|
Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Tue, 23 Dec 2008For Christmas this year, I determined to visit family, as I do most years. Months ago, I scheduled myself an Amtrak seat, which would get me to Portland in time for a recital my mom was participating in. Things got a little crazy when I realized that I was closing the Judy Garland Christmas Special at Open Circle on the 20th, and planning on getting on a 9:45 am train on the 21st. Closing a show is many things, but it cannot be described as "early." I would surely be out until late on the 20th, quite possibly late enough that it would make more sense to just stay up rather than trying to get any sleep before I had to leave for the train. This was complicated, of course, by the fact that mother nature and global warming delivered a devastating one-two punch in the form of a dramatic series of storms that dropped over a foot of snow on the Seattle area, and kept temperatures below (at times well below) freezing for more than a week. Normal Seattle snow goes like this:
There was a big storm scheduled to roll in on Saturday night, and finally around 4 pm, Ron called me and said we should probably call off the show. It was a sad thing to cancel for closing night, but it was the right choice. Of course, I received this phone call while biking around Green Lake on my way to the theater, my nose nearing frostbite, breathing in sharp crystals of dihydrogen oxide, studded snow tires whirring over packed snow. What wasn't sad, though, was that suddenly taking a train in the morning didn't seem anywhere near so daunting. Liz came up to join me (having her own bus fiasco that consumed several hours and involved three different modes of transport) for the evening, and I planned out my departure for the morning. Orange Cab, bless their incompetent, overworked little hearts, told me that I couldn't possibly schedule a cab in advance (as I talked to them on Saturday night) due to the incoming weather, and that I should call an hour before I wanted to be picked up. Ok, thought I, I love getting up tremendously early. I'd give them a call, but plan on taking the bus down to the train station, since the cabs I'd seen had been pretty sparse. It was a 9:45 train, and I wanted to be there about an hour early, just in case. It's normally a 35 minute bus ride to the station, but I figured leaving an hour for the bus was about right, making my departure time around 7:30. Only, I miscalculated the night before, and decided that I needed to be pounding pavement (which is to say, trudging through packed snow) at 6:30. So that meant a 5:30 wakeup time. Arg. But I could do it. We set an alarm and went to sleep. 5:30 rolled around, and I got up. First, call the cab company. "Hi, I'm calling to see if I can get a cab up near Northgate around 7:30?" "I'm sorry sir," said the scheduling drone, obvious contempt dripping from her voice, "we have a one to four hour wait time right now." Right. Bus it is, thanks. So, Liz and I were ready to trudge out into the swirling white stuff. Just before I shut off the computer, I loaded up the Amtrak website again, and checked the status of the train one last time. It seemed improbable that it would leave on time, and sure enough, the 9:45 departure was suddenly pushed back to 2:45. Hallelujah! I called the Amtrak phone droid ("Hi, I'm Julie, your automated ticketing agent!") and confirmed the time, then we went back to bed. Ah, sleep. We finally got the show on the road around 12:30, and after one bus passed by the stop without even slowing, we boarded a bus headed for downtown. We arrived at the station around 1:30, and Liz loaded up the Amtrak site on her iPhone, to discover that the departure time was now scheduled for 4:30. Grand. Oh well, it was still running -- there was a hand-scrawled sign on the door of the station saying that every train except mine had been cancelled due to weather. Liz and I sat in the station, trading stories, watching videos on her phone, and generally enjoying ourselves until about 6:30. The departure time kept changing, and by this point, it was no longer even listed on the website, but they'd announced that we should try to be back by 9 pm if we wanted to go explore the night life around Pioneer Square. Liz reluctantly left at this point, to go home and feed her poor neglected kitty cat, and I settled down with a book. Some time before Liz departed, an announcement came over the PA that Amtrak would be providing sustenance, in the form of Subway sandwiches, to ticketed customers. Someone sitting across from us stood up, and shouted, "How about pizza?" There was a bit of repartee between the pizza shouter and the announcer, and that seemed to break the ice a bit. After Liz left, and I'd occupied myself with a book for a while, I realized that something was happening. The guy who'd shouted about the pizza was juggling. He'd already trekked out with several other hearty souls to a nearby grocery store, spent a surprising amount of his own money, and brought back food when it appeared that the provided sandwiches would only be enough for the sleeper-car customers, and not for us coarse and vulgar coach customers. He was now juggling oranges. There was someone else up there with him, trying to teach him to juggle while passing. She was an actor, and announced in a clear voice that we should all go see the next production at the Seattle Shakespeare Company, as she was juggling oranges with a complete stranger. This juggling performance (each person chanting "self-self-pass!") elicited cheers, applause, groans and laughter from the rest of the crowd, and AJ (the aforementioned pizza shouter and food requisitioner) turned out to be quite willing to make a spectacle of himself, as he demonstrated why it takes jugglers years and not minutes to perfect their craft. He was extremely good-humored about it though, and by the time they'd finished (having split two oranges open, and rapidly running out of fruit to juggle) everyone seemed to have been cemented in a good mood. Next thing I knew, all sorts of cellphones were out, and people were taking random pictures of each other. AJ would run to different groups of people, and take pictures of himself with them. He sat down next to me and took a picture. I couldn't resist, so I pulled out my camera, and took a picture too. He was, it turned out, an actor who was now living in Vancouver BC, and was travelling with his wife down to California. Someone across the aisle from us held up his device and had us posing for a few seconds before he broke up laughing -- he was holding an iPod, no camera involved. I quickly became entranced with something Aleah (spelling probably wildly inaccurate) was doing -- her phone included a camera mode where it would stitch together three images to make a panoramic shot. She and AJ were working out pictures where he would appear to be fighting himself, or kissing himself, etc. They staged one where he was tossing an orange to himself. I ended up stepping up as the cameraman and trying to get some more cool panoramic stitch shots going. AJ was game for this, and we got him fighting himself with Aleah mediating between the two aggressors, one of him exiting and entering two different doors, and one where he was flirting with himself. I may have to play with stitched shots like that, it was a lot of fun. During all this time, we'd occasionally hear new announcements from the Amtrak staff about when the train might be arriving. First it was "be back at 9," then it was "the train might be leaving the yard at 11:40," then it was 1 am, and so on. I found I didn't care much, because I was having a good time with these delightfully crazy people. I pulled out a pack of cards I've had knocking around in my bag for ages, and taught a group how to play Hosenabe, which game went on for a surprisingly long time, with most everyone in play until the very end, when three people lost at once with 30 points each (the winner had three of a kind, for thirty-and-a-half points). This attracted onlookers, and, more importantly, passed nearly an hour. Around eleven, after the Hosenabe game finished up, Aleah (who had been to see the Pajama Men at Annex the night before, because it's a tiny tiny world) had been ready to start a game of Werewolf (aka Mafia, aka Vampire, etc.), a party game I've never played but have heard of several times. Unfortunately, most people seemed to have run out of energy, and we were doing a lot more sitting down, and a lot less running around. She ended up sitting down next to me and talking for a while about relationship things: "So, now that I've known you for nine hours..." I think the additional bond of theater (she's an actor) and having seen me with Liz (thus: I'm "safe") helped, and we had an interesting but probably not terribly useful conversation about past relationships and what we learned. Of course, the train kept getting later and later. There was a flurry of activity as the conductors came out and might have been setting up to give car assignments. People flocked to get in line for their assignments, and ended up standing (then sitting, then lying) there for over an hour before the first assignment was given out. It was past midnight at this point. I took several too-dark pictures of people lined up with the big wall clock conspicuously in the background reading out 2:20 or 3:10 or whatever. There was a cheer that went up around 7:30, for the train (which had been sitting outside the station) pulled out. They'd announced that the big delay was that they had to get the train down to some yard south of town, where it would be "commissioned." This seemed to include turning cars around, stocking the dining car, safety checks, etc. It was suggested that this commissioning process might take an hour or two, and was the majority of the delay. We didn't see the train again until about 2 in the morning. Apparently the cold was severely complicating the process. AJ's food had long ago disappeared (and I hope that he was reimbursed for all of it, but I wasn't keeping close track -- I think I paid $10 for a handful of cookies and some chips, but it was the spirit of the thing that I approved of). The sandwiches were a memory. The vending machines, overpriced though they were, were empty. Of course, it was a baleful, snowy night outside, and most of the area restaurants were closed or had never opened. Aleah and someone else had wandered out in search of a bar around 8, but apparently it was clear that the city was shut down, and they returned, empty-handed and sober. By 2 am, there was considerably more horizontality in the station. People were stretched out on benches, and even on the very dirty floor. I wasn't that sleepy (having had my morning nap thanks to that well-timed check of the train status), so I was still up. Finally, around 3:00, the doors were thrown wide, and we started our zombie shuffle-march to the waiting train. I was up the stairs and in an actual train seat by 3:10, and around 3:20, the train actually moved! I sent a text message to Liz (who was still awake and following my plight with considerable concern) at 3:20, then immediately had to send a follow-up saying, "Oops, false hope again -- they had to move the train to water the cars." Just before 3:40, the train lurched forward, and failed to stop for the next watering point, and I realized that we were actually off. I sent a final text, and curled up most uncomfortably on the seat that didn't quite recline to horizontal. I slept, eventually, but woke up every hour or so. At 6:15, I called my parents, to alert them that I'd be arriving in two hours (theoretically). I didn't have anyone's word on this, I was just guessing. I awoke again to find that dawn had broken, and there was light to be seen out the window. I stumbled down towards the cars where I suspected there might be food, and passed Aleah, stopping to talk for a minute. She directed me to the cafe car, and I made it down the narrow stairway to discover the cafe itself closed, but a group of Safeway doughnut boxes scattered about a table. "Free doughnuts, I guess," quoth I to no one in particular, and grabbed one -- it was bland and flavorless, but better than nothing at all. Having returned to my seat (after washing my hands of the sickly sticky remnants of the doughnut), and ended up trailing Aleah to where AJ and Jennifer (his wife) were sitting. We passed the time until we reached Portland there, Aleah and I squeezing out of the aisle each time someone wanted to get past. Finally, right around 10 am, the train came to a stop at the Portland station, and I got off. AJ, Jennifer and Aleah were outside smoking, and I took a few final pictures before bidding them farewell. They definitely made the trip more enjoyable, and I'm hopeful that through the miracle of Web two-point-oh, we might actually keep in touch. It sounds like AJ would enjoy coming down to Seattle to see shows, and I'll certainly have shows to invite him to. Aleah, coming from Albequerque, might have a harder time making an evening trip to Seattle, but you never know. Of course, this was only the end of one leg of the journey: I still had to return to my parents' house, which is located in Scappoose, 30 miles from Portland, and up a very steep and winding road, in a foot and a half of snow. I met my dad in the station, and we started off. The roads were covered in packed snow, and the only time I saw anything like pavement, it was a manhole cover, presumably heated by whatever substance was passing beneath. The drive to Scappoose was very slow, owing to the tire chains, which would start to slap against the car most distressingly if we went over about 23 MPH. But we got there eventually. The trip up the hill was exciting, as even with four wheel drive and chains on the rear tires (the owner's manual says not to chain the front tires, since it's possible to damage drivetrain stuff if you do), we were sliding to and fro, spinning tires, and generally driving in a way which doesn't inspire supreme confidence. Particularly driving, as we were, with a sheer drop-off on one side of the road at times. Good times! But we made it back to the house without any real problems. At this point, the memories become pretty hazy. I suspect we ate something (I know I was hungry after my doughnut several hours earlier). I think I checked my email. I know that around 3 o'clock, I took a nap that didn't end until it was dark outside, and dinner was nearly ready. The nap, combined with the surreal night the previous day, combined to give me only the fuzziest sense of what the word "yesterday" might mean. Fortunately, that's where the exciting story leaves off, and the time since then (unless you count a trip or two down and up the hill) has been a fairly normal family visit. I can't honestly say that I regret going through all that -- meeting AJ and Aleah and Jennifer (and the actor from Portland whose name I never really learned, but was teaching AJ to juggle) was worth it, and really made the waiting at the station enjoyable. It's nice to be with my parents again, although leaving Liz behind was not my favorite choice, and thanks to Facebook, I'm much more aware of what my friends are doing back in Seattle -- I find that I would like to be spending time with them, too. The real question, though, is whether my train back will be any trouble... Posted at 17:02 permanent link category: /misc Fri, 19 Dec 2008So, Seattle was hit with a couple inches of snow in the last week, and totally contrary to tradition, it actually stayed cold enough to stick around. Then it snowed some more. The roads now most closely resemble very poorly maintained skating rinks. Of course, I was ready for this one! Last year, after a week of being stuck in the house or wherever I could very slowly hoof it, I had had enough. I ordered up a set of Nokian Hakkapeliitta W106 tires (scroll down on that page to see them). Of course, they arrived after all snow was done for the season, but I gave them a try anyway. Pretty heavy, pretty slow, and I suddenly seemed to be in worse shape -- oh yeah, rolling resistance. But when the snow came this year, hoo boy, was I ready! I levered a studded tire on the front rim (a story all in itself -- I had to remount it 6 times, somehow pinching holes in the tube every time), on the theory that there was snow predicted, and this would get me half the rolling resistance hit, but still allow good steering and stopping. Then the snow hit in earnest, and I put on the rear tire (another story in itself -- I had to take the bus down to the theater and install the tire on the stage after leaving my bike there in favor of a ride a few days before). Now I was fully prepared when the Real Snow hit a few days ago. So yesterday, the director and I took a census of the actors, and decided that, damn the snow and ice, we would put on the show! (I'm stage managing for the Judy Garland Christmas Special.) The roads were covered in packed snow and ice, but people were raring to go. It's closing weekend, after all. I hopped on my Hakkapeliitta-equipped bike, and made the journey. It was slow going (I didn't want to ride too fast, or I'd have too much momentum to stop in an emergency), and the now-frozen slush next to tire tracks made for the odd butt-clenching moment, but I didn't really have any trouble. It was a trifle nerve-wracking to ride next to the big FedEx trucks down Phinney Ave, but all the motorized traffic seemed to have the same "slow and steady" approach to not crashing that I did, and I didn't even have any close calls. I took the Fremont Ave hill very slowly. The real surprise, though, was riding home. It was late (of course) and colder, and most importantly, a lot more uphill than the way in. My preferred route takes me up a hill that must be a 10% grade, but it's pretty short. Of course, this time, it was also covered in packed ice. And I just rode up it, as if it were lumpy pavement. The tires didn't slip at all! I was terribly impressed. The ride home, in fact, was almost entirely uneventful, and I saw only a handful of cars. As I was riding past the Q13 building (a local TV station), I noticed another hardy soul biking slowly along. After dithering for a moment, I turned around to say hi, and recommend the sidewalk (which didn't have any of the obnoxious tire-track ruts). We ended up riding together for about 10 minutes, and it turned out she was riding on normal, underinflated mountain bike tires. It seemed to work pretty well for her, until we got to an incline that I didn't even think about. She had to dismount and walk very slowly up the hill, though, since her rear tire wouldn't grip on the slick surface. That was one of maybe three other bikes I saw on the trip. Also, the one absolutely insane guy on a 50cc scooter with street slicks on. Not a choice I would have made. Riding two-wheeled on ice is insane to start with, there's no call for riding something really heavy with gasoline power behind it (unless you've got those buzz-saw tires they use for ice racing, of course, which is its own special variety of insane). The whole experience definitely left me pleased with my purchase of studded tires. They'll last me many years, in this kind of service, and they work really well! Posted at 11:28 permanent link category: /bicycle Tue, 02 Dec 2008
Wind
Posted at 10:54 permanent link category: /huh Sun, 30 Nov 2008I just got back from my Thanksgiving travels, and also from my novelistic adventures. I didn't do anywhere near as well this year as I have in past years -- I just barely squeaked by, inputting the 50,187th word this afternoon on the train. And it was a pathetic ending, with me basically giving up once I hit the 50k mark. However, I did hit the 50k mark, so I'll call it a win, and see what lessons I can learn. First off, I get to post this: 
Lesson number one: overloading the ol' schedule is a bad thing. The novel was competing with running a theatrical show, rehearsing another show, and Thanksgiving travel this month. Not to mention eating, sleeping, working 40+ hours a week, etc. That was officially Too Much. Lesson number two: I'm not sure if there's a lesson number two, because I was otherwise pretty happy with how things went. If I'd heeded lesson number one, I would have been fine with this novel. If you want to read this year's novelling attempt, you may do so here, temporarily: I'll be updating the location soon, it's just not there yet, and (surprise!) I don't have time to deal with that right now. Posted at 20:46 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 26 Nov 2008I finally sat down and figured out the backdoor my favorite Brazilian skript kiddie was using to a) hack my site, and b) send thousands and thousands of spam messages as me. Hi, skript kiddie! I've got your IP addresses now, and I can see into your botnet! So, boo me for having old unsafe CGI scripts around (but no longer). Boo Brazilian fucktard for abusing my gentle, trusting nature. Yay for watching him flail hopelessly, trying to figure out why his 0wn3d account wasn't working any more. It's enough to put a smile on a guy's face. Posted at 22:38 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 23 Nov 2008I ended up taking over 600 pictures last night, and they're all posted now, right here. I think my overall favorite from the evening was this rockstar picture of Meaghan Darling [update: correct image now posted here]:
