload, I find myself drawn more to the sci-fi idea right now.

We'll see what happens come November 1st, and more importantly, November 30th.

Posted at 20:56 permanent link category: /misc


Flat tire closure; the rain cape gets a real test

I went to roll on into work on the bicycle this morning, and discovered that the front tire was (finally) flat. I'd been expecting it for a week or two, ever since I got the last front flat. Interestingly, it didn't appear to be that little pinch I'd noticed which failed, although the leak didn't identify itself until I had the tire up to nearly full pressure again.

So, I spent 15 minutes swapping in a brand new tube, checking for pokey things in the tire, applying talcum powder, and preinflating the tube. All the things which should work to make the front tire as flat-free as possible. Hopefully this is the last one until I actually get an unpreventable flat.

In other news, it was misting today (for those who aren't from Seattle or other rainy climes, that's the kind of rain where it's a bit heavier and downward-trending than an actual fog, but not so heavy as to form really satisfying rain drops (which would be a drizzle), with the end result that you get this uniform dampness from being in it, rather than splotches of true soaked wetness; Seattle has lots of words for rain, what can I say). I decided to pull out the rain cape again, in a test to see if it would have any effect on water hitting my legs.

The short answer is I don't know what effect it had. My shins are not dry, but they're not uncomfortably damp, either. I have a feeling it helped, but probably not as much as I was hoping. That's partly due to having too much stuff on my handlebars (most importantly, lights to make me more visible). The cape is also just a mite too small for me, and I feel somewhat constricted riding in it. In particular, it's nearly impossible to do anything with your hands other than have them on the handlebars. The cape is too restrictive to allow crazy motions like, say, signalling turns.

I also arrived relatively damp under the cape, because humans have this crazy cooling system which works on the principle of evaporation. Unfortunately, with the cape in place, no evaporation. Still, it was far better than if I'd worn my non-breathing rain jacket.

Finally, I definitely noticed a slow-down due to wind resistance this time. The trip into work has more quality downhill time, and I didn't feel like I was moving as fast (although the speedometer suggested it wasn't as big a difference as I perceived). I was also working harder to move over the flat sections.

So, despite all the negative-sounding verbiage, I do like the rain cape. I think it's a better choice (as a concept) than the rain suit, particularly as my goal is to do this bicycling thing with as little extraneous work as possible. It's certainly been working so far: I haven't bicycled this much since I was living a mile from work, downhill all the way in.

Posted at 10:07 permanent link category: /bicycle


Wed, 18 Oct 2006

Much Ado About... ew, gross!

I finally jacked up the sidecar, and pulled off the wheel. I've been needing to do this for months, since I discovered an axial crack near the hub in August or so. I've been putting it off, since I had absolutely no clue how to do it, and didn't really have the patience to sit down and figure it out.

So I finally went out and tried the method suggested by Aaron, the previous owner. Sure enough, it came right off, no problems at all. Well, that was easy!

I pulled the wheel off and set it aside. But, wait, what's that? There's some schmutz on the brake disc... Oh.

The brake caliper is leaking, or something. It's covered in grime, and I can only guess that it's brake fluid, since there's nothing else there to be producing oil. As far as I know, this brake caliper was last current in about 1969, so I can only imagine that finding a rebuild kit for it is going to be less than simple. Sigh Finding a replacement, even less possible. Putting on something different is conceivable, in that it's probably a task I could accomplish, but that's far from a cakewalk as well. On top of all that, I was only given a 50% chance of success at the wheel shop.

Maybe it's time to sell the Goldwing rig.

Posted at 20:05 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Thu, 12 Oct 2006

Um. Wow.

I hate to make a post which is simply a link to something else, but this project took my breath away, and I actually started trying to figure out how much it would cost to buy one of these things when they're available. (I'm not going to, but wow is this cool.)

Machine-made man

Posted at 17:01 permanent link category: /misc


Tue, 10 Oct 2006

A little wrap-up

I left a few things dangling over the last few days. Here's how stuff turned out:

Tsukamaki: I finished wrapping the sword handle, and even got some of the more obnoxious hishi-gami (little paper thingies) tucked under the ribbon where they're supposed to be. It hardly looks like a professional job, but it's good enough for a Halloween costume.

Total time spent: about 8 hours. That includes a lot of folding, cutting and folding newsprint (black fingertips and all), studying pictures, saying to myself, "uh, what?" and turning my head sideways, and a lot of tugging that ribbon as tight as I could while intricately folding it around little triangular paper wedges. It was actually pretty fun.

Bicycle flats: I put a new tube in the rear tire last night, and it's holding up so far. Of course, so is the front, where I know there's another puncture lurking in the wings. I'll have to get that changed after work today.

Monday in general: ended up being much more pleasant than the start would suggest. Nothing specific to point to, things just went better than I might have expected given the rough beginning.

Posted at 13:31 permanent link category: /misc


Mon, 09 Oct 2006

Monday most foul

If you don't like griping, you may want to pass on this entry.

I woke up this morning feeling fine, ready for a bicycle commute into work. I stretched out my legs, and ate a spot of breakfast. Got my stuff shuffled into the appropriate bag.

I got myself all geared up -- high-viz vest, shoulder bag, helmet, gloves. After this point, things started going wrong.

  1. Lock the door on my way out. Realize I've left my cardkey behind. Unlock the door and retrieve it.

  2. Get the bike out, glad to see no more flats. However, rolling it a foot or two in the cramped garage reveals a rubbing sound. Adjust the rear fender, which is rubbing yet again, despite repeated re-adjustments.

  3. Get myself out, lock the garage, get on the road. Roll 50 feet before realizing I'm not wearing my gloves. Of course, they're locked in the garage. Turn around, unlock garage, get gloves on, re-lock garage.

  4. Finally on the road. Make it perhaps 1/4 mile before realizing I left my phone behind. Turn around, ride back, unlock door, retrieve phone, re-lock door, nearly drop phone as I juggle it, keys, and gloves.

  5. Now, really, finally on the road. No further troubles until 50th and Phinney (about 3.5 miles from home), where the bike starts shimmying uncomfortably. Look down, sure enough, flat front tire.

  6. Pull over at a convenient concrete structure, repair flat. Notice another nascent puncture next to the full-blown one, make note to repair it too. Completely fail to do so. Back on the road, 20 minutes later.

  7. Make it down Fremont hill without incident (thinking of nascent puncture all the while). Turn onto 34th, in the home stretch. Rear tire suddenly feels mushy. Yep, rear flat.

  8. Walk the remaining short distance into work, carrying the bike down stairs to avoid damaging the rear rim. Into my office, 35 minutes later than I wanted to be there.

  9. Rush to staff meeting. It's been cancelled, which I hadn't known about, having not yet had time to check my email. Rushed and felt flustered for nothing.

So yeah, Monday isn't treating me that nicely so far. On the positive side, I've received a bit of advice which will hopefully help me avoid these flats in the future. Seems the advised procedure is to fill the tube with a bit of air before levering the tire back on, to help avoid getting it pinched.

After today, I sure as hell hope that's what I was doing wrong. Five flats in under a month, all of them pinch flats, is driving me to distraction.

Posted at 10:36 permanent link category: /bicycle


Sun, 08 Oct 2006

What the devil am I doing wrong?

I went out this afternoon, to ride the bicycle to Northgate. I was all set to do the healthy, eco-friendly thing.

But as I pulled the bike from its little nook, what should I notice, but that the front tire was completely flat.

Now, several days ago, I rode out to Lowes, a mile and a half distant mostly via bike trail. As I was pulling into the parking lot, I noticed the bike felt mushy, and looked down to see my rear tire rapidly deflating. I hadn't run over any obvious hazards. When I found the leak, it was facing toward the rim again.

On the ride back, no problems. All seemed fine. Obviously not, though, as today the front was flat. Again, I didn't seem to hit anything -- why the flat?

I patched the hole, and it was facing right at the tire's bead. Ok, obviously something is wrong here. The two constants are me (ie, the mechanic's hand) and tires/rims/tubes. The tire isn't letting anything through (and in any case, the cuts are always facing the rim, where glass and the like can't hit the tube). I don't feel like I'm running over anything nasty, yet I appear to be getting pinch flats (I don't know what else to call them -- little tiny slits, as if a very tiny and restrained prison inmate shivved my tube shyly, just once to see if it worked).

I do hear an ominous crinkling sound as I inflate the tire after each patch. I had assumed it was the patch wrapping crinkling, but maybe it's something else. Whatever it is, this makes three flats in less than a month. On my previous bike (26" wheels vs. the 29ers I have now, and 1.75" wide tires vs. the 35mm/1.38" I have now), in 8 years of riding, not one flat. Never. This is just a little frustrating.

I guess on the positive side, this has forced me to be prepared for flats, and I'm rapidly figuring out how to deal with them. Now I just need to figure out how to prevent them. Also on the positive side, and completely aside from flats, I've managed three bicycle commuting days a week for two weeks. That's pretty damn good after many years of perhaps one bicycle day every 6 months.

Posted at 21:55 permanent link category: /bicycle


Fri, 06 Oct 2006

Tsukamaki

For my Halloween costume this year, I wanted to have a katana (Japanese samurai sword). I thought about it, and did a bit of research. Eventually decided that although I would really appreciate getting a real sword, a fake one was probably a far better idea from a legality standpoint.

So, I did yet more research, and found myself tempted to pay upwards of $70 for what amounted to a slightly curved stick. In this case, a boken, or wooden practice katana. Fortunately, I paid a visit to the local martial arts supply store, where they had one and only one kind of boken, and it was $14.06 after tax. Good enough. I came away with a relatively inexpensive practice sword which might even be functional should I some day decide to pursue a currently vague interest in Aikido.

Anyway, for the costume, I wanted it to look a bit more real than a simple curved stick. Not to the extent of making it look more like an actual blade, but rather in a bit of decoration for the handle.

Enter this site on tsukamaki, or how to wrap a katana handle to get that cool diamond-negative-space effect. Suffice to say that it's an ancient Japanese art form, and takes years of practice before you start turning out handle wraps which a master practitioner would deign to spit on, or perhaps set fire to. So of course I figured I'd do a good enough job for a Halloween costume in one or two sittings.

As it happens, I'm actually doing pretty well. It looks a lot like a katana handle:

My fingers hurt from pulling the ito (that's a fancy word for cheap polyester ribbon) tight, and folding the hishi-gami (a fancy word for small triangular pieces of paper). That handle represents two 3 hour sessions of sitting in a chair and carefully tucking ribbon under pieces of paper while simultaneously holding it on the far side of the handle, so it doesn't all unravel. I'd probably do a better job if I had four hands, but I seem to be making it work with two.

Fortunately, it's going pretty quickly at this point. I should be able to finish up in another hour or two of work. Not bad for a first attempt. Obviously, I've still got a couple of years of practice to do before I can expect any imperious spitting from my betters.

Posted at 22:31 permanent link category: /misc


Busted guns

I'm helping out the current production of Slow Children, again in the capacity of Master at Arms. I'm also supplying them with stage guns, since I have managed to collect a few over the years.

I had two when I started out with this show. One was a copy of a Beretta 92, and the other a copy of a Walther PPK. I bought the Beretta copy new for the first production of Slow Children, so it felt entirely appropriate to re-use it this time. The Walther copy came from a pawn shop, on someone's tip that they had a blank gun or two there.

So I got a call about a week ago. It was the stage manager, calling to say that the Walther had broken. Specifically, the safety lever fell out. I went down that night to make sure it was still safe to use. It appeared to be, so I gave it the green light. I got a call the next night, saying it had broken further: the firing pin fell out. Turns out that on that model, the firing pin is held in place by the safety lever. Oops.

I felt bad for Imogen, who was getting new instructions every night, and had started out saying, "I'm a gun-hating liberal, this is really weird feeling," as she hefted the thing for the first time.

So, I decided that for the good of the production (cause I'm a freakin' softie, apparently), we should get another blank gun in. I looked around a bit, and decided on a .357 Detective Special, since it was a revolver, and revolvers have fewer parts to break.

When I dropped that off, I noticed something: the pamphlet which came with the revolver listed all these part numbers... That suggested to me that perhaps parts actually are available for these things (I'd figured that since they were so relatively inexpensive, they were just "throw-away" items). Hmmm!

Sure enough, a bit of poking around found the Kimar FAQ. They will send you parts, if only you know the part number! Oh, but the broken gun is the one I got used, naturally without a manual.

I took a chance, and filled out a form requesting the part anyway. I figured it couldn't hurt.

To my delight, I had an email in my inbox this morning from Susanna Chiappa, saying that a new safety lever was on the way. Hooray! I love it when broken things can be fixed, instead of discarded!

Posted at 12:21 permanent link category: /theater


Wed, 04 Oct 2006

"Oh sorry, I didn't see you"

Normally, with a title like that, I'd be telling you about a monster SUV that tried to crush me. Not so this time.

I decided to ride the motorcycle in this morning after I got a late start; the bicycle would have been on the slow side, particularly as it was after traffic (which defines, to some extent, how late I was). No more than background levels of driver stupidity were detected for the majority of the drive.

I turned down Fremont Ave, which is a popular bicycling route (that's how I get into work on the bicycle myself). At 35th street, I usually swing into the left-turn lane to avoid the utter traffic craziness which is "downtown" Fremont. As I crossed 36th and was preparing to move into the left turn lane, a bicyclist I was about to pass suddenly swerved sharply in front of me, crossing my path to get into the left turn lane. It wasn't a scary moment, but it left me a little cross that this cyclist had pulled such a foolish stunt.

I pulled up next to her, and said, "you might want to look next time, I almost ran into you when you pulled out like that." We conversed for a moment, and she asserted that she'd looked, and not seen a car, and so decided it was ok to pull out. At the moment she'd pulled out of the bike lane, we were going about the same speed. She didn't look over her shoulder (and had no mirror), and didn't signal.

"Sorry, I guess I didn't see you, I was looking for cars," she said. I had a very brief internal forehead-slapping moment, and said, "bicycles and motorcycles have the same problem with visibility," or something. The light turned green and we both pulled away. I let her go first, since I figured (correctly) that she'd cross my path again to get over to the outside of the road. I waved as I went by, although I don't think she'd assumed I was angry (since I wasn't).

Note to bicyclists: watch out for all vehicles. I would have smushed her just as flat as a car would have.

Posted at 12:42 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Fri, 29 Sep 2006

A vignette of urban life; or, how to get beat up

At lunch today, I was treated to the following shred of space-time:

Parked outside the window is a new-looking BMW R1200GS. A decent enough looking bike, particularly considering it starts at $15,000, and this bike has at least $2000 in extras on it.

Into view heaves a man, late 30s, sunglasses, dressed like a typical wage slave (blue button-up shirt, khaki pants). He's talking on a cellphone. I notice him because he's walked over to the bike.

He stands next to the bike, looking down the street. He glances at the bike. Back down the street. Back to the bike. By the way he's standing there, it doesn't look like he really deals with motorcycles normally, so I guess he's not the owner.

More standing and turning, looking around, talking on his little phone. He walks down the length of the bike, and I think he's going to open a sidecase and get out his helmet. Maybe he does own the bike.

Then he walks back up to the head of the bike, and looking up the street in the other direction, quickly plays his free hand all over the head area of the bike (where the handlebars, ignition and instruments are). His hand runs over the ignition switch, and down into the gap between handlebars and instrument cluster. Back out, and under the instrument cluster.

He quickly retracts his hand, and nervously tap-kicks the bike: on the front wheel, on the cylinder head, on the right footpeg. He walks away.

Now, if that had been my bike, and I'd seen this man do what he just did, I would have been out of the restaurant like a shot, with unpleasant loud words exiting my mouth, ready for a confrontation. It's not kosher to either fondle or kick another person's motorcycle, and it's a particularly poor idea in front of a picture window with 5 curious faces staring right at you. I have no reason to suspect this man owned the bike, and it certainly appeared that he had just fumbled looking for hidden ignition switches or stashed keys.

I looked for him when I left a few minutes later. He was nowhere to be seen, but there were multiple exits he could have taken without passing by me. Perhaps not the smartest move, khaki-man, the fondling of another person's motorcycle. That's a good way to get beat up.

Posted at 13:52 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Attention Ebay idiots!

On Ebay, there's this "feedback" system. It's pretty cool, allows you to let other users know of your experience with a buyer or seller. Seems like a good system.

Then, you see how people actually use it.

See, here's how it should work. The seller of an item bases his feedback on two important phases of the post-close transaction: communication and payment. Once the buyer has communicated any necessary information to the seller, and sent payment for the item, the seller is basically done. At that point, feedback can be left by the seller, for the buyer.

The buyer, meanwhile, must wait until the item in question arrives, then he must ensure that it's in advertised condition. If it is, hooray. If not, he works with the seller to come to some kind of remedy. Either way, the buyer's feedback is based upon the item arriving, and how the seller resolves any problems. The seller's feedback to the buyer doesn't change, as the seller's experience has already been solidified in the prompt (or not) communication and payment.

The way it actually works now is that the seller waits until the buyer leaves positive feedback, effectively holding his feedback (a kind of payment in the Ebay system) hostage. If I don't leave positive feedback for something I bought, I never get positive feedback from the seller, despite my transaction having gone perfectly, from his point of view.

I can just see why a seller might want to withhold feedback until it's obvious the buyer isn't going to freak out about a non-existant problem. People do that sometimes. But to actually make a policy out of reserving feedback until positive feedback has been left? Seems like a shitty way to deal with people. What if I leave negative feedback because I ordered a book and all I got was the dust jacket? Do I get negative feedback in return, despite the fact that I paid quickly, and completed my end of the transaction effciently? Seems to be so.

Ebay: further proof that no matter how well you design a system, people still suck.

Posted at 11:26 permanent link category: /misc


Thu, 28 Sep 2006

How not to do it

I am helping a certain production with some firearm training and supplies. One of the things I'm helping with is reloading the blanks once they've been fired (much cheaper, and considerably quieter than the full-power blanks). It's not hard, just pop out the old primers, and press in new primers.

I got a call a couple of days ago. It was the stage manager, asking for more blanks. No problem, says I, but I'm bicycle mounted today, so would you mind if we did it tomorrow? Oh, that's fine, replies he.

I got there last night (the "tomorrow" in question), to pick up the spent blanks. The stage looked suspiciously well made-up. At some point, I asked if they were expecting an audience tonight. He'd mentioned on the phone that they had enough for that night, which extrapolated out to mean that they didn't have enough for the next night. He replied in the affirmative to my question.

Ok, so there's a problem here. Let's go over the situation, from the viewpoint of, say, Monday. It's Monday, you have a rehearsal Monday and Tuesday, a preview Wednesday (with audience), and opening Thursday. You look into your bag of unfired blanks, and count out 5. You use 2 per rehearsal or performance.

You have a number of choices available to you. First, you could choose not to use blanks in the remaining rehearsals. This gives you five shots for the nights with audience, assuming your master-at-arms (me, in this case) has some schedule conflict which prevents him from getting you a fresh supply. Second, you could call the master-at-arms Monday afternoon, to give him a few days' lead, and warn him that there will be audience there on Wednesday. You could also combine these two choices into a kind of extra-safety option. Finally, you could call your master-at-arms late on Tuesday, and ask him for more blanks, with no mention of when opening happens. That's what just happened.

Of course, it's not as simple as all that. A stage manager has to be shockingly on-the-ball at all times, and it's easy to let some things slip. In particular, it's very easy to assume that everyone with the slightest involvement knows the schedule. Past performance on the part of the master-at-arms (ie, providing a one-day turnaround for fresh noisemakers) may lull you into a false sense of complacency as to his ability to deliver such speedy performance every time. In short, it's a mistake easily made.

That doesn't really make it any better when you have to perform in front of an audience with empty guns.

Posted at 11:33 permanent link category: /theater


First flat

I managed to pick up my first flat tire on a bicycle in a long time last night. Of course, it was as I was half-way to where I was going. Naturally, I had all the requisite components to fix the problem. At home. Sigh.

Fortunately, I had given myself a lot of time to get where I was going, so walking the rest of the way was a viable option. Fortunately again, I had already been planning a trip to REI, which has an extensive bicycle department, on the way home; the trip to REI on foot only took 15 minutes. I bought all the requisite stuff, ending up with a nicer collection of tools than I have at home, so it wasn't a total loss. I felt silly buying $70 worth of stuff I already owned, though.

The cause for the flat seems to have been old age. When I was wrestling with the front tire a few nights ago, I ended up using a tube I had lying around. It was a 700c tube (the size used on road bikes), which means it was at least 7 years old, and more likely 8-10 years old. The last road bike I had was sold early in 1999. Anyway, the leak was caused by a tiny nick in the tube, facing right into the rim. That means there was nothing on the road which could have caused it, and there was nothing on the rim. It must have split from old age.

Ah well. It was hardly a disaster. And now I'm equipped to deal with flats, so hooray for that.

Posted at 09:34 permanent link category: /bicycle


Wed, 27 Sep 2006

A backward glance to buried treasure

Story time.

Back in the dawn of time (I can feel my parents rolling their eyes), I was an unhappy, angsty little boy. I didn't know (and still don't, for the most part) what made me unhappy, but I was unhappy. No one seemed to like me in school, the one and only social outlet I had. That's actually not true, I had a small group of friends, and we spent a lot of time together. I would hate to slight that. At the time, though, it seemed like I was the least popular kid in school.

For a variety of reasons, I didn't get interested in so-called popular music until I was nearly in high school. I had no peer pressure on the musical front: my parents were and are classical musicians, and so classical was my musical upbringing. My friends had wildly diverse musical tastes, which I only partially shared. They never really pushed music on me.

One day, possibly while working at my early job of backing up a computer system (insert 5.25" floppy disc A; run back to terminal and press enter; 3 minutes pass; run back to disc drive and swap to disc B; repeat for ~30 discs), I was listening to the radio. I don't recall what station, possibly KUBE -- this was back before they'd gone to the all hip-hop format they have now, and they played top 40.

Soon there emanated from the radio a song which caught my attention. I think it was the "compressed" singing which first caught my notice -- I've always enjoyed what I think of as "interesting noises." This usually means sounds which aren't to be found in nature. In any case, this song caught my hear. I strayed by the radio until it was done, suddenly interested for the first time. The DJ called out what he'd just played, naming "my" song as "Peekaboo" by a band called Suzie and the Banshees. I committed the name to memory, and determined to look for it the next time I was at a record store.

Look I did, and although I didn't find any Suzie and the Banshees, I quickly found Siouxsie and the Banshees, which I correctly deduced was the same band. I located the album which contained Peekaboo, and bought it. I'm sure I listened to the whole thing many many times, and found myself going back to the record store when possible, and buying as many of the band's albums and singles as I could find. I also bought numerous posters, an interview picture-disc, and a scrapbook sort of publication. I developed what can only be called a crush on the British singer. I didn't know anyone else who knew about the band, much less liked them, so I began to think I was a fanbase of one.

Siouxsie and the Banshees (along with The Cure and a number of other bands) became a soundtrack for my late teen years, intimately associated with many aspects of my life. I have any number of memories which are triggered by listening to this music again, and which can only really be remembered with particular songs scoring them.

Fast forward a few years, from 1988 to 1993. I now had all Siouxsie albums produced thus far, and many singles, either on LP or CD. I was now going to college at the Evergreen State College. At Evergreen, I was finally given access to this "Internet" thing I'd heard some of my more computer-literate friends talking about. Specifically, I had access to email.

I signed on to the SATB-L mailing list (which I probably discovered via either Usenet or Gopher, a predecessor to the WWW). I'm sure I made many embarrassingly uninformed posts and displayed a ridiculous amount of innocence.

Regardless, at some point members of the list began an ambitious project: we would gather together all the singles, live recordings, whatever we could find which constituted "rare" Siouxsie recordings, and create a set of self-recorded CDs using recently introduced CDR technology. At the time, the cost of this set of 4 CDs, just for the media, was ridiculous, perhaps $50-60. This doesn't consider the many hundreds of dollars a single-speed recording CD drive cost. These CDs would be burned, and then passed from member to member, with additional CD sets available to anyone who could afford to supply the media. The project coordinator also offered to create tapes for those who couldn't afford the CDs. The tapes would cost $26.

As I was a poor college student, spending $50 on a set of CDs was completely out of the question. $26, though, was just within my budget, and a very attractive (if expensive) proposition. I made out my check and sent it off to the guy making the tapes, at some college on the far side of the country. I was giddy with anticipation, since this collection represented a vast treasure trove of music I'd never heard before, and desperately wanted to hear.

Two weeks passed, then a month, then two months, then six months. Despite repeated emails to the tape creator, I never heard from him again. The check was quickly cashed. I was a sucker. I actually do think he'd intended to make tapes, but he got overwhelmed, and wasn't very good about returning people's money (or he wasn't able to after spending it). In any case, I was out $26 -- a lot of money to me -- and mad about the whole thing. I didn't want anything more to do with the project or the list, and unsubscribed myself shortly afterwards.

Years passed after this little fiasco. Occasionally I would spot the project again, once spying a set of discs in a store, inexpertly produced in Finland or somewhere equally exotic, for the princely sum of $20 per disc (there were four). $80 was equally beyond my budget at the time, and I still felt cheated that I had already paid for this music yet didn't own it. I continued collecting Siouxsie and the Banshees albums as they came out, including whatever singles I could get my hands on.

Fast forward again, to 2006, several weeks ago. I was poking around at random on Google after trying to figure out on which album a particular song had appeared. I found my answer, but I also found a Siouxsie album I hadn't heard of before: Downside Up.

I clicked the link and read the Amazon entry with a growing rushing sound in my ears -- this was the professionally-produced version of that rarities collection from years ago! I noted with what approached glee that Amazon was charging list price for it, which meant I could order it from my friend Steve, who runs Quimpersound in Port Townsend with no qualms.

In less than 5 minutes, I had the album ordered and on the way. $45 shipped to my door.

It arrived this weekend.

And I still haven't listened to it. I'm even now ripping it so that I can put it on my MP3 player (which is how I listen to music at work), but that's just putting it off.

Honestly, I'm kind of afraid to listen to it. I already know about 1/3 of the music on the album, from owning the single where it was originally released. But that other 2/3 (of four discs!) represents new, never-before-heard music to me. From a band which was important to me 10 and 15 years ago. It was so important at the time, and particularly at the time of the tape fiasco, it would have meant a great deal to me to even hold this thing in my hands.

But... What if it doesn't mean much to me now? What if I'm distracted while I'm listening to it? What if it becomes background music!? (I used to lie on my bed in the dark, just listening to Siouxsie and the Banshees albums, concentrating my whole attention on the sound coming out of the stereo.) What if that long-dormant crush on a singer 20 years older than me comes rushing back? What if it doesn't?

I'll just have to listen to it and find out. Still, it doesn't stop me from feeling like I'm a character in Amelie, rediscovering a childhood treasure hidden in a cigar box.

Posted at 11:37 permanent link category: /misc


Tue, 26 Sep 2006

Woot, I say, woot!

I was swapping out tires on the new bicycle today (the first one? 2 hours, lots of swearing, blisters in odd places; the second one? 10 minutes and I barely noticed). As part of the process, I dug into a box of bike stuff which has been languishing in the garage for years.

In said box, I found a near-miraculous unused innertube, which saved the day with the 2-hour tire swap. I also found some documentation on the old bike, and on a whim I started digging through it. Wait a minute, what's that? A receipt!? Cool!

Oh, no. That's the receipt for my headlight. Bah.

Hmm, but what's this? The original Norco book... <flip> <flip> Ah-hah!

There was the original receipt for the bike!

In case you've lost the thread of this particular saga, I discovered about a month ago that my old bike (the Norco in question) had a crack in the head tube. That's where the steering pivots, and a crack there means the bike amounts to so much trash. I called Norco, since someone put the thought in my head that they might offer a lifetime warranty on the frame. Indeed they do, but they require the original receipt. I went through all the likely places, but it was nowhere to be found. I'd resigned myself to selling the thing to the used bike shop for $10 and a roll of Mentos. However, I held out the faint hope that in going through boxes (which I would be doing anyway), I might find the receipt. Behold, hope fulfilled!

Now, I just have to figure out how to cash in on this warranty.

Posted at 20:47 permanent link category: /bicycle


Mon, 25 Sep 2006

Video intros

Oooh, I just saw that the video intros from this year's SketchFest Seattle are available on the SketchFest website. Download 'em now while they're still fresh! Congrats to Josh for creating some quality introductory video.

Posted at 21:22 permanent link category: /theater


Finding a projector (Part III)

The next day, Thursday (we're following the saga of SketchFest Seattle, see previous theater journal entries), started early. I was freaked out about that projector. I had promised the groups coming that we would have at least rudimentary video available.

Even so, I sent an email out to everyone that morning (entitled "Video doom") explaining what was going on. I got a couple of sympathetic emails, one half-smarmy, "you should really test this kind of thing sooner than the day before the festival" email, and a half-frantic call from the group which was planning on utilizing video heavily for their show. Believe me, if there were any way to test this kind of thing sooner, it would have been done. You organize and set up all technical aspects of a major two-week comedy festival, and get back to me when it goes off without any problems.

Anyway, I knew the day was a total loss to work, so I called up my boss. He was sympathetic, and let me take the day off. I immediately started burning up the phone line, calling around to see who would rent us a projector, and for how much.

Obviously, the really cheap rate we'd gotten from the other theater company was out. No way we'd see that matched anywhere. I ended up calling 4 different rental houses (well, 5, but only four of them had projectors to rent). Between them, we quickly reached a consensus on what was needed: a Sanyo XP55 or XP56 projector, with a custom lens. Sound cheap? Nope, it wasn't.

One place said, "well, normally it'd be $500 per day, but because you need the special lens, we have to charge $150 per day for that extra." I did the math in my head real quick, and came up with a jaw-dropping $3900, before tax. I apologized, and explained that we just didn't have that kind of money. The next place I called wanted $500 per day, and $125 per day for the lens. The next only wanted $450 and $150 (I had been warned that they were horribly expensive, so I was surprised when they came in so cheap -- I was also horrified when I realized that I was now considering $3600 "cheap").

The last place I talked to, A/V Pro, finally said, "look, why don't you call up your money guy and figure out how much you can actually spend. We can fudge numbers on the equipment, but not on labor. So if you do your own labor, we have a lot of latittude." I averred that our budget was going to be a paltry fraction of the lowest price I'd heard so far, but called the money man anyway.

After suitable consultation with the exotic, multi-headed deities of financial mathematics, he called me back and named a figure which was, indeed, far below the figures thus far named. I called A/V Pro back, and repeated the figure, like a man about to be hanged names his final request. To my absolute incredulity, the voice on the other end of the connection immediately said, "oh, we can do the whole rental for thus amount," naming a figure $200 lower than the one I'd just said. (Pardon my vagueness, I don't know the etiquette surrounding discussions of budget numbers -- suffice to say that we were working with an amount which was barely a noticeable fraction of the $3600 price of entry.) I had a moment of stunned silence. "Are you sure?" "Yes, I'm sure. If you want to spend another $100, you can keep it between weekends." "Done!" I practically barked. I paused a moment, and said again, as if in a dream, "we're talking about two weekends, six performances here, right?" "Yep. You can pick it up today," and we were into mundane details.

Amazing.

So I ended up heading down to A/V Pro within the hour, to retrieve the suddenly-affordable video projector (if you were wondering, list price on an XP55 projector is $9995, who knows how much the lens would cost). It came in a big road case, which I loaded into the sidecar after a brief exchange of happy words. It was also while I was down at the shop that I got the call from the video-heavy group, so I was able to pass along word that the video situation was resolved.

Whew, thank god that was solved.

I headed up to the theater, to set up my new prize. It worked exactly as it was supposed to (I'd given my picture and screen specs to the shop so they could pick the right lens). I guess renting something for far less than the going rate is still better than not renting it at all. A valuable lesson to keep in mind.

Teching the groups

At this point, I started running the tech sessions for each of the groups. I won't go into much detail on the individual techs, since they were all about the same thing.

Each group was given 60 minutes for their tech rehearsal. During that time, we had to set up light cues in the board (which was programmable, so once it was all set up, you just hit the GO button to switch between cues; very slick), set sound levels, and do anything else which they needed done. This is standard fare for a travelling show, but the groups' readiness for the process varied considerably.