I'm working on a favorites gallery, and I'll post a link to that when I get it finished. 600 is a bit too many to traipse through... (Although I'll also say that my favorites list is only 90 long, and there are more than 90 good photos, so don't go assuming that my favorites match up with yours.) This was from the Homecoming 2008 fundraising event that Annex Theatre hosted last night. I had a fantastic time, and I wanted to thank Annex for putting it together, and letting me relive my obnoxious-photographer highschool past. Update: The favorites gallery is now up. Enjoy! Posted at 12:21 permanent link category: /theater Sat, 22 Nov 2008I just plugged in my Dana, on which I'm (sluggishly) writing my latest Great American Novel, and discovered that my work for the day has been dissappeared. There are certain, distinct disadvantages to writing on a device which overwrites memory at every keystroke, has a "soft" power button, and is carried in a shoulder bag while actively bicycling. Feh. Instead of my carefully crafted 1000-or-so words, I found a whole lot of "sasasasasasaasa." Not so useful. Novelling fail. Posted at 00:03 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 19 Nov 2008I just got back from watching the preview of Snow Queen (pdf) at the Bathhouse Theater on Greenlake. The ADD review is: go see it. Good stuff. I found myself looking at the tech, and the production, and how they did things. I also watched the show (except when the prop knife came on -- then my attention achieved laser-like focus after my experience making my own knife for Halloween), which was very good. From what I gathered, they've been performing roughly this show for the last 6 months, with a larger cast, and in parks over the summer. This has resulted in a very tight show, with excellent acting, artful choreography and a beautiful production quality. Although what I saw was a preview, and thus technically a rehearsal, they're definitely ready for opening night. I won't single out any actors, because they were uniformly very good (and, I have a friend in the cast; I'd hate to show undue favoritism). The audience was pretty sizeable for a Wednesday night preview, and hopefully indicative of their houses for the run. I found myself particularly looking at the lights, after my experience designing lights for the Lovecraft show (which lights I felt were alternately good and lackluster). I'm also friends with the lighting designer, so I'll restrain myself to saying that I thought the design was very good, with an excellent use of color (particularly on the cyc behind the stage). He had a sort of abstract spot of light on the cyc at the top of the show, and after the show, I understood what it was for. He told me that it had actually been an accident, but it was a happy accident. Not a trick I would have thought of (but now I will...). The Snow Queen is a Hans Christian Andersen story, and Google will quickly tell you more about it. I was curious to see how they would stage it. My friend in the cast, Molly, asked if it met my expectations for a fairy tale, and as I said to her, "I had no expectations. I was pleased with what I saw." The staging was actually very sparse, and I found myself delighted with how much they did with so little. I was particularly impressed by the costumes, which evoked Denmark without being too elaborate, as well as a variety of fantastic characters including talking crows, reindeer, night mares (not bad dreams, but rather the horses which carry dreams -- I think), a horde of snow gods, and of course the Snow Queen herself. There were traces of dance throughout the production, and there seemed to be movement involved in almost every moment. It was clear to me that a good deal of thought had gone into the staging, probably ideas which evolved and were refined over the course of the summer run in the parks. Overall, I was very pleased with the whole thing, and it was entirely a worthwhile expenditure of my time. You, dear reader, should go see it. It's playing at the Bathhouse Theater on Greenlake, but only for this weekend, opening Thursday and closing Sunday. Go! Go now! Posted at 22:36 permanent link category: /theater At least one of my readers wasn't clear on one vital point from my last entry: M. is married. I wasn't leading up to anything romantic with the story. Sorry to let you down. It is pretty cool though, M. and I established a friendship very quickly. I'm glad I got over whatever weirdness I had set myself up for. I will say that dating (speaking of romance), online or otherwise, has not proved to be a rewarding pursuit, so I shut down my Lovelab profile for a good long while. I did meet some cool people, and I'm still in the process of figuring out what those relationships may become, but being in the dating mindset was driving me crazy. Sibyl has an excellent attitude about this: "Online dating made me unhappy, so I stopped. Now, I'm happy being single, and when the right guy comes along, it'll happen." For my own sanity, I'm following in her footsteps. Except, of course, waiting for the right girl. Details. Posted at 17:09 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 16 Nov 2008 A long time ago, in a personal galaxy far, far away, there lived a
boy, whom we shall call Ian. Now, this boy had recently experienced
the end of his first long-term relationship, and got himself into
theater to As it happened, he did meet a number of hot chicks, and was more or less paralyzed about actually speaking with them. One of them solved this problem by attaching herself to him, so the plan met with general success. However, before this aforementioned attachment occured (and practically in spite of it) our young hero (the aforementioned Ian) finally worked up the nerve to ask another of these hot chicks out on a date. It went something like this: IAN: [pre-dejected, trying to put on a brave face] Hey, I was wondering if you'd be interested in going to dinner at some point. HOT CHICK: [trying not to smirk] Oh, I'm sorry, I can't. I don't have free time for like the next two months -- I'm working on two shows at once. It's madness. Sorry. IAN: Oh, ok. Well, thanks. [SFX: cue wah-wah trumpet, "Loser" by Beck] Anyway, our young hero took this as one might reasonably interpret it: the hot chick in question was saying, clothed in a scant tracery of code, "I wouldn't go out with you if you were the last human standing." Of course (reckoned the aforementioned Ian), she couldn't say this outright, since she and our hero might end up working together at some point (the theatrical environment being as tight-knit and winkingly incestuous as it is), and then things would be awkward. Some time after this, our young hero (the aforementioned Ian) found himself in a relationship with another hot chick, so the matter became irrelevant. Except, of course, that it didn't become irrelevant, for the Seattle theater scene is a small one, and hot chick the first (let's call her M. for pseudo-anonymous clarity) and our young hero came into contact every so often. Now, M. (our heroine, if you will, for the purposes of this yarn) went off and got married and had kids shortly after our briefly hilarious scene above, and was by all accounts living the good life, which has only the most tiny bearing on the story, but is important. Now imagine, if you will, an analog clock face occulting the scene, and the hands spin faster and faster. Pages rip off one of those obnoxiously wasteful page-a-day calendars and fly away, faster and faster. About 8 years pass, and we are, as they say, in the present day (and in a personal galaxy considerably more like the one that exists as you read this). Our young hero is no longer quite so young (at least 8 years less young, in fact), and comes into contact with this M., our heroine, again. He is standoffish, having figured for all these years that she considered him some kind of inoffensive but essentially uninteresting freak. Imagine his surprise when she seems friendly, and not remote at all, as he had expected. Interesting! This is not a romantic thing, merely cordial relations, which our hero had not hitherto expected to exist. Our hero and heroine converse at a party, and words are said which confirm that cordial relations do in fact exist. This aforementioned Ian walks our heroine home (said assistance being graciously accepted, passing as they do through some of the less savory crowds available on Capitol Hill), as her abode is on his way home, and he is nothing if not chivalrous. They part on friendly terms, and our no-longer-so-young hero leaves the scene noticeably buoyed: M. had, in fact, had two shows she was working on, and was already engaged (albeit quietly and without ostentation) in a relationship at the time of the above hilarious scenic re-enactment. She was thus triply correct in her assessment that it was madness to consider adding any further complications to her life. Our silly-headed hero, it turns out, had been constructing from the whole cloth of his fevered imagination this supposed indifference all this time, all these last 8 years. Imagine his relief! Oh, I can no longer maintain the subterfuge! Yes, it is me we are discussing, I am the aforementioned Ian! I know, shocking, but I couldn't keep lying to you any more. It was a moment of minor personal victory to realize that this aforementioned M. (who shall remain essentially nameless for reasons too numerous to recount here) was actually perfectly friendly, and was not in fact maintaining some kind of bizarre "I turned you down 8 years ago and now never want to speak to you again" grudge. And it was perfectly timed to buoy my spirits, right when they needed a bit of a lift. In fact, part of our discussion at the party aforementioned was the retelling of our brief moment 8 years ago, which I had figured would have long passed from her memory (I'm not sure why my memory of it is so clear, for that matter). It was all very amusing, and means that my future visits to the aforementioned theater will lose the slight but noticeable tinge of tension I had imagined existed. I may even work on a show there again... Posted at 04:48 permanent link category: /misc Fri, 14 Nov 2008I saw a sign a few weeks ago that struck me (although I don't remember now what specifically it was advertising): Get the
www.something.com Note to signmakers: I don't think those quotes mean what you think they mean. Posted at 17:10 permanent link category: /huh I've now had a chance to use the Planet Bike Blaze a few times (and I should clarify, this is the one-watt version, which is comparatively new). I have good and bad to report. The good news is that this is one bright light -- bright enough to use as a primary. So the optics are designed "right" in that sense. The reason I say it's bright enough to use as a primary is that it's about as bright, in its central hotspot, as the light I'm currently using as my primary headlight, a NiteRider MiNewt.X2. The downside is that the Blaze's beam pattern is still that you get wtih cheap optics. With a carefully crafted reflector, you can have a center spot with a tapering sidespill, which is how the MiNewt works. With it, I can see what's about to roll under my front tire, such as when traversing a tricky gravel path I use most days. With the Blaze, there's really no sidespill to speak of, so that although I can see what's in the center spot, the rest of the world is in darkness. This is a typical artifact of using a lens instead of a reflector. The real problem I ran into is that the Planet Bike mount offers exactly zero capacity to rotate that I can find. If you can't find a piece of handlebar that aims dead ahead, your light is aimed off to the side. Particularly with a light as tightly focused as this one, that's a huge detriment. There are almost no perfectly-straight/flat bars out there, so this model is going to spend a lot of time illuminating the side of the road. To PB's credit, the mount does seem to offer the option, albeit poorly thought out, of rotating 90°. However, it's just not capable of a 10° deflection like I want. I'd welcome corrections on this point, but I spent some time investigating it when I was working with my W-shaped bars, and was disappointed. I solved the problem for myself by rearranging items on my handlebars, and regretfully giving up my front reflector -- I'll have to apply some SOLAS tape to make up for it (something I should do anyway). I also had to tape up the handlebar to keep the light from rotating down. Sure enough, within 10 minutes on my first ride with the light, it was pointing at the ground. Although the mounting system offers the promise of pretty fine adjustability, it didn't quite deliver for me. It's possible I could have solved the problem with more futzing, but as I had to move it anyway, and the tape was handy, that was a good solution. The other bit of updating is that my MiNewt has developed a new and obnoxious problem. It appears to have a broken wire in its connecting cable, so that unless the wire's held in a certain position, it comes on with 1/100th its normal output, and can't be turned off. If the wire is bent around to complete the normal circuit, it functions correctly. Interestingly, this has roughly coincided with the charging brick randomly not receiving power. Fortunately, NiteRider is good about their support, so I've got an RMA number from them, and will be sending the whole kit and kaboodle in to them for repair. Good thing I've got a good back-up light! Posted at 11:22 permanent link category: /bicycle Wed, 12 Nov 2008I just picked up a new backup bike light. I'm always on the lookout for new, better lights, and this one looked like it'd be a good step up:
It's a Planet Bike Blaze 1w, and it does something I've wanted for a long time: it takes the Superflash concept (bright and not-as-bright flashes, with a characteristic pattern that's very noticeable), and does it in white light, for a front-light. So, that's cool. It's kind of an expensive light at $40, but what price safety? Unfortunately, it suffers from two bits of inanity that I simply no longer understand from manufacturers, particularly manufacturers I expect to be as savvy as Planet Bike. The first defect is plainly obvious when you look at it. It's tremendously front-heavy (it's a heavy light anyway, and most of that weight sits forward of the center-point of that bar clamp). I know that even using gaff tape on my handlebar, and clamping the hell out of this light, it's going to slowly swivel down until it's pointing its excellent flash pattern at my front tire. Well, it doesn't do me any good if no one can see it. This raises the second point. The beam pattern is just terrible, for a "be noticed" light: it's got a massively bright central spot that's fairly narrow, and almost no side-spill. Now, this is a good thing when it's a light I'm using so I can see. I want to see what's in front of me, and it's usually not so important to pick up peripheral vision. I even know why they designed it that way: the optics are easily and cheaply available. However, this light is not strong enough to be a "to see with" light. It simply isn't bright enough to be a primary light, except on the very darkest streets. (Note: I may reverse myself on this particular point, as I haven't actually ridden with it yet.) So its tight focus and mode order don't make sense (it switches on to low, then high, then flash, then off). What I want in a "be seen" light is a 90-150° beam. I want this thing to broadcast light all over the place, ideally in a flat arc that I can aim at cars, perhaps 20° in height, and at least 90° wide. It doesn't need to be tightly focused, it needs to be visible to as many targets as possible. All that said, I still paid my money for it, and I think it'll be an improvement over my current backup light, a CatEye something-or-other 410. The CatEye is even worse than the PB I already have (which uses the same clamping system as this one) for rotating forward around the bar, and the CatEye has a comparatively very weak beam. It also runs for twice as long on less battery, but I'll change batteries more often if it means I get more light and a still-reasonable runtime (PB claims 20 hours max out of this light, which I assume is on the flash mode). For what it's worth, I've been happily using my NiteRider MiNewt as my primary "to see with" light for more than a year now, and love it. If it goes away for any reason, I'll replace it with the same thing, most likely. It has an excellent beam pattern, runs most of a week before I have to charge it, and it's very bright, particularly for its size. So, super-secret note to Planet Bike engineers: quit it! Wide beam! And give me a light that actually balances reasonably on the handlebar, just move the whole thing back on the mount. It can't be that hard. Posted at 15:58 permanent link category: /bicycle Mon, 10 Nov 2008
Applying the scientific method to MY OWN STUPIDITY
So, about a month ago, I installed a fancy schmancy new saddle on my bike. A leather Brooks saddle, in fact. I almost immediately took it off, because I couldn't find an angle that felt good. It was either pressing too much in that sensitive spot, or slid me forward, or pressed to much in the other spot, etc. I put my old saddle back on with a sigh of relief, and proceeded about my life. Several weeks later, I noticed that, all of a sudden, my legs seemed to be chafing. Now, I'd been biking for over two years solid at this point, there was no reason for this to happen. Not all of a sudden. Not even bothering to find two and two to put together, I started changing things. I figured, hey, (and this is the point where you may want to turn off the monitor -- this discussion necessarily involves bits of my anatomy and articles of clothing I wouldn't normally talk about) I'm wearing cotton briefs which have a seam that runs right where I'm getting chafed: the joint where my legs join up with my pelvis, where the seat hits. Cotton == sponge. Maybe that's a bad thing! So I switched to boxers, which I had given up on a year and a half earlier as being entirely too uncontrolled. There is little so uncomfortable as having a testicle repeatedly crushed between leg and seat as you pedal. Trying to remedy this situation is also at least as embarrassing as describing it. The problem still existed, and furthermore, all the fabric seemed to get bunched up right where I was chafing -- before I'd had a small wodge of cotton there; now I had a huge mass. Boxers: FAIL. Next up were boxer briefs. I looked on Amazon (user reviews are surprisingly handy in this situation), and found some inexpensive but (and this is important) cotton boxer briefs. The best of both worlds, right? The anti-flopping properties of briefs, but without the triple-folded seams right where I was chafing! BZZT! Same problem as boxers, except with less testicle-crushing. So, a step in the right direction, but as painful as ever. And by this point, the pain had become excruciating. Not just "Huh, I seem to be chafing a little," but "Holy mother of god, maybe I'll call a taxi!" I had one hope left. I'd read about non-cotton alternatives, and at this point, I was ready to try anything. Anything. So I ran out and got a pair of Under Armour Boxerjocks. Stupid name, good product. Basically, they're boxer briefs intended to be worn tight, and made of the moisture-wicking polyester blend that UA uses so effectively, and which I've long appreciated in a shirt I wear under my racing leathers. I thought, Ah, heaven, these are perfect! I rode to work that day, and it seemed better at first, but then, dammit! They bunched up right where I was chafing, and it hurt like hell. By this point, even walking had started to hurt. So, I gave up. I also wised up, and went to the doctor, having finally realized that this was so abnormal, it must be an infection of some kind. He confirmed, yes, standard-issue jock itch (a fungal infection), apply this cream twice a day, etc. This elicited a huge sigh of relief from me -- it was just an infection! Problem solved. I rode the motorcycle for a couple of weeks, feeling both like I was giving up on my ideals, and like I was getting away with something -- after all, I had a valid medical reason I couldn't ride a bicycle. It was fun to get back on the Ninja and shuttle around without any exertion. There's nothing like riding a bicycle to give one an appreciation of what goes into acceleration and going up hills and things. Today was my first day back on the bicycle. The cream seems to have worked, and I figured I was ready. Wicking underoos: check. Infection under control: check. Rock on! Imagine my disappointment, tonight, as I was riding home, and recognized the now-familiar burning sensation. ARGH! Did my body get its one taste of that damned leather saddle, and is now spoiled!? It was nice how narrow the nose of that thing was, but surely one day of riding on it couldn't have... At approximately this point in my reasoning, as I rode along, I gave myself a virtual dopeslap. I pulled over to the side of the road, leaned the bike up against a fence, and pulled out my little toolkit. I adjusted one bolt in, and one bolt out, lowering the nose of the saddle about 5°. The rest of the ride back home was, well, not exactly burning-free, but was clearly no longer generating that awful burning feeling. Hey, cause? Meet effect. Effect, cause. You guys should get together more often. IN MY BRAIN. (Hopefully the ride in tomorrow will be a trifle more comfortable.) Posted at 23:31 permanent link category: /bicycle Sun, 09 Nov 2008I've found myself enjoying the creation of fictional Facebook status messages, and this one occurred to me tonight, but is too long to fit in the allotted space. Suck it, Facebook, I'm putting it up here: We biked down city streets, you and I, up hills and past cafes with smiling crowds. Into the park we rode, and up the green hill, tumbling off at the top, to lie in the prickly softness of the grass, giggling, and lost in each other's eyes. Posted at 03:19 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 05 Nov 2008It's that month again. Time to write up some novels! If you'd like to follow along on my novelling adventures this year, you can check my progress here: For extra-special challenging crazy, this year, I'm also involved in at least one play (and possibly two, just for extra crazy-points), and building props for a third. And, you know, writing a 50k or more word novel. Free time? I'm sorry, I can't recall what that's like any more. Oh, and there was a historic, mind-altering election yesterday. That wasn't distracting at all. Posted at 22:38 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 03 Nov 2008They're still processing as I write this, but I will momentarily have the entire, ridiculously large gallery of Alaska photos available. To the gallery! Note that if you're seriously on the ball with updates to this journal, the gallery might not be ready yet. There are a lot of pictures, around 1300. Also, for this reason, I didn't upload the 10 MP version of each picture, opting instead for a 1200x800 "high res" version. If you see one you just gotta blow up to poster-size, drop me a line. Posted at 10:48 permanent link category: /misc Fri, 31 Oct 2008With help from Margie Belling and John Cornicello, I have some pictures of my full costume:
I'm sure I'll have more as the day goes on. What good is a cool costume without pictures? Posted at 11:31 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 29 Oct 2008I realized I had some spare time this morning, and set about to take a few pictures of the costume bits I've got together:
It's still not the complete costume, since I'll be getting my rental "frock coat" (by which I mean modern cutaway tux jacket, but that's just fine) on Thursday, but I thought the pictures came out pretty well. Posted at 11:13 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 26 Oct 2008Math/graph nerd humor that made me immediately laugh:
Posted at 22:03 permanent link category: /huh Fri, 24 Oct 2008Rather than go hang out with a bunch of randoms in a bar, or sit alone at home listening to the radio, is anyone having an election night party on the 4th? Have space for one more? Let me know. I'm not sure I can take the suspense, sitting alone in my house, listening to the radio. Posted at 16:45 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 22 Oct 2008The inimitable Jen Moon pointed out that the Weekly's review of Necronimicon is up, and it's pretty positive: In Open Circle Theater's annual tribute to the horror tales of H.P. Lovecraft, a handful of his stories are adapted as the troubling dreams of a contemporary young woman (Kaitie Warren as some sort of office administrative assistant, which might make you look twice at the woman in the next cubicle). The tension in the script, co-credited to John McKenna, Ron Sandahl, Dustin Engstrom, and Maggie Lee, mounts skillfully as the dreams encroach on her real life and reveal a gruesome truth about her ancestry. Once again the shoestring company does a lot with a little, aided hugely by McKenna's sound design, an insinuating, near-constant earscape of drips and mutterings that provides not only creepiness but an almost musical continuity to the tale. GAVIN BORCHERT Posted at 10:05 permanent link category: /theater
Those poor, lonely Russian brides
This disjointed missive arrived at my Lovelab inbox, from poor, lonely natalya26: hi Uh-huh. Pull the other one. Posted at 03:13 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 21 Oct 2008
Apparently stress is good for at least one thing
I seem to have dropped an inch or two off my waist. (And welcome to a new feature/category here on Stuff-mo-tron: "huh." I've been thinking about doing this for months, for short, pithy observations. Let the pith continue.) Posted at 08:54 permanent link category: /huh Mon, 20 Oct 2008Rather than leave you in suspense, I figured I'd provide a quick update to yesterday's entry.