Some groups came in with excellent scripts, fully annotated and ready for me to use. Others came in with marginal scripts. Others came in with my recommended "tech sheet" format, listing a few lines before each cue, then the description of the cue. No one came in unprepared, which was nice.

Probably the biggest variable in getting each group set up was their ability to convey to me what they wanted. Some had a dedicated tech liason, who worked with me more or less constantly to get light looks and sound levels set. Some groups ended up making lighting decisions (like, where should light cues occur?) on the spot. We managed to get through all of them, but for some of the groups it was a struggle.

Opening the Fest

Techs out of the way, I got myself out of the theater for a spot of dinner. Tech rehearsals had started at 4, but I'd been going all day, getting the video projector situation squared away. There's a great restaurant just down from the theater, called Honey Hole. They make delicious sandwiches. One in particular, the El Guapo, prompts me to think I've finally found a sandwich to displace the fabulous Vegetarischer Croque from Eden (a bar which I hear has gone out of business) in Hamburg, Germany. Good thing, too: Honey Hole is a lot closer.

7 pm and then 8 pm rolled around, and the Festival was on. Honestly, the rest of the Festival is something of a blur at this point. There were no groups which stood out as particularly excellent, although there are moments which stand out. Dusty Warren's "All American Push-Up Party," as he stood there in character, uncomfortably explaining his bed-wetting while his hands treaded water of their own will, and he winced away from imagined sharks. A Mark Twain sketch in which we switch back and forth between East Coast dandies discussing his work, and Twain himself providing lurid and lascivious counterpoint. Two elephants looking at paintings in a museum, discussing elephantine stereotypes. Two Vikings dancing an elaborate choreography to Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House". It was an excellent set of shows.

Posted at 21:17 permanent link category: /theater


Video doom (Part II)

After I got the lights set up at the Erickson, for SketchFest Seattle '06, it was time to set up the video.

Through a connection on our staff, another theater was willing to rent us their video projector for what amounted to a length of string and some empty bottles from the last party. It was perhaps not the ideal projector, but for the price, we'd make it work somehow!


The Cyc (white) and scrim (black, in front of cyc) at the Erickson
I got the projector up in the booth and hooked up to the PlayStation2 we would be using as our video source (high tech, I know!). We were using the little 10x8 foot spandex-n-PVC screen I built for Speechless lo these many years ago (it's gotten a lot of use in that time!). The idea was that we'd project video onto that little screen, which would be placed at the foot of the audience. When the video was done, two eager stage hands would hustle it offstage, or at least away from the center of the stage. We had these great video intros for each group, produced by Josh Knisely.

So the screen was put in place, and we marked its location so I wouldn't have to re-aim the projector every time. I leapt up the stairs to the booth and fired up the projector.

Hmm.

That... that won't work.

The image was considerably larger than the screen. I adjusted the limited zoom control on the projector to no avail. The smallest setting left 40% of the image spilling off the screen.

Well... shit.

I briefly flirted with the idea of shooting the image on the fabric at the back of the stage (which is called a "cyc," short for cyclorama). However, there was a scrim (like very tightly woven fishnet) in front of it, which rendered the image this awful confusion of moire patterns when seen from anywhere which wasn't directly in line with the projector (ie, everywhere). In addition to that weirdness, the image was too big, the top 10% being cut off. Argh!

We ran through options, but none of them made much sense. Put the projector in the audience (to get it closer)? Too dangerous from a cord-tripping standpoint, and we wouldn't be able to control it. Hang it from the lighting grid? Again, no control, and we didn't have cords long enough. Rear projection? Well, maybe, but we'd have to get it off the stage at the same time as the screen, requiring yet another person to help out.

That projector looked like it was out. Aaaand we'd already been through all the reasonable options for getting another one.

I made a few tense phone calls, just in case any of the options we'd explored might have changed. Nope. Crap!

I did what I could that night to finish up, mostly getting microphones set up, and making sure all the equipment we had was playing correctly through the sound system. It was, but I was seriously bummed about the video situation.

Posted at 16:03 permanent link category: /theater


Thu, 21 Sep 2006

Finally coming down (Part I)

It's over... SketchFest, that is.

For the second year in a row, I was the Tech Director of SketchFest Seattle. It was interesting, stressful, fun, tiring, invigorating, annoying and completely fulfilling.

It all started last year, when I said I'd do it again. But it really all started on Wednesday the 6th. We piled into the Erickson Theatre Off Broadway to get everything set up for the arrival of the first group on Thursday.

My biggest priority was to get the lights and video projector set up. Val (Artistic Director, second board op, generally helpful person) and Rachel (Stage Manager, also generally helpful person) both joined me for the Wednesday setup. I looked over what lights were available, and decided that they were about right as they were. I wanted different gels (color filters) in some of the lights, and I re-aimed a few, but I didn't ultimately do that much to them. The worst part of that was getting to the instruments over the audience.


Audience seats at the Erickson
The audience in the Erickson, as in many theaters, sits on a slope which rises away from the stage, so everyone has a good view. That's great for the audience, but it makes getting to the lights above the audience a bloody nuisance. On top of the aforementioned bloody nuisance, the only ladder which would fit up there safely was this amazing extend-o-ladder. Great ladder (I have already forgotten who makes it, of course), but it must weigh 75 lbs. So I found myself wrestling this incredibly heavy extend-o-ladder between rows of seats, laboring to keep it from opening too far, lest it should lock open. If it locked open, it would be permanently wedged in the seats until I could figure out how to release the pressure on the locking mechanism and unlock it (which is normally supposed to happen as it's lying on the ground). Not, really, the best option as far as ladders go.

However, despite all the odds, I did manage to get the lights gelled and focused, roughly to my satisfaction. The words, "you can change anything you want, but you have to put it back when you're done" kept ringing through my head, discouraging me from doing very much to the lights.

Next, video doom.

Posted at 21:26 permanent link category: /theater


Tue, 19 Sep 2006

Perfect timing

On Sunday, I realized that I finally, finally, finally had time to wash my riding suit. Finally. It's been far too long. So gross.

But I digress. So Sunday was spent washing, and washing, and washing... and drying, and spraying. Then I had to wait four hours for the first coat of ScotchGard to dry, but it was already 10 pm. No way I could afford to stay up until 2, so I determined to work from home on Monday.

That plan went off without a hitch, and I got the suit all prepped on Monday. I'd thought I was going to have to run an errand at lunch time via motorcycle, but Jesse showed up with his old, crusty XS650 that he'd sold to someone in Alaska -- he wanted my help getting it to the shipper. Perfect! We threw my rental return in the truck and headed out.

This morning, I awoke to the "sssssSSSSSsshhh!" sound of cars driving by on a thoroughly soaked road. I just looked out the window, and sure enough, it's pissing rain out there.

Good thing that riding suit is all clean and freshly waterproofed. Hooray for serendipity!

Posted at 07:51 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sun, 17 Sep 2006

Finally, cleaning day

At long last, I was able to wash my riding suit today. That Aerostich has been through a lot, including a lot more Summer riding than normal, in the last 6 or so months. Maybe it's been longer. Whatever the case, it was time. I think it may have developed a method of communication based on the subtle shifting of mangled insect corpses on its surface. It certainly showed a propensity for interesting scents.

I tried a slightly different method this time, partially because it was so very encrusted. Two washes in full strength mean ol' detergent, two wash cycles with no soap to rise, and a cycle with the wash-in stuff from Nikwax. It's out in the garage now, stinking up the place from its first coat of Scotchgard. It certainly looked a lot better after the gentle caresses of the washing machine.

It's never a good thing when you think to yourself, "gee, I should wash this," and then you repeat that same thought to yourself for months on end. The first one should have been the action date. Sometimes life just gets in the way, particularly when the washing process takes the better part of 24 hours to complete. As it is, I could only get in one coat of spray-on waterproofing tonight, so I'm going to have to do the second one in the morning and work from home until it's dry.

Posted at 23:10 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sat, 16 Sep 2006

New bicycle

I picked up my new bike today:

I decided on the Gary Fisher Utopia from Gregg's Cycle. I like it.

Now, I just have to do all the stuff to it which needs to be done:

Regardless, it's a great starting platform. I already have one upgraded disc brake which I bought for the old bike, and I'll probably get another and sell the ones which came with this bike. That's the general word I'm hearing from everyone I ask.

So, the first stop is to take the wheel I bought back to Recycled Cycles, where I'll have $50 of store credit to blow. A new computer is the likely outcome of that situation.

Posted at 14:53 permanent link category: /bicycle


Tue, 12 Sep 2006

Yet more bikes

I stopped into Gregg's Cycles on Aurora today, and took a look at some of the bikes there. The first one that caught my eye was the Gary Fisher Utopia, which was on sale for $600, vs. the normal $720 price (and $760 for 2007, I later discovered). I handed over license and credit card (apparently de rigeur in any larger cycle shop these days), and took it out for a spin. Pretty nice! I had actually gone in to look at recumbents, but that Fisher struck me as being a good deal.

I did also test ride a recumbent for the first time: a Rans Velocity Squared (a mere $999). Interestingly, Rans is a company which makes recumbent bicycles, and kit airplanes. Hmm, interesting coincidence of interests...

Anyway, riding the recumbent was interesting. I felt a bit like a young colt taking its first steps: wobbly, hesitant, not really knowing quite how these legs work yet. The recumbent gave me the same uncomfortable, how-do-I-balance-this-crazy-thing feeling as the one and only time I rode a cruiser-style motorcycle. In other words, it didn't positively impress me.

I was impressed by how much power I could get out of my legs since I was able to shove them against something other than gravity. If I were riding longer distances, a recumbent would be high on the list, simply for the improved aerodynamics and mechanical efficiency afforded.

The bike I rode was a long wheelbase model, which is not my preferred style -- I think I'd like the short wheelbase better. However, I'm glad my first ride was on a LWB model, I probably would have fallen off a SWB. I also think I would prefer under-seat steering, while this bike is over-seat steering. Part of my discomfort was surely having the handlebars be the end of a lever, instead of at the pivot -- my normal balancing inputs didn't work quite right, which really didn't put me at ease.

With any luck, I'll be heading out to ActionBent soon, to test ride a SWB model they have, as well as a trike. The trike sounds utterly fascinating, but largely impractical for the riding I want to do. I still want to check it out -- if it gets me excited about riding, it might be worth the price and impracticality.

Anyway, after I got back, the Gary Fisher bike was still sitting there, and after some deliberation, I put a $20 "hold it for 10 days" deposit on it, since it's the last one in the store, and a good price. So unless I find a better bike in the next ten days, I suspect that Fisher will become my next bike. If the Fisher ends up not being quite my thing, the Raleigh Mojave 8.0 I rode yesterday is also a strong contender.

I think the thing I like about the Fisher above the Raleigh (other than having generally better componentry) is the 29" wheels. They're much more appropriate for city use (vs. trail use). I just hope that the whole 29er trend doesn't fizzle like Betamax.

Posted at 22:22 permanent link category: /bicycle


Interesting bikes

Bicycles I've test-ridden so far:

Jamis Exile - A nice bike, but $800 for an '06. Well spec'd, with good components and a steel frame. Higher quality components than I'd really be able to appreciate.

Raleigh Mojave 8.0 - This is currently the top of the list, hitting all the things I care about, mostly disc brakes, wide tires, and a suspension fork with lockout (making it nearly as stiff as a non-suspension fork). Plus, it's only $550, considerably cheaper than the Raleigh.

Cannondale F800 - Alright, I guess, but I didn't feel like I fit on it all that well, and it was the "right size" for me. Again, fairly pricey, at $870. The coolest feature was the front suspension, which had the slider inside the headtube (in the frame), and was adjustable for rebound and lock-out on the fly -- no need to stop, get the weight off the fork, then lock it out or release the lock. For the price, I didn't think it was the right thing, at least partially because high-end components are lost on me.

It's been interesting, looking around. Next up, I'm going to look at recumbent bikes tonight, and will hopefully soon be looking at a recumbent trike (the ActionBent Tadpole Trike). I don't think a trike is seriously in my future, but they're utterly fascinating. Major cons are that they're too low for any visibility at all, and they can flip over if you take a curve too fast (not an issue I'd even consider on a two-wheeled bike).

The one thing which appeals to me about trikes is that they're so different, I might be inspired to ride much more often. They're spendy, and they're weird, and they have their downsides. But if they inspire me to get on them and ride more often, that's a net gain for me, my health, and my energy consumption.

Posted at 16:58 permanent link category: /bicycle


Mon, 11 Sep 2006

A strong nominee for the Darwin Awards

We were coming north on Highway 99 today, from south Seattle. As we passed by Queen Anne, where they've recently constructed a shiny new pedestrian overpass.

There, directly under the pedestrial overpass, was a hapless guy with a bicycle, and no lights. Under the ped overpass. In a section of road which is marked 40 MPH, but which everyone takes at 50-60 MPH. With no lights. In the dark.

Good luck on that, dude.

Posted at 21:36 permanent link category: /misc


Sun, 10 Sep 2006

Well, I guess I'm in the market for a new bicycle

I don't think I'd mentioned it on here, but I went ahead and ordered some stuff to convert my Norco Cypress mountainbike to use a disc brake in front. I've got an Avid BB7 caliper and rotor, and Rock Shox Dart 3 on the way, and I found a used front wheel with a disc hub at Recycled Cycles. While I was in Recycled, I also picked up a used stem, to see if getting the handlebars a touch closer to me would make the bike more comfortable

So, that's cool and all. Hooray for disc brakes. But I went to put on the stem today (easier than I'd feared), and noticed what seemed to be a little line of dirt or oil or something on the head tube (the steering pivot point on the frame). Hmm, I thought. I rubbed it to get it off, and noticed that not only was it not rubbing off, but it was also quite rough.

Upon closer inspection, I realized it was about a 2" crack running from the upper bearing race to the middle of the tube. D'oh!.

In other words, the frame is toast. It's not safe to ride, or sell to anyone else to ride. It's almost certainly not repairable, since you'd have to weld right at the bearing surface, in aluminum. Not really practical. It'd certainly be worth recycling. There's a faint chance that this is covered under warranty, but my receipt certainly went to the great filing cabinet in the sky years ago, so it's probably a moot point.

Anyway, I guess that means I'm in the market for a new bike. I'll keep my eyes out, who knows what I might find.

Posted at 19:58 permanent link category: /bicycle


Fri, 08 Sep 2006

I have this friend in Wyoming...

Who would have guessed that he was the Incredible Hulk? (Yes, he's really lifting that bike.)

Posted at 11:53 permanent link category: /misc


Thu, 07 Sep 2006

The folly of youth

I felt compelled, for a number of reasons, to take the sidecar rig to the opening night of SketchFest tonight. Mostly, I had to carry a big heavy projector which wouldn't have fit happily on the Ninja.

I came out at the end of the night to head home, and what do I see but someone back into the space ahead of the rig. I don't give it a second thought until I get closer, and see that this car has gotten really quite close to the rig. Wait, he's still inching backward... And now the hack is bobbling back and forth in that uneasy shimmy every vehicle undergoes when another one taps it while trying to parallel park.

I put on my best angry voice and yelled "HEY!" loud enough to wake the dead. I got up to the car window, and this little face looked out at me, and said, "sorry about that." He got out of the car, and I found myself looking at what appeared to be a 13 year old asian kid. His car was a blue, late model Honda Accord, with blue tribal-style flame decals along the side. Great. And his car was still resting wearily on the sidecar's nose.

It didn't seem worth the effort of tirading at him, so I just told him to let me out and I'd be leaving shortly. He made some comment about how this was the fourth time he'd had to do this. "What, run into my sidecar?" I thought to myself.

He was trying to park a 17 foot long vehicle in a 10 foot long space.

I just got my helmet on and got out of there. I could see that his car had knocked a small chip of paint off the sidecar, but it had many cousins from road debris or flying rocks or whatever. Not worth the bother of intimidating him into giving me his insurance info (assuming he had any -- it seems anyone who gets into any kind of automotive altercation has a 95% chance of being uninsured).

Hey, thanks for a great night, kid! Learn to park, or get a smaller car, or something.

If it had been a motorcycle, he would have knocked it over, and then we would have been in angry-Ian land (fortunately, there was a cop less than a block away, and it would have been very satisfying to drag him into it).

Posted at 23:52 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Mon, 04 Sep 2006

The ride report, finished

I've finished up the Montana ride report. Take a gander. I've got a few finishing touches I'd like to add, but it's pretty well complete as-is.

Posted at 12:04 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sat, 02 Sep 2006

Bicycle maintenance

I still ride my bicycle occasionally, but not anywhere near enough. Even so, it's got 1000 miles on it since I bought it new, in 1999 or 2000. I brought it into Free Range Cycles a couple of weeks ago, and asked them about replacement chains, figuring I was due. Sure enough, the guy measured my chain and said that it was just at the point where it should be replaced.

I asked how much a replacement chain was, expecting to hear $70 (motorcycle chains start at $80 and go up for anything decent). The guy pulled a chain out from behind the counter, and as it hit the countertop, he said, "that's $16." "Sold!" quoth I.

So, now, probably a month later, I finally got around to it. Getting the old chain off was more difficult than I'd been hoping -- the motorcycle chain tool I have was not as universal as I'd guessed it was. It worked eventually, but I really need to get a proper bicycle chain tool if I do that again.

After a minimum of false starts, I got the new chain on, and routed correctly. A quick ride around the block suggests I did everything right, so hooray for new chains!

In a related note, I was discussing "peak oil" (well, peripherally, anyway) with my friend Josh the other day. Roughly, the theory is that we're right near the point where all the easily-found oil has been found, and to get any more oil will be increasingly difficult.

I'm not interested in debating anyone about peak oil. However, it did start me thinking about our society's oil usage in general. It's frightening. The one I didn't know, which really got me, is that apparently the agriculture industry is hugely dependent upon hydrocarbons in the form of natural gas, which they process into fertilizer. Without that fertilizer, our overworked soil will cease being productive. Just let that sink in for a moment -- when gas runs out, not only does it become expensive to transport food from farm to market, but it becomes expensive to even grow the food in the first place.

I don't know about you, but that's an absolutely horrifying thought. That means that our way of life will have to change drastically, no matter how much monetary wealth you have.

Ok, so horrible, depressing world-view aside, how does that apply to me? Well, I'm already doing a lot of my part to reduce energy consumption -- I ride a 50+ mpg motorcycle, I live close to work, I keep the thermostat turned down to 66° F in winter, I take short showers, etc. I could ride my bicycle more, and that's one of my goals. I need to figure out to what extent I could continue to live my life normally if I rode the bicycle more. My guess is "mostly," but I would have less freedom in terms of absent-mindedly leaving something at home.

But the big one is, does it make any sense to devote 5 years of my life to building something which is, at its heart, a huge gas guzzler? I speak, of course, of building an airplane.

The airplane I rent now uses about 9 gallons per hour. At that consumption rate, it probably flies 110 mph, so that's 12.2 mpg. Ouch. The biplane I would build would cruise at about 85 mph, and use about 5.5 gallons per hour, depending on which engine I ended up using. That works out to 15.45 mpg, which is better, but still hovers in the "horrible SUV" range when compared to land vehicles.

I haven't discounted the idea out of hand, but in light of my lifelong efforts to be more efficient with resources, it seems kind of non-sensical. A highly correllated issue is the price of a gallon of gas in 5-7 years. If we keep going at this rate, it's going to cost $6-7 per gallon of avgas. That means that every hour of flying will cost as much as $38.50 in gasoline alone. That compares with $4.50 now, for $24.75 per hour. Of course, that's not the total cost of an hour of flight, but it's the most variable cost.

So, my 40 hour flight testing regimen will cost $1540 just in gasoline. Of course, building the plane will probably cost $30k-40k, so $1500 is kind of a drop in the bucket. However, money aside, it's going to use a lot of gas.

This is all a set of thoughts I've had in the back of my head about the airplane project, but I find them coming much more strongly to the fore now. It bears more consideration. I still really want to build an airplane, but maybe what I should focus on is building an airplane, getting some flying fun out of it, then passing it on to someone else who really wants a biplane. That will definitely be an expensive hobby, since I suspect I won't come close to breaking even if I build an airplane then sell it.

Anyway, a lot of interesting things to consider. I'm glad I got over my initial funk about the whole oil consumption culture thing, it had me seriously down on Thursday.

Posted at 19:56 permanent link category: /misc


Fri, 01 Sep 2006

20 hours of work done in 2

I believe it would be an understatement to describe last night as an improbable, mildly choreographed dance on the edge of disaster.

"Awesome" will be putting on noSIGNAL at Bumbershoot this year, and last night was our allotted set-up time. They gave us from 6:45 to 9 pm to get set up. By the time we got in, it was already past 7:10.

To put this in perspective, we were attempting to do in two hours what had taken us 20 the first time we did it. We're certainly faster now, having worked out a lot of the bugs in the first tech week, but we're not 10x faster.

We got our stuff loaded in pretty quickly, and introductions were made. Stormy (spelling unknown) was our stage manager, and these were our sound, light, projection folks, and these were our stage hands. Everything passed in one ear and out, as every member of the group stared more or less slack-jawed at Stormy. She was perhaps 28-30 with long auburn hair, and for some reason utterly captivating. That's great and all, but I could feel our time trickling away. (I was no less captivated, don't get me wrong, but I was also frantically aware that we needed to be working fast.)

First things first, let's get those lights set up. Great, progress! Oh, wait... Why is that light bar coming down? What's going on guys, why are we patching lights? 20 minutes of futzing later, the lights were sorted out. By the time we actually got to being able to write cues on the light board and start setting up sound (which necessarily happened simutaneously), it was already 8 o'clock.

A frantic 45 minutes of slowly building light cues later, and we were maybe 1/3 through the cues I knew we wanted to build. You'll notice that this put us at 8:45 if you've been keeping track. We had 15 minutes to finish the other 2/3 of cues. No, actually, Stormy informed me, you have 10 minutes, because we need you out at 8:55, so we can shut down the theater. Oh, great!

Dustin and I kept plugging, slowed down to the speed of cold treacle through the whole thing by a complete unfamiliarity with the lighting set up. There were four of us on headset, trying to get cues set: Gary in the booth, actually hitting buttons; me, trying to stay out of the way and occasionally shouting out cue numbers; Dustin (our light designer) trying to muddle his way through the "magic sheets" the theater had provided; and someone else (Warren?), the theater's light designer. It was cacophonic and difficult. Add onto that that I occasionally had to go off headset to shout something at the actors, or answer a question from someone else (about 2/3 of the way through any of these given distractions, Dustin would tug on my sleeve and make it obvious that lights were more important to him than anything else going on).

On top of all this, I (and everyone else in the room) couldn't stop glancing back at Stormy, who continued being captivating whether we had a ton of work to do or not, and regardless of how much or little time we had left in which to do that work.

Finally, at about 8:53, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and Stormy leaned down to tell me that she was extending our tech time to 9:25. Hooray! I wish it hadn't felt so much like the state had just moved my execution date out a week.

Dustin and I got back to lights, feverishly plugging them into the board. Things were going faster as he got used to which lights were where, and as I looked at the light cues in my book, and ruthlessly crossed them out one by one. 2/3 of the cues left quickly dropped to 5 cues left under my smoking redaktionsstift.

Finally, light cues were done (but not before we'd had to pause for 3 minutes while the band played at full volume, completely cutting our ability to hear each other). I jumped up and announced we were done. The band cheered. They got on with their final sound check. I called out, "5 minutes! No, wait... 2 minutes! We have to clean up and be out of here in 8 minutes!"

There followed an immensely frantic collecting and packing of props, instruments, accessories and cords. I gathered up a load of stuff, following after Stormy as she showed me the small bathroom which she had deigned to let us use for storage.

Then it was the quick-paced baggage train, getting all our stuff into the tiny bathroom. Fortunately, it was capacious enough for twice the stuff we had, and we were done by about 9:27. Thank-yous were shouted all around as we bustled out. I was out the door before 9:30.

We met there outside the loading dock door, in the cool, calm night air. I felt like I had just come out of a war zone. I heard others trading jibes ending in phrases like, "but I already have a wife," which was my first clue that I wasn't alone in finding Stormy completely distracting. (I had been too busy doing everything else to pause long enough to read others' stares.)

We worked out a plan for Saturday and split up, but not before The Distraction Herself and the rest of the theater's crew filtered out the door and to their respective transport media.

Still feeling shell-shocked by the whole experience, I rode my Littlest Ninja home, where I got to spend a lovely hour or so reconstructing my sound work from 5 months ago to send to our sound designer -- I hope he got those files. I think I was finally in bed by 11:52. I'm sure I was asleep before the clock ticked over to midnight.

Posted at 12:23 permanent link category: /theater


Tue, 29 Aug 2006

Consumeristic sadness

This coming Thursday is the last day of operation for the Larry's Market supermarket near my house. This makes me sad, since Larry's was the one market that didn't stoop to such ridiculous practices as customer loyalty cards or bait-and-switch style advertising. They just had good food, and usually kept it in stock. Sometimes it cost more than elsewhere, sometimes it was the same price, sometimes it was cheaper. They usually had things I couldn't get anywhere else (Tunnock's Caramel Wafer bars, anyone? -- pure, Scottish candy heaven).

If the bitter checkers are to be believed, poor management felled the Larry's chain, resulting in a chapter 11 earlier this year. Apparently now, Metropolitan Market has offered to buy up some, but not all, of the stores, destroying the value of the chain as a whole. "My" Larry's is not slated to be saved, and will shut down on Thursday. I probably just got back from my last shopping trip there.

This leaves me with a few choices, none of which appeal to me. Safeway is down Greenwood, on 87th. It's a bit further than Larry's, but still decent bicycling range. It's considerably lower rent, carrying a lot of the high-fat, high-starch prepared food that I try to avoid. To the west, QFC is easily accessible, and a bit less low-rent than Safeway. It'll probably be my next choice for when I want "normal" groceries.

By my work, though, is PCC, which will probably be gaining a fair chunk of my grocery business, particularly produce and "hippie" groceries. I'll just have to stop by after work, rather than taking a random trip there whenever I feel like it.

It's just annoying to see such an otherwise good choice go casters-up.

Posted at 20:08 permanent link category: /misc


Sat, 26 Aug 2006

Back from Montana

I've returned from my Montana trip. Oof, tired. I actually got back last night, but the only things I wanted last night were a shower, a shave, and sleep.

Some statistics for your edification:

Camping was a mixed bag, first night was ok, second night sucked, third night was fabulous. I was going to camp a fourth night, but the campground was so awful-looking, and I didn't have an alternate planned, so I set my sights on home, and more than doubled my riding day.

Yesterday was a bit mad, departing from Troy, MT (nearby, anyway, at the Bad Medicine Campground, which I highly recommend) at 9:30 MDT (aka 8:30 PDT), arriving at my intended destination around 2 pm PDT, deciding I'd rather ride 8 more hours than stay there, and got home at 10:45 PDT. Surprisingly, "butt burn" on a long ride like that gets up to a certain level of pain then just plateaus, so that's nice at least.

This is all going to turn into a lengthy write-up with lots of pictures interspersed, have no fear. For the moment, you can content yourself with thousands and thousands of pictures with no explanatory text, if you like.

I have pages and pages of notes I took to help me remember what all happened and what I experienced on the trip, which should help in constructing the trip report. Notable points included: hitting 71.3 MPG on one tank of gas; getting up to Logan Pass and the Continental Divide; having one of the Myrna Loy Theater's lights go "fizzle, fizzle, BANG!" inches from my face (no damage, just scary); twice having something very large walk close to my tent in the pitch black night, amidst conspicuous "recent bear activity!" signs; successfully riding over 500 miles in one day on slow back roads.

I'll post here when I've got the trip report up, just in case you're not in the habit of checking the other pages for activity.

Posted at 13:16 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Thu, 17 Aug 2006

A moment in Ian's personal aviation history

I just looked, for giggles, to see who currently owns N1912H, the Piper Cherokee in which I did most of my training.

Imagine my dismay when I came across this entry in the NTSB database. Yep, 1912H was crashed two years ago, killing one of the passengers. The idiot pilot loaded it more than 100 lbs overweight, didn't do a weight and balance calculation, and plowed into some trees. Sounds like he did a fair job of piloting once he realized the predicament he was in, so credit to him for thinking fast. But really, minus several million points for thinking he could load four people in that little plane in 100° F temperatures and actually take off.

It's kind of sad for me, as I always liked that plane. It wasn't fast, but it certainly worked well for me. It took me to Portland and back, and I probably spent 40+ hours in it for my training. I was bummed when Zephyr went under, and it stopped being an option for rental (although I see Zephyr is still in business in some form, and still has the $100 I had on account there when they croaked in 2002). 5850W, the Cherokee 160 I now fly via Northway is fine, but I liked that 140 better.

Anyway, I'm taking a moment of reflection on the passing of a friend. It was just a hunk of metal and electronics, but it was my hunk of metal, on the occasions I was in it.

So things go, I guess. Note to self: weight and balance calculations are important.

Posted at 14:39 permanent link category: /aviation


Wed, 16 Aug 2006

Oh, I am so boned.

I contacted the current owner of my old Ninja 250, and asked if he'd trade seats with me for the trip to Montana. Sure, he said, and we traded.

I thought to myself, "Whew! That's one load off my mind!"

Then I rode it home.

Yep, you guessed it (ain't foreshadowing great?), it's not very comfortable. But, how can this be? I hear myself and my colossal readership asking. Answer: I don't know. It may be the basket on back pushing me forward, and certainly that's part of it. However, the basket is smaller than the bags I'm intending to put on the back, which means I'll be shoved even further forward.

The question now is, what do I do? Honestly, it's starting to feel like the stock seat will be the best choice. The hard, flat stock seat. At least it doesn't press uncomfortably into my legs or hips. Maybe I can find someone selling a scrap of sheepskin suitable for use as a seat pad (the Airhawk sheepskin seat pad is supposed to work wonders).

I'm feeling stuck at this point. Due to multiple time-robbing committments, I've got more riding to do today. I guess I'll do that on the old seat and see if I can figure out something to make it more comfortable.

This is definitely not how I wanted to feel before a major, 3000 mile trip.

Posted at 18:48 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Passengers, beware

I've recently joined the Fishnet mailing list, a list for people to discuss Fisher Flying Products airplanes. The model I'm looking at, the Celebrity, is a FFP kit.

Anyway, among the first things I asked about (if you click that link, you can read the list archives) was cockpit size. The consensus seems to be that I'll probably fit as the pilot, but I might well not fit as the passenger.

That's kind of a problem. A number of people I'm imagining as passengers are about my size. If they can't fit as passengers, why am I building a plane with two seats? It'd be much cheaper, and just as satisfying, to build a smaller airplane, with a smaller motor, with a smaller weight envelope, and with one seat. Granted, it'd just be me, but this project is really about what I want, and not what other people want. It just happens that one of my desires aligns pretty well with some other people's desires: for both of us to go flying in the plane I built.

So, I think that before I commit any money to anything, I need to find myself a Celebrity with a completed cockpit and mounted wings, to see how hard it really is to get into the passenger seat. If it really is improbable, I need to move on and keep looking.

The other thing I need to look at long and hard is my intended mission. My current flying regimen breaks down about like this:

It's actually a bit more biased in favor of the touch-n-go flying, but that's pretty close as far as how things line up in my mind, whatever may be in the logbook.

If I built a plane, what would I want it to do?

How about passengers? Right now, I've got about 40 hours in the logbook since I got my license, with about 60 spent in training. Discounting training as a special case (which it is), of the remaining 40 hours, I've probably spent 5 to 7 of them with one passenger, and perhaps 3-4 with two or more passengers. That's 10% with two or more passengers, almost 20% with one passenger, and 70% by myself.

But, what would I like to do?

I know I want to fly with one passenger. That's a no-brainer. Whether it's my girlfriend, or a friend who wants to go up, or a parent or brother, I want to be able to accomodate them. But some of those people I just listed are my size or bigger, either in height or breadth, so I must be able to be a passenger without much trouble in order to ensure that they can too.

I don't need to carry more than one passenger. If I need to do that, I just go rent a plane from Larry's SpamCan Rental, and we go wherever in certified comfort. It'd be cool to be able to fly groups in my own airplane, but then we're getting into serious money and time to build. Both are things which will prevent successful completion of a project like this. I'll just do the occasional rental for that, it's way cheaper in the long run.

So, my mission includes at least 10% distance flight. For distance flight, you want at least moderate comfort. Is that comfort afforded by a small wooden biplane? Probably not. My mission includes at least 10% local flight, and probably more once I realize I can do it and how much fun it is. All you need for that is appropriate clothing and a tough enough butt to last 30-60 minutes in the cockpit. Pretty much anything will supply that. I could fly to Orcas in a powered hang glider if I really wanted to. Night flight poses the same requirements as local flight, with the addition of some weight for lights.

The interesting one is mountain flying. I think mountain flying, and I think of big, powerful airplanes. But I realized that part of the reason I think that is because I think of climb rate. To put this in perspective, the Piper Cherokee I usually fly has a climb rate of about 440 feet per minute (fpm) at 4000 feet, which is about what mountain passes require around here. At 4000 feet, a Piper Cherokee Six (the little Cherokee I fly, but scaled up a bit), probably has a climb rate over 1000 fpm. That's good, and that'd make me feel comfortable flying through the mountains -- if things go wrong, shove that throttle forward and climb out to air that's free of things like clouds and rock.

The thing is, if I put that Jabiru 3300 engine in a Celebrity, it would climb like a kicked mule. It'd probably top 1500 fpm at sea level, and be above 1000 fpm at 4000 feet. All that wing plus a generous dose of HP and low weight means you can go up fast.

So mountain flying doesn't actually mean big plane. It means plane that can climb well. The Celebrity would score well on that scale.

That isn't remotely all there is to it, though. That's just one of the factors which occurred to me. I probably wouldn't want to do any serious mountain flying without a much more significant investment in instruments than the Celebrity will allow, among other things. It's just an interesting thought.

The bottom line is that the Celebrity is right for a few things, even most of the flying I'd want to do. But it may well fall down when it comes time to pack a 6' 2" friend into the passenger seat. I'll just have to see one in person. Anyone have a Celebrity I can come see in person?

Posted at 13:59 permanent link category: /aviation


Tue, 15 Aug 2006

The Agony of Da Seat

I tried my best. I really did.

But I just couldn't finish that damned seat.

I set about a week or so ago to build another custom seat, for the new Ninja 250. I got a really good start, and figured I was within a few days of done (don't I always?). It just needed a little bit of tweaking...

So yeah, most of a week later, tweaking multiple times every day, I finally run out of time, and throw a cover on it, knowing I am simply too late to do anything else. Needless to say, it wasn't right, and in the process of covering it, I somehow made it much worse than it had been, with what feels like a sharp corner pressing on my femoral artery, or something. Ow! Not acceptable.

I tried grinding that bit down, and that made it better, but it was still pinching something. No good!

So, I gave in. I emailed the current owner of my previous bike (who conveniently parks right next to me at work), and he's agreed to swap seats with me. Phew! That's a huge load off my mind. At least when I head for Montana I know I'll be on a good seat.

Now, of course, I just have to contend with the fact that I'm likely looking at a 3000 mile trip on a 28 HP motorcycle, going over big mountain passes. It's gonna be quite a trip. I'll be stopping to take a lot of pictures, I hope. I'm planning on it.

Posted at 23:41 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Mon, 14 Aug 2006

The first vestiges... it might be real

I've taken the first ominous step towards making the biplane project real. I've put up a web page about it.

Yep. I'm doomed.

Posted at 16:39 permanent link category: /aviation


Sun, 13 Aug 2006

Feasible, but wobbly

I just tried packing up 95% of my camping gear and strapping it to the bike. Hmm. I think it'll work, but it's got a bit of side-to-side wobble. It's not that big a deal, since motorcycles don't experience side loading (or if they do, it's because they've fallen over).

The whole thing seemed to strap on securely enough that I'd be willing to travel in that condition, but I'd defintely be checking the security of the straps at the first stop. I might even make the first stop a bit early, just to be on the safe side. I think the plan of wrapping the tarp around the non-waterproofed pieces may be doomed to failure, due to wind-induced flapping.

I may have to go with fewer clothes than I'd planned on, but mostly in the form of the giant wool sweater, which I don't think I'll be needing in Montana in summer. Current weather is supposed to go down as low as 50° F, but I can survive that without a giant sweater. I may also want to work on fewer changes of clothes.

The main thing concerning me right now is that my clever first aid kit is so enormous that I have no idea how I'll pack it in. It's very comprehensive, and I'm sure it'd be a useful thing, but I think it needs to become smaller if I'm actually intending to take it with me. A very comprehensive first aid kit sitting in my bedroom does me no good if I'm 500 or 1000 miles away from it.

So, it's nice to get a quick sanity check that I will most likely be able to pack everything I was intending to pack. Some adjustments may be necessary.

Posted at 12:18 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Fri, 11 Aug 2006

The EAA meeting

I attended the monthly EAA Chapter 26 meeting last night. It was pretty interesting, and as I suspected, I've found another old-rich-white-man hobby. (That's not an insult, the people at this meeting were very friendly, and I felt like I fit pretty well with a number of them.)

There were a few presentations, some discussion, an impromptu dissertation on why fatal crashes are happening at Oshkosh (a very large fly-in event where they have to deal with lots and lots of air traffic), and finally a free-for-all after the meeting.

The presentations were interesting, being mostly pictures of airplanes. The first person to speak had a Kitfox which struck me for two reasons: first, it was on floats (the idea of flying with floats is intriguing to me); second, it had the coolest paint job I've seen in quite a while, with a Northwest Indian animal head painted on the cowling. When he got to a later picture with wheels on, the wheel fairings were painted in the same style with eagle claws. It was a very striking design. I was particularly interested, because I haven't yet decided anything about how I might paint my plane.

The next two presentations were pictures from the big Arlington fly-in, which I missed by a week. Of course, it's less than an hour up the freeway, so it would have been a fabulous and inspirational introduction to the whole homebuilding subject. Ah well, next year. One thing I saw which piqued my interest in those pictures was a biplane on floats. I didn't know people did that.

In the discussion afterwards, I was able to talk to a few people, and got some good information. That's why I came to the meeting, to meet other people who know more about this subject than I do.

I got three good tidbits of information. First, "limit the number of 'experimental' variables as much as possible: your freshly built airframe is experimental, so try to avoid having an experimental engine." Good thought, and it inclines me back towards the Continental O-200, which is a known-good engine, with millions of cumulative flying hours.

Next was the same guy asking why I wasn't considering the Jabiru engines. I replied that I thought they were horribly expensive, and he said, "nah, they cost about $14k, just like a bunch of other engines [including the radial R2800]." Ah-hah. So I went and looked, and the Jabiru 2200 actually looks pretty interesting. What is it with Aussies and airplane engines? (The same guy also guessed that I'd want an 80 HP motor, which I found interesting and worthy of note -- I'd been thinking 100 HP would be the more appropriate level, but there's a lot to be said for lighter weight. The Jabiru 2200 only weighs 132 lbs, vs. the 220 for a Corvair or R2800. That's a big difference.)

Finally, I got a recommendation from a new member to seek out George Kirkish for tailwheel instruction. He runs Vashon Island Air, which despite its name operates out of Boeing Field. He has a couple of Piper Cubs and a Maule, all of which he uses for training. I think if it'll lift us, there's no way I can pass up doing training in a Cub. I've got that set to go in later September, after my theatrical schedule calms down a bit.

So, hooray for progress. Of course, now I want to build a plane more than ever.

Posted at 08:40 permanent link category: /aviation


Wed, 09 Aug 2006

Scanner's back

In case you've been waiting for the scanner stream to come back, your day has come. It's back, and appears to be fully functional. Still one user at a time, unfortunately, but it's back to where it was.

Hooray!

Posted at 18:45 permanent link category: /misc


Shocking, pt III

I got an email from Dave Quinn today, intrepid importer of Hagon shocks. He said that my spring rate on my rear shock is 90 kg/cm (or about 500 lbs/in), which is nice to know.

He also said that the damping adjuster should have a range of 7.5 full turns, yet mine has 4.5 (or 5 if I turn the adjuster really hard). I've emailed him back asking whether he thinks it's safe in that condition (ie, can I ride it to Montana and back). I'm concerned that if it should have 7.5 and only has 5, something's got to be blocking it, and that something could come loose and make riding the bike either very uncomfortable, or actually dangerous.

If he thinks it's safe as-is, I'll make the trip, then send it back to have this error corrected. If not, I guess I'll swap the stock shock back in and suffer along with a sagging rear-end (of the bike, get your mind out of the.. gutter, I guess?). It'll be pretty sag-tastic once I get my ~50 lbs of gear loaded on the back. But then I can get the shock sent of to jolly ol' England and they can get it back to where it should be.

Dave's website suggesst that these shocks have a 2 year warranty, and that Dave Quinn "extends" that warranty to me, the consumer. When I've gone anywhere near this territory on the phone with him, Dave has shied away like I was asking for a pound of flesh, so I'm not sure what he considers "extending the warranty" to include. I suspect it just means that if I send the shock back at my expense, Hagon will fix it and send it back again, still at my expense for shipping.

Update: I just talked to Dave, and he says that his rating of 7.5 turns is actually based on another type of shock, and when he grabbed a shock similar to mine off the shelf, he only got 5.5 turns out of its adjuster. Sounds like my shock just gets 5 turns of adjustment. Whew! I'd hate to have to ride to Montana and back on the stock spring.

Posted at 14:24 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Tue, 08 Aug 2006

At last!

I actually wrote a very critical post just now, which I discovered was unwarranted. So if you saw an entry with me lambasting ElectroSport, it was premature. Turns out the results I was waiting for were stuck in my spam folder. (Hooray for spam!)

Anyway. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, that's fine, just ignore me.)

I got the results on the Ninja 250's alternator today, from ElectroSport. The bottom line is that with no modifications at all, I could drop in a new stator and get another 50W out of my electrical system. With a bit of machining of the sidecase, I could drop in 110W extra. My goodness. (If you're looking at that xls file, the top line ("row 4") is the original, stock part. Apparently the curve is basically flat beyond 6k RPM.)

It's an intriguing upgrade, since when I ride with a heated vest (44W), the +50W alternator would basically cover the difference, leaving me with stock power generation. There's just room for the vest with the stock setup, but with the additional power, I could run the vest and something else, like an extra light, without worrying. Not so much something I'm worried about, but I have no doubt it'll be interesting to a few of the more touring-minded 250 riders.

Posted at 16:05 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sat, 05 Aug 2006

You're taking what now?

I gathered together all the stuff I think I'm going to take along with me on my camping trip to Montana:

It's.... quite a bit. Although looking it over, it looks like I'll actually be able to fit it into the Ortlieb drybag I've got without too much trouble. The sleeping bag (red), tent (black, behind the sleeping bag) and sleeping pad (black, in front of the sleeping bag) will be strapped on outside the drybag. The tarp (blue) will probably be wrapped around the tent and sleeping pad, since they're not in waterproof bags. A lot of the smaller stuff will be packed into the tank bag, which isn't in the picture.

It's going to be quite a bit to pack, though. Unfortunately, there's very little in there I feel would be a good idea to leave behind. It depends a lot on projected weather for the area -- I won't need to take the big army-green sweater if it looks like temperatures will be mild, for instance. It's the biggest single item I'm trying to pack into the drybag, and I've got other, smaller warm stuff.

This is all a good sanity-check. Now I know what all I'm missing, and I have a decent idea of how it's all going to go together.

Posted at 12:56 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Thu, 03 Aug 2006

More engine choices

I was poking around today, and it finally struck me that a Corvair engine might be a really good choice. I got some disturbing news about the Rotec radial which makes me think it's not a great choice (bad customer experiences, and a few failures). I read up some more on the Continental O-200, and it's still an interesting choice, but the Corvair looks quite interesting.

That site I linked above sells completely overhauled and flight-ready Corvair engines for $8k, which now seems like a downright bargain to me. I really like that the Corvair doesn't need any gearing to turn the prop at the right speed, which is very unusual among automotive engine conversions. I also hadn't realized that the Corvair was a boxer engine, which immediately endears me to it.

Yet another choice. At least I'm not suffering for lack of options.

Posted at 21:25 permanent link category: /aviation


Tue, 01 Aug 2006

Sweet seat

I just took my newly carved Ninja 250 seat for a ride around the block. It's actually really good! I don't think the "butt-facing" parts of the seat need any more adjustment, aside from one edge being rounded down a little bit.

Now, it's just reducing the width of the forward section (which I guess would be the "thigh-facing" part), and doing the finish shaping to make it look purdy. I'm going to be done sooner than I thought. Better stock up on some more adhesive, top foam and vinyl.

Posted at 23:04 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Fuel-management simplicity

So, I just had an interesting idea. Let me set it up for you.

The Fisher Celebrity biplane (the airplane I'm considering building) has three gas tanks. One is mounted between the passenger and the engine, and is the main tank. Two supplementary tanks are located in the upper wings, near the center.

I don't know how fuel management is normally accomplished, but I suspect it's done with shutoff valves -- you turn on the wing root tank's valve, and it recharges the main tank.

But what if that same fuel management were automatic? The idea is to use floats inside the main tank to cut off flow from the wing tanks, and open them up once the main tank drops below a certain level (say, half a tank). You could even hook up a switch to each float, and if either of them drops to the stop, it'd actuate the switch. Either switch turning on would set a flasher going in the cockpit to let you know you were running low on fuel.

That way, you'd fill all three tanks, and fly. The tanks automatically equalize the way you want, and when you get below a half main tank (probably 3 gallons remaining, or about an hour of flight), the flasher lights to let you know that you need to land and get more gas NOW. The circuit would be simple enough that a momentary switch in the cockpit could test the light to make sure it still flashes.

It's a very interesting idea. I've posted it over on homebuiltairplanes.com to see what the more experienced folks there think of it. Maybe it's already been built and used in many planes. I'm sure I'm not the first person to have thought of it. It's not without its faults (implementing it would be somewhat difficult, but not insurmountably so), but I'd put up with a longer build time if it significantly enhanced flight safety (and this idea would do just that).

Posted at 14:05 permanent link category: /aviation


Fri, 28 Jul 2006

Truly, it is goodbye

I just watched the new owner of the Z750s pull off and down my street. As always, it's a mixed happy/sad reaction which fills me when I sell something major like this.

On the one hand, I'm happy to be rid of it (for usually, as with this time, the thing I'm selling is something I really don't want any more, for whatever reason). I'm always happy to see someone else with a big grin on their face as they trade their money for the object of their desire. In this case, Steve (the buyer) looked quite happy as he saddled up and rode off, following his friend in the car they arrived in. Steve gave me a much more comfortable feeling than the previous theoretical buyer, who I now simply refer to as Mr. Creepy. Steve also gave me the impression of being a more skilled rider than the person who bought my BMW R100 a few years ago -- that guy rode off, swinging wide across the street, wearing nothing but a ventilated jacket, a helmet he'd purchased that day, and street clothes. I think it was 40 degrees that day. He must have been half-frozen by the time he got home. Steve will be happier in that way as well.

On the other hand (to return to the structure with which we started this sojourn down memory lane), it makes me sad to see a major part of my life departing. In this case, the Z750s was less major than some previous bikes have been, but it was still important. Going back to the R100, that was a bit of a jar, if only because I'd had the bike for a couple of years, and had gotten to know it really well over the course of several major breakdowns. There's a certain connection with a bike when you've had large chunks of it disassembled for repair. Selling the Le Mans was a similarly mixed event, the sad part coming from the ridiculously incorrect goals I'd loaded it down with. Road trips! thought I. Gonna go places! Yeah, that didn't happen. Then when I rode it those distances once or twice, it turned out it wasn't really all that good for the purpose. Live and learn, I guess.

Now, of course, I find myself with a situation which would probably make most "real" motorcyclists cringe: a Ninja 250 (anathema to speed junkies everywhere) and a Honda Goldwing (gasp!) with a sidecar (double-gasp!). Nothing speedy in there. I mean, the Ninja could be considered speedy when pitted against a stock Honda Civic DX, but it's really not a fast car. The Goldwing feels powerful, but it's hauling around so much mass that even though you feel like you just burned through the gears, you're only going 70 MPH and it's starting to wheeze a bit.

Of course, this is what I wanted. This is actually my ideal situation right now, and I've finally achieved it. Now I just have to finish up the changes to the Ninja (all centered around making the bike fit me better), and I'll be done. Just in time to move houses and build an airplane!

Posted at 13:42 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Thu, 27 Jul 2006

But which motor?

So, I started poking around looking for prices on Continental O-200 motors for the biplane project. The O-200 is about the same amount of power as the Rotec radial. It's lighter by 40 lbs and puts out 10 HP less (110 HP for the Rotec vs. 100 for the O-200).

However, more importantly, a used, certified O-200 costs $8000, vs. $14,000 for the radial. And the O-200 is certified, with an excellent track record for reliability. Of course, an O-200 which costs $8k is also used, and therefore has some open questions about its actual condition.

It's an interesting point to consider. The Continental is a more "familiar" engine, in the sense that I could get service and parts for it at just about any repair shop on an airstrip. It has a lot to recommend it. But, of course, it's not a cool radial engine.

Still not making any decisions, since I'm still far from doing anything about this whole airplane project. It's most enjoyable doing the research, though.

Posted at 22:05 permanent link category: /aviation


Is this.. goodbye?

I have accepted a deposit on the Z750s. If the deal goes through like I hope it will (and I have no reason to suspect it won't, at this point), I will finally be at the level of general bike-itude I've been aiming for.

Here's hoping all goes well. Then I get to contend with how I'm going to get myself to Montana and back on a Ninja 250.

Posted at 21:42 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Hey, nice rack

With any luck, there will be a new motorcycle rack on the Ninja 250 soon. Glenn of the Infernal Machine Shop borrowed the Ninja over the weekend to take final measurements and construct a jig for building racks. This is about year 3 of my waiting for a rack from him, so i'm maintaining a "wait and see" attitude about the whole thing.

If it actually happens, it sounds like it'll be a nice design. It would probably make packing for my little Montana camping trip a lot easier.

In other news, I expect that Hagon rear shock to show up either today or tomorrow. I'm definitely looking forward to installing that, as I was noticing on the way in this morning that the rear shock is feeling pretty overwhelmed. I realized that because the front end is riding so much higher now, with the stiffer springs and all, it's transferring weight to the back. The stock rear shock is now even worse than when I got the bike. But oh, the joys of getting the suspension fully balanced and sorted out should be sweet.

I also got in my new tires on Monday, and will be putting them on soon (probably in the next week or two, particularly if it cools down a bit). The other Ian, on the Ninja 250 board, insists that it will be a revelation when I put the new tires on, so I kind of want to spend some time on the old tires and new rear shock. That way I can feel the full impact of the new tires once I do put them on.

Exciting times down at the ol' motorcycle ranch.

Posted at 13:08 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Tue, 25 Jul 2006

Clarfications

I had a chance to chat with my parents today, and they expressed some concerns about the direction my recent aviation discussion has taken. I suspect that if they have these concerns, others among my masses of readers (all two of you) may also be wondering.

"Ultralights are so scary and flimsy." Well, yes and no. Some ultralights are pretty terrifying looking, I agree. Some are pretty substantial looking. Most seem to actually be pretty strong and safe. However, regardless of that, what I'm proposing to build is that airplane on the right, which has an empty weight of 600 pounds, and can carry its own weight again in passengers and gas and such. Not an ultralight at all. Properly constructed, they're very sturdy planes. (Note: not knocking ultralights, although you have to admit that to the untrained eye, some ultralights look like they should fold up like a bad lawn chair.)

I'm interested in having a long and productive life, which is why I've spent thousands of dollars on excellent motorcycle safety gear. However, I also want to enjoy it, which is why I'm riding motorcycles every day instead of commuting in a Volvo. The same logic goes for building an airplane: I like flying, but I want to do it as safely as possible -- that means I'm not going to pick a kit which is known for folding up on itself after 3 hours of flight. It also means I'm going to be painfully fastidious in the construction of that plane to make absolutely sure I'm doing it correctly (and thus safely).

The same also goes for the engine. My dad asked about what kind of engine I would use, and I started going into the types I was looking at. Almost the first thing out of his mouth was, "how reliable are they?" We had an interesting discussion about certified vs. non-certified engines (basically, a certified engine is one which has been built and maintained and possibly overhauled with FAA-blessed procedures by FAA-blessed mechanics; a non-certified engine is not). The short answer on that one: I don't know which I'll want to use. The one pictured on the right is the leading contender if money and reliablity are no object. It would cost over $20k by the time it was installed (unless I found a used one), and it's not certified, so reliability is more of an open question.

In any case, all of this is still pretty far out. I have a few other things to take care of in my life before I even consider actually spending any money on any of this. Any actual decisions will be made two years from now, at the earliest. Anything I say between now and then is purest speculation, although it may be well grounded in research. But then, I can always do more research.

Posted at 23:02 permanent link category: /aviation


Mon, 24 Jul 2006

Bremerton, fish and chips, and overflying houses

Very briefly, Kristin and I took a flight over to Bremerton yesterday to get some flying in and eat fish and chips. Pretty tasty.

We also took the opportunity to take some pictures. Enjoy!

Posted at 11:44 permanent link category: /aviation


Better, more expensive

It occurred to me a day or two ago that if I do go through with the idea of building an airplane, and if I stipulate that I'd like to be able to carry passengers, it doesn't make sense to do that if I can't carry every probable passenger. This leads, of course, to building a bigger plane.

The one I was originally so excited about, the Classic, would have a maximum passenger weight (assuming I built it exactly to spec and weight) of about 160 lbs. That rules out a number of people I'd want to fly with. What fun is that?

So now I find my eye lighting on the Celebrity by the same company. It's bigger, and would allow me a theoretical maximum passenger weight in the 300 lb range, which is more than enough. Of course, it also allows me the opportunity to use one of these beautiful radial engines.

The downside to all this is that the costs are getting right up there. The bigger plane kit costs $2500 more. The motor is insane, costing $14,000 for the engine, and $7500 for the installation. That's a lot more than the $8,000 for the smaller engine which would power the smaller plane. Of course, the bigger plane will take other engines, which don't cost as much. How much less? Unknown at this point.

It still makes sense, if I do go through with the idea, to start with the bigger, more capable plane. Or, if I decide that passengers are a bad idea, I can go back to a simpler, lighter, cheaper kit, and commensurately simpler and cheaper engines.

Fortunately, I still have a lot of time to research and decide.

Posted at 11:43 permanent link category: /aviation


Sat, 22 Jul 2006

"Anyone know anything about magnetos?"

After my comparatively failed trip to Arlington on Thursday evening, I decided to try again today. I got a late start (I needed the sleep) and was up there by about noon.

I tooled around the ultralight hangars again, but this time actually spotted a few people moving around. I pulled up in front of the largest group (all two of them), and doffed my disturbingly warm riding clothes (it was at least 90° F out there today).

I started up a brief conversation, and it turned out that the talkative guy was the owner of "Let's go flying!" which is an ultralight instruction firm (or something like that). "Demo flights are $65, and I charge $140 an hour. Not that I'm trying to pressure you or anything." He seemed like a fine guy, and I didn't feel pressured. He introduced me to the two people who were over by his ultralight: Idaho Joe, and Elmer. "Elmer just finished building that plane over there!" he said, waving in the general direction of half a dozen planes in hangars.

It turned out that Elmer had come over for a reason. "Anyone know anything about magnetos?" he asked. "I know some, although I'm hardly an expert on them," I volunteered. The talkative guy (whose name I've thoroughly forgotten, of course) burst out cheerfully, "that's what we like to hear! You're going to be very popular around here, Ian!" (he had, of course, already memorized my name).

I followed Elmer over to the newly finished plane ("it hasn't even flown yet," reported Elmer), and he described the engine running on the left magneto but not on the right.

Quick diversion for the non-geeks among my 3 readers: a magneto is this clever thing which produces a spark for an engine without the assistance of a battery. Almost all airplanes have two of them, so that if one conks out, your engine is still running. Airplanes are all about redundancy where possible. Anyway, most airplanes have two magnetos, and a switch up in the cockpit to switch between the left, the right and both magnetos running the engine.

Back to our story. Under a bit of questioning, Elmer further reported that the right mag used to work, but it didn't work this morning, and he didn't know what to do about it. After about 5 minutes talking with him, it was clear that he had followed the instructions in the kit without really knowing what he was hooking up, when running all the wires in the plane. That's fine, but it makes troubleshooting a real chore.

Fortunately, I was able to give him a bit of impromptu instruction in how most magneto systems work. Then I got back to the engine (the plane uses a pusher prop, where the propeller and engine are mounted behind the wing), and saw that there were no magnetos. Of course. This engine (a Rotax 503 if that means anything to you) uses the more modern electronic ignition which the non-aviation parts of the world standardized on 30 years ago. That complicated things a bit, but we eventually worked through it.

First thing was to test the mag switch (think of it as being like an ignition switch in a car -- same function, different design). He operated the switch while I poked and prodded with the multimeter I usually have in my bag (have I mentioned recently that I'm a total geek?). Something wasn't right, but I attributed it to my lack of detailed knowledge on this particular engine setup.

We moved back to the engine, where I saw a host of wire connections buried beneath a wad of black electrician's tape. Normally, a wad of black electrician's tape is home to a horrifying electron graveyard of terrible wire connections, but Elmer's work there had been effective if a touch basic. No problems there. I was starting to feel stumped.

We moved back up to the mag switch (side note: a lovely thing about ultralights and similar airplanes: there's very little digging to be done to get to all these connections -- Elmer just pulled a piece of fabric off its velcro and we had full access -- a normal airplane would have required extreme contortions to get to these contacts, and I would have required a 4 year degree to legally do what I was doing). We ran through the testing sequence again, but this time something was different. One terminal which had been unresponsive last time was now changing. Only, it wasn't changing the way it should have. Hmm.

"Elmer, try wiggling the key back and forth, just jiggle it," I said. Sure enough, the multimeter beeped in time with the key's gyrations. *sigh* "That's it," I said. "The switch is bad." Lame. Lame.

One of the weird and/or annoying things about this situation is that the switch was basically brand new. He estimated he'd cycled it from OFF to START and back maybe 10 times. This is a part which appeared to be a certified switch (I actually don't know now if mag switches can be certified or not), which costs on the order of $90 to replace. I just hope he can get a replacement without having to spend the $90 to get it.

The other annoying thing is that this plane (according to Elmer) was at that moment ready to fly for the first time, except for that dratted switch. The kit manufacturer (who provided the switch with the kit) is in Florida, and doubtless was unreachable by the time we found the problem (around 1 pm Pacific, or 4 pm Eastern). Looks like Elmer's grounded for a little while longer.

Eventually, after profuse thanks for helping him out, I left Elmer to his own devices and headed out to eat a very delayed breakfast. This time, the Taildragger Cafe was open, and it was every bit as pleasant as it had appeared through the locked door on Thursday evening.

Posted at 18:25 permanent link category: /aviation


Thu, 20 Jul 2006

A brief sojourn to Arlington

As I watched the clock hands swing past 5 pm today, I found myself still in a very aviatory mood. I didn't want to be at work any more, I wanted to be looking at planes or talking to someone about planes. Hmm, pity I missed the Arlington fly-in -- I have it! I'll ride up to Arlington and have a look around!

So I packed myself up, and headed to Arlington Municipal Airport, after a brief stop at home to pick up the aviation radio and the kneeboard (which contains a few documents I wanted to refer to). Traffic was slow, but I eventually turned into the "main" parking lot (consisting of around 20 parking spots) around 6:30.

The office had closed at 5, but there was an information board up, which I perused. I saw that I was on the opposite side of the field from the ultralight operations, but decided to stay there for the moment, to give myself some time out of the sweaty riding suit.

As I was considering whether to walk out onto the ramp or not, I heard a high-pitched engine noise, somewhere between a tiny model plane and a Cessna. Ah-hah! I looked toward the lowering sun, and spied what looked like a hang glider with a framework slung beneath it. A quick examination with the monocular confirmed that I was looking at what I think is called a trike. This one looked very much like a motorized hang glider, with wheels, and a seat instead of a grab bar.

There was also a Cessna 152 doing touch-and-goes as I sat there in the sunlight, and I heard an "experimental" call on the radio as he crossed one runway on the way to another. I watched the experimental take off (usually an experimental plane is one built by the owner, such as I would do in my ideal world), but it was a low-winged, fast looking plane. Just the opposite of what I want to build.

The ultralight hang glider thing continued buzzing around the far end of the field, climbing at a ridiculous angle, then pirouetting around in an improbably small amount of space. It looked like fun. I listened to the pitch of the engine, since I'm sure it was using a Rotax engine similar to (but smaller than) what I'd use on the Classic. It wasn't as bad as I'd imagined, but definitely not the throaty burble of a big radial. I think I'll have to hold off on the big radial for a while, though.

I sat down on the bench, and read through the Airport/Facilities Directory entry on Arlington Muni. Nothing too surprising, although I was interested to note that there's no tower. I figured there would be (Arlington claims to be the biggest general aviation airport in the state). Traffic must be exciting during the fly-in.

Finally, I packed myself back up, and told the GPS to route me to the other side of the field, so I could check out the ultralights. A few scant minutes later (having had to travel around the perimeter of the airport plus some), I pulled up to the "UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS OR VEHICLES PROHIBITED" sign. I dallied for a moment, then decided that as a licensed private pilot, I was probably authorized. In any case, there was no one to ask, and no gate or even a speed bump barring the way.

I cruised slowly past the hangars, looking at the wide variety of ultralights or the bits of them I could see. Some were very run-down looking, covered in bird poop and spiderwebs. Others were shiny and new (although the old-n-rundown variety was much more prevalent). Some hangar bays were closed with solid materials so I couldn't see in, while others were partially covered with tarps, or wide open. A couple of the ultralights were for sale. The one which caught my eye was the Loehle Parasol for $4500. I'm sure the resale value of kitplanes is very low compared to their construction cost.

The hangars, I noted, were particularly low-rent looking. The term "clapboard" comes to mind. Rooves were of corrugated metal, with a variety of materials separating the T-shaped bays -- plywood, masonite, plastic "wood-like" siding, etc. It looked like they'd been constructed with whatever materials could be had cheapest at the Home Depot dumpster. Possibly they were. It was actually encouraging, in the sense that I'm very confident I can build a better structure assuming I have space to do it. A trailer would definitely be in my future.

Unfortunately, the ultralight which had been flying seemed to have dissappeared, and there was no one around the hangars. I gave up after a few minutes and headed out. I drove again to the "main" entrance, and headed for the cafe I'd seen advertised there, the Taildragger. Indeed, it looked nice too, but despite two signs claiming it was open, the door was locked, and the hours sheet said they'd closed nearly two hours ago.

I headed back down the road to my alternate, the Chrome Cafe, or Bar and Grill, or something. It seemed to have a variety of names. There was a WWII trainer parked out in front of the Cafe, which I took as a good sign.

That good omen feeling evaporated when I walked in the door. Instead of anything I might call a cafe, I was faced with tables covered in green felt, people crowded around them, clicking multicolored chips and looking at small stacks of playing cards. Oh yeah, one of the signs had said something about a "card room." Eesh. A few mulleted heads turned my way as I walked in, but quickly lost interest when they realized that looking at me was not winning them any money.

I walked in uncertainly, and finally asked one of the barmen if they were still serving dinner. It was only 8:00 or so, but the place was definitely full of gamblers (the sound of chips clicking against each other was the soundtrack for the entire time I was in there) and didn't seem to contain many people eating food. He said they did, and indicated I should take any seat I wanted. Without realizing what I was letting myself in for, I sat at a booth near one of the card tables.

The menu was, not surprisingly, full of meat. I'm not a big meat eater myself, being basically vegetarian except for the odd bit of salmon in sushi. Strike two, definitely not in my element. Click click click click click.

I ordered the "chicken quesadilla" without the chicken, figuring it would be pretty hard to screw up a quesadilla. I was right and wrong -- it's not that easy, but they'd tried pretty dilligently. A grilled cheese sandwich made with tortillas arrived on my table shortly, along with a small cup full of a tepid red soup with little chunks in it. I eventually decided it was supposed to be salsa and dumped it over the cheese concoction in front of me. If that was salsa, it was definitely made in.. New York City?! (Get a rope.) Heavy on the vinegar.