And last, this isn't so much an update to Sunday, but a note for today: I'se tired! I took last week off in order to deal with the 12+ hours of work required at the theater each day, which technically counted as "vacation time." I really need a vacation from my vacation. Posted at 14:12 permanent link category: /misc Sat, 18 Oct 2008I'll have to give you some history for this story to make sense, so bear with me. My last girlfriend, K., and I broke up earlier this year. We both saw it coming a long way off, and no one was surprised when it happened. We're still friends, so that's a fine thing. But that was in maybe March of this year, about 8 months ago. In fact, the relationship had started to disintegrate around September of last year. Nothing terrible, but the key item for the purposes of this tale is that I started feeling kind of single around that point, September last year. A month or so before K. and I broke up, I met J. I wrote about that encounter here at the time. It put me in a very weird state of mind, since I had thought occasionally of J, wondering what ever happened to her, coincidentally also recalling the unreachable-girl crush I'd had at the time (long story short if you don't want to read the whole thing: J. and I worked a crappy pizza-joint job together, I developed a huge crush and never acted on it, then I moved away, and I figured I'd never see her again; imagine my surprise when I sat down next to her and had a delightful conversation at lunch 16 years later and realized at the end who I was talking to). J. was a shock to the system, not in any romantic way, but in the fresh-perspective way. Seen from her perspective, I saw that K. and I really did need to go our separate ways, and that happened not much later. Of course, I couldn't forget the crush I'd had on J., half a lifetime ago. We discussed it (J. is amazingly honest and forthright, which I value tremendously) and decided that we should remain friends despite the attraction we both felt. There are fine reasons for this which aren't germaine to the issue at hand, and I'm very happy to have J. for a friend now. In fact, I wouldn't have it any other way. Still, coming to that decision, and sticking to it, haven't been as easy as I might hope. I'm not telling that story now, but wondering if J. and I should get more deeply involved, or rather the feeling of it, is part of the story currently under discussion. In any case, that all stabilized months and months ago. In the intervening time, I had decided that despite my assertion that I wanted to stay out of relationships for a year (which served me well after the previous big relationship to K.), I was ready to try again. I set up a profile on Lovelab (clicky-clicky to see how I pitch myself as a hot hot hunk o' man), a local dating site. All the kids are doing it, I figured, and what the heck, it was free to sign up. There were a few interesting hits, but nothing that really fired me up. A friend of mine is also single and looking, and we would frequently complain how the people on Lovelab seemed to be... well, there's no single word for it, but they never seemed to live up to their potential. Lots of verbiage about how "I'm just looking for a man who is X, Y and Z. Where are you hiding?" X, Y and Z would describe both my friend and I pretty well, and despite attempts at contact, we'd hear nothing back (through an unspoken gentleman's agreement we've kept our contacts segregated -- it would be terrible to be involved in any kind of situation where we were both "competing" for the same woman). We were and are both weary of the posing and hypocrisy which seems to exist at the site. While randomly trolling through listings one day, several weeks ago, I found one which looked interesting. Her picture called to me in a way that most didn't: she was very attractive, without looking like she was working at it. Her profile text contained some very interesting things, and I sent her a "flirt." This is essentially a free, messageless contact you can make via Lovelab -- you have to have a paid membership to send a message with any content, but flirts are free. My single friend and I were talking about it a few days later, and I started describing this woman I'd seen. As I was talking, I realized that, in fact, I really wanted to meet her. It took me talking aloud to realize it, but realize it I did, and I blew my $4 wad on sending her an actual message with real content. Very gratifyingly, she responded with enthusiasm (unusual on Lovelab, where most people seem wary and reserved in their actual communications), and it wasn't long before we had set a date to have lunch. My usual MO in these situations is to set up a non-committal meeting from which either of us can escape with minimal interaction if it turns out the other is a cretin in real life, but which can last longer if there's call for it. We set the lunch for a Friday a few weeks ago. She cancelled at the last minute, due to a terrible start to the day, involving "my refrigerator, a lot of water, and a parking ticket." Understanding bad days perfectly, we re-set the date for the following Monday, and life proceeded. Of course, for me, life proceeded to go from merely full and lacking free time, to full, lacking free time, and incredibly stressful. The Lovecraft show tech weekend was that weekend, the day after this woman (who I shall call I., just to maintain the confusing pseudo-anonymity of initials) and I had originally been scheduled to meet. Only, that tech weekend, which should normally be a weekend full of tech folks such as myself running around stressed, was about three days behind schedule. Instead of running around stressed because those lights weren't focused right, I was running around stressed because those lights weren't even up in the air, and they had no power cables to run them. I was literally building and stringing power cables, hanging lights and connecting speakers, in a space with no seats, no curtains, and public areas that looked like disaster areas, days and days after that should have all been done. A three-day slip in the schedule is pretty toweringly ominous when the deadline is five days away. The problem is that Open Circle Theater, the company which is producing the Lovecraft show, only secured their new space a short time ago. Instead of building a show, we were building a theater and show at the same time. This is far from the normal course of events, and long story short, it put the schedule way back from where it should have been. We were originally scheduled to open on the 10th of October, but had to push opening back a week, and even so just squeaked under the wire, ignoring all the flapping appendages that weren't quite ready. So, when I. emailed to say that maybe Monday wouldn't work (this was the Monday after tech weekend, and also the day it became apparent that I'd have to take the entire week off work in order to work at the theater if we wanted to open at all), it was pretty easy to be cool about it. "That's ok," I wrote back, "this week is crazy for me, so maybe we could meet next week -- you seem interesting, and I don't want to lose track of you." It sounded like her life was crazy too, so it would work out all around. One of the "benefits" of being as incredibly stressed-out as I was last week is that it stopped any "Aw jeez, I'm so very single," thoughts (which I've been having a lot lately) in their tracks. I didn't have time for that crap. I had a show/theater to build. I was spending 12-14 hours in the theater each day, arriving around 1, and staying until 1, 2, or 3 in the morning. I'll spare you the gruesome details, but this week has left me feeling like I haven't particularly slept, and questioning whether I ever want to do theater again (I do, this was a singular and extraordinary situation -- I'm unlikely to experience its like again). When I'd roll back to my house at 3-4 in the morning (and another 15 miles on the bike's odometer), I'd grimace to myself with a 50/50 mixture of pleasure and angst that at least I wasn't leaving someone waiting up for me. That would last for a second or so, then I'd fall in bed and wake up around 9:30 to do it all over again. The show finally opened last night, after a nightmare-like stretch of time this last week. I spent most of yesterday assembling and installing seats in the theater, while around me swirled a slowly gathering flock of people, doing the thousand and one things which needed to be done before the show could open: cleaning, preparing the bar (which looked like a construction zone around 3 in the afternoon). If you'd asked me when I arrived yesterday, around 12:30, I would have told you there was only a 50% chance we'd actually have the theater ready enough to open that night. As it worked out, we didn't accomplish some important but ignorable tasks, and the show opened. We had exactly one full rehearsal under our belts (normally, the last week would have been dress rehearsals each night -- instead, we were doing all the tech we should have done this weekend). Last night, we had full costumes for the first time. Last night (opening night, keep in mind) was the first time all the cues actually ran when they were supposed to (or within a few seconds of when they were supposed to, anyway). After the incredible stress of building a theater, actually running the show was pathetically easy -- normally, running a show would have me full of butterflies and jumpy about every moment from the actors' call time onward. Instead, I passed through panic, through stress, and came out to the calm place on the other side. Once the seats were all installed (my sworn task for the day, and one I would have said at 4 pm wasn't going to be finished in time), I had reached the state of imperturbability normally reserved for Zen masters. I was soaked through with sweat and chaos raged around me, but I could have tripped face-first into the padh thai I was eating with no more reaction than reaching for a napkin. I've had two beacons of hope and/or pleasure buoying me up this week. One was that the day before I. and I were supposed to meet initially, J. and I had lunch. It was curious timing, but that's how it worked out. I hadn't seen J. in months due to conflicting schedules, and was pretty solidly missing her. She is, in a way, my touchstone that yes, there are still attractive women out there, and yes, they might even want to spend time with me. So meeting her again for lunch (at Blue C Sushi, where we initially met back in February) was a very good thing, and put me in a very good mood. As usual, J. was like a shot in the arm, and all the lingering self-doubt which had been slowly gathering in me was dispelled. The other beacon of hope was that I was looking forward to an email from I., with a new date when we could have lunch and meet. Based on what I'd been able to learn about her so far, I. seemed like a person I'd really connect with, and I had no problem imagining that here was a potential relationship. It was exciting, and against my better judgement, I found myself more and more hopeful that we'd sit down for lunch and instantly the sparks would fly. I know better than that, but my treacherous brain was ignoring the unpopular, doom-saying-nerd part of itself. All I was waiting for was a promised email with the date we could meet. I said to myself that I shouldn't pin any hopes on it, but I did. It's so easy to say the correct words, but forcing your heart onto the right path is nigh unto impossible. That email arrived today. I'll paraphrase (with the hope that I., who certainly knows about this journal and will probably read this entry sooner or later, won't be offended): Hey, so the reason I blew you off this last week is that I met someone else. Sparks flew, and I'm not single any more. Sorry. You still seem interesting, though. Still want to meet for lunch? I hit the reply button, and sat there with one very polite "Yeah, but I'm disappointed" sentence written, for about 5 minutes, with a sinking feeling washing over me. Finally I cancelled that email, walked back to my bed, and lay down, the frail wisps of hope that I'd built up settling to the ground as I lay there, David Sedaris tinnily describing some likely-amusing anecdote from his childhood over the radio I hadn't had the energy to turn off. Which leads me to here and now. I sit in front of my computer, having recounted the past. Now, the only thing I can offer is analysis of the potential future, which I'm not sure I'm up for. The Cure plays on a shuffled loop through my headphones, matching my mood to a T. Do I want to have lunch with I. and meet her in person? Absolutely. Am I disappointed? Absolutely. Will that color our interaction? I don't know. I don't want it to, but it probably will, although knowing me, it'll be subtle and something that only I will notice. Regardless of whether it can develop into a deeper relationship, I. seems like a very interesting, attractive person, and one who I'd like to know and count as a friend. I think perhaps the best bet is to reply, say, "Yes, let's have lunch," and include a link to this journal entry. I can't be this descriptive in an email, it's too much, but I need her to understand that when I say, "Yes, but I'm disappointed," I'm not disappointed in her, but rather in the situation, the timing, and myself. I think that in the end, on top of every thing else that's been happening, it's difficult to hear, "Hey, you seem like a cool guy and all, but let's just be friends, ok?" before I even get the chance to meet someone. At least I'm not too worried that, in this case, "Let's just be friends" might be code for "I never want to see you again." So, I., when's good for you? Drop me a line. Posted at 13:41 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 13 Oct 2008Pieces for my Halloween costume this year are slowly trickling in. Today, my new glasses arrived:
Posted at 15:04 permanent link category: /misc Sat, 11 Oct 2008
Well that's not encouraging...
I was riding home from the Lovecraft paper tech tonight, and came across a little surprise:
I noticed something silver and odd-looking on the ground, and looped back around, having thought it was a discarded bullet -- close! It was a munged up .40 caliber handgun casing! I picked it up, pondering the ominous implications of this find. This was in upper Fremont, a couple blocks south of the Woodland Park Zoo, on Fremont Ave. I got back on the bike and rode on, but I didn't get more than a couple dozen yards before I spotted another suspicious silvery glint on the pavement. Sure enough, another Speer .40 S&W casing, less munged than the first. I found them both on the east side of the street, roughly along the line where a parked car's outer set of wheels would run. The fact that I found them both close together and on the same side of the street suggests that they didn't end up there because they were kicked around by cars. Although they'd clearly been run over numerous times, it's unlikely they'd have stayed that close together if they'd been moved very far. If that's true, then they were likely fired from a semi-automatic pistol out of the passenger window of a northbound car. There could easily have been more I didn't see -- I was trying to get home, not play detective. This was just mid-way along the row of nice brick brownstone-style houses around 48th, and if my scenario holds true, the bullets would have been east-bound, toward the brownstones. I considered calling the police, but what are they going to do? They'll say thanks for the info, and that'll be the end of it. It might go into a statistic, but probably not -- these could also have fallen out of someone's range bag as they unloaded after a target session. In any case, I found myself reconsidering my long-held decision that I wouldn't ever carry a pistol. If I'm going to be riding through live-fire areas, that changes things. I certainly haven't changed my mind yet, but I find myself pondering the question again. Posted at 00:40 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 05 Oct 2008The whole "being single" thing sits better or worse with me depending on a huge variety of factors. I've found that there's generally a soundtrack to match my mood, but sometimes I get it wrong. A couple of weeks ago, I decided that my mobile music (a 1 GB MP3 player, rhyming with ruffle) should change. For a long time, I'd had it loaded up with all the Cure albums I had, plus the latest Supreme Beings of Leisure, and the latest Portishead. That musical diet (which could be called "morose" or "angsty" without hyperbole) felt right for a good long while, but as I said, a couple weeks ago, it was time for a change. Listening to The Cure for any extended period of time is a fine way to stay blue, and it finally felt like I was breaking out of morosity (is that a word? Merriam Webster says yes). So I picked a new selection of tunes, trying for things which were more upbeat. On went some Anoushka Shankar, Chemical Brothers, Brazilian Girls, Fatboy Slim, and so on. Generally more uptempo, with a few really peppy songs, and some that were fairly mellow. The rest fell somewhere in the middle. That was more or less when I discovered that the really peppy songs were incredibly jarring when I wasn't feeling correspondingly cheery. Because I was riding my bike at the time, I had little attention to spare for finding the "skip forward" button, and ended up gritting my teeth and bearing it. I have since reformulated the playlist. Less pep, more mellow. At some point, I'll be back across the whole range. Posted at 09:28 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 01 Oct 2008In Seattle, if you want to vote in the November presidential election, the last day to register to vote by mail is October 4th. The last day if you're a new Washington resident, and can register in person, is the 20th. If you're not already registered go, do it now! The deadline is likely to be similar in other parts of the country. Go register, and vote in November. This election will be another nail-biter. Do your part to help elect the person you want in the White House, not the person other people foist upon you. Posted at 10:20 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 28 Sep 2008Wow! SketchFest was freaky. Good. And busy. And crazy. But while I was there, I took some pictures, in particular this one:
That's our lovely Josh Knisely, SketchFest PR/video/web man extraordinnaire, and Cory Nealy, of The Cory and Doug Show. It was a great picture, and I wanted to get it up where people could see it. The other picture I took that I really liked on the tiny screen of my camera was this one, of Angel Yau, who brought her solo show to the fest:
Then there was this picture of Ivy Lindsey and Brett Butler from Slow Children Crossing ("Possibly the most beautiful sketch comedy group this year," I opined around 1:30 this morning):
How about this lovely shot of Josh, Cory, and Val Bush, who's the Managing Director of SketchFest?