"Quesadilla" conquered, I paid my bill and suited back up to hit the road. It was around 9 pm, and the sun had already winked below the horizon, although the sky was bright and the light was still good. I was a little dissappointed I hadn't had a chance to talk to anyone about ultralights, but I hadn't really expected to.

As I spurred the bike up to freeway speeds, I saw that the horizon was rimmed with a beautiful lavender mist as the sun sank further down in the sky. Even if I hadn't seen all that I'd hoped for, it was a nice night to be out.

Posted at 22:52 permanent link category: /aviation


The obsession continues

I just plunked down my $40 to join the EAA. I'm sure I'll get myself to the next Seattle chapter meeting when it happens next month. I spent a solid chunk of time reading this guy's construction pages as he builds a Fisher Classic.

It was quite interesting reading that site, because every time he described making a choice, I read over his explanation and reasoning, and said to myself, "yep, I'd make the same choice." Some of the things he did are probably not things I'd do myself, but I agree wholeheartedly with his reasoning almost every time.

I'm hoping I can find someone to talk to soon, to figure out if I'm travelling the right theoretical pathways in thinking about this project. To some extent, it doesn't matter right now, since it's at least two years until I'll be able to even consider building a plane for real. I know my home life will be disrupted early next year as I move out and prep the house for sale, so if I were to start anything today, it would be put on hold around January, and I'd have to move it to the new house/garage (probably in an extremely fragile state). Once I move and find a new house (which will either have an excellent shop/garage or space to build one), I'm sure I'll have projects for at least a year in the new house.

In any case, I'm having a great time researching and reading and pondering right now. I decided to tote up a quick tally of what a kitplane would probably cost, just to see if I could shock myself back to reality:

Hmm. That's actually about what I was imagining. That would set me up with an airplane that would carry myself and a passenger (and maybe a few small pieces of baggage) at 70 MPH cruise for a distance of up to about 200 miles on 10 gallons of gas (including a goodly reserve). Insurance is a wide open question, and running costs are a big question in my mind -- I'm guessing they'd be way lower than if I tried to own a Piper Cherokee or something, mostly because I can do all the maintenance and work myself under an FAA builders exemption.

Of course, that doesn't take into account the "incidentals" I'd need: trailer, vehicle to tow trailer, storage location for the plane, tools, and so on. Some of those things are useful enough that I wouldn't consider them "airplane specific" -- the vehicle (probably a small pickup truck) and the tools spring right to mind. The trailer is something I could either build, or design and have built (depends on whether I end up learning to weld or not). The storage building is something I could build myself, assuming there's enough space on the new lot, or it could be a 10' wide section of garage if I have a large enough garage. Building a simple, unheated hangar would probably be on the order of $3000 if I built it myself.

Overall, it's a big financial committment, and a bigger committment of time. Not something I'm going to enter into lightly when the time comes to actually make the decision. But in the mean time, it's great fun to fantasize about.

Posted at 17:02 permanent link category: /aviation


Tue, 18 Jul 2006

I feel a... stirring in the Force

For the first time in a number of years, I actually find myself excited about an aviatory subject. Specifically, ultralights and/or kitbuilt planes. I'm actually not as excited about actually legal-ultralights as I am about very light kitplanes.

It turns out that to be a legal ultralight, a plane has to fulfill a number of requirements, like only carrying one person (the pilot), a freakishly low maximum weight (254 pounds, I think -- about 100 lbs lighter than my Ninja 250), etc. The bonus if you meet all these requirements? No FAA license needed.

Ah-hah! But I have an FAA license, so I don't have any difficulty moving up to a non-ultralight airplane, which most specifically interests me because I can carry a passenger, and because I can go a bit faster.

The goal is not actually to go fast, but it'd be nice to be able to pass the traffic on the freeway (at least, if they're driving the speed limit).

So far, two kits have caught my eye in a serious way. The first (picked out of a list completely at random, of course) is the Loehle Spad XIII. It's only a single-place, so it's less interesting to me now, but it is freakishly light.

The second kit, which has garnered much more of my attention is the Fisher Classic. The more astute of my three readers will have determined by now that both planes are biplanes. Indeed, I find the biplane is the exciting part of all this.

The idea of flying any old highwing doesn't really do it for me. I wouldn't get into kit building to duplicate what I could get from a Cessna or a Piper. I find myself attracted to kitbuilding for the idea of flying an "old" airplane that's brand new.

I'm not going to do anything about it now, but it's cool to finally feel any real attraction for flying again.

Posted at 19:46 permanent link category: /aviation


Mon, 17 Jul 2006

Oh, it's the valves' fault!

I just returned from the garage, where I finished up the Ninja 250's 600 mile inspection/adjustment. As I'd suspected, the valves were all too tight. What a pain it is getting those valves adjusted. Fortunately, it seems to be getting easier every time I do it.

Hopefully, this will improve the idle and maybe even increase power and efficiency a tiny bit. Mostly, it means I can finally adjust the carburetor synchronization, which will make the engine smoother, more efficient, and possibly a trifle more powerful.

One additional gripe: who puts in the freakin' fairing screws? I actually stripped one trying to get it out (fortunately my trick bolt remover worked a treat on it, but now I'm out a fairing screw). It was in tight enough that the battery drill I was using to remove it actually overheated and clicked off. What? Who put this thing in, Moosey McArmstrong? Whoever it was, he was feeling his oatey-bites that day.

Posted at 21:36 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sun, 16 Jul 2006

Weird memories

I took a long ride today, to commemorate the nice weather (see the motorcycle journal for that). On the way back home, I took a route through Woodinville, where I spent my formative years.

Coming down 522, I spied a sign that said "Paradise Lake Road," and got in the left turn lane. Ah, Paradise Lake Rd. It was a road of legend in highschool, some sort of mystical automotive rite of passage, at least for kids of a certain bent. There was a persistent rumor that a student from our school had killed himself on that road "a few years ago." You proved how cool you were by citing the speed at which you traversed Paradise Lake Road (well, I didn't, but I was a Nerd or something, so I didn't count). I had a friend years later describe his own "mishap" on the road, where he got his car stuck in a ditch. It's not as daring as you think -- he misjudged where a driveway was in the dark, and dropped a wheel off the driveway into the ditch.

As I neared the end of the road, and turned onto Woodinville-Duvall Road, I found myself thinking about all the girls I'd had a crush on in junior high and highschool. For a variety of reasons, I knew where a few of them lived (think after school events and group homework projects), and ticked off directions to their houses as I passed by on my ride, feeling split between the present and the future.

As I neared my old house (or at least the turnoff to head to it), I saw the location which will forever be known as "the White Stallion" to me. It's just a little tiny strip mall at this point, but once there was a huge cheezy white horse statue (made of god knows what, plaster probably) there, and a moderately expensive (so I supposed) restaurant which bore the name. My parents always used it as a landmark when giving directions. For some reason, that's the intersection I always picture when I'm thinking about cryptography (don't ask me why, but I strongly and unconsciously associate street intersections with subjects).

That same corner also houses the "new" AMPM/Arco station, which was built when I was in my preteens, and became the bicycle destination of choice when candy acquisition was indicated. Previously, it'd been Mack's Corner (which I noted is still there as I passed it by). Mack's Corner, though, was a real trek. It must have been more than a mile away, through the variety of paths and residential streets which make up suburbia. I was first taken to Mack's (shown the special path, as I might have thought of it then) by the older kid in the neighborhood (name thankfully forgotten, possibly Gordy) who initially took me under his wing, then turned on me and started a "neighborhood war" against me, effectively alienating me from all the other kids in the neighborhood. In any case, diversionary story threads aside, I remember when the AMPM when in, and candy was suddenly much closer, and available in a very nicely air conditioned store.

I also remember looking up at the gas prices there (this must have been around 85 or 86) and seeing 78 cents. I thought to myself at the time, "jeez, if gas ever goes over a dollar a gallon, I just don't want to drive; it's too expensive." Ha ha ha. (Today, I was thrilled to find gas for $2.97 per gallon.) I'd like my shakin' cane and false teeth now, please. "Hey you kids! GET OFF MY LAWN!" I've been practicing.

Anyway, I passed by my old street and was again reminded of how you can never go back. When I was growing up, Woodinville-Duvall road was this lovely curving downhill thing. I dreamt of driving up and down it in a VW Bug (1963 or 1964 for preference), and laughing at my younger self, huffing and puffing up the hill on a bicycle. I did eventually own a horribly clapped out 1964 Bug for a year or two, but it never made the trip back to Woodinville (I don't think it would have gone that far without spewing all its oil or shaving most of the teeth off the transmission gears or something). Even if it had, they reconfigured the road to prefer heading straight down to 522, rather than bending down to "downtown" Woodinville. To follow its old path, you now have to make a sharp left-hand turn at a traffic light. I think I once exceeded 40 MPH riding my 12-speed down that hill, according to the fist-sized CatEyeMate bicycle computer my grandparents had astoundingly given me as a present one year. I was pretty proud of that.

As I passed down the hill, back in the present, I came upon a dual memory-path moment. The first was in 6th grade, riding the big yellow school bus down the hill. It was cold out, cold enough that the field to the right had frosted over, leaving all the tall grass looking like it'd been dusted with sugar. Of course, now that field is a stripmall with a QFC as the anchor store. That bus was really cold, too. The heater wasn't worth much. The field didn't last long either, being plowed under for the stripmall by the time I was in 8th grade.

Off to my left, I saw that the Godfather's Pizza had thankfully moved on. That's where I worked after my one and only automotive accident (passenger: "Oh! Turn left here!" me: "Ok!" [SKREEE! SLAM! shatter tinkle]).

The most notable memory of the Godfather's restaurant? This girl I barely knew, who lived down the street from me, also worked there. Once, we were both on break at the same time, probably eating.. well, pizza, 'cause we got one free personal pizza per shift, and she looked over at me, out of the blue, and said, "you know, despite what other people may say, I'm not addicted to crystal." I looked at her owlishly for a moment before responding, "ok."

I had never heard the word "crystal" used to name a drug (as it obviously was) before. For all I knew, it could have been drain cleaner. I didn't have any friends who did drugs (I wasn't cool enough), so the most I knew about drugs was that I was to say NO to them, and I could probably name a half dozen from various D.A.R.E. type visits by scary police officers to school assemblies and health classes. And of course none of this addresses why she should confide this obviously important and defining fact to me. As far as I could tell, I was beneath her notice at all other times. (Fine with me: she was scary and, I now know, looked disturbingly like Boy George.)

It was also at that job at Godfather's Pizza that I developed a huge crush on a girl whose name I've forgotten, but may have been named Jennifer. She smoked cigarettes, and would blow smoke out of the corners of her mouth and her nostrils, making it look like she was a cartoon character. It was not for this talent that I was crushing on her, I just thought she was brainstoppingly attractive. She would relate intriguing stories of she and her boyfriend "doing it" in the snow. It certainly impressed quite the mental image on me.

I vaguely recall listening to The Cure a lot that year, and feeling a special thrill when she loaned me her tape of the current album (this would have been 1988, and the album was Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, which to this day reminds me of snow and feeling rejected; hooray for highschool memories!). Suffice to say, that crush never went anywhere, which is probably for the best, really. Jennifer now puts me in mind of a really hot, really crass, white trash 17 year old version of Jodie Foster.

Back in the present (whew!), I passed through the intersection in which I caused the aforementioned traffic accident, and was interested to note that the surrounding businesses actually hadn't changed. Of course, the left turn arrow was still there (I like to think my intense, 16-year-old stupidity had some hand in that).

I kept rolling down the main drag until I came to Las Margaritas, where my family used to eat every once in a while. Gee, dinner sure sounded good. I think that's a thoroughly sufficent trip down memory lane for now. And by posting this, I'm guaranteeing my complete ineligibility to run for elected office! (I'm sure someone can figure out how to twist this in some vaguely blackmail-ish way if given enough money.)

Posted at 21:58 permanent link category: /misc


A brief trip

Today was far too sunny and pleasant to consider doing anything other than going for a ride. So I did.

Even though it sounded kind of familiar, I decided to ride up to Granite Falls and follow a route described in Destination Highways: Washington (a fine book if you ride and want to find the cool routes in Washington -- there's also a British Columbia edition). It was indeed familiar, as Jesse and I had ridden it two or three years ago. Ah well, it was still a fine ride.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of this particular ride was the distance covered: I didn't note exact numbers, but it's on the order of 180 miles. Not necessarily a lot in general, but for a few bike that's still going through break-in, that's a goodly number of miles.

Of course, that was also plenty of time to remind me of why I was so excited about rebuilding the seat on the last Ninja 250. Ouch. I was very happy to stop for dinner in Woodinville. I definitely wouldn't want to commit myself to any longer trips on that seat.

Overall a fine ride, though. I as also pleased to see that on the second tank of gas (I was nearly out by the time I got to Granite Falls), I got just over 64 miles per gallon. That's much more like it.

Posted at 21:01 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Oh, so that's what it's supposed to feel like!

I went for a ride on the new front suspension last night. Neat! The beefier spring firmed things up a lot, and the GVE widget plainly helped things too. I tried experimentally running over a small pavement flaw which I've hit before, and it was a non-event. I wasn't even sure it was the same little pothole.

Previously, when I'd hit that little divot, the bike would shudder and buck a little bit, producing a feeling I guess I'd best describe as "harsh." Now, with the new bits installed, it was almost as if the flaw wasn't there. To me, it's a fairly impressive recommendation in favor of the GVE. Springs alone wouldn't have caused that change.

The other impressive thing was a quick direction change, where I go around a small roundabout and have to quickly switch from leaning left to leaning right. (Well, "have to" -- rather, "enjoy.") Last night, I noticed that I felt as though I had traction throughout the whole transition. Previously, right as I was transitioning through directly upright, the feeling of traction was sort of vague. This wasn't as marked an improvement as the bump handling, but it was still a noticeable improvement.

Of course, the improvements I was expecting, like reduced brake dive and for the bike to stop feeling like a toy happened too. I even suspect the GVE improves brake dive, although I'm not as sure of that.

The downside of all of this, naturally, is that the bike feels weirdly unbalanced now. I haven't received the new rear shock yet, so the back end is still struggling along with the stock, vastly undersprung shock. The bike now sits upright in front, and kind of wobbles and sags in back. I actually felt the rear suspension bottom out coming over a series of sharp hills going up to Capitol Hill -- definitely not supposed to be happening.

So I now find myself hoping more fervently than ever that the new shock arrives from England sooner rather than later.

Posted at 09:50 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sat, 15 Jul 2006

That's the front end done, then

The Ninja 250 received a $250 front-end lift today. As I believe I wrote in the past, both front suspension bits I wanted to install had arrived, and today I finally had time to do it. So I did.

The springs are easy, just unscrew a few bits, pull out the old springs, and drop in the new ones. The Gold Valve Emulators (henceforth GVEs) are a trifle more complex. First, completely disassemble the front end, to get each individual fork leg off. Half-disassemble each fork leg, and drill six impressively large holes in one of the bits removed from each leg (called a damper rod, for those keeping track in the techie booth). Once that's all done, reassemble with this little GVE widget tucked under the spring. There's also some weirdly non-intuitive math involved for figuring out a spring preload spacer (so the springs start out slightly compressed).

Of course, my drill press (almost the perfect tool for the job) is over at Jesse's house, since he needed it a while back, and I haven't terribly missed it. So, I had to grab the damper rods and head over there to do the drilling. On the way, I decided to stop into the dealership and see if they had a crush washer I would ideally have to make the job perfect, but they didn't. Oh well, no great loss.

I got my drilling done, and came back home, by which time it was after 5, and I was increasingly aware that I hadn't really eaten any food yet today. Food it is, then.

Finally, I was able to get back to work, and finished up at 8:30. Because of the huge gap in the middle, I'm not sure how long the work actually took, but it felt like around 3 hours.

And now, with that done, I think I'm going to go for a little ride to see what the new front end feels like.

Posted at 21:13 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Thu, 13 Jul 2006

Front end, here I come

The new fork springs arrived today, and the Gold Valve Emulators arrived earlier this week, so I'm set to fix up the front end on the Ninja 250. I still need to pick up some fork oil, but that's just down the street and under $10. Hopefully I can spend part of Saturday getting my front end set up for less dive and more control.

Now, if only the rear shock would show up, I would be perfectly set.

Posted at 22:39 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Why'd they put that hole there, anyway?

In the rear fender of every Ninja 250 is a hole, exactly 1" across. Through it passes the wire which runs to the license plate light. The wire is about 1/4" across.

The rear fender is the piece which keeps anything flung up by the rear tire -- water, sand, mud, glass, road apples, whatever -- contained and restricted from the rest of the bike. So, why did Kawasaki, in their infinite wisdom, put a 1" hole (and it's exactly one inch) in the rear fender, leading into the underseat storage area?

Who knows. It's rather bizarre, and frustrated me on the last bike, since anything I put back there (there's precious little storage on a Ninja 250) would invariably get soaked and caked with grit.

Finally, years after I noticed the problem, I found the solution. Since the hole is 1" across, it perfectly fits a 1" hole plug. That's this sort of round plastic widget which snaps into holes to cover them up and, well, plug them. They cost less than a dollar each. Perfect!

I spent about 5 minutes with a small round file and a sharp knife making a hole just large enough to pass the wire. The plug popped right into place, and doesn't look like it'll ever move from there unless I want it to. 50 cents, 5 minutes, and problem solved. Finally.

Posted at 22:36 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Wed, 12 Jul 2006

Ninja 250: 367 mile report

I've had the Ninja 250 now for 367 miles and about 2 and a half weeks. I've added a bunch of stuff, notably: new grips, new fuel filter, LED taillights, a BMW power socket, hazards-enabled left switchpod, louder horn, stainless braided front brake line, and a few days ago, the bar-end mirrors which had been on the Z750s.

The bike is comporting itself well, with a few odd things I've noticed. The front brakes make a dull grinding noise when applied, which I think means they're still getting broken in. Nothing looks amiss, so I'm going to leave that one for now.

The engine seems to have an odd hunting/surging feeling at mid-throttle and mid-RPM, which I suspect means it's running lean right there, and I need to raise the main jet needle a little bit. The valves are also ticking a bit, and cold idle (even when it's fairly warm out) is still shaky, so the valves probably also need a bit of attention. I also suspect that the idle mixture screws, while closer, aren't yet adjusted exactly right. I'm going to tackle all of that at the 600 mile service, which should be coming up in a few weeks.

The suspension is still very definitely on the "goofy" side. I'm looking forward to installing all the suspension modifications. The gold valve emulators showed up a couple of days ago, so one out of three down. I expect the front springs will be here within the week, and the rear shock is kind of a mystery. Some time before August, is my best guess. Fortunately, the front and rear can be done at different times, although I'd rather do it all at once.

The stainless brake line is definitely worthwhile. It just makes a great difference. Now if only the brake pads would bed in and stop making that grinding noise. I may pull them at the 600 mile service and make sure nothing untoward is happening.

The motor seems more powerful than the previous 250. It's hard to know if I'm imagining it, or if it's a real difference. I'm guessing that long term oil consumption and fuel mileage will ultimately tell the tale.

Posted at 16:45 permanent link category: /motorcycle


My new favorite bumper sticker

In a military-stencil font on a black background:

We kicked their ass!
Now where's our cheap gas?

Seen on a big 'Murrican truck, of course.

I... I just don't know what to say.

Posted at 13:14 permanent link category: /misc


Tue, 11 Jul 2006

And people think society is worth saving

Two construction workers were walking behind me part of my way to work. I couldn't help overhearing their conversation:

Worker 1: So, you goin' to jail on us again?

Worker 2: Naw, this is the ticket they gave me last time.

W1: Uh-huh

W2: Yeah... When the cop pulled me over, he was actually real nice. See, my mudflap had come off, and.. well, the truck's got 44 inch tires.

W1: (incredulous) Uh-huh. (knowingly) Spraying shit everywhere, right?

W2: Yeah. So anyway, he got me for driving on a suspended [license]. (pause) I've gotten 21 3rd degree driving on a suspended [license]. But, you know, I gotta drive. I tried getting an occupational license, all that shit, but no.

At this point, my brain exploded a little bit and I lost the thread of the conversation. By the time I tuned in again, #2 was saying something about "different jurisdictions," which I'm guessing indicated that the reason he hasn't been drawn and quartered yet is that he caught his infractions in a variety of locations.

And I'm supposed to feel at all safe on the road. Right.

Posted at 09:05 permanent link category: /misc


Sun, 09 Jul 2006

It's like fighting a land war in Asia

"Sir! We've got them on the run, but I don't know how long it will last," Lieutennant Snips reported breathlessly. Around him, the air was filled with the scent of death, but no matter. The war must continue.

I surveyed the field myself. On the eastern front, their forces were gathering like a tidal wave. I could see them spilling over each other, eager to overcome the temporary barrier erected to keep them at bay. Fortunately, the western front was largely under control, and was the operation on which the good lietennant was reporting.

Their armies have been tenacious, and sometimes I feel like I'm fighting the war myself. One man against an endless mountain of thriving, solar-powered chlorophyllic evil. Ipomoea violacea and rubus procerus. And now they're working together.

The first hint of collaboration (which I suspect is against the Geneva Convention, but I'll have to ask my legal staff) appeared this spring, when I found a spiked stem athwart a bulwark, with a coiling stem wound around it like a leafy snake. "This is going to be bad," I thought to myself at the time. My prescience was spot-on.

Now I find spiked vines, their tines razor-sharp -- sharp enough to go straight through leather gauntlets and into soft flesh beneath -- climbing toward the sky and impeding progress through vital tactical thoroughfares. And indeed, twined about them like strangling serpents come the smooth vines of violacea.

The end-times are nigh upon us.

Through tenacious trench warfare, I've kept their forces at bay, and our supply routes remain free and operational. But it's only a matter of time before they simply overwhelm us.

I hope this message makes it out in time to warn my fellow generals. Don't let them gather their forces. Keep them small and on the run. It's the only way to survive.

Posted at 15:28 permanent link category: /misc


Thu, 06 Jul 2006

Let there be fireworks!

"The weather briefer says the clouds are marginal, and there are some thunderstorms still lurking around, but let's drive to the airport anyway, and maybe things will look better when we get there." The time was 8:15 pm, July 4th. The place, north Seattle.

We gathered our stuff: warm clothes (it's the 4th of July in Seattle, of course there was heavy cloud cover and intermittent rain), headsets, random flight bag items, a bottle of water. We piled in the car and aimed it northward, to Paine field.

The sky looked alternately ominous and glorious, depending on whether you were looking away from or towards the sunset. Clouds stacked upon themselves, giving every appearance of being incipient thunderheads, tinged yellow and gold with the light of the descending sun. Over the roar of road and wind, we could hear the popping of firecrackers.

We pulled up to the fence outside of Northway Aviation, and I dialed the weather briefer again. To my surprise, he said that conditions were improving as predicted. That never happens. Ok then, I decided, we were good to go!

I got out and got to preflighting little N805W, which would be our trusty mount that night. (Don't believe those pictures, by the way. My head tops the trailing edge of the wing, and Kristin, at 5'2", can just barely stand underneath the wing without hitting her head.) Kristin stayed in the car, where it was a much more comfortable temperature. Nothing notable turned up in the preflight -- even the tires were properly inflated. Firework reports popped and pinged off the metal buildings as people around Paine celebrated their diminishing freedom.

I called Kristin out, and we fired up the little motor (I say "little," but the motor in a Cessna 152 would provide a hell of a power boost to most economy cars if appropriately regeared -- air makes a very inefficient traction medium). After a quick fuel stop (amazingly, the little plane has enough load capacity to carry Kristin, myself, and full fuel; I had to redo the calculations twice to make sure I was reading it right), we taxied out to the runway, and launched into the gathering darkness.

I had a brief radio exchange with another pilot who was coming in, just before we took off. He wished us a good flight, and jokingly expressed his hope that no one was celebrating their freedom by firing guns in the air. I had a little private shudder, and exclaimed, "don't even joke about that."

We were off without incident, the little plane struggling to climb with the extra weight of full fuel and Kristin aboard. It was not a dangerously low climb rate, but I had to remind myself of the difference in performance when you suddenly load a noticeable percentage of the total weight of the plane in. (To those who are sensitive to the propriety of talking about a woman's weight, let's just say that Kristin is quite light, but so is the plane, so it doesn't take much to add up to a "noticeable percentage.")

Almost immediately, fireworks were visible off to the sides of our path, giving the impression of lofting toward us until they popped in a shower of sparks off to one side or the other. As we left the Paine Field airspace, I called up Seattle Approach and set up flight following. This is a service in which air traffic control will help you spot other aircraft which might pose a collision risk. For the most part we had no need of their services, but I always like having someone else watching my back.

The fireworks below were not as frenzied as I recalled from two years ago, but were still impressive. Kristin had her neck craned around, looking at all the sparkling, scintillating light below us. The engine droned on as we ascended to a relatively safe altitude. Between the engine, our distance, and the sound-damping headsets we wore, the pop and crackle of exploding gunpowder had dissappeared.

We had gotten a later start than I wanted, but this meant that as we were passing abeam of Lake Union and Elliott Bay, the professional displays were in full swing. Kristin tried to record them on the digital camera at my urging, but conditions were too dark for the movie mode to record much more than darkness. Elaborate sprays of red and white sparks danced below us, lighting up the underside of the wing with their glare. Gleaming rings of multicolored sparks flared and died over Lake Union. Competing bursts of approximately floral flares ignited and faded over Elliott Bay. The ridiculous competition of the two shows struck me as we watched both from the air.

We flew along, hovering motionless over Lake Washington: a long, irregularly shaped patch of blackness separating scintillating lights, two strings of brakelight-red, sodium-orange and headlight-white pearls linking the lights to each other. The north end of the lake erupted rocket trails from a barge as Lake City or Kenmore residents celebrated our independence from those oppressive British monarchists so long ago.

Around us, other planes flew, taking in the view, or ferrying passengers, or going about whatever errands they had to do. A helicopter passed below and in front of us with surprising speed.

We proceeded past the Renton airport, Kristin half-twisted in her seat to look backwards at the retreating firey displays. In retrospect, it would have been better to turn back and watch the big displays while they were still happening, but I was hoping to find the same carpet of shimmering sparks I'd seen two years ago over Renton and Kent. Alas, I was dissappointed, Renton remained remarkably passive on the airborne-display front.

We turned and descended to 1500 feet to pass over SeaTac airport at the tower's instruction. It's usually somewhat thrilling passing over the big airport, with the big planes, but the haze and lack of planes lined up on final approach made the traversal something of an anticlimax. We climbed back up to a safer altitude and banked back north, passing over the considerably darker and less sparkling western shore of Puget Sound.

Just as we were approaching closest to downtown Seattle, the fireworks reached their ultimate paroxysm of overactive flashing and booming, then went dark. Alas, we'd just missed the Grand Finale. Kristin still seemed satisfied, and I know I was. I pointed out the glowing trail of red lights along Alki Drive, and expounded my theory that they had to be cars. In fact, a lot of roads looked quite busy, and I remembered part of the reason I was so happy to be watching all this from 2000 feet -- less having to deal with people.

As we returned, I pointed out Fremont and Ballard, and about where my house is, and the gaudy necklace of highway 99, stretching north and south. I-5 put in an appearance below us, sleek and efficient looking compared to 99.

We turned back towards Paine Field, and descended for a landing. I aborted the first one, after it was clear that we were too high and too fast to make a safe landing. The second go-around was much more successful, and we made a very good landing, the wheels chirping below us as they spun up to match the tarmac racing by.

"Well, how did you like that?" I asked. "That was really cool!" exclaimed Kristin. Can't ask much more than that for a first real flight.

Posted at 12:32 permanent link category: /aviation


Wed, 05 Jul 2006

Aaaaah-hahahahahahahah!

I just got this phishing scam:

                              Security update.
       
                             Dear Chase Member,
                          Enhanced Login Security
   Chase Online Banking has added enhanced login security by implementing       
      password expiration and failed login attempt functionality. The
    implementation of the enhanced login security is supportive of NOAAs        
    Information Technology (IT) Security Policy as well as the security
                policy of other Online Banking applications.
    Password Expiration: System preferences have been established within        
    the ITM v8.1 software to expire login passwords every 60 days.  Users
      will be prompted to establish a new password and verify account
      information upon expiration of their existing password. Password
     expiration applies only to login passwords. Signature PINs are not
             affected by the password expiration functionality.

If you read that closely, there are a couple of hilarious things in there.

First, NOAA? Since when did the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration get into IT security policies? For banks?

Second, ITM v8.1 software? When was the last time you saw a bank mention what kind of software they were using, much less which version? Talk about inviting attack, on top of confusing customers. Bank customers don't want to know about your software, they want to know how to make a deposit or withdrawal, and they want to be sure that when the do that, the money goes where they expect it to go.

Anyway, it just gave me a good solid giggle.

Posted at 11:58 permanent link category: /misc


Tue, 04 Jul 2006

Hyperlites: GO!

On my first Ninja 250, I installed a set of Hyper-Lites, which are these LED lights that go in or near the taillight, and provide additional running and brake lights. They also flash, which is nice, but most important to me, they provide additional, non-incandescent lights in case the traditional (and solitary) brake bulb goes out. Obviously on something which is already as hard to see as a motorcycle, losing even the marker light would be a bad idea.

So, a number of weeks before I even bought the new 250, I bought a set of Hyper-Lites to go on it. (In my defense, there was every indication that the Le Mans was going to sell, and that the purchase of a 250 was imminent. I was ready to get on with the new bike.) Since I figured I'd be using them soon, I opted to buy the lights from the local BMW dealership, where I knew they were in stock. In fact, I bought the same kit I'd bought for the previous 250.

Once I finally got my new bike in the garage, and started installing stuff, the Hyper-Lites were high on the list of things to install. I pulled them out of their packaging, and discovered that the fine folks at Hyper-Lite Inc. had reconfigured how the lights connected. Now, it wouldn't fit on the 250 without some additional connectors and fittings, which I naturally didn't have on hand. Fooey! I shelved the project for a later time.

Finally today, I had the right parts on hand and some time to do it, so I did. On the previous bike, I'd just kind of connected everything up any old which way. It worked just fine, but it would have been a pain if I'd wanted to remove the taillight assembly for any reason, and it wasn't done with much planning. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't, in the engineering sense of the word, Good.

So today, I took the time (while the glue is drying on another modification) to do it Well.

The Ninja 250's tail section has a sort of skeleton, which is the rear subframe, over which rides the "skin" of the fairing. There's a beefy bracket right at the back, which joins a few things together, and also happens to support the taillight assembly. Previously, I had stuck one of the LED light modules (a separate flasher circuit box) to this support bracket, which would have provided no end of trouble if I'd wanted to take off the light assembly.

This time, I actually took out the light assembly, and discovered that not only would all the little boxes and wires fit onto the assembly, it could be done well. Of course, taking the part off the motorcycle also makes it far easier to work on. No bending upside-down to see into a space the size of a softball, nor cramping large hands into tiny spaces. Everything is very clean, and likely to be more robust than it was on the previous bike, just by dint of being so clean and tucked out of the way.

In fact, looking into the space where I'd worked on the previous bike, I can only see a small indication the extra wires are even there. Excellent. I love doing things Right.

Posted at 13:43 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sun, 02 Jul 2006

In which Kristin takes to the air

Yesterday morning, I had time scheduled in another Cessna 152. Kristin had bravely agreed to a practical test, to see if she could stand being up in a small plane. The idea was, I'd go through a normal touch-and-go scenario, and she was asked to cry foul at any point she felt uncomfortable (obviously, once in the air, she'd have to content herself with waiting, so hopefully she'd feel any anxiety before that).

I urged her to tell me at any point, including first sight of the Lilliputian flying machine, to tell me she didn't want to go. The last thing I want to do is drag along an unwilling passenger.

However, despite her initial nervousness and my initial concerns, it all went smoothly. The sight of the little plane didn't seem to cause her any undue concern. Not even when we got into the plane and I explained what to do if I was unresponsive for any reason did she really seem to balk (although she implored me not to pass out).

Side note: if you're in a small airplane with dual controls, and the pilot passes out, you grab the throttle and shove it all the way forward, and make sure the nose of the plane is above the horizon. Then you grab the transmit button and say "mayday" until someone pays attention to you. Then you go from there. Actually, if you can remember to say, "I'm declaring an emergency," that's even better, since that's the magic phrase that gets everyone's attention, including diverting jumbo jets away from you.

Anyway, there was no need for any heroic action on her part. I completely failed to pass out.

We went up and down the requisite three times (it's not actually required, but if you do three takeoffs and landings, you reset the 90 day "I can legally carry passengers" clock). Kristin seemed unphased, although one unexpected burble of turbulence caught her off guard.

We landed the final time (these landings were much better than the night landings of a week or two ago), and taxied in. Kristin appeared to be happy and smiling, so that was all positive.

Of course, now that we've successfully done this, I have a sudden urge to fly places. Having a willing partner makes the idea of flying much more appealing, just in the sense of being able to enjoy it with someone else. It's amazing how much of a difference that makes.

Posted at 10:35 permanent link category: /aviation


Let the aviatory excursions begin (again)

A few weeks ago, I signed up for some time in a Cessna 152, for night-flying practice. It was a nice night, and a quick call to the weather briefer confirmed this observation. No clouds, comfortable temperatures, easy, predictable (and straight down the runway) wind. Perfect!

I got myself familiar with the 152 again. What a tiny plane. Seriously, this is a plane where I can fly by myself, or with a small passenger (think under 150 lbs). Anything much over that, and we exceed the maximum load. Two guys my size? Hah! On top of weight issues, our shoulders would literally have us pinned to the windows, it's so narrow. Every time I come out of one, I find my legs shaking from the effort of holding them in such a relatively cramped-up position. I wrote in a previous journal entry ages ago that a 152 is capable of lifting me, half fuel, and a banana (or something like that). That's very nearly a literal truth.

Anyway, I got back in the plane and remembered what it was all about -- oh yeah, tube radio. And that's it. You get your basic six instruments, a radio that actually uses vacuum tubes, and a transponder so air traffic control knows where to look when you scream "mayday." Great! Oh well, I wouldn't be needing most of the instruments, and I have a backup radio I always carry.

The flight itself was pretty good. I (re-)discovered that flying in the dark is harder than I think -- I always think it's going to be pretty easy, with all those lights twinkling, making everything so obvious. Of course, then I proceeded to fly three passes where I turned very prematurely for the final turn each time, touchdown itself was acceptable, but I always flared early, etc. Nothing heinous, but not as good as I would have liked.

I taxied back in and filled out my paperwork. 0.6 hours of night flight, and 3 take offs and landings. Cool. I was set for my night flight on the 4th.

Posted at 10:14 permanent link category: /aviation


Fri, 30 Jun 2006

The Z is a stately luxocruiser

Due to the possibility of showing it to a potential buyer, I rode the Z750s into work today. I wasn't sure what the experience would be like, having ridden the Ninja 250 for the last few days.

In fact, I was not-entirely-surprised to find that the Z reminded me a lot of something I noticed ages ago on the K75: it feels glassy-smooth and heavy. I equated the K75 at the time with a luxury vehicle of some description, and the F650 I'd been given as a loaner as being a kind of rickety contraption-feeling bike.

I get the same sort of comparative feeling about the Z750s and the Ninja 250 now. I knew I would, but it was still a bit surprising to actually have it come true. The Z feels really heavy, and big, and powerful; the Ninja feels small and toy-like, and not particularly smooth. What's interesting about that is that I really prefer the Ninja, although by reading the preceding sentence you might conclude the opposite.

The Z felt like the perfect bike to load up and go touring on, but far too heavy and twitchy-powerful to be riding to work. I guess it's a good thing I've got it for sale, and may even sell it today (but I figure there's maybe a 5% chance of that).

In the good news department, I filled the tank for the first time last night, and the Ninja turned in 46 MPG. Not bad, considering that I was spending a lot of time cranking the throttle wide open for break-in, which I don't normally do.

Posted at 11:16 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Shocking! part II

I placed my order today, for a shiny new Hagon shock. Bright red spring and all.

The Hagon guy called me up yesterday and relayed that a stock shock (costing a mere $375, in the face of $500 for the equivalent Works or $800+ for an equivalent Penske) should work fine for me. Good news for me, since it means I don't need to spend the extra sixty bucks for a new spring and a revalve to match the new spring.

Of course, it's also exciting because it means I get to introduce a new alternative to the Ninja 250 board. This is a very rare circumstance, since the Ninja 250 aftermarket is basically completely stagnant. And, of course, I'm not actually telling anyone they couldn't have found out for themselves with a bit of looking, but there's a bit of a hidebound quality to the Ninja 250 folks. It's like a bunch of scientists from 1902 sitting around talking about the nature of the universe when suddenly Einstein bursts in with some crazytalk about relativity and quantum universes. They're not (ultimately) going to dismiss it out of hand, but they never would have even thought to look under that particular rock for an answer, assuming they could have even found the rock.

So I'm very excited to see what will show up at my door in a few weeks ("3-4 weeks usually; I mean, 85% of the time we'll get an order in within 2 weeks, but at this time of year, I wouldn't be surprised to see them take the whole month," said the distributor). It should be quite an upgrade to the current situation.

On that same topic, the front end needs some help, too. Fortunately, this is easier to do, and cheaper. Some new springs and a cartridge emulator should have me sorted there, and for under $300.

It's funny, as I mention all these prices they sound like an awful lot of money, particularly for a $3000 motorcycle, but these bits represent about 75% of the outlay I'm expecting to do on this bike. Suspension bits have never been cheap, but I'm getting away with spending very little for a huge improvement.

It helps that the bike only really needs three things to make it right for me: slight improvement in brakes (already installed: stainless steel braided brake lines), better tires, and upgraded suspension. Since the tires it has right now are actually fine until it rains (then they apparently get much less acceptable), I've got a few months until I really have to worry about tires. Even so, new tires are under $200 shipped to my door, so they don't come close to suspension upgrades. They have to be replaced much more often, but you can typically live with replacing one tire at a time, which brings it under $100 a whack. I can live with that.

So, in a month's time (or so), I should have the bike suspended properly. It won't feel so toy-like, rocking back and forth as I apply throttle or brakes, or sit down on it.

Posted at 09:57 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Wed, 28 Jun 2006

The cold starts are always the hardest

I decided to try riding the Ninja 250 into work today, my first "practical" use of the bike, rather than riding around trying to break in the engine. A fine plan, but fraught with difficulty.

As I mentioned a few posts down, my bike came with the apparently mis-adjusted carburetors. In the last day or two, I'd actually thought they got better, but this morning cured me of that freakish delusion.

The morning was cool, perhaps mid 60s Fahrenheit. I pulled the bike out, and put on my helmet and gloves. I hopped aboard and hit the starter button. It was a bit fiddly, but by very careful (sub-millimetric) manipulation of the choke lever, I was able to get the bike to idle at a decent speed.

I knew I'd have to wait a moment for the engine to warm up, so wait I did. I tried putting the bike in gear after a minute or two, which killed it (the first shift in the morning usually finds the clutch plates sticking together, since they're immersed in oil, which can kill the motor if you're not holding some throttle on).

I uttered a gentle "crap!" to myself, and restarted the bike. The idle was dancing, possibly like a ballerina. Up, and down. Up and down. But I wasn't touching the throttle. Hmm. I tried adjusting the choke a bit, to see if the bike would be happier with a bit less. Putt -putt-putt... putt... silence. Ok, that didn't work.

The engine started again, idle once again dancing up and down. I'll save you the time and jump to the end of the story: I sat atop that bike for a bit over 10 minutes this morning, occasionally killing and restarting it, waiting for it to do whatever it needed to do. Trying to add any throttle would immediately pull the engine speed down as if I'd switched off the key. Finally, it was running just well enough that I could pull away and down the street, the engine hiccoughing and bucking any time I tried to speed up. This just isn't acceptable.

Fortunately, mysterious as this all sounds, each of these symptoms points squarely at the problem I'd already identified. I just have to pull off the carburetors, remove the silly EPA caps, and adjust the idle mixture screws back to a sane value. I think this weekend will see me taking the carbs off. My previous Ninja 250 didn't have this problem even remotely. No reason this one should, they're practically identical bikes.

At least once it's warm, it runs and idles fine. Getting to "warm" is just a huge pain right now. Good thing it's not winter time, or I'd have to wait 20 or 30 minutes to leave in the morning.

Posted at 14:19 permanent link category: /motorcycle


I'm laughing, but I'm crying on the inside

I contacted Maxton Suspension about the possibility they made a Ninja 250 rear shock yesterday. I didn't have very high hopes, but I figured what the heck, choice is good.

I wasn't particularly expecting a speedy response, so I was surprised when I opened my email this morning and found a message from Maxton. It reads as follows:


Ian

Thanks for your enquiry, unfortunately this year we have been
unsuccessful in obtaining product liability cover for the United
States.  Whilst we have every confidence in our product, we are also
very wary of the legal system in the U.S. I apologise about this, we
had been enjoying building up a customer base in the U.S and dealing
with your country.

Regards

Richard Adams
Maxton Engineering

Yep, that's... well, that's about right.

Posted at 08:01 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Tue, 27 Jun 2006

Shocking!

Ah, sometimes I even crack myself up. (Yes, I should probably be shot for punning.)

I called up the US distributor for Hagon shocks this morning, and asked him about a shock for the Ninja 250. I know I'm going to get one, it's just a matter of sorting out which one at this point.

So far, I have the following choices:

So I've got a few choices. Right now, Hagon sounds like the best choice, although Bitubo is a close runner-up. I think the Hagon is likely to be a better deal, in part because the distributor sounds like he knows his business (which the Bitubo distro doesn't), and in part because the Hagon is cheaper and probably offers similar performance. "Probably" and "similar" are, of course, complete weasel-words. Unfortunately, finding reviews of shocks is very difficult, and very few people have actually tried multiple shocks in their bikes then written about it.

Posted at 10:31 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sun, 25 Jun 2006

You want me to what now?

When Kawasaki builds a Ninja 250 (I'm a little obsessed right now, can you tell?), they make some of it in-house, and buy some of it from subcontractors. This is pretty much everybody's business model now, because in order to do, say, engines well, you have to devote a huge amount of effort to the project. If you also want to do, for instance, carburetors well, you have to devote another huge amount of effort. Needless to say, these huge efforts also cost tons of money.

So, Kawasaki buys its carburetors from another company which specializes in them: Keihin. This is good and bad. Keihin makes good carburetors, and lots of engines use them. Harley-Davidson (heavens, I know, an American company using Japanese parts? please, bear with me) uses Keihin parts on all their bikes. So does Kawasaki for the majority of bikes, and snowmobiles, and jetskis, and generators, and so on.

The practical upshot is, Kawasaki says to Keihin, "we want 1000 CVK30 carburetors," and Keihin says, "right away, that'll be $50,000," or whatever the cost is. Kawasaki takes their barrel full of carburetors, and puts them on various things, including my bike.

Unfortunately, of late Keihin has been falling down on little, unimportant things, like the precise adjustment of their carburetors. It's nothing your average home mechanic can't fix, but it's kind of a pain. In my case, they've set the idle mixture screws incorrectly (at a guess).

Now, for me to go and fix that, I have to remove the carburetors, and drill out the special EPA tamper-preventing cap. The EPA is justifiably concerned that your basic ham-fisted home mechanic will see this screw, turn it without knowing what they're doing, and suddenly their bike will be spewing lots of unburnt hydrocarbons into the air whenever they're sitting at a stoplight.

Unfortunately, those same screws also determine how the bike idles -- properly adjusted, it idles nicely all the way from cold starts in the morning, to the midst of summer traffic. Improperly adjusted (like mine are), the bike simply refuses to idle nicely. When cold, it refuses to idle without lots of choke. When warm, the idle speed hovers a thousand RPM higher than where it's supposed to be, then sinks down to lower than it's supposed to be, without any input on the throttle. It would be enough to drive a new rider to distraction.

So, I'll be pulling out the carburetors soon, and adjusting those same screws the EPA seems convinced will destroy the world. Never fear, EPA, with the bike idleing properly, there will be far fewer noxious emissions than if I left the bike in this whacked-out state.

Posted at 11:34 permanent link category: /motorcycle


The scientific method, applied (kind of)

For the new Ninja 250, which I picked up yesterday, I'm going to follow this guide as closely as possible for doing the engine break-in. It's pretty different from the Kawasaki recommended method, but following a different break-in doesn't affect the warranty (short of actual abuse, of course). That method I linked to was used by one of the competitors in the Iron Butt Rally, in which motorcycles are run over 1000 miles per day, for 11 days. It's a pretty thorough test of a motorcycle (and a rider).

Anyway, I've now done the idleing step (let the motor idle for 10 minutes, 4 hours cooldown), and the first ride (~5 miles, very gentle acceleration). I got a request from one of the Ninja 250 board members to test the compression of the engine before and after break-in, and discovered too late that my compression tester didn't have the right little adaptoid to fit the Ninja. So, I lost the chance to test it after the first step (the engine is supposed to be warm), but I did get to test it after the ride last night. About 170 PSI on each cylinder, which is low, but not shocking.

The new bike, by the way, is a gorgeous color. I was right to stick to my guns and wait until I found a red one. The picture on the Kawasaki website doesn't really do it justice, it's a fabulous deep maroon. On the right is my bike loaded up into Jesse's truck -- he was generous enough to help me get the bike home so I wouldn't have to ride it and mess up my clever breaking-in plans.

It doesn't idle very nicely, which could either be poorly adjusted valves (possible, but unlikely), or poorly adjusted carburetors (very likely). Unfortunately, to fix the carbs, they need to be taken out, which is practically a masters course all by itself, so that step is going to wait a little bit. I think when I do the 600 mile maintenance stuff, I'm going to check the valves and pull the carbs to get them sorted out.

I'm intending to replace a lot of suspension bits, and the tires, but I want to wait on all of it until I've had a chance to ride the bike for a while, to see what the stock parts really feel like. My one reservation about constantly dissing the stock tires and suspension is that I don't really remember what they were like. Spending some time on them should be plenty of reminder.

I'm also trying a new thing on this bike, and weighing the pieces I put on or take off, to keep track of how the weight of the bike changes as a result of my modifications. I don't know how valuable it will be, but it's an interesting exercise.

Posted at 09:45 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Thu, 22 Jun 2006

Ok, *wow*

So, I sat down this evening to rebuild the new Goldwing starter I picked up from the guy at bikesalvage.com. I was thinking to myself, "well, it's a junkyard starter, it probably needs at least new brushes, which I already have." I'd picked up most of the commonly-needed parts for a starter rebuild a month or two ago, hoping to rebuild my current starter.

I opened up the new starter, and was surprised to see that it actually looked pretty good. I measured the length of the brushes (which is the standard way to gauge when they need to be replaced), and they were the same length as new. Hmm. What? How could they be new? But there they were. In fact, the insides of the starter looked new too, no dirt, everything shiny and sparkling. I greased the end of the armature shaft, and reassembled the starter.

I turned my attention to replacing the starter in the bike. This was a bit of a challenge -- in order to do it most easily, the bike has to be on its sidestand. Of course, the Goldwing has a sidecar attached to the side of it. It doesn't have a sidestand. I ended up pulling up the sidecar by its wheel, rigging it to the main beam in the garage, and putting a jackstand under the shock mount to keep it secure.

Pulling out the old starter and putting in the new one turned out to be pathetically simple. If I'd taken it to the dealership and they'd charged me an hour's worth of labor (probably $65), it would have been a waste of $35. My total time, which includes me being a complete novice at replacing Goldwing starters, was an hour. I usually figure my time is 3-4x what a professional mechanic could do. But hey, hooray for things being easier than expected!

The real surprise was when I ran back inside and grabbed the key. I switched on the bike, ensured it was in neutral, and pressed the starter switch. I expected to hear the old familiar "ka-whIIIRRRRR-na, ka-whIIIRRRRR-na, ka-whIIIRRRR-na" of the old starter. Instead I heard, "RR-NANANANA" and the engine was started. Whoa! That was 5-10x faster than the old one! It was really quite amazing, I hadn't realized how tired the old starter was; I just figured that old Goldwings had slow starters. Not so, apparently!

So, I'm very pleased with my $50 investment in a new starter. I'm very confident this starter will last a long time, quite possibly longer than the engine, and it'll probably still be going strong when this rig is finally broken up and sold as scrap. Amazing. I'm going to have to call Bob at bikesalvage.com and ask him about the bike it came from. It couldn't have had more than 10-15 thousand miles on the odometer.

Just amazing.

Posted at 22:20 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Wed, 21 Jun 2006

No sooner said than done

Curious as to the status of the theoretical black Ninja 250 which Lake City Kawasaki claimed they'd be getting in, I called them back.

"Oh, we haven't see that bike yet."

"Ok," says I, "and no word on a red one?"

"Nope, they're really hard to find. I don't think anybody has any new ones left any more."

Riiight.

So I typed "Kawasaki" into a yellow pages search, and started calling.

Bellevue: "No, we don't have any, but I think the 2007 models are coming out in two weeks. I'm sure you want to wait for a 2007 model, right?" Kawasaki normally releases the next-year Ninja 250s in September. Whatever.

Enumclaw: "Nope, they're really hard to find. No one really has any more 250s in stock right now. Haven't heard they're coming out in two weeks, though, they usually release the new 250s in September."

Kent: "Yeah, I'm looking at four right now: yellow, blue and red."

Monroe: "Yep, we still have a yellow one available."

Renton: "I've got two left, a silver one and a blue one. Yeah, the silver's an '05, that's right."

Waldron: "No, we're sold out of them. Good luck finding one, they're getting pretty scarce."

Ok. So if you've got them, there's no mention of their scarcity. If you haven't, they're made of pure unobtanium.

I really hate vehicle dealers sometimes.

Kent wins though, and has a small deposit from me on the red one. I guess I'm really buying a Ninja 250.

Posted at 11:50 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sold!

The Le Mans is finally gone. Even with the bike out of the garage, and the money in the bank, it doesn't feel quite real yet. I keep expecting to check the bank website and find the money gone. "Sorry, turns out that check was made of fairy dust! Where'd you get that thing, anyway?"

I'm left with the shop stand, which the buyer didn't want, and the spare front tire, which is so old at this point that I'm not sure I feel comfortable even giving it away. I'll probably post it on Craigslist anyway, with the caveat that it's 3 years old. It's still probably better than a bald front tire.

I'm not sure what exactly happens now. I'm still excited about pursuing a 250, but I'm also kind of ready to stop worrying about motorcycles for a bit. I'd like to sell the Z, but I'd better have the sidecar functional by that point or it'll be the bicycle for me. Hmm. Bicycles don't have insurance payments or use gasoline....

I couldn't have a bicycle as my primary transportation, unfortunately. If I were in a compact city it could work, but in Seattle, everything's so spread out that I'd spend hours just getting from place to place.

I called Lake City Kawasaki, and they claim that "no one has any" Ninja 250s right now. We'll see about that. Chances are decent that he's right, but I'll do my own research before I believe it.

A friend mentioned that I would do well to wait until July, so I don't have to pay the Monorail tax (which apparently ends June 30th). Noted, but if I find the right bike, I'll probably have to jump on it, no matter the date.

Posted at 10:58 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Mon, 19 Jun 2006

Warning, needles ahead

Seriously, don't read on if you hate needles.

I went into the doctor's office this morning so they could check on my cholesterol level -- they discovered it was 251 a month ago! I've been trying a lovely pill-a-day since then, to see if it would help. I also had this obnoxious "hives" thing happening, which I wanted to run past the doctor.

So, I sat down and chatted with the doctor for a bit. In particular, she noticed the hives (which have been getting worse on a day-by-day basis), and her eyes got kind of wide when I told her that was pretty much a 24/7 occurrence. She jumped up and came back with a syringe full of something for the swelling. After a follow-up question about side effects on my part ("none, really, your arm will probably be sore..."), she lined up and plunged the needle into my shoulder. "Which arm do you want to be sore?" Great. Actually, it was amazingly painless, but I really don't enjoy being jabbed with needles.

That was all fine, and the theory is that that shot will keep me hive-free by reducing my tendency to inflammation. Here's hoping the reality lives up to the theory; I'd greatly enjoy being less itchy. Really, is there any time you wouldn't enjoy being less itchy? (And who doesn't want to hear about somebody else's hives! I mean, come on!)

So, on to the best part.

The phlebotomist came in after a bit of wait. She beckoned me out, and we went back to her little station, where I sat down in her chair. The little arm support was folded down in front of me, and I mentally prepared myself. I'm not real fond of having my blood drawn, and this time was no exception.

First, a tiny bit of background. I remembered last night that I was going in for this cholesterol check in the morning, but I couldn't remember what the fasting period was. Was it 12 hours? That sounded about right. Due to schedule craziness, I had lunch at 2:30 or so, and wasn't able to get into a dinner scenario until 9:00 that night -- crap! 9 am doctor's appointment! 12 hours! So, I decided to skip dinner, I mean, better safe than sorry. I'd hate to screw up the blood draw and have to do it again.

So, on with our story. The phlebotomist set me up, wrapped the little druggie tubing around my upper arm, and located a juicy vein. *pop*! went the needle, and she was drawing blood. Of course, I didn't see any of this, since I look away, on the theory that my imagination is not going to be as vivid as the real thing. Huh huh. Riiiight. It was pretty painless, but the knowledge that there's a hair-thin sliver of metal inside a vein, supping on my life fluid has never been pleasing to me.

She pulled out the needle and pressed some cotton over the wound, the whole thing finished in about 30 seconds. Unfortunately, in that time, my world had gotten weird. I looked over at her, a pattern of cracked safety glass superimposed over my vision. I don't know how to describe what was happening to my hearing, but in a TV show, they'd simulate the effect by adding a lot of reverb and making it sound really distant and hollow. I vaguely recall a lot of rushing-blood sounds. My head felt light, and I was suddenly sweating much more than the situation warranted.

"Do you want some water?" she asked. "I can't really see," I responded, wittily. "Ok, well that's perfectly normal, some people just don't like having their blood drawn." The words seemed to be coming from far away, and I was having a hard time correlating the sound I was hearing with what limited information I could gather from my eyes. I wondered if I was going to pass out.

Looking back on it, I can see they treated me with a fair amount of concern as they asked if I wanted to lie down. I think I responded coherently, but I for all I know, I might have just dribbled and said "floobey da goo-ga" -- they would have understood that to mean "yes" as much as if I'd said, "why yes, that sounds like an excellent idea."

The short, crew-cut nurse and the phlebotomist guided me carefully back about 3 feet to a couch, and I laid down with my feet up on the arm. Things got a little bit better, but I still felt like I was looking through a translucent desert floor, and everything was tingling. I was freezing cold and really warm at the same time. The nurse explained how he used to be a medic in the military, and he would have to lay soldiers down when they fainted in formation, and put their gear under their legs -- s'what you get for standing perfectly still with your knees locked, I guess. "This is a little trick I learned in the military," he said. At that moment, I would have believed he'd learned it at the Jedi academy under the tutelage of Chewbacacca. "Aaarggggh! Yuuuur rruuuuugh!" I wanted to respond. My head hurt just thinking about trying to make Wookie noises.

As I slowly came back to my senses, I sipped some water and ate a few of the crackers they'd given me ("Oh, 19 hours of fasting? That's above and beyond the call of duty, aaand your blood sugar is probably just a little bit low..."). I looked around, and realized I was lying on a couch in the kids' room: there was a Shrek II DVD sitting there, and some toys, and a silent TV staring back at me.

I was still shaking a bit, and sweating, but my hand was freezing from the cold-pack they'd handed me at some point. I was still clutching a tissue the doctor had given me after the shot, although I'd turned out to be "not much of a bleeder." Yay me!

I gradually felt more and more like a human and less like a kaleidoscopic acid-toy. I had a moment when I thought I was going to break my nearly 20-year no-barfing streak, but it passed. Still, it's amazing what you can fight through to get to a toilet when it feels like your insides would really rather be outside.

Finally, everything was about back to normal, although I still felt weak and lightheaded. I asked the phlebotomist, and she said that whole episode I'd just had usually happens from very low blood pressure -- the veins dilate, you've got less blood than you did a second ago, and everything goes downhill very quickly. Including, of course, all the blood which no longer has enough pressure behind it to fight gravity all the way up to your brain. Whoops.

So, let this be a lesson to you. 8 hours is an acceptable amount of fasting. 10 hours is ideal. 12 hours is overkill. 19 hours is heroic to the point of idiocy. Plus, I'm a little girl when it comes to needles, apparently.

Posted at 22:16 permanent link category: /misc


Sun, 18 Jun 2006

Apparently, raccoons like cherries

Even when unripe.

Posted at 17:05 permanent link category: /misc


Tue, 13 Jun 2006

The starter is dead. Long live the starter!

This weekend was a WMRRA race weekend, and Jesse was in full force, turning in a 2:13.9 lap as his best (that's better than his previous best). I was also there, to film things, as has been my wont since he started racing.

Of course, to film something properly, you really need the proper gear: camera, tripod, etc. For a day-long event, it also makes sense to bring suitable refreshment: a small cooler with drinks and refrigerables; other, less frigophyllic foods; reasonable quantities of water. One also needs certain other supplies to protect from excessive sunlight exposure: hat, sunscreen, umbrella, what have you.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that it's a big wad of stuff, and it's more than really fits on a solo motorcycle. Enter the sidecar rig. Perfect!

So I rode the sidecar rig down on Saturday, and filmed my heart out. It was great. As is usual these days, the bike's starter was slow, a gentle prodding reminder that I needed to pull it soon and see what all I could fix up.

On Sunday morning, I loaded up the sidecar again. Hat, cooler, water bottle, bag, camera, tripod. Certainly not a full load, but really more than I wanted to try carrying on a bike. I rolled the rig out and locked up the garage.

I turned the key, pulled on the choke lever (ah, that new choke lever is so much better than the old one, thought I), and hit the starter button. Ck! LLLrrrrrrRRRRrrrrr. Hmm. That's not right.

I hit it again, greeted by the same slow, pained groan. Uh-oh, looks like my battery really is dying. Crap!

I opened the garage back up and grabbed the battery charger, which also has the handy 50A "engine start" feature. Tried again, pumping 50 fat amps into the battery. Ck! LLLlrrrrrRRRrrrrr.... rrr... Silence. Uh-oh. I tried again, just to be sure that what I thought had happened had really happened. Ck! mmmmmmmm. Oh.

Yep, the starter is gone. Rest in peace, old starter. Most likely, it welded itself together after 23ish years of use gradually loosened everything up, increasing internal resistance until it was pulling way too much current, heating up, and eventually destroying itself.

So, I'm now on a quest to find a replacement starter, since I suspect the one I have isn't rebuildable. Ick. At least it croaked at home, instead of down at Pacific Raceways. Thanks for small favors, little starter.

Posted at 13:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Fri, 09 Jun 2006

And they're off!

Well, the Ninja 250 alternator parts are off, anyway. I just shipped off a box containing mostly packing peanuts, with a few very dense motorcycle parts interleaved like lasagne noodles.

I'm hoping that ElectroSport will be able to get back to me soon with a lovely column of numbers, correlating RPM to output power. That would be excellent information to know.

Posted at 14:30 permanent link category: /motorcycle


The return of the pocket knife

In 1996, I was given a very nice Laguiole pocket knife for Christmas. I'd been carrying it for a number of years as my apple-cutting knife, when it suddenly went missing a few weeks ago in Portland. Despite searching the places it would have likely fallen out of my pocket, I didn't find it. Drat!

So, I started the search for a new pocket knife. They're so handy that I didn't really want to be without one. A friend recommended Knifeworks as a good place to buy pocket knives, so I took a look around.

The first model my eye lit upon was the CRKT M16. That's about the perfect shape, in my mind, and would probably be small enough to be unobtrusive. With a bit of cursory searching after I found that, I decided that it was the right thing -- the price was certainly right. So, I ordered it.

I waited patiently for it to arrive (ordering things online is never quite as instantly-gratifying as buying them locally). I got a call one day, about when it should be arriving; it was Knifeworks calling. The woman on the other end explained that there'd been a mixup, and my order had been sent to someone else, and their order sent to me. Could I please send it back? No worries, but how annoying (they paid for return shipment, of course).

However, in the mean time, I'd been doing research, having gotten more interested in the subject. I ran across this article on steel types in my wanderings, and after a thorough reading, I began to have more misgivings about the M16 I'd ordered.

On the one hand, that knife is an excellent price. On the other, I really don't like liner locks (the kind where part of the liner springs into place once the blade is open, to lock the blade in place): I always feel like I'm going to lop off the end of my finger, since the unlocking tab is invariably in the path of the closing blade. I was uncertain of the liner lock, but swayed by the low price.

Then, in the steel article, I found that the steel CRKT is using in that blade (which isn't even listed in the article, but is logically "below" a steel rated "just barely acceptable for daily use") is sub-par. That at least partly explains the low price, I guess.

All this brought about a certain amount of buyer's remorse. When I got the call that the order had been cross-shipped, I took it as my cue to change my order.

For a birthday present several years ago, I was given a Benchmade knife, exact model unknown. I carried it for about a year, clipped to my pocket (as is the style with these things), until one day a shoulder bag grabbed the clip and slid the knife out of my pocket without my knowing it. Of course, when I went back to look for it an hour later, it was gone. Crap! That was actually what spurred me to carry the non-clip Laguiole.

Anyway, thinking back to that knife, which I really liked, I decided to change my order to something about the same. After some deliberation, I decided to order a Benchmade Mini-Griptilian. It's got a few things going for it: the "axis lock," which is a much better locking system, to my mind; 154CM steel in the blade -- in contrast to the AUS4 in the CRKT knife, 154CM is among the best rated steels for knife use; it's smaller than the M16 -- I realized after looking at a ruler that the M16 is huge and would have been hard to carry every day. Of course, it's also $20 more than the CRKT M16.

I got the call that the Benchmade shipped on Wednesday, so with any luck I'll be seeing it today or Monday, but I'm resigned to waiting until Wednesday or Thursday before it arrives. I guess the advantage or ordering stuff online is that it's kind of like waiting for a Christmas present to arrive, except you already know it's going to be exactly what you want.

Posted at 11:04 permanent link category: /gadgets


Thu, 08 Jun 2006

To Z, or not to Z?

So, I've been thinking, since my excellent, all-flowing-right ride this last Sunday (ride report pending), that I'm not so all-fired convinced that I need to get rid of the Z750s.

Since then, I've been pretty actively enjoying the bike. It hasn't annoyed me once.

Of course, it got 44 MPG on that trip. I was working on my riding technique, and it was working really well. The bike was flawless, as it's always been. But more importantly, I realized that I was fitting on it well, and it suited what I was doing really well.

The problem is, it's still going to get in the low 30s for around-town MPG. It's still top-heavy. It's still overpowered for most of the riding I do.

I don't know what exactly I want to do at this point. I suspect my decision will depend at least in part on how hard it proves to be to sell either or both of the motorcycles.

Posted at 19:29 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Wed, 07 Jun 2006

The Le Mans is back on the market

The guy who was going to buy the Le Mans has backed out, so the bike is back on the market. I'm sick of sitting on it, so I've reduced the price to $6500. Hopefully that'll be more enticing to someone.

Posted at 13:34 permanent link category: /motorcycle


RSS a-go-go

I finally sat down and figured out how to add an RSS feed to this journal thing I've been doing. At least, it works for me.

As you can see, I also added a clever calendar-thingy at the top. Should make it much easier to find older entries, the one thing I wasn't so happy about when I made the switch to Blosxom. Hooray for plugin developers!

Posted at 12:01 permanent link category: /misc


Slacking on my journalistic duties

I just realized that I haven't updated the theater journal in a while.

The show I was last working on, noSIGNAL, went really well. It was only a three night run, and we managed to get 90% or better houses on all three nights. I think on Saturday (the final night) we turned people away.

As expected, we did in fact put on three good shows despite all the hurdles. It would have been nice to have fewer hurdles, of course.

I'm now on a kind of theatrical hiatus, with one more planned theater event this year: I'm going to be Tech Director of SketchFest Seattle again. There may be some amount of noSIGNAL work this year as well, but that's only to be expected with a show that good and a run that short.