If you'd like to sort through the eleventy quadzillion pictures I took during SketchFest, please peruse Ye Olde Gallerie. As I find time, I'll be sorting through and pulling out some good ones to put up on my Flickr account. You know, like I've put up all those Alaska pictures I promised. Right. Posted at 21:23 permanent link category: /theater Tue, 23 Sep 2008
Oh yeah, cables wear out, don't they...
I've been having shifting weirdness on the commuter bike for the last couple of weeks, and today I finally had time to deal with it. I'd lubricated the cable a few days ago, which seemed to help, but didn't totally solve the problem. When I lubed the cable, I noticed that right where it entered the shifter, I could see a couple of loose strands. It looked like time to replace the cable, so I picked up a new one (along with replacements for the other three cables) a few days ago. Once I finally figured out how to replace the cable (it being distinctly non-obvious), I gave it a tug. It kind of came out, but didn't really want to slide out like it should, so I pulled a little harder. Ah-hah! It moved a bit, and i discovered that I was holding something that looked more like a wire brush than a control cable. I ended up having to cut the head off the cable: it just wouldn't slide through due to the frayed end. So, yeah. Looks like 3400 miles is way too long to leave a shifter cable. Note to self: replace that cable again around 5500 miles... Posted at 13:56 permanent link category: /bicycle Ok, maybe it's still a bit early for a wrap-up, but you get the idea. I successfully trailered my load down to the International District today, chugging slowly up the hill on the sidewalks of 5th Avenue. It took a lot longer than the trip normally takes, because even going downhill, I was so paranoid about going too fast. When the speed gets up, it's all fine, until the bike hits a bump. Then, things move uncomfortably, and I find myself wondering what's going to bend or break. Still, there's no evidence of actual bending going on, so I may be getting too close to paranoia. The bike's brakes are clearly up to the task, but I'd still be happier if the trailer had brakes. Unfortunately, that's something which is going to take a fair amount of engineering, so it won't be happening for several months yet. The biggest potential issue is that as long as the trailer is brakeless, the possibility of jack-knifing it in a quick stop is there. It would truly suck to avoid slamming the bike into the car that just pulled out, only to be catapulted off the seat and into the side of the car. Perhaps you can see why I've been taking it slow. The load I was carrying, about 90 lbs, is towards the upper limit of what I ultimately want to carry, I think. I'm sure the system is physically capable of carrying about double that, but it would just be too great a percentage of the overall vehicle's weight. I think the trailer will be much more comfortable in the 30-50 pound range. I'll probably call 120 the hard upper limit, which makes it 150 lbs total, or about 1/2 the weight of myself plus the Xtracycle. Overall, I'm very pleased with the trailer. It's working exactly as I expected it would, although certain practical matters (such as the 15 mph speed limit) didn't really sink in until I started it trundling down the road. Score one for self-sufficiency on a bicycle. Posted at 00:08 permanent link category: /bicycle Mon, 22 Sep 2008I made it as far as work with the trailer, without any problems to speak of. I tried to keep the speed under 15 MPH, and was mostly successful (the computer recorded a max of 19.8 MPH, so I broke my self-imposed speed limit at some point). The tongue is clearly too heavily loaded, but that's just a matter of shifting things around a little bit. The biggest indication was a wallowing feeling when going over bumps, which I think came from the tongue pressing too heavily on the rear of the Xtracycle frame. The only other indication of trouble was going down the hill on Fremont Ave: I had to ride the brakes the whole way down to keep from going too fast, and the front brake was making an intermittent noise like I might have warped the disc. Certainly a distinct possibility, although it didn't seem to continue after the bottom of the hill, so perhaps it didn't set in a warp. I took the promised posterity/insurance pictures (click for the gallery):
Posted at 10:22 permanent link category: /bicycle Sun, 21 Sep 2008In preparation for SketchFest this year, I've gathered together all the stuff I think I'll need: MD decks, microphones, video camera, tripod, etc. I put it all in a neat stack in the front room, and appraised what I had. "That's a lot of stuff," I thought to myself. By special request, I'm bringing a fogger as well. Wondering if I could actually take all this stuff on my fancy new bike trailer, I decided a weighing must be in order. I grabbed the scale from the bathroom, and recorded some numbers:
Yow. And of course, that doesn't count the tie-downs or the tarp which is feverishly suggested by the rain pounding outside the window even now. I also, just out of curiosity, weighed the trailer itself: 31.5 lbs, including the side stakes and all the hitch hardware. I think I'd better take this trip slowly. Uphill, that won't be an issue (I'll be going plenty slow, with an extra 130 lbs holding me back), but the trick will be to keep slow in mind heading down the big hill into Fremont. If I have to stop that freight train, it ain't gonna be quick. I'll definitely take some pictures of the load for posterity, and possibly for insurance reasons. Posted at 23:03 permanent link category: /bicycle Fri, 19 Sep 2008This year for Halloween, I'll be attenting a party with the theme, "Gods and Monsters." No strict interpretation, just take those words and run. So, this set me thinking along the lines of, "Who can I dress up as who is reasonably human (ie, no extrvagant make-up or costume required), monstrous, and somewhat identifiable?" I thought about it for a while, and after dismissing a lot of choices, settled on Jack the Ripper. Now, Jack the Ripper was not a nice fellow (if it was one fellow). This is the theoretical person responsible for a set of the most grisly murders in London, from the late 1880s to the early 1890s. He killed a bunch of prostitutes in a very bloody way, complete with missing organs and all. I won't go into details, you can look them up if you're interested. In preparation for my role, I've started growing out different facial hair than normal: a Van Dyke beard and much longer sideburns than normal. This makes what I think is a pretty striking difference from how I normally look (with a little, close-cropped goatee). It's not too far along, but already I feel like I look very different. I've only looked noticeably different for about a week, but in that time, I've seen innumerable people who I normally see. Some of these people, I would have expected, would notice and comment on the difference in my appearance. I'm sure this is partly a vanity thing, but that's not where I'm going with this. I have, thus far, had two people actually comment. During this time, I've also explained my costume choice to a number of people (maybe 5-7). Their reaction, almost universally, has been, "Cool!" or "Hey, neat!" Until today, that is. I told Laura, one of the servers at Blue C Sushi, who I've known for the entire 3 years she's worked there, about it, and she immediately got this repulsed look on her face. "Finally!" I said, "you're the first person to react like that!" I had noticed (being aware of the really terrible things Jack did) with some small amount of wonder that people seemed so positive about it as a costume choice. I was waiting for someone to stop and say, "Wait, wasn't he a horrible rapist and killer?" And really, I was amazed it took so long. In part, I wonder if this doesn't delve much deeper, to the roots of Halloween -- embracing the horror of the world, to effectively "cheapen" it so it's not so terrifying any more. Either that, or the horror of Jack the Ripper has passed into a kind of past-age reverence which equally elevates Sherlock Holmes or Tiny Tim, despite their negative aspects (Sherlock Holmes was an anti-social know-it-all who took cocaine and morphine any time the doldrums between cases hit; Tiny Tim was disfigured in a way practically unknown in first-world countries today). Whatever pop psychology I may apply to it, it's very interesting to observe the reactions of people to my choice. Posted at 13:25 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 18 Sep 2008Finally, the tomatoes are starting to look interesting:
My tiny, tiny garden is finally being productive! Posted at 11:46 permanent link category: /misc Sat, 13 Sep 2008I spent the afternoon getting the side-stakes set up, and getting the anti-skid stuff attached. It's done. Now I just need a load and a destination!
Posted at 21:03 permanent link category: /bicycle I screwed the plywood deck down to the frame today:
Click on the picture for a little gallery of finished-trailer pictures. Of course, it may never be done, but here's the list of things I'm pretty sure I have yet to do:
I've also got a better trailer-side hitch design in mind, but I'm not going to worry about that for a little bit yet. It'll be easy enough to build when I get around to it. So, for the moment, the trailer's done! Unfortunately, that leaves me without a pressing project for the day, and thus, I sit here wondering what I'm going to do with myself... sigh. Posted at 15:42 permanent link category: /bicycle Fri, 12 Sep 2008I was invited out to a production of In The Sawtooths last night, a play about a trio of friends from Boise. It was a good show, but apparently no one has discovered this yet: the audience was sparse. You can find details on their page. I recommend it. Go enjoy local theater. Runs until the 20th of September, so you don't have long. Posted at 16:53 permanent link category: /theater Thu, 11 Sep 2008Out of curiosity, I found myself checking out how much power a bicyclist exerts in different conditions. I then ran across this page, which includes the source code for a program to determine power (among many other things) given a set of conditions. After playing around with it (and assuming the program's accurate), it looks like for normal riding, I cruise in the 150-200 watt range, going up to 300W for fast cruising. Sprinting (such as keeping up with traffic between lights when there's no bike lane), I get as high as 500W. Neat! One horsepower is 745W, so when I'm sprinting like that, I'm actually working at a fairly significant fraction of a horsepower. I had no idea humans could put out that much power. Posted at 11:42 permanent link category: /bicycle
Hey look, a picture of a mess!
I found myself awake early today, so I headed over to the hardware store and picked up some approximately OD green spraypaint. I came back and sprayed down the trailer frame (using essentially the entire can -- damn overspray!):
I should have taken the picture before I brought all the stuff back in to clutter up the background. In any case, it's getting closer, and I found a good source for a 2x4' piece of plywood: Olson lumber will sell me a 3/8" sheet of AC plywood for $6 and change. Sold! After I pick that up, all I have to do is paint it and get it fastened down. The trailer should be complete in the next week or so (it's hard to say for sure, since I'm suddenly involved with not one but two theatrical productions, so free time is at a premium). Posted at 08:42 permanent link category: /bicycle Tue, 09 Sep 2008I just pulled my second ripe tomato off the vine. This time, it was a "Health Kick" tomato. Don't ask me what that's supposed to mean.
The flavor was pretty good, relatively strong (compared to store-bought on-the-vine tomatoes), and in the middle between sweet and tart. The texture was slightly more mealy than one of the on-the-vines, but not objectionably so. It was much less wet: if an on-the-vine tomato from the store is wet, this was merely damp. Not dry, but it also didn't leave the cuttingboard looking like I'd dumped a cup of water on it. It wasn't a dramatic improvement over the store-bought tomatoes I've had recently, but it wasn't bad. And, hey, I grew it! Posted at 22:43 permanent link category: /misc I headed up to Jesse's house last night to put the finishing touches on the trailer. We attached a short tubing stub to the back for mounting a blinkenlight, and I drilled the mounting holes for the trailer-side hitch. That was actually pretty interesting, since I just set up the drill press on the ground, and rolled the tongue onto the table. I took a bunch of pictures, from different angles (click for the gallery):
And after standing around admiring my new creation, it was time to put the rubber on the road, and see what happened. Not bad, all told. I had to stop several times to check bolts and tighten the 8mm bolt I was temporarily using as a hitch pin, but other than that, there were no technical problems. I was able to hit my normal speeds, although there was clearly more weight involved in the situation. Stopping didn't prove to be a big deal, but it probably won't be until the first time I try to load a couple hundred pounds back there. I didn't have my wave washers with me, so the wheels shuttled side-to-side a little (the stub axles are cut a little bit long to allow the wave washers). That was the only noise as I rolled along -- once I get the wave washers on there, I think the trailer will be about as quiet as the bike. I measured across the axles and across my handlebars, and decided that if I allowed 3" on each end of my handlebars, that was a fairly accurate gauge of how wide the trailer is. The bollards that protect the bike trails I was on (through Shoreline) were plenty wide enough, although I'm a little concerned about the bollards on the Burke-Gilman trail in Fremont. That could be a little bit tricky, and will warrant a careful passage the first time. Now I just have to figure out my deck material and get it attached, and it'll be functionally complete. I've already got the frame primed, and I think if I can locate some OD green spraypaint, it's going to be army-colored. The Swiss cargo trailer on the Cargo Bike Ride was very inspiring. Hooray new trailer! Posted at 07:09 permanent link category: /bicycle Sun, 07 Sep 2008Jesse and I got together today, and put the final touches on the trailer. It now sports all of its structural members (ie, the final diagonal on the tongue), as well as a full assortment of wall supports and tie-down hoops. We got the axle holes drilled (which was very difficult to do free-hand, but there wasn't a better way available) and the wheels installed. I even (very carefully) sat down on the crossbar just aft of the axles. I eased my whole weight onto the trailer, and it held just fine. Jesse said it didn't really deflect, either. That's a fantastic sign, since that means that the trailer is almost certainly capable of supporting 200 lbs (I'm 230 in street clothes). I was mostly on the one crossbar, and normal loads will be spread across many points via the plywood decking. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera with me, so I didn't get any pictures, but I'll take some pictures once I get the trailer home. I also didn't have my trailer-side hitch done, so I couldn't bring it back. That, however, is what I spent my evening doing. I just got back inside from some quality time with the mill, where I came up with the trailer-side hitch fixture:
It will be mounted with the right side, the "fork," forward. That fork goes around the circular ball joint in the bike-side hitch, and a pin drops through the holes, keeping it all together. I hope I can find a pin that fits, since the fittings are metric. If not, I guess I can just make one. For a sense of scale, the whole thing is 1/2 inch wide and about 3 and 1/4 inch long. I'm really enjoying the ability to make my own thingies out of metal. This whole metalworking thing was definitely a good idea. I certainly wouldn't have embarked upon this project if I hadn't gotten the lathe, and I wouldn't be able to finish it if I didn't have the mill (this hitch was made entirely on the mill). Posted at 22:54 permanent link category: /bicycle Sat, 06 Sep 2008 Johnny was a chemist,
Posted at 17:18 permanent link category: /misc I brought my trailer-making materials up to Jesse's house last night, and we got started on the project. I figured we'd get as far as getting the pieces cut, and maybe tacking a few welds -- after all, we didn't start until 9 pm. However, the process just flew! By the time the last tungsten welding tip had been contaminated (the limiting factor for the night), the clock read past midnight, and the trailer frame was almost completed. Voila:
I decided to add the diagonals to the tongue yesterday, for added strength and stiffness. As you can see, there's only one diagonal left to attach. Not bad for 3 hours of work! Of course, there's still a bunch of stuff to do. We still have tie-down hoops, side-wall supports and axle reinforcements to attach, as well as axle holes to drill, and primer to apply. I have to design and build the trailer-side hitch -- I'm going to make it in such a way that it will be trivial to switch to a new hitch that incorporates surge brakes. That's a separate (but really interesting) design challenge, which I'll work on once the trailer's all functional. It looks like (if I can do the trailer-side hitch in time, which is pretty questionable) the trailer could be rolling by tomorrow night. That would be fantastic, although I'm not going to be disappointed if it isn't true. Posted at 10:15 permanent link category: /bicycle Fri, 05 Sep 2008I don't have the trailer built yet, but I needed to figure out a hitching system that would work without weakening the Xtracycle frame, or getting in the way of storing the bike on its tail (which I do to save space, with the front wheel in a hook on the wall). Inspired by Val at the Cargo Bike Ride (which I now recall I haven't mentioned, but I took pictures, and they're here), I decided the best way was to slide a bar inside the rear cross piece of the Xtracycle frame. He suggested just putting the hitch on one side of the bar, saying that asymmetrical stress wouldn't cause a problem. However, my brain recoils from loading anything asymmetrically if there's any other way. So, I came up with this:
The round bar slides inside the cross piece, and the square bar bolts into that. It's not quite done yet, as I need to cut some relief into the back of the square bar so it either matches the curve of the cross piece, or at least bears on its upper and lower edges rather than on the center -- it's currently a flat face against the cross piece, and isn't very stable up-and-down. But in the next week or so (hopefully before SketchFest eats my life, to be followed closely by Necronomicon at Open Circle), I'm hoping to get the trailer largely done. I have the major pieces I need, except for some plywood for the deck, and that'll be a piece of cake to pick up... once I have a cargo trailer, that is. (For the complete gallery of trailer hitch pics, go here.) Posted at 16:06 permanent link category: /bicycle I thought some of my half-dozen readers might enjoy seeing the post-crash pictures of the leather riding suit I was wearing. This, my friends (to quote a certain geriatric contender-for-office) is exactly why you wear your riding gear each and every time you go out:
Note that if I weren't wearing this suit, I would now be sitting in a hospital awaiting skin grafts over 30-40% of my body. Riding gear good! Posted at 10:11 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 04 Sep 2008For the last day or two, I've been waking up to the sonorous strains of high-powered wheed-whackers, starting up at the stroke of 8. This morning, it finally occurred to me that they were coming from behind my house, and that the thing behind my house was the drainage ditch, but more importantly, blackberries. The blackberry bushes between my house and the next one east have been present for the entire time I've owned the house, and have gotten absolutely deadly in the last few years: this year, one got so aggressive that it put a huge, thick tendril 10 feet up in the air, and into the pear tree in my back yard. I cut back the odd tentacle snaking out over, through or under the fence, but I had no clue how to deal with the mass. I had considered calling the city; I'd thought about hiring goats; I'd pondered Rambo-esque scenarios with me wielding a flamethrower. Somehow, it was never a high enough priority to actually pursue any course of action. Imagine my delight when I peeked out the window this morning to see sun streaming through my fence, rather than blackberry vines! I hailed one of the guys wielding a weed-whacker, and asked him if he was from the City. Yes, replied he, and went on to explain that the job had been "lost in the shuffle." I was so elated it didn't even occur to me to think that the "shuffle" had lasted over 8 years now. I confirmed who I'd call if it became an issue again (the City's main call-center, who would route the work order to them in the Drainage department). I thanked him profusely and came back inside for my camera:
Posted at 08:46 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 31 Aug 2008Racing yesterday was definitely story-worthy. The schedule for the weekend was unusual. Normally, we'd have two practices on Saturday, followed by a practice then two races on Sunday. This weekend was the endurance race weekend, and so Sunday was entirely taken up with endurance races. That meant all the rest of the racing had to happen on Saturday. Thus, we had one practice in the morning, a race at noon, and a race at 3:20. I felt kind of shortchanged, since that meant I got 3/5ths of the time on the track I normally would. The morning practice passed fairly uneventfully, although I had one notable occasion: I was trying to take corners faster, fully aware that this was one of the places I could stand to improve. As I was entering turn 2, which is a wide, sweeping left-hand curve at the end of the front straight, I decided to not slow down as much as I normally do. I remembered Jesse saying that he'd been able to take 2 at basically full throttle in 5th gear, so I figured I'd head that direction. So I entered in 5th gear, going faster than normal (although how much faster, I couldn't tell you). I made it around the turn, but I had a slightly butt-clenching moment when both tires started drifting sideways. It was very controllable, and I didn't spaz (for spazzing would have certainly caused me to crash). But it was a data point: at least on those relatively cold tires, I'd reached the traction limit. I was also scraping the footpeg, which is getting to be a real irritant for me. I didn't make as much progress on braking late into 3 as I wanted, but it was otherwise a decent practice. I had one other moment that was just dumb: coming into the bus stop, where one must slow way down and shift into 2nd or 1st, my foot missed the shifter, and I entered in 5th gear. Not a big deal, just clutch in and do some quick shifting, but it slowed me down, and the group of riders I'd been following disappeared. I tried to turn off the camera after the practice only to discover that it was frozen again. I guess my new very-solid mount is transmitting too much vibration to the camera. Again. I'm not thrilled with this. I pulled out the shim I'd been hoping would keep down the up-and-down vibration I noticed in a test in the garage, and decided I'd try again for the race. The first race rolled around at noon, and I got myself suited up. Turned on the camera, but it wasn't having any of it. It wouldn't even turn on. I gave up, and left the balky thing behind, since I really didn't need to be late to the race for this. So I rolled out, and did my warm-up lap. Nothing notable there. Gridded for the start, although as I did, one of the new riders next to me suddenly turned, closing the path another rider had been aiming for, moving way too fast. He swerved right in front of me, and I caught it at the last minute, jamming on my front brake so hard the back tire came up and slapped back down. That was the end of that, but I have a vague memory that the rider who caused me to slam on the brakes was the same rider who I shall refer to as number XXX for the remainder of the story. The start was fine, and I kept up with the back of the pack. I could have started better, but it wasn't bad. I followed the pack all the way into 3, but they were so bunched up in there that I fell back just out of a desire not to be too close to the crashing that seemed imminent. No crashes occurred, but somehow I found myself behind 146, Mark, and XXX. Mark was able to pass XXX without too much trouble half a lap later, but I found myself utterly stuck. Every time we'd go through a corner, he held me back, but every time there was a straight or corner exit, he'd pull away. I finally realized he was riding a bigger bike, and learned after the race that it was a 350. But every corner, he'd slow way down, and I couldn't figure out how to pass him safely -- I don't have the technique, and I don't have the power to make up for my lack of technique. So, I found myself thwarted at every turn, with a growing sense that I wanted to pass this guy no matter what. As he ground down to playground speeds through the bus stop, I determined that I'd try to get him around turn 2, which was the next likely place. Of course, he disappeared hundreds of yards in front of me down the straight, but I knew I could get him in 2, if not 3 or 4. So I tucked way down, and even saw the tachometer pass 10k RPM, which was my previous top speed. I was ready for this guy. I decided that since my tires were probably warmer, I could try hitting 2 fast again, like I had in practice. I kept the throttle pinned, with barely a waver as I prepared to turn in. I turned in, following my usual line, and the following events happened very quickly: I realized I was going too fast. I'd leaned over as far as I could, and the footpeg was starting to scrape. Damn that peg! My brain passed along the urgent, high-priority message: You're going too fast! An agonizingly long quarter of a second later, I decided I'd better slow down, so I rolled off the throttle. I didn't chop it, but I reduced throttle a lot. As I did this, I traced out the line I was following. It crossed into the dirt on the side of the track. As a result of rolling off the throttle, the suspension balance was slightly upset, which caused the rear tire to lose some traction (I think). This part isn't as clear to me. At no point did I touch the brakes, so at least I wasn't making that mistake (in a full lean, the available traction in a motorcycle's tire is basically all going into resisting sideways force; there's nothing left for slowing down). Something caused the lightened tire to skip, and my world went blurry. Suddenly, my hip hurt, and I realized I was on the ground. I remember thinking, "Well, this does hurt a bit. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised." I slid nicely along the track, the leather suit and gloves doing their jobs perfectly. Then I started rolling, with my arms flopping around, probably about the point I hit the gravel. I realized what was happening, and tried to hold my arms out to stop the rolling. That was also about the point I came to a stop. I looked up to see the bike lying a dozen feet in front of me on its side. I did the quickest body check I've ever done, and decided nothing was seriously damaged. I got up, still nothing causing pain; cool. I walked over to the bike to shut it off, and it blub-blub-blub'd to a halt just as I bent down to flick the OFF switch. The corner worker on the opposite side of the track yelled something, and made expansive "come over here!" arm gestures. I quickly grabbed the bike and leaned it up against the tire wall. I wanted it on its sad little tires, but I realize now that I was also doing a service to anyone else who might crash in the same spot, so I'm glad I did it. I jogged across the track, since I saw some bikes rounding turn 1, which meant they would be passing me in a few seconds. As I jogged, I shook the gravel out of my gloves, and tried to make further assessments as to my state of health. Certainly the first thing they'd ask was whether I was alright. I seemed to be. I pulled off helmet and gloves. The gloves were dusty, and my thumb had a tiny numb spot on it, as if I'd whacked it really hard against something. There was also a dark red blood blister developing at the base of my left palm, but that was the extent of the visible damage. I checked over my helmet, but to my amazement, it hadn't touched down anywhere. That's $500 I won't have to spend again today, at least! The woman who was working turn 2 asked me if I wanted to be examined by the medics. After some theatrical patting of limbs and checking of collarbones, I said I was fine. I knew my hip was going to bruise (although at the time, it really didn't feel damaged at all), and my thumb felt weird. The bike, however, didn't look so good. The crash truck showed up and they loaded the bike in. I grabbed the number plate that had parted company with the bike at the track/gravel border, and hopped aboard as well. The big problem was that the front wheel was torqued about 30° away from where the handlebars were pointing. The left peg was pushed up into the bike, and the left numberplate holder was a comical mess of twisted aluminum. They dropped me off at my pit area, and I stood back to assess things. The front end was definitely in trouble. The shifter rod was bent in a comical S shape, and the shift lever itself was pointing at the sky. With the assistance of many of the other vintage riders, I was able to put it all basically right. I got the engine started again, and rode it up and down the pits once. I called Tim over to tech the bike again. I told him what I'd fixed, and my misgivings about the front-end: although I'd been able to get the wheel pretty much straight to the handlebars, it wasn't moving up and down like it should. He gave it a push, and said, "If you want, I can give you this tech sticker and you can go race, but I wouldn't do that if it were my bike." I agreed with him, and decided I wouldn't go out again. The problem was that the front suspension was much stickier than it should be. I could get it to move with a big shove, but me sitting down on the bike, for instance, didn't move it a millimeter. That's not good. The suspension is what keeps the wheels on the ground over bumps, and particularly while leaned over, any inability to track over the bumps means the tire loses traction. And what did I just do? Lost traction while leaned over. I wasn't real keen to try that experience on again. So, I sat out the second race, glumly sitting in the stands that overlook the bus stop as the little vintage bikes roared by. I noted that every lap, XXX fell further and further behind, sourly thinking, "I was behind that jerk. That would have been me." Of course, what puts a bow on the whole thing is that this was probably my last race of the season. I am most likely committed to something else for the last race on October 4th and 5th, and won't be able to race. So my 2008 race season was capped by a dunder-headed mechanical failure on the first race of a weekend absolutely packed with vintage races, and then by a stupid crash after one lap (a 2:16 lap, I noted, stuck behind XXX) in the first race of the last weekend. Clap. Clap. Clap. So I guess now I have time to do all those winter projects I was thinking about. Postscript: While I was at the race, someone came up and said, "Ian Johnston?" He went on to say, "You don't know me, but..." and explained how he'd been reading this journal after finding my website in a search for BMW R65 information. That was pretty cool. We ended up talking for a long time about these vintage bikes, and racing, and all that. He came over after my crash and expressed his sympathy, watching with his two sons as I attempted to straighten a well-bent shift lever. Of course, I've completely forgotten his name, but hi! Thanks for reading. It's neat to meet people who read this stuff, and who aren't compelled to do so by familial or friendship bonds. Post-postscript: In the cold hard light of morning, I'm almost exactly as damaged as I first surmised. I have what's going to develop into a grapefruit-sized bruise on my left hip. There's a small raised bump on my left forearm. My thumb feels normal, and the blood blister is ugly but painless. I added a few tiny scrapes in various places on my arms and legs. But that's it. No (new) joint pain, no exciting new aches other than the hip. That was, in almost any sense, the perfect crash. A nice lowside while leaned way over. If it hadn't munged up the bike's front-end, I wouldn't even give it a second thought. Other than, you know, "Hey, don't do that again." Posted at 09:39 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 27 Aug 2008My first ripe tomato showed up nearly a week ago, and I've patiently left it on the vine, anxious that I shouldn't pick it too early: 
There is actually one tiny tomato hiding in there It's very lonely looking (well, I should say, it was very lonely looking) all by itself on that vine. So I ate it.  The end. (Well, hopefully the rest of those gazillion tomatoes will ripen up too, but that's for another day.) Posted at 20:02 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 24 Aug 2008
Tee hee: more CAD goofing around
I forgot how much fun it is to play around in CAD programs. I decided to model (approximately) the new camera mount, pictures of which appear below.  The real thing ended up a bit more mangled than that. In order to relieve stress on the hose clamps, the corners of the ears got rounded over with a file. The camera wouldn't angle far enough up, so I ended up cutting down the top edge of the 3-fingered mount in an ungraceful way. Posted at 19:29 permanent link category: /motorcycle I finally sucked down some CAD goodness in the form of brl-cad, and made a basic model of the bicycle cargo trailer I want to build:  That's just the rough outline, and not terribly well done, but it shows the basic idea. That'll get a plywood deck to complete it, and some rings and tubes to accomodate strapping things down and adding a temporary wall with dowels and something between them (rope, webbing, netting, whatever). The deck will be two feet by four feet, and the tongue will be one foot long. That makes it big enough to carry my cello, which was the real goal. It should also be sized appropriately to carry 100-150 lbs of whatever else -- boxes, cider blocks, bags of heavy stuff. The frame (based on simplistic calculations) should weigh about 10 lbs, and by the time it's all put together, it should come in under 30 lbs. The trailer hitch on the bicycle will be composed of a heim joint attached to a bracket welded to the back of the Xtracycle frame. It should be pretty robust, but I'm still trying to figure out how I can continue storing the Xtracycle up on its tail with the hitch in place. Given how often I'm likely to use it, I suppose I could just remove the hitch from its bracket when it's not in use... That would certainly be the easiest solution. Posted at 17:18 permanent link category: /bicycle
Introduction to The Enormous Room
Given that The Enormous Room is available electronically, and the copyright date on this introduction is 1934, I'm going to guess that it's safe to reproduce here. This is from the Random House "Modern Library" edition, published, well, some time after 1934. There are no other dates I can find.
I endeavored, as much as possible, to preserve the formatting and spelling. Hopefully I don't have too many typos in there. Posted at 13:57 permanent link category: /misc I finally got my new mill squared up and ready for serious work a couple of days ago, so I decided to christen it with a job that absolutely couldn't be done on the lathe: a new, steadier mount for the on-bike camera. I had these crazy plans for a very complex clamping assembly that would clamp onto a fork tube. Very swanky. Very nearly impossible to do given the facilities and skill I have at the moment. Then I was struck with inspiration for another way to do it: a much simpler mount plus bog-standard hose clamps. It worked perfectly:
Posted at 01:41 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sat, 23 Aug 2008I finally got around to editing and posting my on-the-bike footage from Sounds of the Past:
It was a all good until that last time down the straight... Posted at 08:40 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 20 Aug 2008When I was 17 (the day I turned 17, in fact), I learned of a book called EIMI, written by one ee cummings. It was mentioned in the introduction of The Enormous Room, which had been given to me as a gift that day. I fairly devoured The Enormous Room, which is a book I'd recommend to almost anyone. It's not tortured typesetting, it's actually a novel, but it's a cubist novel. I can't really explain, just go read it. Every lending library in the world has a copy. I was on the Powell's Books website today, looking at other stuff, and it randomly occurred to me to type "eimi" into their search box. Maybe, thought I to myself, they'll have a used copy in. I'd never seen a used copy, but I always look when I'm there. To my shock, delight, surprise and amazement, they actually have a new printing of EIMI! I learned, for the first time, anything about EIMI beyond its title (the introduction to The Enormous Room is intentionally incredibly vague on the topic). I have some new reading material. Update: if you'd like a recommended version of The Enormous Room, this is the best one out there. It includes sketches he drew at the time, and is based on his original manuscript rather than the sometimes heavily-edited version that had previously been in print. The introduction I mentioned is from a hardback edition, and I'll have to update again with the edition information. If you'd like to read it online or on your uber-trendy Kindle, have a gander at the free e-book. Posted at 16:04 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 18 Aug 2008I had just gotten myself settled in bed, when the phone rang. Yep, 18 minutes out of vacation, and Adobe calls me to fix a balky server. Welcome back to the working life, suckah! Posted at 00:23 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 17 Aug 2008Today is the last day of my sabbatical. I've been off work for 7 weeks as of Friday, and I return to the office on Monday. It's been a full 7 weeks, too. I thought for sure I would tire of an excess of free time, but instead I've found myself wishing for more. The first thing I did with all my free time was drive down to Pat's Acres with Jesse, and ride my little racebike around the kart track. I had a great time, and will definitely return if that event happens again next year. I have most of a formal write-up done on that adventure, but haven't put the final polish on it yet. Look for that to go up soon. Then, with a surprisingly small number of days between the events, I clambered aboard a plane to Alaska, landing in Juneau to find the weather overcast and in the 50's. It was like landing in heaven. I spent 10 days aboard the SV Sequoia with my parents, who were up there on a 3 month trip. I joined them through Glacier Bay, where we saw glaciers (duh), sea otters, orca whales, tons and tons of humpback whales, glorious scenery, and about a zillion eagles. Seriously, I have one picture in which I counted 21 bald eagles, just hangin' out in a tree. I have a trip report brewing for Alaska as well, and I took 1200 pictures while I was there.