In any case, I'm pretty much theater-free until September. Now I just have to get started cleaning out my basement and trashing/giving-away/selling stuff. Anyone want some 1960s era SLR camera bodies and/or lenses?

Posted at 11:09 permanent link category: /theater


Sat, 03 Jun 2006

Well... that was a waste of time

Sound Rider (where I'm advertising my motorcycles for sale) asked me a week or two ago if I wanted to bring my bike(s) down to show at this Marketplace event they were planning for today. I said to myself, it's free, and it's marketing exposure. Why not?

Just in case SR pulls that page (I would), this is one of the paragraphs:

We've once again invited some of the most innovative manufacturers and vendors in the Northwest to come out and show the people what they've got. You'll see the latest in clothing, touring gear, bikes, electronics and more.

Cool, sounds good to me. Next to it is a photograph showing a huge hall, with people, motorcycles, displays and so on, going on for hundreds of yards. It's pretty impressive looking. Looks like one of the annual International Motorcycle Shows, in fact. Fabulous!

As I've so skillfully foreshadowed, it was anything but fabulous. It was, in fact, held in a small parking lot attached to Cycle Works in Renton. The used bike display area contained no more or less than five motorcycles: two sidecar rigs (which immediately attracted all attention, to the detriment of the other bikes there), a scooter, my bike, and a poorly blinged-out CBR600.

Instead of the "latest in clothing, touring gear, bikes, electronics and more" we had the Sound Rider store (with some interesting stuff, I'll admit) and a booth promoting service dogs and motorcycling. Or something. Aaaand, a lot of empty parking lot.

I encountered Tom Mehren, head mover-and-shaker at Sound Rider, and said, "what happened to all the vendors?" He replied, "yeah, we didn't charge them any money to join in, so they all bailed -- they didn't have any incentive to come. We're not going to do that again." I bet.

The turn-out was impressive, too. I probably saw a total of 40 people walk by my bike (and I was there most of the time, since there was nothing else to do). Maybe 5 people actually stopped and read the little sheet I'd made up and hung on the handlebar (and a huge thank you to Cycle Works for letting me laminate that, and use a rubber band -- it sounds trifling, but it meant a lot to me after getting to Kinkos just outside of business hours twice in a row).

The sheet ended up being a hassle, since I discovered that Xerox (nee Tektronix) wax printer printouts don't actually perform very graciously under the heat of a laminator. Yeah, it turns out the reds just completely dissappear, leaving you with a picture which looks like it's been soaking up UV for years.

I ended up being situated next to a nice but slightly quarrely couple trying to sell their Goldwing sidecar rig. It was great being able to leave my stuff there and wander, but I grew weary of the tit-for-tat arguing pretty quickly.

Add to all this that I didn't get much sleep last night (had to have the bike there by 9), and neglected to pack any sun protection (having assumed it would be indoors) and I was one unhappy camper.

I hope SR gets their marketing game together for next year, but I'm unlikely to be attending.

And now, for some high-quality naptime.

Posted at 13:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Fri, 02 Jun 2006

The long road to goodbye

I got up far too early this morning to go meet a potential Le Mans buyer in Sumas, WA. That's about 13 feet from the Canadian border, inland from the more popular Blaine, WA crossing. It's also two hours from my house, and about four (!) from Dennis's (the potential buyer) house.

Anyway, I did the straight-up-I-5 route to get up there, because I was uncertain of how long it would take, and I started about 30 minutes later than I wanted to. The ride up promised to be awful, as I started out in that heavy mist that isn't quite rain, but is really too thick and downward-falling to be mist. However, as I rumbled northward, the mist died off, and things started drying out.

Fortunately, I-5 went by quickly. It was long, straight and boring. Hoo boy. But the Le Mans is certainly at home on the freeway. No problem passing anyone who gets uppity.

I turned off 5 in Bellingham, and headed over to Highway 9, which is a much smaller, much more interesting road. It winds through farmland, with lots of low-speed sweeping curves to follow property lines. Alas, that section of road didn't last nearly long enough, and I was shortly at our designated meeting spot.

We chose one of the few open restaurants in Sumas, and sat down to breakfast. We ended up discussing a wide variety of subjects, only touching on motorcycles now and again. I had pretty much decided beforehand that this trip wouldn't result in a sale, so I was just treating it as a social visit at the midpoint of a nice ride.

We traded bikes for a quarter mile of Sumas' exciting urban asphalt, with Dennis declaring the Le Mans lighter-feeling and better-steering than his R1100R. I didn't notice too much difference, but I'd already ridden a very similar bike, and knew about what to expect.

I was getting ready to depart, when Dennis paused, and was obviously pondering something. Suddenly, I remembered that he'd actually expressed interest in buying this bike I'd ridden up. He turned to me and said, "I guess we need to agree on a price, then."

Oh! Right!

So, after five minutes, we'd hammered out the details, and I parted with a glowing feeling of having finally sold the Le Mans.

The ride back was very pleasant, particularly as I diverted to take Chuckanut Drive from Bellingham, which parallels (if you can consider a nicely curvy, waterfront road to parallel anything) I-5. I found myself singing Variations on the Theme of Chuckanut -- mostly repeating "Chuckanut Drive!" -- into my helmet. Very nice, if somewhat silly.

Arrival at home didn't actually see me at home. Instead, I rode straight to Lake City Kawasaki to see if they had a lovely red Ninja 250 for me (not buying yet, since the deal for the Le Mans isn't absolutely done yet). Alas, they were sold out, but tell me they'll have a black one available some time this month. I was really hoping for a red one, but I could probably make do. In all honesty, the biggest difference between the two is that the black model will probably show dirt a lot faster. I'm a lazy bike washer.

Anyway, overall an excellent day. I'm looking forward to finalizing the sale of the Le Mans, and getting it into the hands of someone who'll actually ride it properly. And, of course, looking forward to getting my butt back on a Ninja 250.

Posted at 17:10 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Thu, 01 Jun 2006

Wet, you say?

I decided to take a late-evening jaunt down to Fry's this evening. The weather has been off and on rain all day, so I knew I was taking a chance.

The ride down was perfectly dry, and quite pleasant. I discovered that the marked speed on a particular interchange was estimated very conservatively. I got to watch as a poser in a lowered, fancy-wheeled car ran wide on a curve in front of me (to no one's actual detriment, except perhaps to his ego), suggesting either lack of skill or lack of attention.

Fry's itself was, as always, a huge bin of temptation. I managed to restrain myself and only get a DVD set and some CDR envelopes in addition to the batteries I'd originally gone for.

However, when I got outside, I was greeted by post-sunset deep dusk, and pounding rain. Well, I thought it was pounding at the time.

I secured my booty, and donned my helmet while still under the cover of Fry's ostentatious overhang. I leapt aboard the bike (more or less), and headed out.

As I rounded the onramp to I-405 northbound, at a conservative pace, the rain seemed to increase in intensity a bit. By the time I reached the end of the ramp (possibly amplified by the passing traffic), the rain seemed to have doubled from its previous intensity.

When I finally got to a section of road where I didn't have someone right in front of me, I confirmed that the rain intensity had, in fact, doubled from what I'd seen before.

The rain didn't slacken until I was nearly home, of course, and well after the Aerostich suit's notorious "leaking crotch" had reared its chilly head. My gloves, treated a year or two ago for some modicum of waterproofness, squished. My feet seemed dry enough, which is something of a miracle considering that my boots are not nominally waterproof, and there was even more water at foot-level than there was at glove-level.

And now, I sit here slowly evaporating, drying out. It's nice to be home and inside. Maybe I'll watch a DVD.

Posted at 21:57 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sat, 27 May 2006

The cloud deck is how low?

I ended up just doing ground work today, as the clouds were scattering around between 300 and 600 feet above ground level. Suffice to say, that's far too low for a visual rated pilot such as myself.

Turns out I still know how to read a sectional chart, but I have to refer to the key more. And I still know basic pattern approaches, and approximately how to communicate on the radio.

When we actually go up to do some air work, we'll work on some airport approaches and maneuvers like stalls and steep turns. Should be a good workout.

Posted at 19:25 permanent link category: /aviation


Thu, 25 May 2006

First-aid kit, hooooo!

I found this description of a good motorcycle first aid kit a few weeks ago, and set about to gather the bits and pieces. All told, I ended up spending about $75 at the drugstore, followed by another $30 on other pieces, and $15 today for the bag to hold it all.

I'm trying not to think about the cost.

But in any case, I now have a very well-suited motorcycling first aid kit. Unfortunately, it's kind of huge. Like, 2x bigger than I was imagining initially. I could make it smaller, but only at the cost of making it less capable.

I may try to assemble a less complete, but still useful kit out of the remaining parts, as something that I can carry more regularly.

Posted at 19:38 permanent link category: /motorcycle


How not to do it

On my way in today, I was passed by a guy riding a Honda ST1300 (an expensive sport-touring bike). Not remarkable in and of itself, but I noticed that he was wearing a 3/4 helmet (no chinbar), a questionable-looking jacket, khaki pants, and hiking sneakers. So, not very concerned about falling off, I thought to myself.

I watched him ahead of me. This is on the stretch of Highway 99 (if you know the Seattle area) at Greenlake, where it goes from lots of stoplights to sort of freeway-like, with a 40 MPH speed limit. No one actually goes 40 unless there's a cop right behind them, 50-60 is the usual speed.

Anyway, as I watched, he changed lanes suddenly, without signaling, and without looking over his shoulder. Ok, I thought, not very conscious about his vulnerability on the bike. Nothing bad happened (it's not one of those stories).

I made my usual turn at 39th, but noticed that he was leading me. His turn signal was on this time. As I came around the corner, I saw that he was still correcting from running wide, 200 feet down the road, approaching a very sharp and blind descent down a steep hill.

The real capper for me was, as I pulled up behind him facing steep downhill, I saw that he'd pulled hard up to the car's bumper in front of him, bounced from foot to foot a few times (he couldn't quite get both feet down), then did something and completely relaxed. Remember, steep downhill. No hands or feet on controls. He seemed unaware of the world around him, or that someone might come crashing down the hill completely out of control.

I wondered what he'd done. Maybe the ST1300 had some kind of a parking brake I didn't know about? Did he have some cool accessory that allowed him to do that? His brake light wasn't on...

Nope. The light turned green, and he hurriedly started the motor (he'd left it stopped and in gear so it wouldn't roll), turned left without signaling, and ran really wide on his turn. Fortunately, he wasn't going the same way as me.

That guy is an accident waiting to happen. I hate it when they take nice bikes with them.

(For reference, when I stop at a light, I am waiting with the bike running, in gear, my hand on the clutch and watching the rearview mirror waiting for the car that's going to come in too fast and rear-end me. My foot is on the rear brake so I can take off at a moment's notice. I don't relax from that until there is at least one car fully stopped behind me. Oh, and I always signal turns and lane changes, and don't run wide going around corners. This is just how you ride when you don't want to die.)

Posted at 10:20 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Tue, 23 May 2006

I strike at thee, green-hearted denizens of the field!

I just got medieval on the back yard, which was approaching 4' tall in places.

Me. A scythe. A pitchfork.

That grass didn't stand a chance.

The neighbors looked on laughingly, waving to the brave victor of the battlefield.

Posted at 20:25 permanent link category: /misc


Mon, 22 May 2006

It's been a long time...

I called up Northway just now, and scheduled myself for an hour of ground followed by an hour of flying time. I had a brief but interesting conversation with Jim, the owner, who is usually there answering the phone and running things.

Last year (see the previous journal entry in this subject) I had what might be termed a terrible time flying. I was so aggravated and annoyed that I seriously wondered when I would have any interest in flying again.

I mentioned some of this to Jim, and he was actually troubled enough by my report to go dig through the old invoice to see who I had flown with (the only place I have it written down is in my logbook, since I apparently decided last year not to name names). It's always kind of nice to have a business show concern for your happiness.

So, I signed myself up for an hour of ground instruction with young Jared (seen on the right there) followed by an hour of flight time in the Cherokee. I picked the Cherokee since it's my favorite plane, and the idea of re-introducing myself to flying in a foreign or uncomfortable plane is not very appealing. I figure if I'm going to do this at all, it'd better be as appealing as possible.

We'll see how it turns out. Hopefully next weekend will be nice and I won't have to also contend with bad weather.

Posted at 15:50 permanent link category: /aviation


Fri, 19 May 2006

I am the weirdest rider in the world

I realized today that my riding produces exactly the opposite effect on tires from everyone else. All the reports I've read about tire usage read something like, "I get n miles out of a rear tire, and n * 2 miles out of a front tire." However, I'm the exact opposite -- I usually go through a front tire faster than a rear tire.

I guess this is likely due to my in-city riding. However, it means that I'm spending a lot more time braking than everyone else, and obviously I'm not accelerating much. If I were, I'd be going through rear tires a lot faster.

And despite that, I get terrible gas mileage on whatever I'm riding. How lame is that? At least front tires are a bit cheaper most of the time.

Posted at 09:56 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Thu, 18 May 2006

Montana, here I come (later)

I have been asked to join in on a little theatrical venture later this summer. The kink of course is that it's in Montana. And for some odd reason, it's on a Monday night. So I'm looking at the Google map of the route and thinking to myself, hmm... there are a lot of interesting looking secondary roads along that route, and I would have two days to do it... Then I thought to myself, if it's going to take me two days to get there, it's also going to take me two days to get back, which means I'm already taking three days off from work, so why not take five, and make a real trip out of it?

Yep, time for a road trip!

So, I've been feverishly researching Montana, motorcycle camping, tents, sleeping bags and pads, flashlights, radios, national parks, first aid kits, etc. All in pretty much random order. It's been very distracting.

Fortunately, this isn't happening until later in the summer, so I still have plenty of time to research and plan and acquire backpacking-quality camping widgets. I'll be heading to Portland soon, so a stop into Powell's is definitely in the cards, to explore their large travel books and maps section.

Hooray for travel!

Posted at 10:34 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Tue, 16 May 2006

Frustrating doctors

Ok, so this is really frustrating. I went to the aviation medical examiner last year (a year too early, as it happened), and after an easy exam, he got to the blood pressure part.

There was a bit of frantic brow scrunching, as he explained that I was one point away from being over the FAA limit, which is 155 or so on the systolic. I passed, but he was worried that my blood pressure was dangerously high. Arg! This was particuarly aggravating as I'd been to see my normal doctor (who's even now still not certified as an FAA AME, double arg), and specifically asked him about the high blood pressure the AME had noted.

He said, "I've never seen any indication of high blood pressure with you," or words to that effect. Cool. Only, the AME was still reading high.

So today I went in for a physical with my regular doctor, and noted with interest that my blood pressure was 120 over 80-something. That's definitely not high, and is nowhere near the 155 limit I was brushing last summer.

What changed? I made a conscious effort to reduce salt, but it seems surprising that it would have had that much effect so soon. I pointedly related the story of last summer's AME encounter, and he looked at me incredulously, saying "I've never seen any signs of high blood pressure, Ian, you're fine."

I must say, this is frustrating. I guess I must tense up when I get around the AME, or his equipment is measuring differently, or he's testing differently, or something. Whatever it is, it makes me really wish my regular doctor would get his AME certification.

This all came up, by the way, because I'm finally going to get back into flying, so I can try going up on the 4th of July again. I don't want to dislike flying, but the federal apparatus around it makes that very difficult at times.

Posted at 10:54 permanent link category: /aviation


Mon, 15 May 2006

Replacing throttle cables takes how long?

To my dismay, I felt the "return" throttle cable (the one which closes the throttle, and is mostly redundant) break on the Goldwing as I was headed up to Jesse's house on Saturday. I was going up to help him with maintenance on his CBR600. It's been his commute vehicle since he moved up to Shoreline last year, and hasn't really had the maintenance it needs for a while.

In any case, about 5 minutes out from my house, I felt the cable snap. It took me a moment to decipher what exactly had happened, because the only change that I could feel was that the throttle suddenly had a lot more play. By the time I arrived at Jesse's, I knew that the return cable (also called a "push" cable, since a system like this is referred to as a "push-pull" system) had snapped, and judging by the amount of pressure it'd taken to break, there must have been one strand left.

I got to Jesse's house, and we replaced his tires, chain and sprockets. That's easy to say, but it ended up taking us nearly 5 hours to do all that, and we didn't even fit in balancing the wheels with the new tires on them. His old tires were pretty worn out, with the rear somewhere beyond the wear bars, and the front nearly bald as well. Jesse said even on dry pavement, the rear tire would slip -- eek!

He ended up buying Continental Road Attack tires, both based on my (review-based) recommendation, and on the fact that they were the cheapest set he could get. I'm looking forward to hearing how they work, since they came very highly reviewed.

So, yesterday, I sat down after the obligatory Mother's Day brunch to replace the defective cable (and the complementary "pull" cable, as long as I was in there). Fortunately, the previous owner had a set of throttle cables in among the spare parts included. Although they were a trifle crusty looking, they also looked like they'd never been in service, and so were a better choice than the busted up ones on the bike.

I got ready to actually replace the cables (fortunately, the garage was clean from earlier, when I'd prepared it for changing the front tire on the Z), and took off all the bits I figured I'd have to remove. Then, as I got down and got a good look at the cable attachment point, I realized this was going to be way more work than I'd thought.

I pulled down the manual, but it didn't describe any procedure for changing the cables. I realized with slowly mounting horror that I would have to remove the carburetors from the bike before I could get at the cable attachment points. D'oh! Those carbs are huge, and it looked like a massive pain to get them out.

And, in fact, I was right. It was a huge pain. Honestly, I'm not sure it's possible to remove the carbs as a unit -- the four carburetors are bolted to an intake manifold. The whole thing is bigger than any of the openings out of which it could come. The manual seemed to be saying it was possible, but I'm not entirely sure they were referring to the model of bike I have.

In any case, after two hours, feeling beaten into submission, I had the cables replaced and the bike about half reassembled. It shouldn't take more than another half hour to get it finished up, but what a huge pain. At least it'll be done, and another thing I don't have to worry about for a while.

Posted at 11:56 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sat, 13 May 2006

Whew. Or, That's not a Nail, THIS is a Nail!

After more prep work than should have reasonably been required (the garage was on the heavily cluttered side... sigh), I got the Z propped up and ready to pull the wheel off. I grabbed my trusty multitool and pulled out the nail I'd seen a day or two before.

To my surprise and delight, the "nail" was a tiny piece of metal, maybe 3-4 mm long. It had not punctured the tire completely, leaving enough rubber in place that it didn't leak a bit when I pulled the offending object out. Hooray! That means no patch, and no having to pull the wheel off to wrestle with tire irons.

Unfortunately, the front tire is definitely on the cupped side, so it'll need to be replaced soonish. It's still acceptable, but that could explain some of the uncertain feeling I get from the front end.

It turns out that getting the Z750s's front tire in the air is no mean feat. The factory has access to this nifty adjustable "double" jack, which grabs both sides of the engine case, to support it very stably while leaving the inconveniently-routed exhaust pipes uncrushed. I guess technically I have access to it too, if I cared to spend a couple hundred dollars on the special tool from Kawasaki. However, between some cleverly-rigged tiedown straps and the slightly off-center jack from underneath, I managed to get the bike up and stable. Not really the way I'd normally choose to do it, but it worked in this case.

In other news, I got a phone call from someone in Florida(!) today, asking about the Le Mans. He sounded pretty interested, but it would involve crating up the bike and shipping it down there. He knows of some shipping company which will perform the crating as part of the shipping service, though, so that's encouraging.

I suggested to Nils (for that was his name) that he should consider flying up here to inspect the bike in person, relating my own bad experience with the R100 (in brief, it was Not in Advertised Condition). He seemed to appreciate the suggestion, but for all I know that killed the sale. Who knows. I'd rather not ship the bike if I can avoid it, although I'd also rather sell it and ship it than not sell it at all.

Posted at 12:46 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Fri, 12 May 2006

Less arg.

I rode the Le Mans into work on Thursday, because I finally remembered to post my bikes-for-sale to the internal motorcycling list. One of my coworkers from a previous life (back when I was compiling builds, instead of dealing with email) mailed back indicating his interest.

So, on Thursday, he got a chance to look at it, and hear it roar a little. He still seemed interested, but I'm not really holding out any hope on that front. If it turns into a sale, I'll be thrilled, but I won't be shocked if he declines.

In riding the bike in, I was reminded on several counts of why I really like the Le Mans. It has a beautiful drivetrain -- the clutch and transmission are buttery-smooth. Power delivery is invigorating, particularly rolling on a heavy dollop of throttle at around 3k RPM, when you get that hearty V-twin staccato roar from the exhaust. It feels really nice to ride, like it's working with you to make riding more enjoyable.

Of course, to counter that, I was reminded also of its relatively heavy feel at low speed (the Z750s is no better, although it's different). I remembered the huge driveline lash as all those gears take up their play going from acceleration to deceleration. I filled the tank, and was reminded of the terrible in-town gas mileage.

So yeah, for all that I like the bike, it's better that someone else buy it and use it for it's actual intended purpose -- distance, moderate to high speed riding.

Posted at 21:43 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Arg.

I looked down at my front tire today to see a jolly little metallic glint wink back up at me. Yep, there's a nail buried deep in the front tire of the Z750s.

Fortunately, this is nowhere near as grim as it could be. I have two different patching/plugging technologies available, it's not losing air, and I have a spare front tire. How convenient is that? I figure I'll stick on my spare tire tomorrow morning. If I dislike it (as I did on the Le Mans, which is why it's a spare in the first place), I can always go buy a new front for the Z later on.

It's very unusual to get a nail in the front tire, usually they're in the rear -- the front tire kicks them up, and the rear rolls over them once they're aloft. I've even pondered some kind of a deflecting sweeper system that would redirect anything kicked up by the front tire out of the rear tire's path. It'd look goofy, though.

Posted at 21:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Tue, 09 May 2006

Yeah, that'd be no

I got a call from the guy who sounded so excited about the possibility of buying the Z750s. You can probably guess what he said.

Yep. "I guess it's not going to work..."

Posted at 21:19 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Mon, 08 May 2006

Arg.

The guy who was interested in the Guzzi just called and (in many many more and less-direct words) said, "not interested." Anyone want a Guzzi, cheap?

Posted at 11:46 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Wow. Just wow.

Amazingly, after far too long worrying I'd never even see any interest in the bikes I'm selling, I'm doing well.

I showed both bikes this weekend. Each person (one per bike, fortunately) walked away saying, "I'll have to see how my finances are going to work out..." That's definitely with an implied, "so I can buy this bike." Woo!

Of course, none of this means anything is sold yet. That has two implications: 1. potential buyers, keep it coming: money talks (although I always give people right of first refusal based on who contacted me first, so latecomers will have to hope that the first people to contact me aren't actually ready to put up cash); 2. I'm not taking any action on the Ninja 250 front. I still need cash in hand and a clear spot in the garage before I go plunk down my cash for a 250.

But when I do get a 250, it's going to be an interesting time. I'm planning on following a fairly regimented break-in procedure (documented here), which will leave the bike out of "normal riding" commission for several days. I'm also intending to change things like tires and suspension and probably brake lines quite early on. Ideally, none of those things will take too long to install, but practically, I expect the first round of modifications to eat up a weekend.

I'm kind of conflicted on changing the tires immediately. I'm tempted to leave them on for a while, so I can see how bad they really are. The general consensus on the Ninja 250 board is that they're terrible, but I don't really remember what they were like on my previous bike (where they also had ~9000 miles on them).

Posted at 11:45 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sat, 06 May 2006

'Tis the weekend of bike interest

I'm pleased to see that my bikes are finally generating some interest. I've gotten several inquiries about both the Le Mans and the Z750s. I'm probably meeting someone on Monday with the Le Mans, and possibly Sunday on the Z. Here's hoping they're in a buying mood!

I called Lake City Honda/Kawasaki just out of premature curiosity, and they have both a blue and a red 2006 Ninja 250 in stock. With any luck, I'll own one of them before too long.

I am most interested in the red color, but honestly, the only color from this year's selection I wouldn't want is the yellow, leaving me with blue, red and black to choose from. Any of them would be great. Here's the red, from Kawasaki's website:

It's a pretty classy color.

Anyway, this is all premature drooling until I actually have some cash in hand and an empty spot in the garage.

Posted at 13:33 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Ugh. Cinco de Mayo.

Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against the holiday itself. Just the morons who go out, get blitzed, and then take to their cars as if nothing's wrong.

Fortunately, I'm speaking only in theoretical terms, and not based on some actual encounter. I had to come home late after a show last night, and I was hyper-aware of every car around me -- I suspect if a cop had been following me, he would have pulled me over on suspicion of being drunk myself. I was just keeping everyone at a distance as much as possible, and coming nearly to a stop at every intersection when I was riding through a residential neighborhood.

I really value being alive, I guess.

Anyway, nothing bad happened, I got home just fine. Still, I hate having to be so completely aware of all the drivers, and having to expect any of them to suddenly move unpredictably.

Posted at 11:44 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Fri, 05 May 2006

Hooray for scams!

So, I posted the Z750s in a SoundRider ad about a week ago, and finally got my first reply:

Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 03:48:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: david cole 
Subject: Sound RIDER! Inquiry 2005-Kawasaki-Z750S-60414
To: Ian Johnston

I am  a car dealer based in the UK and i am intrested in buying your
bike .And i will want to know the price of the bike and the firm
price.Expecting your reply.

Thanks

David.

---------------------------------
Love cheap thrills? Enjoy PC-to-Phone  calls to 30+ countries for just
2¢/min with Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.

Riiight. You want me to sell you my motorcycle and crate it up, and ship it to England? How dumb do I look?

(There's a very common scam on the Internet these days where someone outside your country contacts you about a big-ticket item you're selling, like a car, boat, plane, motorcycle, etc. They offer to buy it, often for a bit more than your asking price, and then explain that, through a complicated business relationship, they have your price plus 50-100% in a cashier's check. They'll send you the check, you take out your price, then send the rest of the money and your big-ticket item to the scammer. Several weeks later, the bank comes back and explains that it was a counterfeit cashier's check, and you owe them the entire amount. You're now out one vehicle, the price difference you sent back, and the entire value of the cashier's check.)

Anyway, I sent him back a reply explaining that if he would like to fly to Seattle and hand me $5800 in cash, he can take the motorcycle.

I don't expect to hear back from him.

Posted at 10:26 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Tue, 02 May 2006

The sound of one wing flapping

I've received several good suggestions for how to make a wing flapping sound. Thanks for those -- it ends up that what we actually wanted was a kind of enhanced fluttering sound (which Kirk ended up making into a microphone for me, after attempts #1, 2 and 3 all met with his dissatisfaction).

To make my own flapping sounds (which I think ended up sounding pretty good), I actually built a kind of pseudo-wing out of cardboard, with triangular "feathers" cut in the trailing edge. That gave me pretty much the sound I was going for, but it's not what Kirk wanted.

In any case, it's sorted out, and thanks for the suggestions.

Posted at 15:16 permanent link category: /theater


Better

Fortunately, the board crashing was kind of a blessing in disguise. The actors got some work in that they needed, and wouldn't have been able to do if we'd proceeded on plan last night.

It was still a really stressful and annoying blessing, but at least we recovered and are at least theoretically in a better position than we would have otherwise been.

It's all about the silver linings.

Posted at 14:11 permanent link category: /theater


Mon, 01 May 2006

Oh. Crap.

I just got a call from our lovely production manager, Peggy. "Hey, just so you know, the lighting board is broken, and corrupted the disc or something. So, you're going to have to rebuild all the cues from scratch. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news."

It's not her fault, and I'm not actually all that upset. This just means that we've lost a day of progress -- maybe less than that, since we've now seen the looks we want, and can more easily recreate them.

It's just really, really, completely annoying. Really. And we were already about a week behind. I don't know if a day more or less makes any difference, but I'm still certain that this show is going to kick ass when it opens, and even more so when it closes two days later.

Posted at 17:07 permanent link category: /theater


Sat, 29 Apr 2006

Hey stranger...

I was getting my helmet on after doing a very brief shopping trip this evening, when I heard a pleasant female voice behind me say:

"I promised myself I'd do this the next time I saw someone..." I turned around (glasses off, so I couldn't see any details) to see what I assumed was a woman in some kind of big black luxo-SUV (probably a Lexus). She continued, "you're amazingly handsome. Very striking." I sort of nodded and said, "thanks." She drove off.

It was a slightly surreal moment.

Posted at 21:29 permanent link category: /misc


Fri, 28 Apr 2006

Have you ever tried to create the sound of wings flapping?

Me neither. I'm working on sound cues for noSIGNAL, and I'm having a devil of a time figuring out how exactly I'm going to create this noise. I know it's possible, it's just a question of how...

But in other news, I've made good progress on other projects for the show. I'm not sure I'm going to be as far along as I'd hoped, but it's been a productive day. Obviously, I can't talk about some of this stuff, since it's secret.

Come see the show, and you'll see/hear my work. On the Boards is the theater, 8 pm is the time. May 4, 5 and 6 are the days. Be there or resemble a rhomboid.

Posted at 21:38 permanent link category: /theater


Quiet Goldwing, here I come

Jesse went to have a look at a Yamaha XS650 yesterday, for a cafe bike project he wants to do. I took a look at the ad he'd found, and noticed that the guy selling the XS also had some Goldwing parts for sale. He didn't specify what he had, but I worked on a hunch, and gave him a call.

I asked if he had a full set of exhaust pipes and silencers for an 1100. He paused for a second, then said, "yeah, I do." He pulled them out while I was on the phone, and at my request he poked at them to make sure they weren't rusted all the way through anywhere. He described one rusted-through section near the exit, but after the silencer. Not a big deal.

So, I asked him how much he wanted for them. He said, "hmm; I guess $100?" "Done!" was my immediate reply (Ebay examples in similarly functional shape go for $200-300). I called Jesse (who was already on the way, since this was his ideal bike, and only cost $400) and asked him to pick them up after a suitable inspection for me.

I got a call later that evening (but missed it) which ended up being Jesse, reporting that they were really rusty on the surface, but solid. I still haven't seen them, but my current plan is to take them to a sandblaster (after inspecting them to ensure sand won't muck up the silencers), and get all the rust blasted off, and the chrome roughed up, and paint them with black stove paint. I really don't care about how they look, but I'm quite interested in making sure they don't rust through.

So, when I have free time, I should be on my way to a much quieter sidecar rig. I can't wait.

Posted at 21:30 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Buy my bike!

If you're interested in buying the Le Mans, it's even now sitting in the Ride West parking lot.

Have at it!

Posted at 15:50 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Wed, 26 Apr 2006

This show is kicking my ass

I'm having a hard time keeping up with my latest show, noSIGNAL. I'm stage managing, but I'm falling behind on a lot of the tasks I'm supposed to be doing -- keeping track of information, keeping people updated, etc. It's frustrating.

The show itself seems to be going alright, although it's running what I would classify as "late" -- we're not as far along in the process as we should be. I suspect a lot of that is the unique nature of the show.

This is a show which can't be called a play, and can't be called a concert, but contains elements of both. If you go in expecting either, you'll be dissappointed, but if you go in with an open mind, you'll probably be delighted. The script is still being tweaked, but it's close to done.

Unfortunately, one of the problems is that we're working in a theater which is used to dealing with finished shows, and their attitude to getting certain things done (like sound, tonight) reflects that -- they're not in the fringe mindset from which we come. So, we're only going to have proper sound set up (remember, part concert) on Saturday, a few days before we open. Not pleased about that.

On the positive side, I'm really enjoying the music and the play aspects of the show. I think it's going to be an amazing performance, although I'm expecting people to come away wondering what the hell they just watched. There's no message, no plot, not really identifiable characters for the most part. Still, a very cool show.

Anyway, it's far too late to even think about anything beyond bed, and I've got this same ridiculous schedule for the next two weeks. I'll survive, but I might be a zombie by the time I'm done.

Posted at 00:00 permanent link category: /theater


Tue, 18 Apr 2006

Deeply, electrically psyched

Ok, this is really extremely cool. I ended up calling ElectroSport the other day, to see if they sold a high-output stator (part of the electrical power generation system on a bike) for the Ninja 250. They didn't exactly, but I ended up talking to the lead engineer for a while.

One thing he said which immediately piqued my interest was that he had a rig set up to test stock alternators and find their actual output. I asked if he could produce a graph of RPM vs. output, and he said he could. I was even more interested.

I really want to have that information available via the Ninja 250 board's FAQ section, and I really want to do a survey of the current used on the bike, to isolate how much power is actually required to run the bike. This will ideally result in a graph or chart which shows how much power is available at every RPM from idle to redline.

As a result of this discussion, I've got some of the folks on the Ninja 250 board searching their spare parts bins, looking for the parts in question. I expect that by the end of next week, we'll have a complete set of parts at least on their way to ElectroSport, if not actually in their hands.

Let me explain why this is so neat. Most motorcycles (with the notable exception of many recent BMWs and a few others) come with what may be safely termed anemic power generation systems. Just enough to power the bike itself, and really very little extra. So if you want to add lights, to improve your visibility, or heated clothing or whatever, you run the risk of overloading the electrical system, which usually leads to a dead battery (and thus a dead bike) right in the worst conditions -- after all, who is going to turn on all their lights and heated clothing because it's a bright sunny day?

This leads to a perpetual problem, of balancing the bike's power generating potential against what you really need to have powered. A GPS takes almost no power, but extra lights, even little running lights, add up really fast. Heated clothing, particularly that which uses an old-style rheostat thermostat, can be a huge drain. For instance, on the Ninja 250, the accepted wisdom is that you've got maybe 55 or 60 watts of extra power available at freeway speeds. That number goes down as RPM goes down.

Of course, this is accepted wisdom, but is not actually empirical fact. Kawasaki claims the alternator puts out 17 amps (or about 235 watts, depending on how exactly you measure things). However, like everything else, that may be an over- or understatment, to make the bike look better than it is. Plus, they only give the rating at one RPM; what's the output at 8k RPM? At 4k RPM? At idle?

So, in the first place, it would be really fabulous to know how much power the alternator is actually putting out at a given RPM, which ES says they can do. That's what initially got me so excited.

But then there's this carrot: they say they can produce a new stator which produces around 100 watts over the stock part(!). The downside (if you want to call it that) is that the power below a certain RPM, like 2500 or 3500, will be "low" -- ie, about the same as stock. Darn?

Here's the real kicker. The stock stator, from a slightly discounted online distributor, is $300. The proposed price for these high-power stators from ES is between $130 and $150. So, let's see here... If I break mine, I can pick the low-output part from the manufacturer, or the high-output part for half the price? Gee, that's a tough choice.

The flip side of all this is that I have no idea who ElectroSport is. I've heard of them before, but I've heard of lots of companies, and I don't trust all of them just because I know the name. Right now, ES is a complete unknown to me -- I've heard neither negative nor positive of them.

I think I'll be able to gauge them somewhat by how they handle this parts testing operation. It's free to us, but we're also giving them free access to parts they'd otherwise have to buy. We're allowing them to develop a product to meet a market segment they didn't previously meet, which is good for them.

I already have a good feeling just from talking to the two guys on the phone. I spoke with their salesman, Paul, and their head engineer, Ritzo. They both had their heads on straight, and knew what they were talking about, as far as I could fact-check what they said. I don't have any reason so far to question them, and am proceeding on the theory that they'll be good until I see proof otherwise.

Suffice it to say that I won't be putting any pre-order money down, but if they do actually produce a high-power stator, chances are good that I'll buy one. I'd love to have an extra 100W over stock power available to me.

Posted at 22:47 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sun, 16 Apr 2006

Too cute

Ok, it's irresistably cute when a little girl, maybe 5 years old, drags her dad back by the hand to say, "I, I, I, I, I like your motorcycle!" (of the Goldwing sidecar rig). In her sunday Easter dress. Too cute.

Posted at 20:01 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Fri, 14 Apr 2006

A clamping good time

I just ordered an Extech clamp meter, for the measurement of currents. DC current, to be exact. I've actually wanted one of these things for a long time (not this specific one, just a clamp current meter), since they allow you to measure current without opening up the electrical system being measured at all.

This particular one is actually more featureful than I wanted, but it was a great deal. I guess it's an older design, but Extech is still making them due to demand. For $80, there's not a better deal to be found, from my research anyway.

My real goal for it is to figure out the "running" current required by a motorcycle, and then to compare that with the claimed output of the same motorcycle to figure out how much power is left over for running things like lights and heated clothing and GPSes. It should be excellent for that.

I had originally hoped you could just clamp any old AC power cord and see how much current was being used, but of course it's not that simple. Apparently, with the electricity running in both directions (into the device, and back out), the fields sensed by the meter are cancelled out. So, I could cut into the insulation, and separate out just one wire.... No. Anyway, it does mean I'd have to rig up a "separated" length of cable so I could measure just one wire, which really defeats the purpose of walking up to a random cable (like a computer's power cord) and checking to see how much current it was using.

Ah well. Still interesting, and I'm sure I'll have fun playing with it. By which I mean, of course, that it'll be a very useful tool to have at my disposal. Yes.

Posted at 14:42 permanent link category: /gadgets


Thu, 13 Apr 2006

House hunting

A couple of days ago, I stumbled across a house for sale that was (except for the price) disturbingly perfect: it was huge, it had a large two-car garage, minimalist yard, etc. Almost exactly what I'd been looking for. They were asking too much for me, but I could probably stretch to their price if it really was the perfect house.

Here's an unlovely (but fairly accurate) picture of it:

Anyway, it was sufficiently aligned with the points on my little list of "must haves" for my next house that I couldn't reasonably pass it by without at least looking.

For instance: it's 12 blocks north of my current house, and I really dig the neighborhood, except this house is on a much less busy street (yay!); did I mention the enormous garage?; 3000 (yes, three thousand) square feet; many bedrooms (sources varied between 4 and 5); recently remodeled kitchen, and from the pictures it looked like they could have hired me as the consultant; built in 1928... Anyway, the list is actually a lot longer, but those are the highlights.

So, I called up Laura, my friend and sometimes real-estate agent, to see if we could go look at it. Indeed we could, and that evening Kristin, Laura, Laura's 2 year old daughter Alice and I were traipsing around the house.

Fortunately for my pocketbook and my sanity, the place was stinky inside. I don't mean in just an olfactory sense either. The kitchen remodel was actually done pretty cheaply, primarily pointed out by the nasty floating floor that appeared to be installed over carpet(!). Everything had that cheap Value Village feel to it, with inexpensive materials applied as cheaply as possible. As Laura put it, "it's had a coat of Home Depot slapped on." Very true.

The house had been added onto at least twice in its past, once to extend the front, and once to extend the side, toward the north (in that picture above, we're looking at the east face of the house). As a result of this, the layout was really substandard, with weird twists and layouts to "take advantage" of the extra space, without actually making it useable. Each room was a slightly odd shape -- not enough that you'd look at one room and throw up your hands, but the overall effect was throwing-up-hands worthy.

Also, in the stinky department, there were these little scent-pots all over the place. I hope they were just there to cover the new-carpet smell (they must have spent a ton on installing this nice thick beige (ugh) carpet). Whatever they were covering, the comingling of scents was.. uncomfortable.

Speaking of money spent in weird places, the kitchen remodel had included shiny granite countertops (probably around the $4000 mark), but also included this nasty laminate floating floor (a $1500 savings over just doing it for real). Kind of weird where they spent their money, until you realize that it all looks really good in photographs.

I ended up spending some time on zillow.com and redfin.com, two interesting house-valuation sites. Zillow in particular seemed to be really wacky on its pricing, pretty much all over the map. But in the course of that research, I discovered that this house had been sold 3 times in the last two years, twice on one day in 2003, and most recently on December 15 of last year (about 5 months ago). Current owner was Rogue Engerprises LLC or something sketchy.

In talking with the mortgage broker (before I'd seen the house, checking my options), he listened as I described the transactions, and decided it was probably bought as a pre-foreclosure, then sold to one or more wholesalers or renovaters, who were hoping to pass the house off with a coat of paint and some new kitchen bits. Particularly after seeing the house in person, I had to agree.

Anyway, bottom line is that I got really flustered for a couple of days, thinking about what it would take to move myself and all my junk if this ended up being the perfect house. I'm awfully glad it wasn't, 'cause that would have taken a ton of work and time I don't really have right now. But it did make me realize that I have a lot of work ahead of me, getting my own house ready for sale (look for it on the market around this time next year). That's good, I guess.

Posted at 14:01 permanent link category: /misc


Test entry

I just installed this clever new "blogging" package (and let us never use that term again) called Blosxom, and it's looking pretty cool. The setup is super-simple, and it uses a categorization system I really like (just directories on the disk, no weird databases to maintain or anything, and each entry is just a plain text file).

So, I'm going to try doing journal stuff in here for a bit, since it fits my growing desire to write on different topics without having to deploy a new instance of my homegrown journal software for each new category. I've (imperfectly) imported all the journal entries that were already in the motorcycle and aviation sections, and as you can see above, I added a bunch of new categories, too. (The "imperfect" part is that I haven't fixed any links yet.)

I can't really get behind the whole idea of "talkback" or whatever it is that "real" blogs let users do -- if you want to talk to me about a journal entry, send me email. I get enough spam without providing yet another entry-point for it.

Posted at 01:03 permanent link category: /misc


Workin' with Awesome

I'm working on the next Awesome show, called noSIGNAL. I'm the Stage Manager, but so far there hasn't been much to do. I've never worked on a show like this, where half the show is music (and it's not a "musical" in the sense that anyone really understands the word). They don't really want me around for the musical bits (and there's not much I can do, anyway), so even though I was all psyched up to be super busy this month, I'm not.

It'll all get more engaging as we get closer, but it's very odd to have this huge expectation of no free time, and yet find that there's actually lots of time. Now, if only it were easier to predict when I wouldn't have to go to scheduled rehearsals...

Posted at 00:57 permanent link category: /theater


Tue, 11 Apr 2006

SOLAS tape and sparkplugs

Yesterday I got two things done that I've been meaning to do for a while.

The first (and more important one) is I finally got that SOLAS tape onto my helmet. That stuff is bright! Damn! The first piece I stuck on, I forgot to round the corners (to keep it from lifting off so easily) -- when I tried to pull it off to fix it, it resolutely refused to come off. That's some good adhesive. I'm very impressed with the SOLAS tape: it sticks very well, molds to compound curves nicely, and is very reflective. Definitely a worthwhile investment.

The second thing I got done is changing the sparkplugs in the Goldwing. I really should have done that when I got it, but it was running well enough that I couldn't justify the work. I finally got some new plugs, and put them in. Last night, I took it for its first run with the new plugs.

There might have been a noticeable difference -- I'm not actually sure. It seemed to have a bit more power, but "seemed to have more power" after a change is commonly just a psychological difference. My car used to run better right after I'd cleaned it. At least, it seemed to.

Anyway, if I felt the difference I think I did, I think the Goldwing's gas mileage is going to go up. The old plugs were definitely weathered looking, although the color was nice, so the mixture isn't far off, if at all. But the electrodes looked a bit nubbly, which is a bad thing for sparkplug electrodes to be -- it suggests poor performance. They should be nice and smooth.

But if I did actually feel a slight increase in performance, then that means the gas is burning with a bit more vigor. That should help efficiency at least as much as it does power. And that's a difference I'll be able to see in the numbers, so I can report on that in the future.

On the whole, it was a fine evening.

Posted at 21:38 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Mon, 03 Apr 2006

Man, it's been forever since I got a chance to sit down and write
in here, but a number of interesting things have happened.

First up, the Story of Free Stuff.

Late last week, I took my cello in to the shop to have some long-neglected repairs done. Because of that, I ended up borrowing another cello from my friend Cam, who has been unable to play for several years due to a hand injury. (This is all apropos, I swear.)

While Cam and I were talking about cellos and sidecars and all (I'd driven the sidecar rig over to her house to pick up the cello), I happened to mention that I was thinking about buying a cheap set of free weights, which I would use as ballast in the sidecar. I think we had drifted to the subject of gyms and working out, which is what prompted the thought.

The next day, we were chatting on irc, and she happened to mention this ad she'd seen on Craigslist, for some free stuff. Among the stuff listed was a set of free weights. I thanked her, and check out the ad. Looked good inasmuch as poorly written text on a website could look good, so I decided to go check it out after work.

I got to the place without any trouble. Sure enough, there was a set of free weights and a weightlifting bench sitting on the sidewalk, along with some other stuff. I examined the set, and counted out 90 pounds in 2.5, 5 and 10 lb weights. Perfect! Delighted, I grabbed the weights and brought them over to the sidecar. I dismounted the weight discs from the bars, and laid them out on the floor of the sidecar, so they would hopefully stay in place.

Not knowing what to do with the bars, I just tossed them in the car as well, figuring I'd probably throw them away or come up with some clever use for them at home. I didn't want to just leave them there, since that seemed against the spirit of helping someone else get rid of stuff.

I geared back up and was just getting ready to leave when someone came up and asked me if I lived there. I indicated I didn't, and figured that was that. He went over and looked over the pile, with a particular eye for the weightlifting bench.

He actually looked just like the sort of guy who would have beat me up in grade school. Big and beefy, with a kind of permanent sneer on his face. He didn't seem unpleasant at all though, aside from my intitial "bully == fear" reaction. I hopped on the Goldwing and set off.

I'd only driven about two minutes when I turned around and headed back. I'd realized that if he was looking at the bench, he might well have some use for the bars. He looked like a weight lifter, in that too-much-bulk-up-powder sort of way. I motored back up to the free stuff house, and was pleased to see that he was still there.

I offered him the bars, and a look of genuine happiness spread over his face. He explained that he had all the weights he needed, but he was really hoping this free pile would include the lifting bars. Particularly this fancy double-bend bar I was handing to him. Huzzah! It worked out perfectly for both of us. I was very glad I'd turned around and gone back.

So, I now have an excellent set of weights to leave in the sidecar as ballast. Much smaller than 10 gallons of water for the same weight.

The next story isn't so cohesive, and is the story of Race Day.

Jesse had his first race of the season this last weekend. I finally had all the stuff I needed to film the event, so I packed up my tripod, little video camera, and a bunch of food and clothes and such. Naturally, it all went in the sidecar, being about 5x more volume than I can reasonably carry on the motorcycle alone.

Unfortunately, race days start really early, and I was hoping to get a fair amount of each day on tape. I woke up at about 6:00 on Saturday morning, and after a bit of dithering because of the rain, finally left around 7:30. It was a cold ride down to Pacific Raceways.

The rain didn't particularly let up on Saturday, which made for a wet track, and a wet crew. We were all complaining of the wet and cold. I never warmed up after my cold ride, and spent the whole day with my riding suit on, because I didn't want to lose the marginal warmth it was helping me retain.

I did end up filming a number of the pit discussions, which were interesting, and may or may not actually make interesting film. I also shot the two practice runs, once from track-level at turn 10, which is called "The Bus Stop" for its hard, 10 MPH curve. I also filmed from up in the grandstands, where I had a view of the same corner, but from higher up. I could also see farther around the track.

On Sunday, I got there around 9 am, and was just in time to try filming the first practice run before the two races. Unfortunately, the sun was in such a position that filming was pretty well pointless, so I gave up and went back to the sidecar, where I took off the riding suit and ate a belated breakfast.

However, an important point from that last paragraph: Sun! The clouds were breaking up, and it looked like the day would be at least fairly rain-free, if not actually sunny.

Jesse's bike was working well, although he arrived after the practice on the crash truck (so-called because it's there to help transport crashed or non-functional motorcycles from the track to the pits). He said at first that he thought it might be a battery problem (these bikes run with no electrical power generation, so the battery just slowly discharges over the weekend). A short while later, with some chagrin showing in his face, he annouced that he found the problem with the bike: it had run out of gas.

Meanwhile, I was helping a man named Arash (pronounced "Ar-ash") with his bike. It looked good: clean, well painted, no dirt. Unfortunately, he said it got him up to the starting line, then just died. Another vintage racer and I went through and checked the obvious stuff, and found a number of problems. The carburetors had some weird parts in them, which would probably make the bike run funny, but not suddenly die.

Then I pulled out the multimeter and checked the battery. It read 3V. Yes, three. It's supposed to read 12V or so, or 11 if it really needs to be charged. Ooops. Fortunately, Robin (the other vintage racer who was helping out) had a charger for just such occasions, and we set Arash's bike to charging.

Long story short, it was indeed the battery. The carburetor adjustments we'd made would definitely help things out, but the battery was the fundamental problem. I really like working on these old bikes; they're so simple. After missing the first practice run and the first race, Arash was able to run most of the second race. I don't think he actually finished, since he said the bike started running rough near the end of the final lap. He decided that pulling off the track and getting a ride back in the crash truck was better than having the engine suddenly die in a corner -- an excellent choice.

I'm impressed that battery actually made it around five laps. After running the bike around the pits for a minute or two, he came back and we measured 9V after reading 11V before he started. I didn't think it would power the spark plugs for more than 1-2 laps.

I don't remember the exact result, but I think Jesse ended up posting a 2:20 lap as his best time. That's up 7 seconds from his best last year of 2:13, but this was the first race, on a different bike, and when the track was cold and relatively damp (fortunately it was dry enough not to be a real factor).

I think I got some good footage out of it. I'll have to review it and see what looks good. Hopefully the pit conversations are interesting and audible and cohesive enough to mean something.

It was a fun weekend, but when I got home at 5:30 (daylight savings time had kicked in that morning, so I was extra-tired from missing that hour of sleep), I had just enough energy to flop on the bed and sleep for an hour. That was nice. The rest of the evening was spent watching a movie, despite ambitious plans to review race footage with Jesse.

Posted at 23:45 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Mon, 27 Mar 2006

I was sitting quietly in my office this morning when a familiar
face appeared in my door. It was Todd, the person who bought my Ninja 250 back in September.

I'd followed along as he reported a few snippets of his trip this last month to a mailing list we're both on. I didn't realize the full extent of it, though, until he stopped by this morning. I just knew that he'd ridden from Seattle to Daytona Beach, Florida in a week, which seems like madness regardless of which bike you're on.

In fact, he had ridden for a month, from Seattle to Florida, and then very circuitously back to Seattle, spanning 8000 miles. I didn't get a lot of details on the trip, but it sounds like it was a lot of fun.

I was interested in some technical details of the trip, and he was happy to discuss them with me. In particular, he said that when he'd run out of electrical power with the driving light on, he had been riding at about 7500 RPM. That was the only extra load on the electrical system, so I now know that the Ninja 250's electrical system needs to be spinning above about 8k RPM to support a 55w extra load. There's not a lot of headroom in that electrical system, to say the least.

He also said that the bike didn't really burn oil unless the motor was turning around 10 or 11k RPM. That's no real surprise to me, as I always found that riding on the freeway would burn a lot of oil. Freeway speeds are usually over 9k RPM if you want to keep up with traffic.

His actual goal in coming and talking to me was to offer me the chance to buy back the bike. I refused without any hesitation, since I know that I want a new or nearly new 250 for my next bike, not one that's already lived at least half its useful life. However, I asked him what he thought his next bike, and with a similar lack of hesitation, he said, "K1200S."

If you're not familiar with the BMW K1200S, the very brief rundown is that it's the most insanely powerful motorcycle BMW has ever made, producing 167 HP. That's about the same as a mid-size car. Yet it weighs 550 lbs. It's about 5x more powerful than the Ninja 250, for a moderately small weight gain. It's also a very expensive motorcycle, at $15,800 list (figure $1000ish for options you'd want, plus about $1000 for freight, setup, and license, and 8.8% tax brings it out to a solid $19,366 by the time it's on the road).

He didn't seem to have any qualms about going to a motorcycle that costs 10x his current bike and makes more than 5x the power. After hearing about the 8000 mile trip, it seems like a better choice for him than the Ninja 250, I have to say.

Posted at 20:27 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sat, 18 Mar 2006

Picked up a new shock today. With
any luck, it can be rebuilt and reconfigured a tiny bit to work on the future Ninja 250. If not, it'll hold its resale value pretty well. Huzzah!

Posted at 15:52 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Wed, 15 Mar 2006

I was up a bit earlier than normal yesterday, so I went by the
local DOL subagent, and got my license plates swapped around again. The Le Mans is now free of all possible entanglements to its sale (previously it had my ham call license plate on it, which is illegal to transfer to anyone else). The sidecar is now my official radio-geek vehicle, which is appropriate -- it's the most likely vehicle to get some kind of radio installed on/in it.

I got the sidecar's windshield mounted to the hinges a day or two ago, and it looks pretty good. I still don't have the angle adjustment system built yet, so the shield is just lying flat against the sidecar's body. I'm not sure about the style, as I rounded the corners in a way that may be a stylistic clash with the rest of the rig.

I just posted the Z to Craigslist, so I guess it's really for sale.

Posted at 12:53 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sun, 12 Mar 2006

A washéd bike

I got the Z750s all washed up last night, and took some lovely pictures for use on the (not yet really posted) for sale page. I can't decide if I want to keep those CRG bar-end mirrors and bar-end weights or not. The mirrors are worth $170 or so all by themselves, and I put easily 5 hours of work into the bar-end weights (mostly learning how to turn something on a lathe, but 5 hours nevertheless).

Part of the problem is that the CRG mirrors aren't really what I was hoping for. They're small enough that they have to be sharply convex to have a wide enough view -- this makes everything look really small, so it's hard to identify anything further than tens of feet back. They're fine mirrors, and well designed, but not really the optical quality I want when looking out for braindead drivers behind me.

I also haven't decided exactly on price. I suspect the $6200 I have posted is too high, and I don't want to have to sit on this bike too. Suffice to say I'm not buying any more motorcycles until I sell at least one. (Where would I put it?)

I went up to PsychoBarn's sale they had this weekend, where they were advertising that they would sell any bike on the floor for their cost (plus reasonable freight and setup fees, of course). I went during the designated 2 hours, and asked one of the salesmorons what their out-the-door price on a new Ninja 250 would be. In reply I got:

"Well, see, what we do is, we fill out the paperwork with the normal price, and setup and freight and tax and all that, and then we take it back to the sales managers. They slash the price a bit, but you're not going to see the same kind of discount on a three thousand dollar bike like this that you would on a ten thousand dollar bike, right? I mean, the salesmen don't know what the price will be, we have to take it back to the sales managers, and they tell us what the price will be..."

It went on like that for far longer than it should have -- he could have said, "I don't know, we'd have to fill out the forms and take it to the sales managers" and that would have been enough. I finally cut him off and said, "that's fine, don't worry about it."

I had asked Jesse as we were walking in what percentage chance there was that I'd buy a bike that day. I said I was figuring about 3%, and he agreed that that seemed likely. I can't stand CycleBarn's sales practices, they're high-pressure and low-intellect. If you go back far enough in these pages, you'll find the story of them trying to tell me a 2 year old Ninja 250 with 5000 (or something) miles on it was worth $2999 (or, list price). Uh, no. What particularly galls me about that interaction was that they basically told me, "no, we'll find someone stupider than you to buy the bike." And they did.

Anyway, I can't stand the way their salespeople treat customers. So, I figured there would be a very minimal chance they'd somehow tell me they'd sell me a new Ninja 250 for $3400 or something, and I wouldn't be able to resist. Not to be so. The whole "fill out the forms and see what the sales manager says" game is a load of crap designed to get the buyer into the mindset that he is committed to the deal now, and usually ends up in people feeling fleeced after the deal is done. Not where I want to be.

The guy at Lake City Kawasaki said the usual out the door price on a 250 is about $3800, which sounds high, but not unreasonable. He also said sort of off-hand, "there's only about $150 in them anyway." That was interesting to hear, since I now know their invoice price on the bike (although I'd already heard it was around $2850).

Someone on the Ninja 250 board reported getting a 250 for $3400 out the door at Renton, so it's tempting to go asking down there and see if they'll repeat the deal. I think before I do that, I'll ask Lake City if they'll sell one to me for that price (which is a bit of a hit, although it's such a low priced bike to start with that it's not actually all that bad), see if I can play them off Renton. At least Lake City is close enough that I could reasonably ride the bike home without totally busting the break-in.

I was down at Boeing Surplus last weekend, and picked up some more aluminum sheet (probably 1/8" thick or thicker), which I'm going to use to make a windshield for the sidecar passenger. Right now, there's far too much wind hitting the passenger in the face, and it would be much more comfortable with something deflecting the wind. I was originally going to use plexiglas, but the same size of plexi would cost around $50. I paid about $3 for the aluminum. It'll be a good excuse to try out my new riveter, too.

The challenge with the sidecar windshield will be making it adjustable. I really want to allow the passenger the freedom to change the angle, and the best idea I've had so far is a sort of Y arrangement where the vertical leg on the Y is threaded, and the arms go up to attach to the shield. Finding or making the threaded bit will be the difficult part. I'll have to see what I can find at Lowes.

Posted at 18:52 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Mon, 06 Mar 2006

I finished the Z's seat last night. It actually turned out quite
well. It looks very nice, and it's a huge improvement over the stock seat. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a staple gun suitable to shoot staples completely into the plastic seat pan. Even using the shortest staples, most of them went in part way, or bent up strangely. It's not a functional problem, but it looks unprofessional. I guess the seat pan material on the Z is harder than on the Ninja 250.

Speaking of Ninja 250s, I noticed that CycleBarn is having a "dealer cost" sale next weekend. That is, maybe they are. They're kind of evasive about it on the phone. I called and asked the salesman who answered for details about the sale (the website says "call for details"). He immediately said, "oh, we don't have any details, the sales managers haven't told us anything yet." When pressed, he explained that it was probably (but not for sure) a sale in which they sold bikes for their cost, probably plus freight, maybe but probably not plus setup. ("Do I have to pay for setup as well?" "I don't know... I don't think so.") When further pressed: "What's your cost on the Ninja 250 then?" he replied, "I don't know what our cost is on that bike."

So, basically, it was a useless phone call. However, once we'd established that he wasn't going to tell me anything because he's apparently clueless, he started wheedling me to "come on down" because it's got to be the best sale in town. I mean, right? It's dealer cost, so it's got to be the best price! Right!?

Ugh. So much for CycleBarn (again). I'd rather pay $500 more for a bike at a dealership which doesn't make me feel like I've just been slimed. I giving CB chances to prove they're not complete slimeballs, and they keep proving how slimy they are.

Posted at 15:07 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Fri, 03 Mar 2006

This morning there was a heavy frost on the ground, and I elected
to ride the sidecar. I bought an instant-up canopy last weekend to cover the sidecar, or whichever bike was evicted from the garage. I'd taken it down during a touch of high wind a few days ago, so the sidecar was uncovered.

I noticed a touch of frost on the bike as well, until I got around and had a close look at the seat. There was a "puddle" of ice. No problem, I tapped on it and freed it from the cover.

Then I sat down. The seat didn't move. Oh. It was frozen solid. How silly.

My butt was quite cold by the time I got to work.

In other news, I went home via Ducati Seattle to check out a used Monster 620 they had on their website. It was sold yesterday, so I didn't get to see that bike, but they did have a demo bike which I test rode.

The bike struck me as being much like the SV650 I rode earlier this week. It had a nicer throttle, without the on/off lightswitch effect of the SV. On the other hand, the ergonomics were even worse. The seat was pretty low, but the pegs were even closer. The handlebars were further forward and wider, all of which conspired to make the ride fairly uncomfortable.

For the price, it's definitely not the right bike. The SV650, which felt functionally similar to me (I'm sure I would have noticed differences with more time) costs more than $1000 less new, and is easy to find used.

I'm glad I took the time to ride it, though. The Monster 620 is one of those bikes I've been curious about for a long time, although I've always suspected it'd be too small for me. It's good to have actual experience to back it up.

Posted at 21:12 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Tue, 28 Feb 2006

Cool. So, I just got back from a quick test ride of both the SV650
and the V-Strom 650. Same engine, different bikes. Quite a bit different, really.

I liked the SV650 a lot (as I'd suspected I would), but the seat and pegs are far too close together, even closer than the Le Mans was before I changed the pegs. It was very cramped. I could fix it by raising the seat, but I'd have to add 2-3 inches to make enough difference, and that's a lot of seat to add.

Then there's the problem with the on-off throttle. Right at that point where you go from acceleration to deceleration, it's very abrupt. I had a terrible time being smooth, and felt like a baby horse going arond corners -- very rickety and uncertain. It's better at higher speeds, but I spend most of my riding time at low speed. Not really acceptable.

The SV does have plenty of power (feels like more than the Z, actually). It also feels much lighter and slimmer. Except for those first obvious flaws, the SV would be a great bike. I suspect that my gas mileage, however, would hover around 30, and that's not a situation I want to get back into; that's what I'm trying to get out of.

The V-Strom was much more comfortable. Actually, it was a bit too much so in the "sit up and beg" direction. That'd be easy enough to fix with lower handlebars (the only problem I had with the seating position), but there are other troubles. The engine has that same on-off problem of the SV, except it feels like it's got 2/3 the power. It's a heavier bike, which makes a difference, but I didn't think it'd make that much difference. It is a slightly different engine, but it wasn't the change I was expecting based on reports I'd read.

So, overall, the SV650 and V-Strom 650 are not for me, at least not right now. I'm still glad I rode them, and now I know. The SV650 would be a great track bike or fun bike, and the V-Strom would be a fabulous touring bike. On the other hand, I already have a decent touring bike, in the form of the Le Mans (at least until/if it sells). So, I think I'll be skipping those two bikes for now.

When I got back on the Z after riding the two Suzukis, it felt really heavy. I'm definitely following the right path by looking into a different bike. Impressively to the SV650's credit, the Z750s also felt fairly heavy and slow while riding. It's still fine, but it throws the 2 vs. 4 cylinder engine classes into stark contrast. I'm definitely a fan of twins.

In other news, I didn't much notice the seat, which means it's pretty much done. I need to clean up some, but it should only be another few evenings of work before it's done. Hopefully by this weekend. Then I can start cleaning it up to sell.

Posted at 18:50 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Mon, 27 Feb 2006

Ok, so I'm coming around to the fact that I pretty much need to
sell the Z and get something different. This sort of leaves open the question of "which bike?"

My thoughts, approximately in order, are:

This time, I need to actually try to ride some of these things. I suspect I still would have made the choice I did when I bought the Z, but you never know. So I guess I'm off to spend the occasional moment riding a few different bikes.

I'm not very excited about the various dual-sport bikes, but I've been slightly fascinated with the KLR650 for a while now, so I figure it'd be worth at least test riding. The DR-Z400 looks like it's got a completely painful seat for more than local riding, so I'd either have to fix it or never ride very far.

I'm very leery of the Ducati, since I think I'm not all that excited about getting another Italian bike. The Moto Guzzi experience wasn't all that good, and continues to decline as I see brand new, never ridden 2002 Le Mans' available for $7900.

Something like a CB-1 is fascinating, and the right size, but really the last thing I want for my one-and-only motorcycle is to have a 10-15 year old bike with questionable parts supply.

I've been interested in the SV650 for a while, and I really owe it to myself to try riding one. I'm worried that they get terrible gas mileage, but it may be that everyone reporting their mileage is a wild-eyed acceleration-hungry monster. Unfortunately, I won't know that from a test-ride.

Later...

I think I need to add the Suzuki V-strom 650 to my list of bikes to consider. I like what I read. I still think a Ninja 250 is the most likely next bike, but this is an excellent time to expand horizons.

Posted at 21:53 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sun, 26 Feb 2006

I haven't made any decisions, but I was curious to sit down and do
the math (and thought others might be interested) on getting a 250 again. Obviously the bike itself costs about $3500 out the door, which is more or less negotiable. I'm not so worried about that at the moment, but rather at the cost of the upgrades I would want to do.

Item Approx. cost
Hyperlites (LED taillight augmentation) $80
Rear shock $350
Front fork springs $90
Front fork cartridge emulators $160
Seat rebuild $60ish
Bike computer $20ish
Stainless steel front brake line $60ish
BT-45 tires $200ish

So, grand total, that looks like about $1000 more or less. None of these things has to happen right away, although the suspension and brake lines would be first on the list. Tires and hyperlites would come up a close second. The seat rebuild and bike computer are kind of fluff items, but I really liked them on the previous 250, and I'll definitely do them again. Besides, they're the cheapest things on the list (although fairly labor intensive).