Upon returning from Alaska, I had a little bit of unscheduled time, and used it to best possible effect: I worked on motorcycles. Jesse and I had bought new carburetors for our racebikes, and we had just a week before Ducati Seattle would be holding a dyno day. We really wanted to get our bikes on the dyno with the new carbs, so Jesse did some high-tech design work, and figured out the intake runners we'd need to make. I did the precision machining based on his design, and he welded them together. The finished product looks pretty sharp, if I do say so myself, and we had it all ready in time for the dyno. Dyno thoroughly vanquished (I think my bike put out 14 HP all told, COWER, BRIEF MORTALS!), I packed up my Ninja 250 with camping gear, and headed down the coast toward California. I wanted to meet up with my aunt in Bend, so that was my only schedule constraint. I camped in Washinton (where I coincidentally set up camp next to a group of Guzzi riders, one of whom happened to be a 160 racer -- it's a tiny tiny world), Oregon, and California, followed by a night at Crater Lake (where I met the most mind-bendingly attractive ranger ever; I still think about her, and I interacted with her for maybe 30 seconds -- Kara R, call me!). Then, it was on to Bend, which was hot, and hot. With some hot on the side. Bend was followed by a marathon 450 mile day (or so) back to Seattle, in time for... Vintage racing last weekend! It was the Sounds of the Past weekend, which meant 2x the normal amount of racing, including a Le Mans start race. If you've been following along, you know how well that went. I put a hole in a piston due to ham-handed wrenching, and only this morning got the bike working again. But I was able to do corner work in turn 9 on Sunday, and that was interesting. This week was spent, well, rebuilding my engine. Scroll down to see how well that went, but the end result was that the bike fired up this morning without any trouble, and I'm back where I started before last weekend. My final act of vacation, aside from writing this journal entry, was to make some no-bake cookies after watching The Education of Shelby Knox. Mmmm, cookies. The movie was ok, but mostly made me want to rail against Lubbock, Texas. And now, a mere 45 minutes before my vacation is officially over, I can wrap it all up in a tidy bow: I had a good time. I'm not sad to go back to work (I'm glad I have a work to go back to). I don't know that I've made any earth-shattering decisions about my employment situation (the nominal purpose of the sabbatical program). I like my job well enough that it's hard to imagine anything fitting me better. See you on the flip side. Posted at 23:16 permanent link category: /misc The engine started exactly like it always does. I must have done things right. There's a little bit of oil coming from the left exhaust pipe, but that's almost certainly the thick coat from the holy-piston run, which I didn't clean out. Both spark plugs look good, and I've finished my first breakin run. Pity I'm gonna have to do the remaining breakin on the track, which is not really the ideal environment (although it's better than babying it along backroads). Posted at 11:45 permanent link category: /motorcycle Curious to see if I could duplicate Jesse's fuel flow results, I set out to do some testing of my own this morning. The first test was done with the tank very low on fuel, maybe 1/2" over the top of the ON tube on the petcock. That is, about 2" of fuel in the tank. I set up my tinfoil trough under both carbs, and pulled the drain plugs. Watching the sweep second hand on my watch, I turned on the fuel for 1 minute as precisely as I could, probably within one second. I examined my measuring cup: about 1/3 cup at the bottom of the meniscus dip, which looked to be around 3 oz from what I could tell. Math tells me it's actually 2 2/3 oz. Yesterday, I did some pessimistic math, and decided that these engines need roughly 2.7 oz/min of fuel flow to develop 14 HP. And my test resulted in 2.666. Hmm. That could be a problem. So, I filled the tank nearly to the top, which is about 6 inches of fuel. I repeated the test, and the flow was obviously much more capacious: at the end of a minute, I saw 1 2/3 cups, or 13 1/3 oz! I didn't do these tests with anything like the precision necessary to be repeatable and useful for actual research, but it was a dramatic demonstration of the effects of hydrostatic pressure. It also suggests that to avoid fuel starvation issues, the tank should always be full or near to it. Posted at 11:14 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sat, 16 Aug 2008
The hopefully-penultimate racebike update
I just got back in from doing the final prep on the racebike. The engine's back in the frame, all the bits are attached, and it's basically ready to go. I still need to pour gas in the tank, but that's the only thing to be done before it should theoretically start. As it was nearly 8:30 pm by the time I got to that point, I decided to be nice to my neighbors, and not start my 120 dB racebike. So, the bike sits, fully assembled (but not quite done -- I haven't done the final safety-wiring, in case I need to pull some things apart in the near future), and ready to go. I've got gas in the can, so tomorrow morning, not too early, I'll fill 'er up, and let 'er rip. You know, hopefully. When I put the engine back together, I set the timing back to about where it had been when the whole thing went kablooey. Just for yuks, I checked to see where it fired the spark. It was at about 80° of advance. It's supposed to be set at 40°. 35°, for example is power-robbingly far off the mark. Anything over 40° is considered dangerous. I'd say maybe, just maybe, having it set to 80° could have caused my problem. Ouchie. I sent a mea culpa email to the 160 list, explaining what happened, so that hopefully no incoming newbies will follow in my dubious footsteps. Other than that, everthing has looked perfect. I reset the timing back to 40°, where it's supposed to be, and everything else is in readiness. Jesse did some flow-testing with his bike, to see how much gas actually flows out of the carburetors. Based on some calculations he did (admittedly for an EFI system, but the numbers should still be close), our bikes require about 4 oz per minute of fuel. Well, something like that, don't quote me on numbers. Anyway, he was able to get 5.5 oz of fuel out of his carbs in a minute, which suggests that there's an acceptable buffer available. The 4 oz figure is only for peak power, which is only a situation you run into part of the time on the track; 5.5 is therefore an even greater buffer than it sounds like. I will do the same test tomorrow, assuming I can figure out a sufficiently precise measuring contrivance to measure fuel quantity. Hopefully it'll be about the same, but I'm pretty sure that my problems were caused by that whole 80° fiasco, and not a lack of fuel to the carbs. So, assuming I did everything right (and I'm pretty sure I did), I should be able to start the bike tomorrow, and be back in the running for perfect attendance/last place in the 2008 season. Posted at 21:05 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 14 Aug 2008I took the racebike engine apart, all the way down to the last screw. I already posted pictures of running the engine cases through the dishwasher (hint for future generations: rinse all the kerosene off if you do this -- my dishwasher smells like kerosene now). With everything cleaned up, and all the bits of dead piston removed, it all looks pretty good. The cases cleaned up nicely, although the dishwasher detergent (phosphate free) etched the aluminum a bit, so the cases are noticeably darker than before washing. I was able to get the bottom end of the engine reassembled yesterday, and it appears to have gone together nicely. I have to say, the design of the transmission is extremely elegant. I really liked having a chance to play with the gears and see how they work (just like I thought they did, but I'd never seen it before). I was afraid of taking the bottom end apart, just because it looked very daunting from the diagrams and pictures in the manual. In fact, except for one spring-loaded lever, it was a piece of cake, and I wouldn't hesitate to do it again. It's that "fear of the unknown" thing. I got a start today, cleaning off the cylinders, and getting ready to fit the pistons. Unfortunately, the first piston out of my kit ended up being the wrong size! I overbored the cylinders as part of the rebuild earlier this year, to .5mm oversize. The piston kit I got is marked .5mm oversize, but one of the pistons inside is standard size. I've contacted Tim O, who sold the kit to me, and who had several others; hopefully he can get me set up with a correctly-sized piston before too long. I can't assemble the engine without it, unless I want to use the old, un-holy piston (which is a possibility if it comes right down to it). There's a lot of measuring and checking to be done on the top end, and I'm debating now how much of it I want to do. I'm not really excited about doing any of it, but I feel like I should, particularly if I end up changing some of the critical gasket thicknesses. That changes how close the piston comes to the top of the engine, which can result in things whacking into each other. Obviously a situation to be avoided. I'll have to see how dramatically different the new head gasket is (that's the "big" one, in that the old one is something like 1.5mm, and the new one is something like .5mm -- 1mm is a lot of space inside an engine). The undersized piston kind of stops me in my tracks, unfortunately. I can fake along and do some of the stuff I need to do, but I'm very effectively prevented from making any substantial progress until I either get a new piston, or decide to use the old one. Arg. Posted at 10:48 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 12 Aug 2008 Posted at 23:33 permanent link category: /motorcycle I just loaded all the engine cases from my racebike's engine into the dishwasher. This is apparently a good way to get engine cases clean, and doesn't involve any abrasives or harsh chemicals, which is a good thing. I am very worried that the close tolerances inside the engine not be damaged. I even discovered I have some non-phosphate detergent, which seems to be a good thing to avoid contamination on the aluminum. "We'll see." To set doubtless shrieking minds at ease: this is the step I'm taking after I scrubbed them thoroughly in kerosene, and dried them off. They're pretty clean, and this is just kind of a final step. Hopefully they'll come out all purty and sparkly (although I'll settle for clean and dry). Posted at 16:03 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 11 Aug 2008This is mostly a Picture Post™. 
Yeah. That's pretty much not supposed to look like that. This may be the reason the engine stopped producing much power. Whattaya think? Posted at 13:53 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sat, 09 Aug 2008We arrived at the track today in plenty of time, and after a bit of rain, a bit of setup, and some bureaucracy, we were on the track. It was wet, but there wasn't actually rain falling. I took it easy, not knowing the limits of these tires in wet conditions. My lap times showed it: 2:35-2:40, where in dry conditions I had previously done 2:19. The bike wasn't working all that well, though. In early July, I got a new set of carburetors for the bike, which are bigger and should in theory allow the engine to produce more power. Jesse and I collaborated on the intake runners, and we had our first taste of power on the dyno at Ducati Seattle. However, this was our first time out on the actual track with the new carbs. Jesse was wide-eyed with amazement at the transformation of his bike. He was powering down the straight, keeping up with people who'd formerly disappeared on the horizon. I, however, was not so pleased. The bike ran like crap for the first lap (I thought I'd have to exit). The second and subsequent laps were better, obviously something cleared up -- we now theorize fouled plugs from a far-too-rich idle setting -- but still the engine ran with obviously too little power. Certainly nothing like Jesse experienced. So, having ruled out jetting (which we'd confirmed on the dyno was set about right), I started messing with the timing. This changes when exactly the spark fires as the piston moves up and down, and if you hit the sweet spot, the engine does noticeably better. If you're off the sweet spot, it turns in a mediocre performance, and if you're far off, it will run very poorly, or even damage the engine. I knew I was close, and so I went in the direction that seemed to make sense: further advanced. Mr. Bateman's advice was to go for nearly the stock full-advance point of 40°, and I was at about 33°. So each iteration, I'd advance a bit further, and the bike would run a little bit better. I seemed to reach a peak and go past it, so I rolled back to about where the peak was (the adjustment involved loosening two screws and whacking a rotating plate with a small hammer, so precision is not one of its strong points). Finally, the first race came. This was exciting, as the Sounds of the Past race series includes a 10-lap, Le Mans start race, which I showed via video in an earlier post. I didn't have any trouble with the start, and actually got off pretty well. I wasn't the fastest guy out there, but no real shock on that, I never have been. I was trading passes with #823, from Portland (I think that's the number, but I'm not sure), and actually catching up to #960, who had formerly had a distinct power advantage over me. I wasn't catching up fast, but my slightly greater skill brought me a little bit closer with each corner, and I figured in a few laps I would have passed him. Two laps in, as I was tucked down low over the tank in the front straight, I noticed that my tachometer was reading a little bit lower than the last lap. Not a lot, but I wondered why I should be down on power. The previous lap, I'd been able to get it up around 10k RPM, and hold it there, although this required a very distinct and uncomfortable squeeze to make myself as small as possible to the oncoming air. Then, as I rounded turn 1 (hardly a turn at all, but apparently it's a big deal at big-bike race speeds), I saw my RPM actually going down, and realized something was wrong. I launched my hand in the air, and continued to slow, despite holding open full throttle. #823 screamed past me after having been behind me for about half a lap. I pulled over to the side, debating whether I should pull all the way off. What could have gone wrong? Did I suck in a valve? Oh crap, I bet I sucked in a valve! This would be terrible, as it would require potentially scrapping a lot of the engine, depending on how it happened. Anyway, it didn't switch off like a valve should have done, it was a comparatively gradual decline: it might have taken 5 very long seconds. Possibly 6. So, I limped around the rest of the track. At full throttle, the bike wouldn't accelerate, but would maintain speed on the level. I had to downshift and upshift a few times to keep things rolling, and at least one of the shifts seemed very strange, as if I'd managed to shift from 4th to 2nd gear in one leap. I wondered what I could have possibly done that would affect both engine power and the transmission, but couldn't come up with anything. I also couldn't think beyond "broken valve," so obviously my brain wasn't firing on all cylinders yet, either. I pulled off at the track exit, and rolled up to the hot-tech guys, who were ready for me. I pulled in the clutch, knowing with a fair certainty that the engine would die as I did, and that I'd likely never get it running again without extensive work. "Oh, yeah, looks like you blew a head gasket," said one of the techs, pointing to the flow of oil down one cylinder. Well, that was actually a pretty benign failure, and it was conceivable I could fix that and be racing again today! He offered me a push to get started again, but I declined, explaining, "I don't think this engine is ever going to start again." I then pushed the bike back to my pit, breathing hard and sweating profusely under the hot riding suit. Pushing the bike any distance involved yet more muscles I didn't know I had, and of which I would have prefered to remain in ignorance. I got the bike back to the pit and sat back to cool down for a bit. I walked over to watch the last half of the race, and saw everyone passing by, but watching from the straight is one of the least interesting locations, particularly when you were most recently watching from the track itself. After the engine had cooled off, I started taking bit and pieces off to see what I could see. The spark plugs revealed the most interesting and doomful story: the right plug was a very odd oil-grey color, which I'd never seen before. The left plug was beautiful, a lovely tan with a hint of grey; exactly the color you want to see. Tim O suggested that I had actually busted a valve, and bade me look into the exhaust port of the suffering cylinder. I looked: one whole, healthy-looking valve. However, as long as I had the flashlight out, I switched my view around to the sparkplug hole. There, lurking casually in the top of the piston, was a ragged hole, the size of a dime. This is in a piston that's around an inch and a half across, so a dime is a pretty significant chunk of it. In any case, you never ever want to see a hole in a piston. That cemented it: I was done for the weekend, possibly for the season, depending on how hard it was to get replacement parts. I put the bike back together, my mood surprisingly upbeat. Upon reflection, I realized that "unavoidable" failures just don't bother me: they're part of racing. It was the "I should have known better" problems that really pissed me off and got me in a foul mood. So, I put things back together, and got myself ready for transport home. Jesse still had one race to run, and ended up placing 6th, which is quite an accomplishment, particularly in this day's crowd. I, meanwhile, have been plotting my course until the next race: work a corner tomorrow (they seem to be perpetually short of corner workers), and spend the next week disassembling and cleaning the engine. The majority of the damage will be the little chunks of molten piston that got sprayed everywhere, but fortunately there should be little or no permanent damage. It does mean I'll have to completely disassemble the engine and transmission, but this is actually an exciting prospect. I wanted to do that before, but even more than that, I wanted a working engine. Now, I have to do it, or I won't have a working engine. I'm such a nerd. Minor update: why it happened! I'm still undecided, but there are two possiblities. The first is that the right carburetor was starved for fuel near the end of the straight (which is where you need the highest fuel flow), and thus ran leaner and leaner as I rode down the straight. This seems possible, but why didn't the left carb suffer similarly? It showed no signs of being too lean. The second thought is that I may well have pushed the timing too far advanced, resulting in a slight detonation condition. This is very likely to put a hole in a piston, since it starts the fire going while the piston is still coming up, instead of when it's ready to start going down. I now suspect that both of these conditions may have combined for a perfect storm of doom for the right piston. I'm not sure why only the right side was affected, but perhaps more clues will become evident as I take things apart. Posted at 19:56 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 08 Aug 2008I happened to be sifting through the pictures I took on my coast trip, and came across this one, which I thought was pretty cool: 
That was taken with my trusty collapsible tripod south of Crescent City, CA, very near the Mill Creek campground turnoff, where I stayed on the third night. That wasn't the biggest redwood I saw, it just happened to be one of the trees in the little area where I'd pulled off to take a rest. It's just a wee tiddler, don't ya know. Posted at 00:47 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 07 Aug 2008Didja miss me? I just got back last night (minutes before sunset) from a motorcycle trip down the coast to Northern California, then back through Crater Lake and Bend where my aunt recently moved. It was a generally good trip, but had a melancholy tinge because I was doing it solo, and would have been happy to have had another person or two to share things with. Anyway, this makes trip report #3 I want to get written up and posted -- good thing I've still got next week off! In completely separate news, and news I wish I'd mentioned before I left (but you know how getting ready for a trip gets crazy): Come watch me race this weekend! Saturday is the event called Sounds of the Past, and is a huge vintage racing event that promises to be great fun. The 160 class (in which I race) will have a Le Mans start race, in which the racers have to run across the track and start their bikes (push-start in the case of most of us): It looks mad, but I'm interested to try it. Also, (hint hint) I'll need someone to hold my bike for me! Check out the schedule. You'll definitely want to be there by 1, but interesting things start at 10:48 (the qualifying practice, which will be as good as a race), and the last neat Vintage event is at 4:05. So, show up anywhere in that range, and you'll see some hilariously slow-paced racing. The entrance fee is $10 per day (there's also racing on Sunday like normal, but Saturday is definitely the day to be there). Here are directions to the track, which is about 40 minutes away from Seattle. I'd love to see you there. Look for me in the pits, right where the B mark is on this map. I'll be under a white shelter, and my bike number is 923. Come hang out. Posted at 09:01 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 31 Jul 2008
CL175 rebuilding part 7. Finally.
Hey, it's only six months late, right? I finally sat down yesterday and logged some more footage for the next episode of rebuilding the CL175. From December. But I finally did it, and the next episode shouldn't be too much further behind.
Look for Part 8 within a month. Really. Probably. Posted at 14:42 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 28 Jul 2008Jesse finally talked me into going out and riding in the dirt a bit, and today was the day. We loaded up and headed out to Tahuya, which is near Tacoma, on the Kitsap Peninsula. It's a little state park that's been set up for offroad vehicles, and seems to be mostly used by dirtbikes and quads. We had Jesse's WR250 and his friend's XR200R in the truck, and I was wearing a hodgepodge of my, Jesse's and the friend's gear. Now, this was a significant day, and I should explain why. When I was growing up in Woodinville, my parents absolutely forbade motorcycles of any kind. There were other kids I knew who were allowed to ride dirtbikes, and it seemed horribly unfair to me that I wasn't given the same opportunity. Unfortunately, most of the kids I knew who rode dirbikes were also, to be blunt, assholes. They seem, through the gathering mists of time, to have been characterized by awful mullet-like haircuts, husky voices, a certain fantastic boastfulness ("I'm a black-belt in karate" sort of thing), and a smug, superior attitude. Between the attitudes (despite all present evidence, I was a scrawny and unpopular kid when I was growing up) and the bike-envy, I essentially grew up hating dirtbikes. In early adulthood, I came to view dirtbikes, and by extension their riders, as these awful noisy things that went around destroying natural areas. It's a classic capital-L Liberal reaction. It was supported by the evidence, though, and it never even crossed my mind that I might one day try riding one offroad. Then, a few years ago, Jesse got a dirtbike. I made the requisite inbred-hick jokes and didn't think much more about it. He seemed to be having a good time with it, but I wasn't interested. After I got into racing this year, I heard an awful lot of people say, "Dirtbike riding really improves your track riding skills." Ok, sure. Still not interested. Finally they got through to me, and last week we made plans to go out. I agreed to go attempt this form of riding that I'd been completely against less than a week earlier. Jesse's friend Eric had a bike to lend in exchange for some much-needed maintenance. So Jesse and I replaced bearings and brake shoes, and adjusted and cleaned and did all the things you really have to do every so often on motorcycles. Once we finally got on the trail, riding Eric's undersprung XR200R, pretty much the first thing I did was crash on the first corner. I saw this seemingly huge vertical wall looming, and stared it down, crashing as surely as if I'd target-fixated on a concrete wall on the freeway. Fortunately, I crashed at about 4 MPH, and the worst damage was to my pride. Heaving and sweating (it wasn't a hot day, but I was already soaked from working muscles I didn't know I had, and I was wearing my effectively non-ventilated road helmet), I picked up the bike, and declared to Jesse as he rode back to investigate, "This isn't fun." He laughed it off, and we kept going. He told me about how he'd had much the same reactions at first, as well. I realized that my mistake on the first crash was that I wasn't looking where I wanted to go, so I worked on that. It got better, but my second crash was basically the same thing. After that, I didn't have any more trouble with crashing due to looking in the wrong place. So, a bit more background here. In street riding, you're working on the assumption that the road surface is solid, and any impediment to traction (such as oil, gravel, rain, snow, etc.) is a call for utmost caution. You train yourself that if you see these things, mental alarm bells go off, and you back way off and go gingerly. Gravel in particular is one of those things that sets off the alarms. Now, on the trail we were riding, there was about 50% coverage with what I will graciously term "gravel." This wasn't your nice, jagged, unlikely-to-roll roadside gravel. No, this was deep puddles of rounded stones that looked to me like gigantic mineralic ball bearings. In other words, exactly the sort of thing that makes my brain flash red strobelights and engages every nerve that will lead to stopping and getting away from this foolish road condition. So, for the entire hour or two we were out, I was fighting deeply ingrained impulses to STOP because I was ABOUT TO DIE. The trails we were following were between 3 and 5 feet wide, and typically involved a sharp curve every 10-20 feet. The curves were massively banked, so it was possible to fly through them quite quickly, although I was going at a grandma's pace. Jesse was very good about stopping and checking that I was still upright, and he wasn't going too fast (although I found that if I let him get ahead of me, I wasn't consuming quite so much dust). However, in addition to being massively banked, they were also covered with these seemingly colossal swamps of overgrown pea gravel ("orange gravel," if you will). Fortunately, it didn't take me too long to figure out that the bike wasn't going to freak out about this stuff if I wasn't. It would slide around a little bit, but in a very controllable way. It would go over little rocks and roots and such without any drama, although the 1991 motorcycle's apparently-original rear shock wasn't doing its job particularly well any more. Unfortunately, my brain wasn't so quick to shut down the alarm bells. On top of all this, despite my book-larnin' about how you're supposed to ride in the dirt, my natural instincts were to adopt street-riding techniques. I stood up over the heavy bumps, but I stood in such a way as I might on a street bike -- as if I was going to sit down again immediately, putting a huge strain on my arms to pull me forward just for a moment. Only I held that position for minutes at a time. Not so good. I put my feet on the pegs with the balls of my feet taking the weight. When dirt riding, you want the weight in the middle of your foot. When I could actually convince myself to do this (or more like remember to do it), things were easier, but that amounted to about 5% of the time. In order to ride correctly, I had to consciously override years of training and instinct, and that just didn't happen very often. Among the kit I had on, the one piece of my own gear I was using was my helmet. I tried Eric's helmet, but it was definitely too small, and adding a headache into the mix seemed like a terrible idea. The goggles I had didn't really fit in the cutout of my road helmet, but it was a better system than trying to use my faceshield, and at least the helmet wasn't attempting to compress my skull. The problem is, offroad helmets are positively breezy compared to road helmets, so my head was swaddled in its own steambath within a few minutes of setting off. Now perhaps, you can imagine me, sweating my way down the trail, turning sharp curves every few seconds (we might have hit 15 MPH in one of the straight sections, so at least we weren't going too fast), brain screaming, "GRAVEL! YOU'RE GOING TO FALL!" the whole time, arms and chest trembling with unaccustomed effort, sucking in clouds of dust as I attempt to tame this sliding, slithering, wobbling motorbike. It was... passable. I made it. My last fall resulted in a banged-up leg, but nothing broken. But at no point did I even approach near the thought, "This is kinda fun." No, it was just work. I was working to make sure I didn't fall so I could get back to the truck, get off this bucking hellbeast, and breathe some air that had much less of a mineral component. It was not enjoyable. And in a very important way, I was horribly disappointed by that. I had really hoped that this would be an activity where I could just let loose, and have a really good time. Stop worrying about everything. Just have fun. Instead, I was thrust into a situation where there was literally a small but solid (6-8" diameter) tree directly in my path much of the time. Every turn was composed of a traction situation designed to induce panic. Working with the bike was a chore to be endured. I did learn (or at least re-learn) things. Looking where you want to go is vitally important. Traction is not an absolute thing, and some traction is good enough. Armor is good. (If I weren't wearing very substantial boots and shin armor, I'd have more damage than a big bruise on my leg.) And, there were cool parts. Once I enforced the rigid discipline of "look where you want to go," it was amazing how easily the bike could ride up these walls in the corners, and over obstacles that looked at first to be completely unsurpassable. I didn't have to think about it at all by the time I was done, the bike was just going where it needed to go. I managed to go the whole ride without bashing anything like a tree or stump (and there were countless opportunities, with a couple close calls). Despite the fact that I'm writing this with my faintly throbbing leg (which inspired the title for this entry) elevated to keep the swelling down, I didn't really come away with any damage. An ex-girlfriend's motto is, "I'll try anything twice." There's a certain logic in that, and I'll stick to it for dirt riding. It's obvious to me how the skills transfer from dirt to track. I don't want to give up on something just because I wasn't immediately skillful at it on the first try. So I'll try it again. Maybe in a few months. After my leg feels a bit better. Posted at 23:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle I took a look at the dyno charts Ducati Seattle sent me home with, and all the runs that look reasonable (ie, real runs instead of "riding at road pace" warmup runs) run up past 16 HP. That's definitely not my bike: we saw a lot of 12.x HP, and 14.0 peak. I'll have to check in with Ducati Seattle again to see whose files I actually have... Posted at 08:21 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 27 Jul 2008At the last race, a few folks got together and started plotting for an event they've wanted for a while: a dyno day. Cogs, one of the racers, works at Ducati Seattle, who have a very nice dyno. He proposed the idea to his manager, who readily agreed, and the Vintage 160 dyno day was born. It occurred yesterday, and Jesse and I both brought our racebikes down. We'd picked up these shiny new carburetors from Bateman early this month, and we were anxious to use the dyno time to tune them up. So this week was spent somewhat feverishly making the intake runners we'd use to hook up the carbs. I ended up standing in front of the lathe and mill for many hours, but it worked out well: we now have six complete runners, with four installed on bikes, and two spare. Anyway, we showed up at Ducati Seattle around noon, to find a moderate crowd of vintage racers milling around, talking, and working on bikes. I don't think anyone was on the dyno at that point, but it wasn't long before the room was filled with the subdued roar of a bike revving towards redline. I should say a word about the Ducati Seattle dyno. It's a different brand than the one at Twinline (which I wrote about at the time, and posted a video about), and apparently reads horsepower numbers differently by about 2 HP -- the 11.8 HP we saw at Twinline is equivalent to about 9.8 on the DS dyno. The DS dyno is also beautifully enclosed in a little sound damping room, so that when a run is happening, it's still possible to hold coversations outside. Saturday morning, I was waiting for intake runners, since the timing had worked out that we only had one set finished by Friday. That set was then installed on Jesse's bike, which was successfully test-run. But it left me with a bunch of machined-but-not-welded runners until Saturday morning after Jesse had time to weld them. So, my new carbs were installed mere hours before they were put to the test on the dyno. In fact, all we had time for before departing for the Ducati dealership was to get the carbs bolted on, not even attached to the control cables or the fuel lines. Jesse had the foresight to check the length of my fuel lines (not long enough) so we brought along some clear PVC tubing I had in my stores. We got there, and essentially the first thing I did was set to work, getting my carbs hooked up. No real problems until I turned on the gas the first time. For some reason, the new (clear) fuel line was weeping gas. I thought it must not be sealing properly, so I bummed some zipties off Mark Etheridge, who had graciously opened his shop (rented from Ducati Seattle, and literally a dozen feet from the dyno room) for us. One didn't seem to do it, so I put on a second. I turned on the gas, and instead of a weep, it was shooting a stream of gasoline at my face! I shut off the petcock, as I realized that the stupid tube must have split. Exercising my excellent "sponge" skills, I asked Etheridge if he had any fuel line. He did, and let me use enough of it to get my carbs hooked up. It was nice Motion Pro line, much higher quality than what had been on the bike before. I owe Mark a cigar. But that solved the problem, and the bike was finally looking ready to try starting. It took forever to get all this done -- I had several people come over and ask me if I was rebuilding the engine or something. So, I rolled the bike off the table (Mark has both a lift and a table with a ramp in his shop -- very nice!), and up into the alley. I spent the next ten minutes unsuccessfully running the bike up and down the alley behind Ducati Seattle, trying to get it to run. Finally, sweating profusely in the mild Seattle sun, I got it to fire off, although it didn't run that well, cutting out at full throttle. Even though it had problems, when it was running correctly (ie, when I wasn't too aggressive on the throttle) it was shocking how much more power the bike plainly had. It tugged me back unexpectedly in first gear, with a much sharper pull than I'd ever felt before. I was entirely unprepared for it. Etheridge later said it looked like I was close to lifting the front wheel off the ground. I rolled the bike back, and sat back in one of the provided chairs, glad of the cool warehouse air and the shade. Tamra and I and several others chatted for a while, and watched dyno runs through the soundproof windows. It was informative to watch the other bikes being put through their paces. I saw peak HP numbers anywhere from 11 to 16 that day. I watched with particular interest as Jesse's bike was rolled up onto the dyno. His bike and mine are so nearly identical that his results (in particular his air/fuel mixture) would indicate the path I should take with setting up my new carbs. He ended up posting 14.4 HP peak, and no real problems with mixture, which was a relief. He was running size 98 main jets, which are the primary determinant of mixture. I had the size 100s in (we bought an assortment of jets for tuning purposes), which looked to be close enough to be worth a try. It'd be interesting to see what the difference was. Finally, it was my turn to roll up on the dyno. We had some initial problems with the mixture reading, which may have been the position of the sensor (a long copper tube that's shoved unceremoniously up the bike's exhaust pipe). However, after a few tweaks, we started getting real-looking numbers, and things looked good. We saw a peak of 14.0 HP on one run, after tweaking the timing. However, further tweaks dropped the power back down to 12, so we ended up seeing 12 most of the time. By the end, the engine was radiating heat pretty fiercely despite the copious flow of air over it, so we rolled it off to cool down while someone else ran their bike. As long as I was waiting, I pestered Bateman to see if he had spare 98 jets -- my sparkplugs were on the dark side after the dyno run, so I figured I might be able to go leaner for a bit more power. He had them, so I swapped the jets out. I have to say, swapping jets on the new carbs is remarkably easy compared to the old stock carbs. The day was wearing on, and by the time it was my turn, Robert, our valiant dyno operator, had a certain limp-rag nature about him. He'd been up there, running puny-horsepower bikes on the dyno, for a full 8 hours, and asked if I could come back some other time. I still had dyno time coming, but he was wiped out. No problem, of course. A bit disappointing that I didn't get to see what the slightly smaller jets did, but that's alright. With my schedule, I probably won't be able to get back to the dyno for a couple weeks. I have to say, one of the highlights of the day was near the end, when Bateman was in the dyno room with Tom Deem's bike. I had been casually watching the numbers scroll up, when I saw them approaching, then passing 15 HP, and keep going. A cheer went up from the crowd, and the bike topped out around 15.8, I think. Someone explained what was happening: Bateman was adjusting the timing on the fly, as the bike ran! That's a good way to do it, if you know what you're doing. It was impressive to see the peak power he got that way. Overall, I can only call the day a success. The dyno was running a lot of the time, and lots of people came away with printouts of their bikes' power curve. I had a USB flash drive with me, so I actually have all the data files with me, although it requires a Windows computer to run, so you'll have to wait to see my charts (I know, you can't wait). I may be able to get those charts figured out today, though. As usual, it was great fun to hang out with the vintage crowd; they're a group of excellent, kind people. It was also interesting to see the power other people's bikes were making in comparison to my own. Particularly with the new carbs, I don't feel too bad about my bike's ability to hold its own. If you're keeping track at home, the peak HP we saw at Twinline was 11.81 HP. Subtract two to get the equivalent HP on the Ducati Seattle dyno, so 9.81 HP. The peak I saw on Saturday was 14.0, or more than 4 HP gain (over 40%!). I'd say those carbs were a fine investment! Maybe my lap times will reflect the change. We'll see on August 9th and 10th, the weekend of the next race. Posted at 11:14 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 22 Jul 2008First things first: I got back from Alaska on Sunday. It was neat. I have a great deal more to say about it than that, but let's call that good for the moment. I took around 1200 pictures. Look for them to go up soon, but you can see some of them on svsequoia.com (my parents' website; click on Trip Journals and Alaska). I got a new milling machine just before I left for Alaska (and the end mills -- the cutting tools -- hadn't arrived before I left, so all I could do was admire it). Jesse and I are working on new intakes to mate up to our new carburetors for the race bikes, and I'm doing the machine work. He did the design, and will be doing the welding. So, these intake tubes were the first project I did on the mill. It wasn't anything too special, just cutting off the ends of four little sections of tube to 8°. These tubes will thus be angled outward from the centerline of the bike, allowing the carbs to clear the central frame section. See?