After the drop last night, I put the Z away and didn't even look at it again. I figured I'd probably had enough. I'll take a look at it this morning (I'm writing this at 4:45 in the morning after cat allergies woke me up -- the same allergic reaction which indirectly caused me to drop the Z), and see if I can't finish up the seat. It needs a bit more shaving to fit me, and then some shaping to look nice (it's still got weird lumpy parts on the edges, since I've been concentrating entirely on the parts that contact me).

I got some hardware to install on the Z (a pair of strap retaining fittings called footman's loops), but now I'm not sure I want to put them on. There's a real question in my mind as to whether or not I'll even keep the bike another month. It would be silly to drill any more holes if I'm just going to sell it. I guess I'll see what I think after finishing the seat, since the hardware I got is pretty specific to taking longer trips. Don't have any of those planned right now.

I emailed the guy who was working on racks for the Ninja 250 years ago, to see if he ever went anywhere with them. He mailed back a week ago to say that he hadn't, but he could build me one if I wanted. That's pretty interesting, since it looked like a good modification, and one I'd use a lot if I got another Ninja 250.

Posted at 04:59 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sat, 25 Feb 2006

The Z's seat progress continues, although it's going slowly now. I
got it to the point where it was just about right, and realized that I had to dig deeper into the foam right where I was about to break through. D'oh! So I pulled out some more foam (actually from doing the Ninja's seat a few years ago), cobbled together an inch-thick piece big enough to cover what I needed to do, and glued it on.

Now, I'm working on the shape I want, and I've already gone through the 1" layer I just laid down, at one spot. Hopefully it'll be enough (although I think it will). On the positive side, even the first iteration and this moment in the second iteration are thousands of times more comfortable than the stock seat. So, progress is definitely happening.

I'm waiting right now for the batteries to charge in my handheld drill, and wondering whether I should bust out the corded drill (which probably turns too fast for this work).

In other news, I had someone stop by to look at the Le Mans the other day. No idea if it'll sell this time, but it would be nice. I discovered that you can currently buy a brand-new 2002 Le Mans from Moto I for basically what I'm asking for mine. The new one wouldn't have the comfy seat or luggage, but it's hard to swallow spending new-bike money for an old bike (even if you do the math on what all the included bits would cost you).

* * * *

God damnit! The fucking Z fell over again, once again at nearly zero miles per hour. Adding more scratches to that crankcase cover (which is strangely covered in a light film of oil with no apparent source). I'm getting really sick of this bike and its obnoxious top-heaviness.

In my defense, I was suffering from a moderate asthma attack, so breathing was taking a lot of my attention, but that shouldn't have caused the bike to go over.

Someone wrote to me and said, "you know, you sound like a man who's talking himself out of what he wants." That person is right, I'm trying really hard to stick with the decision to get the stupid, top-heavy Z, with its obnoxious gas-guzzling ways and too-much-power. And now, having dropped it a second time (this time in gravel, thankfully, which means more cosmetic damage, but zero chance of structural damage), I'm sure it's worth even less. All of which pisses me off further still, and makes me think (right at the moment) that selling this ridiculous bike and getting a Ninja 250 is a really good idea.

I'm going to sleep on it, but this just kind of shoves me even further in that direction. I know I can live with a Ninja 250 -- heck, I can even tour on one. This Z750s is not proving so easy to live with.

Posted at 18:40 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Thu, 23 Feb 2006

Ok, I went back and read the MCN article (conveniently available in
PDF form here), and ordered myself a set of Gripster Ice Grip panels. We'll see what I think of them, but I suspect they'll be a distinct improvement over the current situation.

I also took another ride, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record (remember those? big black disc-y things that make noise?) it's nearly there. A bit more trimming, then I'll take another spin and see how things feel. It's my hope that by the end of today (which is weird to say, since it's just past midnight), I'll have the Z's seat buttoned up. How's that for an optimistic statement?

Posted at 00:11 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Wed, 22 Feb 2006

I took a longer ride on the seat today, and it's pretty good.
There's some pressure on the forward end, but a few quick passes with the grinding wheel will take care of that. I suspect I'm close to being done. Woo!

Now, I just have to find my old materials and see what I have left. I suspect I have enough headliner material, but that I'll need to acquire more vinyl. In any case, there's probably a surface finish of vinyl that I'd like better than the one I used for the Ninja's seat.

I was in Bellevue Kawasaki today, and saw that they had a 2003 Ninja 250 for sale. There was a moment of temptation, but I resisted. It's amazing how much physically smaller those bikes are than the Z.

I was actually in there looking for these pads which adhere to the sides of the tank, and afford a grippy surface. It apparently quite improves overall control, being another point where you're "attached" to the bike. They had some generic pads, with big knobs on the surface, but I wasn't that convinced. I thought I remembered MCN rating some other brand higher, so I wanted to do some research before spending my $40. I'm sure any of them would work fine, and be a huge improvement, but I can't just plonk down money like that on what amounts to a whim at this point.

Posted at 14:48 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Today started well enough, but quickly went downhill. I had just
ripped the seat cover off the Z's seat, when I discovered I couldn't find the electric knife I was going to use to cut the seat foam. Hmm. Nope, not there. Nor there. Nor there! Damn! Where the devil could the thing be!?

After about 20 minutes of fruitless searching, I finally had a vague recollection of loaning the knife and a set of sanding discs to my friend Jesse. I called him, let a message, checked into irc, but he wasn't responding. Finally, I got hold of him, and he confirmed that he did, in fact, have the electric knife and sanding discs. Hallelujah! We arranged the pickup, and I was soon happily cutting foam.

So, in the last five hours, I've got the seat almost completely formed. It's going much more quickly this time, now that I have the Ninja's seat under my belt. I just got the pillion section glued down, and am waiting for the glue to dry so it doesn't gum up the electric knife's blade too much.

Surprisingly, I managed to get the shape just about right before my first test ride. I had thought it was sloped too far forward (which is the problem I was trying to fix -- argh), but when I rode it, it was actually pretty well spot-on. There was some pressure on the forward part of the seat under my legs, but that's easy to fix.

Posted at 14:42 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Mon, 20 Feb 2006

A thing occurred to me the other day. I was driving somewhere (not
on a motorcycle due to passengers) and saw a group of five motorcyclists pass through the intersection in front of me. They weren't doing anything wrong, just riding. But what I noticed was this: they were all riding Harleys (or at least bikes that looked like Harleys).

What's remarkable about this? Nothing on the face of it. However, although it was a bright sunny day, it was also just above freezing. I had seen no other motorcycle riders that whole day.

This isn't the only time something like this has occurred to me. I've seen Harley riders all over the place when there were no other bikers to be found.

This all flies in the face of the popularly (at least among the motorcycle community) held conception that Harley riders are extreme fair-weather riders. Simply not true, at least not in the Seattle area. On days when I've seen nary a BMW rider, or Goldwing rider, there were Harley riders.

They're getting out there, loading up their bikes, and taking trips. It's a model more bikers should follow. When I cruise around the message boards I frequent, I see a lot of Harley-bashing, and I don't think it's entirely fair. There may be a ton of Harleys slowly collecting dust in the garage over the winter, but they're also the people I see out riding more often than anyone else.

The sportbikers completely dissappear when it rains, or when it's cold out. There are a few hardy commuters like myself, but not very many. But if I see someone riding on a weekend in this season, they're probably on a Harley.

Now if only I could get them to wave back.

Posted at 08:53 permanent link category: /motorcycle


I was riding the Goldwing into work today when I glanced down a
sidestreet and saw a fairly amazing view. It was good enough that I had to stop and snap a picture:

That's the Olympic mountain range, west of Seattle. I took the picture around 7:50 this morning.

In other news, the Goldwing remains hard to start. The other night I left it parked on the street while I was running a show downtown, and when I got out to start it around 11:30, it took about five minutes to get running. Every time I pressed the starter button, I just heard the starter spin without catching. I'm developing a theory that there's a bit too much oil in the crankcase (but not enough to cause any damage), and particularly when parked uphill, the starter has problems. The starter clutch is apparently sensitive to oil type, so presumably can also be sensitive to oil level.

Theoretically, the starter parts I ordered last week will be in soon, and I'll have a chance to do a bit of refurb on the Goldwing's starter. Hopefully that'll solve most of the problems, although the starter clutch will continue to be a problem until I drain out some oil (I hope).

Posted at 08:45 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Mon, 06 Feb 2006

I've felt like all my bikes are falling apart lately. They're not
really, but they both have problems. The Goldwing needs some pretty serious starter attention, as the starter's got several problems at the same time. The biggest one is that the starter clutch, a device buried deep in the engine, is not working right all the time. That could be a symptom of slightly overfilling the oil at the last oil change, or it could be an indication of impending doom. The starter motor itself is also showing signs it needs to be rebuilt, and sooner rather than later. sigh

The Z was also having problems, but of a much more benign nature. I could hear one exhaust pulse louder than the others, which suggested that at least one of the exhaust headers was coming loose. Annoying, but hardly the end of the world. I fixed that today, by tightening all the header nuts, each and every one of which was way too loose.

Imagine you've got a nut about a half inch across, and you grab it with your fingers and tighten it just as tight as it will go. That's about 5-6 lb-ft of torque, depending on how strong you are. If you get a screwdriver-shaped nut driver, and really cranked them down, you might get up to 10 lb-ft, maybe 15. Well, these nuts are supposed to be torqued to 12 lb-ft, and they all required at least a 1/4 turn, some of them requiring a half turn. That's pretty loose.

I have a theory that if I'd left the situation for another 5-10 heat up/cool down cycles, I would have started losing nuts off the headers. Now that would be bad, but fortunately I caught it well before that point.

The Goldwing isn't going to be so simple to fix. Rebuilding the starter won't be bad, that's just a matter of unbolting it and pulling it apart to put in new bits and clean out the dirt. If I have all the parts handy, it'll take less than an afternoon. But if the starter clutch is croaking, that'll mean taking the engine out of the bike. This is not a trivial task.

For one thing, I don't really have space to do it. The garage holds the sidecar rig and all the bikes, but not with any room to work on any of them. If I pulled out the two solo bikes and put the sidecar rig in the center, I might have enough space to pull the motor, but then where do I work on it? I could leave the sidecar outside the garage, but I want to move the engine the shortest distance possible to go from bike to work bench. On top of any of those considerations, I have to take the sidecar body off to do it, and once I've got it off, where does it go? It'd have to be outside, which is kind of icky. I'm not looking forward to this one.

The other complication is that if I went to all the trouble of pulling the engine out of the bike, I would definitely want to replace the clutch (easy as long as the engine's out) and look at a bunch of other stuff to make sure it's all working correctly. In particular, I'd want to check to see if the top end needs to be rebuilt, which is a many-weeks-long process (the rebuilding, not the checking). Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to discount that lower-mileage Goldwing...

Posted at 14:07 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Thu, 02 Feb 2006

First impressions of the Garmin 76Cx.

I finally got my Garmin 76Cx yesterday, and have spent some time playing with it. This page details my first impressions -- obviously, if I've only had it for a day, I haven't explored a lot of its capabilities.

Background for this review is that I'm coming from a Garmin 12Map, which is basically a GPS III+ in a 12-series case, and limited to vertical orientation only. It's a comparatively limited GPS, with a mono screen, no autorouting, and a 1.44MB memory size. I got the 76Cx to use on a motorcycle, so things like waterproofness, and the ability to use it with gloves on were important in the decision.

First off, the 76Cx feels pretty solid. It's light (Garmin claims it floats, although I haven't tested that), but it doesn't feel cheap. It doesn't creak or shift at all, and still manages to convey a good sense of quality, which sparse devices sometimes fail at. The buttons are big, and relatively easy to hit. On mine, they're also pretty stiff, requiring a reasonably hard press to register. My thumb is actually sore from the limited key pressing I've done so far.

Inserting batteries was easy, but I noticed that one battery got a coiled spring on its negative terminal, while the other got a leaf type spring. I wonder if one of them will fail sooner than the other. The MicroSD card is truly micro. I fear I'd lose it very very easily -- it's about the size of my pinky nail.

On powerup, there's a brief flash of the screen, followed maybe 3 seconds after you hit the button by a series of ascending tones and a welcome screen. The unit quickly switches to the satellite acquisition screen. When I'm outside and doing a warm startup, it already knows where it is by the time the satellite page comes up (about 7 seconds after the first poweron page). In my office (on the ground floor, with two stories of concrete-and-rebar above me), I get zero signal. On the second floor, I just barely got some signal -- hardly the "indoor navigation" Garmin claimed, but it would be amazing if any signal penetrated this building.

I took it out with me to lunch yesterday, and travelled a more roundabout route to and from lunch than I normally take, checking out the receiver a bit. It had a hard time with walking speed some of the time, having me going all sorts of wacky directions, and at a variety of speeds. The basemap, I also noticed, is stinky, having only major roads (like freeways) shown, and the one that I passed under in real life remained half a mile away on the screen. It had none of the surface streets which even the 12Map has in its basemap. To be fair, I didn't touch either the provided software or the City Select v7 that I got with the unit, and it looks like the provided software includes a slightly better map than what's preloaded.

One of my first problems in actually using the GPS was that I couldn't figure out how to get cardinal directions (N or NW, for instance) and compass heading (358° for instance) to show. I could get one or the other, but not both. I called Garmin today, and confirmed that that's the case -- you're limited to either cardinal letters for direction, or degrees (or mils), but you can't mix-n-match. This is kind of an "oh well" for me, but I can see how some people would be annoyed. I passed on the suggestion that "Heading - degrees" and "Heading - cardial letters" (and so on for the several other bearing-type databoxes) be added to the list of customizable data fields.

The 76Cx still uses the PAGE and QUIT keys to move between pages, which I got used to in the 12XL and 12Map. This GPS has the ability to add pages into the page rotation (and take them out), which is quite handy. I've left it in the default setting for now, but I'll probably play with it more as I develop a sense of what I'd rather have available. I think every single data field can be customized to some extent in this receiver, which is a great feature to have.

Unfortunately, some fields are missing. As I mentioned above, there's no way to show "N" and "358°" at the same time. Also gone is the compass tape across the top of the screen which the 12XL and 12Map had. The list of fields which can be included, while very long, feels incomplete -- some of the data I'd really like to see doesn't seem to be there. Like voltage. I have a feeling there are others, but I can't think of them at the moment.

The screen is pretty quick to respond when switching pages. The CPU is obviously speedy. Route calculation seems quick to me, but I've never really used an autorouting GPS before. I've got it set to the next-to-slowest setting, which is the default.

The autorouting (once I installed the detailed maps from City Select) started out pretty good. I had it calculate the routes between a few places I go all the time (work, my house, a business, etc.), and the routes usually made sense. The only one that didn't make any sense was when it routed me through a recent construction zone, so I can't really complain.

Then, I tried it on a couple of simple freeway trips. The first one was extremely wacky because I just wanted to go down I-5, but forgot that I'd set it to avoid freeways (I had been seeing what kind of cool route it might come up with for motorcycle rides). It tried to route me off at every exit. The perplexing part of that is that I'd forgotten all about the "avoid freeways" setting. Maybe one just gets used to checking settings.

The other funny thing was that, coming back, I went a different way (and remembered to change my preferences); it routed me by a reasonable but traffic-prone route. I took a slightly alternate route (going from Renton to Seattle at 3:30 pm on Friday -- I chose 405 to 90, it chose 405 to 520). But once I took my alternate turn, it spent the next 20 minutes (about as long as it took to go half way along my alternate) telling me to get off at the next exit and turn around. It was remarkably insistent.

The screen is quite good, although it looks dim when inside. Under even a dark overcast sky, the screen is very readable, though. The backlight is very good, evenly lighting the screen. It has some large number of brightness levels (21, in fact).

Surprisingly to me, the beeper is very quiet. Where I could hear the beeper on either the 12XL or 12Map at 50 MPH with earplugs in, the 76Cx is so quiet that it's inaudible above about 25 MPH on the motorcycle. It's about right inside a quiet car, but far too quiet to be useful on a motorcycle, or with an outboard motor running on a small boat. It's not a big deal, since I usually turn off the beeper, but I can see how that's a useful detail for some people who might read this.

Physically, I'm glad to see that the 76Cx still retains the "standard" Garmin plug, the 4-pin circular plug. The USB port on the unit is a standard size, so you're not utterly stuck if you lose the Garmin-supplied cable. The external antenna connector is the standard MCX my other GPS receivers have had.

I've had the GPS through several downpours now, and the unit is not obviously the worse for wear. That's exactly what I expected, but there's a difference between "believe us when we say our product is waterproof" and "I just got back from this rainstorm, and it's still working."

Posted at 00:35 permanent link category: /gadgets


Thu, 26 Jan 2006

Quick update on the sidecar

I asked the question over on hpsidecars.com (a high-performance sidecar site, where they're also quite generally knowledgable about sidecars in general). The overwhelming concensus was that my bike has lots of life left in it, and replacing the Goldwing with a "newer" one would be a fairly fruitless waste of time and money. Good enough for me.

The Goldwing hasn't been showing any signs of trouble. I was just looking at the odometer and thinking to myself, "jeez, I know these are sturdy bikes, but 75 thousand miles with a sidecar has got to be hard on a bike." Apparently, I'm underestimating the Goldwing.

Back to the regularly scheduled program.

I'm still not serious about selling the Z to get another Ninja 250, but the idea persists. I'm going to keep the Z for a year. If, in early September this year I'm still thinking seriously about trading it all in for a Ninja 250, I'll do it. As much as I can't stomach the crappy gas mileage on the Z, the potential of $1000-1500 depreciation over the course of a few months sits even less well. Was that English?

Posted at 14:38 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Tue, 24 Jan 2006

Arg, feeling just a trifle frustrated today.

I stumbled randomly across MotoPort clothing today, particularly their Air Kevlar jacket. I was interested to see that they had an "independent report" on the abrasion resistance of different fabrics. I eagerly clicked the link, and found a poorly edited PDF with some reasonable looking claims. And down at the bottom, where I was expecting to see "Tests conducted by XYZ Lab" and some contact information, there was... nothing. No, no second page, either. This was a completely unattributed interpretation of a lab report.

My interest at this point was basically piqued, rather than enraged. I called, and spoke with someone (probably Wayne, the owner), and we ended up chatting for about 20 minutes. In the course of the conversation, he completely dissed the Aerostich I normally wear, along with nearly every article of textile motorcycle clothing other than MotoPort clothing. That's probably an unfair characterization, but that's what it felt like.

He also basically said that no one likes a one-piece suit, and that everyone who's gone from an Aerostich to his two-piece suit is so much happier. He cited a few reviews, one on Advrider.com, and one on WebBikeWorld.com. I read through them, and while I agree that the Motoport gear sounds like good stuff, it doesn't sound like an improvement for me.

The more I thought about this, the more frustrated I got. Particularly that one on WBW, which had me thinking, "ok, yes, poly- anything is plastic and could melt, but does that mean it will?" All the assumptions in these reviews got me really riled up.

Part of the reason I'm so riled, as I think about it, is that I've spent the last ~6 years thinking that Aerostich was the absolute pinnacle of motorcycle gear, and here sneaks up this other company quietly claiming that, actually, they are the pinnacle, and Aerostich is just a slickly marketed pretender. So, did I spend $800 on a suit for nothing? Was I duped into buying a pile of crap which will be as protective as tissue paper?

The answer is no. A resounding and definitive no. Self-delusion? Could be, but hear me out. Motoport's claims are based on lab tests. Fine, but do those lab tests have any bearing on reality? Ok, 500 denier Cordura (which is what most of the Aerostich suit is made from) has a 22 pound tear strength, on the test machine. Does that mean I'll ever see that in a real-world situation? No freakin' clue! Great, 1000 denier (the reinforced bits on the Aerostich) is "stronger than leather" according to both Motoport and Aerostich. Great. Do I need stronger than leather? No freakin' clue! Probably not. As I wrote in my sander test article, you can get super duper protection, but you don't really need it. All you need is enough protection to keep your skin off the pavement in one crash. Hooray, the Motoport gear is licensed for road racing in Europe. So? Am I road racing in Europe?

On top of all this frustration, I left work today, and hopped on the Z750s to head home. Traffic was frustrating. I was riding a bit differently, trying to keep the engine above 4000 RPM to test a gas mileage theory. Then it hit me: why am I freaking out about this bike's gas mileage? I shouldn't have to worry about it!

I loved the Ninja 250. It got reasonable to great gas mileage depending on how it was ridden. The Z gets down into the sidecar bike's range, which is really not acceptable. So I'm trying Stupid Riding Tricks to get the gas mileage up. Why? Why? It's better than the Le Mans for gas mileage (with about the same real-world performance), but that's like saying that a Hummer H2 guzzles less gas than a Hummer H1. Neither one is a good representative in a gas mileage contest.

Right now, I'm about that far from selling everything and buying a Ninja 250. I'm not going to, because I know this feeling will pass, but boy am I pissed off and frustrated right now.

I'm sick and tired of struggling over what's right, and what's the best thing. I had almost the perfect bike, and I sold it. I have a nearly perfect suit, and there's no reason I should get rid of it in favor of anything else.

Posted at 18:41 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Mon, 23 Jan 2006

I wanted to mention that my new helmet (a Shoei X-11)is now
fitting much better. It only took a week or two until it started fitting quite well, and now it's to the point that it feels perfect. It's still tight, but it's no longer uncomfortable.

I haven't really had a chance to test the airflow, since it's supposed to be really good. I'll report on that when it's not 45° F outside... The noise level is definitely higher in this helmet than the Arai Quantum/f, and the Quantum was louder than the RF800 before it. Earplugs are definitely a good idea. Interestingly, I don't find that there's much wind noise, it's more like I'm hearing more of the outside world. There's less sound insulation.

Getting used to the Shoei-isms wasn't too hard, although I still react to some things, like opening the faceshield just a little, like I'm wearing the Arai.

Unfortunately, this helmet seems even more prone to fogging than either the RF800 or the Quantum/f. I have no idea what it is, but every helmet is getting worse about fogging. This is even with the FogCity liner installed. Part of it is that my glasses are fogging, but previous helmets were better at this, too. If I fully close up the X-11, I get fogging from my breath up to about 30 MPH, where others would clear consistently if I was moving much at all. I'm sure temperature, humidity, and the Z750s's fairing all impact that, but it's frustrating. One of the claims of the X-11 was improved fog resistance thanks to clever venting. Not really, on that one.

On the up side, the X-11 seems much less prone to throwing tiny bits of road grit into my eyes than the Arai did. That's a change I really appreciate. There's nothing like having a tiny, sharp piece of sand stuck in your eye to completely distract you from driving safely.

I'll keep posting occasional updates as they occur to me. Rest assured I'll have comments about venting and airflow come summer, when I'll really want it to be working.

In other news...

The Z keeps getting worse gas mileage. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. I've been careful to keep the revs down, although that leaves me shifting clumsily; I seem to shift far better when progressing briskly through the gears. Unfortunately, that seems like it should guarantee bad gas mileage as well, so I'm kind of flummoxed on how to treat the bike.

I was in a hurry the other day, and was revving the engine higher into its range. It occurred to me all of a sudden that, in my eagerness to improve gas mileage (down to just under 32 so far), I was riding the bike at around 10% of its potential. My getting on the gas that night represented about 40% of its potential.

But if I'm running at 10% (just under normal riding on a Ninja 250, at a guess), and getting 31-35 MPG.... why? Why? Why? Why do I have this fancy new bike which can go a million miles per hour? Why did I spend all that money on a new bike, just to ride it like a crippled Ninja 250? On that Ninja 250, I was getting 42 MPG minimum, and having a blast riding the bike at 80% of its potential most of the time.

I know why, but the reasons are all logical, not emotional. The emotional side of my riding nature is getting squelched in favor of all the rational stuff. The new bike is built for people my size. It's got enough power to be safer on the freeway. It has a catalytic converter. It's fuel injected, and is a nice, modern design. But on the other hand, I'm riding it like I'm scared of it (true in more ways than just twisting the throttle). I'm not scared of it, I'm scared of hurting my dwindling fuel economy, or having a tire slip. (The tires still feel nervous to me, and don't make me want to corner with any authority.) I can't open the throttle without slamming into a speed limit or another vehicle on the road.

I still like the bike. I mean, I get on, I start the motor, and I enjoy the feeling of riding the bike down the road. But I enjoy it less than I did the Ninja (before it started creaking and making me fear frame failure). Part of it is the fuel economy, part of it is that I dropped the bike in the first week, part of it is the squirrely tires. Part, I'm sure, is the atrocious seat, which I still haven't fixed 2300 miles later.

None of this is to say that the Z will be up for sale any time soon, but I find myself nearly constantly wondering why I don't just sell it and get a new Ninja 250. I liked the Ninja 250 a lot, before it started creaking. My only real substantial beef with the 250 is that it feels a tad anemic on the freeway. Despite that, I took it down to Portland and back, and I'd do it again. I didn't really like the 80 MPH section on I-5, but I did it, and it wasn't awful.

So yeah. None of this should be taken as any kind of action-oriented talk. I'm just thinking out loud. Speaking of thinking, I'm thinking that next, I'll try keeping the revs up on the Z, and see if I can get better gas mileage that way. Maybe below 5k RPM is actually lugging the engine enough to waste gas.

Posted at 17:35 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Fri, 20 Jan 2006

Arg. I just found this ad on Craigslist:

1983 Honda Goldwing - $3500

1983 Honda Goldwing with trailer Mint condition. Call Jim 425-712-9726 

Why arg, I hear you say? Well, I called this Jim, and I spoke with him. If he's telling the truth, that is exactly the bike I want to replace the current Goldwing in the sidecar rig.

The current Goldwing is in surprisingly good condition, but it's got 87k miles on it. That's not a lot for a solo Goldwing, but it's a lot for a sidecar bike. Sidecars put a lot of stress on a bike, what with the asymmetrical forces and extra load.

So, I've been thinking almost since before I got my current hack that it might make sense to find a nice Goldwing of the same vintage, and swap all the sidecar gear over to it. It would be a big job, but probably not more than a couple weeks of dedicated after-work wrenching (he said hopefully).

Of course, as long as I was taking everything apart and switching it over, I'd want to clean it up and repaint parts... So, it wouldn't just take a couple of weeks, if I wanted to do it right. It would take a month or two of dedicated work (part of that time simply due to paint drying and whatnot). That doesn't include painting any bodywork, which I'd still like to do some day.

So, it would take a lot of work, and in the end, I would still have a 23+ year old rig. Not to mention the initial $3500 outlay (ameliorated somewhat by being able to sell the current bike for ~$1000 or $1500). But it would be a much better 23+ year old rig, and still far cheaper than getting a modern good sidecar rig (I'm thinking of the Hannigan Bandito specifically, at about $21k). I would have to spend over $10k beyond the purchase of this $3500 Goldwing to equal the price of the Hannigan, but the Hannigan is a better rig in many many ways (although arguably less "cool" from a retro-appreciation standpoint).

I have to ponder this.

Posted at 16:03 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Thu, 19 Jan 2006

The issue of reliability occurred to me last night, as I was riding
the Z. I realized that my ominous predictions that I would never trust the Z again were unfounded. I've been riding it with my normal level of confidence. That's good, it would be silly to shelve the bike just because one piece of wire was routed wrong on assembly.

Unfortunately, the Goldwing isn't giving me such warm-n-fuzzy feelings. The starter has been acting up for the last few weeks, and I have a feeling it's not going to last much longer. It's been displaying all the classic signs: running sluggishly when warm; solenoid failed to kick in recently; running sluggishly when cold. I'm going to have to read up on how much utter asspain is involved in fixing this problem (ie, replacing the starter).

Posted at 11:59 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Fri, 13 Jan 2006

People have been talking on the Ninja 250 board about adding
acetone to the gas tank (a tiny amount, half an ounce for the 4 gallon tank) in order to aid in keeping the carbs clean. Curious about this, I spent a minute searching for other articles or websites about the practice, to see if other people have had luck getting/keeping their carbs clean with this method.

I found this article and was surprised to suddenly find myself in a world of bogus-sounding claims about increased fuel mileage and how THE MAN DOESN'T WANT US TO KNOW ABOUT IT! (Ok, not quite that wild-eyed, but it skirts the border of that territory.)

So, I'm going to try adding a bit of acetone to the Goldwing, to see if it has any positive or negative effects. I'm already keeping close track of my mileage (via the lovely and free Fuel Record for PalmOS), so we'll see if it makes any substantial difference. I'd love better gas mileage, but my original thought was, "hey cool, maybe I can get the Goldwing's intake tract cleaned out even better." That's really my goal. If I get extra gas mileage, cool. But if I don't have to take the carbs off the Goldwing and scrub them out with carb cleaner and an eye to extreme detail? Woo!

I'll report back, although it'll take a little while. I don't find myself aboard the Goldwing all that much these days.

Posted at 11:22 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Sun, 08 Jan 2006

I finally got a chance to wash my suit. My goodness. It's been a
while.

This time, I'm trying the following method:

It feels a touch excessive, but I'd really like to get the suit waterproof again, and I think the two things keeping me from getting that effect are excess oil/dirt left over despite washing, and excess detergent left over in the suit after washing. Thus all the wash then all the rinse cycles.

Hopefully, the final result will be a suit which is nicely waterproof for more than a few weeks.

I noticed, while I was busy taking the pads out of the suit, that they're all breaking down and crumbling, so I suspect it's time to replace them. Fortunately, a full set of pads is "only" $60. For some reason I'd thought they were over $100, so to see $60 was kind of a relief.

Posted at 16:31 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Thu, 05 Jan 2006

I was just discussing and pondering the concept of tiered access
motorcycle licensing. This is something I've been thinking of for a while, probably several years. I always figured I was alone in my interest in this subject, and was therefore surprised to find this:

Tiered licensing: reader responses from motorcycledaily.com.

Most interesting!

The thought which has occurred to me, which I haven't seen mentioned yet, would be to base the tiers not on horsepower or engine displacement, but on power:weight ratio. This would have a number of interesting effects.

First, it would mean that someone wanting to get a Sportster 883 (relatively low HP, relatively high weight), would be able to do so in the first years of ownership. The ratio of power to weight is completely independent of absolute horsepower or weight or engine displacement -- it has everything to do with how fast the bike will rocket you into the next state, though.

Second, it would provide an incentive for motorcycle manufacturers to stop inflating their HP and deflating their weight numbers. Right now, most manufacturers do whatever they can to make the HP of a motorcycle look as high as possible -- measure at the crank, strange lubricants, etc. They post that number prominently in the marketing materials, and it can be a deciding factor for some buyers.

Similar story with weight. They post a "dry weight" which is impossible to achieve with a production motorcycle. Does it include the battery? Does the battery have electrolyte? Fork oil? Brake fluid? No one knows. The dry weight is always this impossibly low number, but again, it makes the bike look better, and some buyers may make a decision based on the number.

But if the HP is high, and the weight is low, then the power:weight ratio will be high, probably artificially so. If the P:W is high, then the bike is out of reach of the tiered license holder. Hold on for a second, the manufacturers might say. If we publish the rear wheel horsepower (typically 10-15 HP less than crank HP) instead, and give the curb (ie, fully-fueled and in a real-world condition) weight, the P:W ratio goes down! It becomes accessible to more riders! We can sell more of them!

It's curious logic, but I think it might work.

Of course, the problem with all this is that the first (and most selfish) thought that spurred this interest was a desire to see more 250-500cc bikes in the country. Those bikes won't necessarily have the lower P:W ratio that would meet the license restrictions, so no one would necessarily have any incentive to import them.

Hmm. That's no good. (Yes, I'm being slightly silly, but bear with me.)

How about a system where the first tier is a displacement limit, like 400cc, and the next tier is a P:W ratio limit? That might be the best of both worlds, although it starts to get complex. A P:W ratio limit is difficult to legislate, since you have to define which numbers to use (ie, manufacturer numbers? measured numbers? who does the measuring? how do you pay for the (necessarily standardized) measurement?).

Another wrinkle, raised by one of the commenters in that link I mentioned above, is that anything mandated which would decrease interest in motorcycling is likely to be a death-knell for motorcycles. Motorcycle owners are, on average, aging pretty quickly, which means that we're not getting a lot of fresh blood in the form of young riders. If we do anything which kills off interest in riding a motorcycle, that process will likely accelerate.

It's an interesting problem, and one I'm going to continue thinking about.

Posted at 11:34 permanent link category: /motorcycle


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