Beautiful! (Please ignore the banding on the tubes, these are definitely "prototype" quality, not "production" quality.) Posted at 21:27 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 06 Jul 2008
The First Annual Formula 160 Vintage Invitational
That's a fancy name for what happened this weekend, but it's also pretty accurate. Bradford Duval of Portland put together a really neat day of riding for Vintage 160 riders, and invited everyone to show up. We had racers from California, Oregon and Washington, that I know of. It was held at Pat's Acres, a little go-kart track in Canby, Oregon, just south of Portland. Check out the track. According to the surveyor's document they had posted, the track was .59 miles long along its centerline, but the whole thing was contained in a square about 300 or 400 yards on a side. Very very twisty. I never got beyond third gear, and that only for about 5 seconds down the straight. The rest of the track was second-gear-only, and I even dropped to first for a couple of the hairpins. Of course, being this twisty and convoluted meant that one lap consisted of about 8 changes of direction, and therefore changes of hanging-off side. It was a constant barrage of gas-brake-gas-brake. The end result is that my arms are protesting from resisting the braking force, and my legs are protesting from all the side-to-side. I think the only time I actually rested on the seat was on the straight, and that lasted all of 5-10 seconds. It took between a minute and three seconds, and a minute and 15 seconds, of the people I timed, to go around the track. That makes the fastest average speed around 25 MPH. I'll have more on it later, including a ton of pictures and video (the GoPro worked every time, so maybe my little copper shim in the battery compartment works). It was great. It was tiring. Let's do it again! (But let me rest first, I need to get feeling back in my legs!) Update: The video's done and posted. This is among my final laps on the track, so I was both tired (thus slower) and more experienced (thus faster):
Posted at 20:08 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 29 Jun 2008It took me a strangely long time to get my race report from the 15th done, mostly due to getting pictures sorted out. Both Cyrus and Vicki contributed photos, and I wanted to get their shots worked in as well. Posted at 23:21 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 26 Jun 2008I've been slowly turning out things, and widgets and frobnitzes on my lathe. This one, I thought, ended up looking particularly good:
That's an axle for my soon-to-be cargo trailer for my Xtracycle. It's made of 1144 "stressproof" steel, and, perhaps my proudest thing, the longer section of thread was entirely turned on the lathe. I didn't use a threading die on it at all, and it accepts the 12mm castle nuts I got perfectly. Threading on a lathe is a surprisingly difficult task, particularly when doing metric threads on what is nominally an inch machine. Particularly when you have to keep resetting the cutting tool because of broken tips and such. This is one of two -- this piece is only about 4" long, and there'll be one for each wheel. It'll bolt (via the longer thread) into a plate on the side of the trailer, the wheel slides on the longer smooth part, and the shorter threaded section takes another castle nut to keep the wheel on. This is to work with the free found-onna-road wheels my friend Josh gave me. Hooray for being handy! Posted at 22:02 permanent link category: /misc Due to my being a loyal
The big orange cat is Miloš, the Siberian cat she got last year. The one in the middle, nearly invisible against the dark countertop, is Nikola, possibly the most friendly cat I've ever met. The white/snowshoe cat on the right is Pasha. So I came in yesterday morning, and there were no cats crowding around the door, trying to escape and/or sniff for food, as is their normal wont. I was surprised, and after I'd closed the door I realized that the door to the office was closed, and they must have pushed it closed while playing. Indeed, inside were three cats suddenly streaming for the door. I only come by once a day, in part because of my schedule, and in part because I'm quite allergic to cats. These three cats had been locked up in this room for who-knows-how-long. It couldn't have been that long, though, because there was no olfactory hint of litterbox (there's no litterbox in the room, if you get my drift), and they didn't immediately bolt for either litterbox or water. So, I grabbed a relatively immoveable-looking object, a file box, and set it in front of the door. It wasn't very heavy, but they'd have to work at it to move that out of the way. Problem solved. I went a fixed up their water and food, and cleaned out the litterboxes. A little bit of attention and scratching-behind-ears later, and it was time to move on. Plus, you know, the sinus itching like it wanted to crawl out of my head. Today, I opened up the door, and went it, and what do you suppose I found? Yes indeed, that office door was closed again. Miloš and Nikola were wandering around, but Pasha was nowhere to be seen. There was a certain amount of pitiful mewling going on, and I opened the door to find Pasha inside, looking freaked out. The file box had been pushed back (it only weighed a few pounds, and a couple moderate hits from Miloš would easily dislodge it, I realized). So this time I took the spare microwave oven, which Kristin has a hard time lifting, and put that in front of the open door. If they move that, I'll be amazed. As I was writing this, I found a better picture of Nikola:
And one of Nikola and Pasha as I was playing with them a few days ago:
Consider this your cat fix for the day. Posted at 10:13 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 22 Jun 2008
SketchFest brings you: 3000 miles!
Ok, that's kind of a weird mash-up of topics. Today, I had a walkthrough of the Theatre Off Jackson, where SketchFest Seattle will be having its big fundraiser event tomorrow night (you're coming, right?). I pondered my transportation options: Ninja 250, at 50 mpg and $4.35 a gallon, or bicycle, with what amounts to free energy costs? Of course, there are other factors: I've been out of town for the last week, in San Jose on business, where I didn't have access to a bike. I did walk to work from the hotel, but that's about 1/8th of my normal amount of exercise, so I was feeling kind of sluggish. Parking in the International District (where ToJ is located) also ranges from terrible to atrocious, so even a motorcycle would have a hard time parking (one of the only knocks against ToJ actually, which is in many respects an excellent place to hold SketchFest). Perhaps playing a small part was the knowledge, lurking in the back of my mind, that my normal bicycle had about 2995 (or so) miles on the odometer before I set out, so this ride would take me over 3000 miles. It's another useless milestone, but it's pretty cool in a way. If I had ridden those miles on the Ninja, I would have paid about $225 in gas (calling it $3.75/gal average over the last year and a half). It's not really that much in terms of money, but it's pretty tremendous in terms of emitted carbon and pollution -- the Ninja has no catalytic converter, so it puts out all the smog stuffs that cars stopped puffing out the tailpipe in the 80s. Anyway, it was pretty cool, when I stopped at Uwajimaya to pass some time (having arrived early), to note that my odometer now read 3001. Posted at 17:47 permanent link category: /bicycle Tue, 17 Jun 2008Quick update; here's the race footage from the second heat of Sunday's race:
Enjoy! Full race report coming soon. Posted at 07:46 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 16 Jun 2008I'll have a fuller update or race report ready later, but I wanted to just mention that this weekend was far better than the last one. I had a good time, improved my bike in a significant way, and discovered that it's making about the same power as everyone else's. My best lap time was a dramatic improvement, too: first race, I got a 2:28. Second race sucked, in addition to the fact that they didn't once pick up my transponder (thus no times). This race, I moved up to 2:18.353. Not too shabby, dropping 10 seconds in three races! The very fastest riders are running about 1:59. The bike worked well, and the camera even recorded some footage. I'll try to get my one race take posted soon; it was from the second race, but I think it only captured a couple of laps before shutting off. I have an idea how to fix the camera, too, so it doesn't prematurely shut down like it has been. Of course, I still came in last, but c'est la vie. Now that I know it's just my skill that's lacking, I'm perfectly happy to come in last. Actually, Jesse had to leave the second race after one lap, due to a busted shift linkage, so I managed to finish next-to-last, getting 10 points. Yeehaw! My friend Cyrus showed up, and took some cool pictures of us puttering around the track, which you can see here, for the moment. I'll be grabbing a couple of them to illustrate the race report, I'm sure. Thanks Cyrus! (Secret hint: I'm #923, Jesse is #808, Tamra (from my video yesterday) is #950.) Posted at 13:09 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 15 Jun 2008The first day of racing went pretty well. The on-board camera even managed to record something!
That's my second race session, following Tamra, #950. The camera still croaked 14 minutes in, but at least it managed to lay down some data before it did. I think when I sent it back to GoPro, they must have flashed it with a new firmware that actually records data as it goes instead of all at the end (which means that now, losing battery contact just kills the recording, instead of losin the recording entirely). Not perfect, but a definite improvement. I never did manage to pass Tamra. She'd been concerned that she was too slow, which ended up not being too much of a problem. I probably could have passed her in several places if I was feeling aggressive, but I really wasn't, and I don't feel that skilled yet, either. Anyway, I'm looking forward to today (rather than dreading it), so that's all good news. The sun is even shining already. Should be a good day. Posted at 06:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 11 Jun 2008Do you like sketch comedy? Do you like chocolate? If you answered yes to at least one of those questions, I need you to come around to the SketchFest Seattle Fundraiser! Yes, you too can eat high class chocky-bikky, win neat raffle prizes, and bid on better auction items! You should check out the official announcement. There will be the aforementioned chocolate (it really will be high-class; we have an artisan coming in), the raffles and so on, as well as the fantastic Becky Poole, and Ben Laurence and Paul Gude to do a bit of their show Naked Ladies, which I managed to find out about too late to actually attend (boo!). I know you, yes you, really want to help support the nation's first sketch comedy festival (all the rest of those sketch comedy festivals? They're total pretenders). I'd love to see you there -- I'll be the guy dressed in black, making sure the lights light and the microphones phone. Posted at 22:00 permanent link category: /misc
I'll be famous, FAMOUS I tell you!
I just did a man-on-the-street interview with a cameraman/reporter for KCPQ, the local Fox affiliate station in Seattle. He said he was putting together a story on walkable neighborhoods, focusing on Fremont and Wallingford. So, if you happen to have a TV and live in range of the station, you might check into the Q13 news tonight and see if they include my witty commentary. I'm guessing I'll be credited on screen as "Some random jerk," or "This man thinks he's being interviewed about walkable neighborhoods," or something like that. Should be good for a laugh. Posted at 13:21 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 10 Jun 2008
Some thoughts for new bicyclists
With gas prices rocketing past $4/gallon, I'm seeing more and more folks on bicycles. This is a fine thing, but I wanted to provide some advice that may not appear in some of the "new to cycling" guides out there. Traffic or not?For most practical purposes, a bicycle is traffic. We ride on the roads. When necessary, we share a lane of traffic with motorized vehicles. This means we need to act like traffic. Obviously, you can't keep up motorized speeds, and that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about mutual respect, and predictability. As you probably know from driving a car, the ability to predict what traffic around you is going to do is absolutely vital to everyone's safety -- that's why we use turn signals and follow agreed-upon conventions, whether they're enshrined in law or not. On a bicycle, you have to do the same thing. The legal ramificiations differ per state and even per city, but generally there's a set of rules to follow which is pretty similar to the rules you follow in a car. In fact, the more you act like a good driver in a car, the safer you'll be. This means many things. Among other things, it means following the directives of stop signs and traffic lights. It means giving everyone else a reasonable chance of seeing you by using lights and reflective materials. It means signalling your turns. It means, in short, being a predictable and respectful part of traffic. If you're not respectful, your actions reflect poorly on all bicyclists -- so, I ask you, on behalf of all your fellow cyclists, please follow the rules. If you don't have a good set of lights front and rear, visit your local bike shop. I highly recommend the Planet Bike Super Flash rear light, which retails around $25 most places, and is worth every last penny. For a front light, there are many choices: look for one which uses LEDs (the batteries will last much longer), and which has the widest, brightest pattern possible. If you can, aim your preferred lights at a wall -- prefer the one that lights up more of the wall versus one which has a tight, bright beam. This is the rule for "being seen" lights. If you're getting a light to see with, that's a different category. Your local bike shop will also have a great deal of reflective and brightly colored clothing. I highly recommend the obnoxious yellow-green neon color as being quite visible. Pair that with some good reflective material, and you're off to a great start. If your favorite piece of bicycle clothing doesn't have enough reflective stuff, buy some SOLAS tape from Ebay or West Marine. It sticks to anything, and is about the most reflective stuff you can get. Bicycle gear and accessoriesOnce you've got your visiblity gear sorted out, you still have a few things you'll need. Unless you're very lucky, you'll need to lock your bike up some of the time, so a good lock is necessary. The best combination I've found so far is a U lock (such as made by Master, Kryptonite, or many others) paired with a stout steel cable. These can be had in a variety of sizes, and all told should set you back less than $50-60. With this combination, you can usually lock both wheels, through the frame, and attach to something sturdy. The cool trick with the cable is that you can loop one end through the other, and cinch down on either your bike or your favorite lamp post, and secure the free end with the U-lock. The next thing you'll want (if only as a preventative against Murphy) is a flat repair kit. This consists of at least a set of tire levers, a patch kit, and a pump. They make devilishly small pumps, such as the Mini Morph Road (which I carry, and which saw me through a massive rash of flat tires early on) that are still effective. The type that braces one end against the ground is best, then you can use your weight and gravity to do most of the work. Any old patch kit should be good enough, but make sure you check the glue at least once a year, as it'll dry out even if you've never opened the tube. I also recommend getting a spare tube that fits your tire and carrying it with you -- it's often faster to lever in the new tube and worry about patching the holed tube later. I keep all these spares (except the pump) in a tail bag that straps under the seat. This keeps it handy, and they can be had in a variety of sizes. My tail bag contains a spare tube, a patch kit, two tire levers, a pair of nitrile gloves for dirty roadside repairs, and a tightly folded plastic shopping bag, which I use either for carrying unexpected loads, or covering the seat when it rains. Do it yourselfMaintaining a bicycle is ridiculously easy. In your home shop, you'll definitely want a good floor-standing tire pump, since the single most common maintenance item is topping up your tires (I always run my tires at the maximum inflation, marked on the sidewall -- it provides less rolling resistance, which makes pedalling easier). Make sure your pump includes a gauge (most do), and that it fits your valve stems. You have either Presta or Schraeder valves, and most pumps will fit both, either right out of the box, or with a little bit of reconfiguration. Avoid using a powered air compressor for bicycle tires, it's too easy to overinflate them. The next most common thing you should do (and most people don't) is to lubricate your chain. Any time you can hear your chain squeaking, that's its signal that it wants more lube. Your chain should run very quietly. Lubricating a chain is as simple as picking your lubricant of choice (and there's a lot of choice), applying it to the inside of the chain (the surface which contacts the gears), and wiping any excess off with a rag. Ask someone at your friendly neighborhood bike shop for a recommendation on lubricant. If all else fails you can even use motor oil (but use a heavy weight -- 30W or higher -- and wipe it up carefully so it doesn't make a mess). Note that for these two operations -- by far the most maintenance you'll have to do on most bikes -- you need exactly one special tool (the tire pump), one special supply (the chain lubricant), and a rag. Beyond these two things, any reasonably mechanical person can do 90% of the maintenance on a bike with a set of screwdrivers, a set of hex keys, a set of wrenches and maybe one or two "special" tools that can be had at any bicycle shop. I highly recommend both Sheldon Brown's website (may he rest in peace) and the Park Tools website for information on the more involved maintenance on a bike. If you can turn a screwdriver and follow instructions, I guarantee you can maintain your bike. If you do decide to let a shop do some work for you, ask if you can watch. Spend the time watching what the mechanic does, and hopefully you get a friendly mechanic, and he or she will explain as they go. This is a great way to learn how to do things you might have thought were difficult or impossible before. Riding in more than sun If you're in Seattle, then you're well aware that riding only when it's sunny will limit you to a handful of weeks and a smattering of days, particularly this year. Riding in the rain doesn't have to be an awful experience, though. My favorite piece of raingear is my Carradice Pro Route rain cape (I got mine from Peter White cycles). It's this big obnoxious neon yellow-green tent that stretches from your hands, over your shoulders, down your back. The thing is, it actually keeps you quite dry without needing rain pants (although you have to have fenders on your bike), and since it's open on the bottom, you don't have to worry about collecting as much sweat inside your waterproof gear as you would have taken on in rainwater. For fenders, the best thing I've found is the plastic Planet Bike fenders (again, check your local bike shop), which run about $40. They're light-weight, easy to install, and very effective. The one addition I made to mine was to add a 10" long flap off the back of the front fender, to catch more of the splash off the road before it soaked my shoes. I cut it out of a cat litter bottle (but any heavy plastic will work) and riveted it on, but even an office stapler would have it attached pretty effectively. Making it comfyIf bike seats give you a pain in the rear, replace yours! There's a huge variety available, and they range from lightweight racing torture racks to huge, padded, spring-suspended comfort saddles. Don't be shy about picking the one that actually looks (and is!) comfortable. If, like me, you find certain very important parts of your anatomy getting tingly (and not in a good way) because of your bike seat, look for a new saddle with a groove down the middle. Humans have sensitive bits right where a basic bike saddle hits us, and the ones with a groove make space for the bits of your body that really don't want to be squished. Most of your weight should be resting on your ischial tuberosities (your "sit bones" at the bottom of your hips). If your weight is resting elsewhere, adjust your saddle so it's not. Hopefully you picked a bike that fits you -- ie, it's long enough from handlebars to seat, and from seat to pedals. If not, it's never going to be really comfortable. You can fake it with a longer or shorter handlebar stem, or a longer seat stem, but you really owe it to yourself to get a bike that fits properly. They make them in sizes for a reason. In any case, one of the most critical measurements on the bike is the distance from your seat to your pedals. Ideally, that distance should have your knee nearly, but not quite, straight at the bottom of the pedal stroke, and should not be so long that your hips are rocking. This is easily adjusted, so experiment with it until you've found a good height. If you don't know how, have your favorite bike shop point it out. They can also help you get it about right to start with. After riding for a while (or possibly right away), you may find that your handlebars don't fit you very well. In particular, the straight mountain-style handlebars can twist your wrists the wrong way. Don't be shy about looking around at handlebars until you find one you like. The biggest problem you'll have with swapping handlebars is likely to be cables that are too short. This is easy enough to fix yourself, but a shop can also do it for you if you're worried about messing it up. A word on safetyOf course, no beginner's guide would be complete without information on safety gear. The biggest thing is a helmet. Go get one. Wear it every time. When you wear your helmet, it should be "flat" on your head, not tilted back -- too many people wear their helmet tilted back like a sun bonnet. The bit you really need to protect is your forehead, so keep that helmet tilted forward. The thing about helmets is, you don't have any control over anyone but yourself, so even if you're a perfect rider, you can't affect whether you're falling over today. Any of those cars, pedestrians, dogs, or other cyclists might knock you over. Wouldn't you rather have a nice cushion around your noggin if you fall off? The same argument goes for gloves. I consider a helmet and gloves to be the minimum safety gear on a bicycle. When you fall, you'll instinctively reach your hands out to break your fall. Even fingerless cycling gloves will go a long way towards keeping all the skin on your hands, where it belongs. Stick some reflective tape on your gloves, and you've got a handy turn signal enhancer. Any gloves will help, but the best are leather gloves sturdy enough that you wouldn't mind your hand slipping toward a running belt sander (hint: that's what the pavement is when you're riding across it). Bicycling requires a compromise on safety gear. Ideally, you'd be wearing motorcycle gear, which will keep you perfectly protected in the event of a fall, but you'd also die of heat exhaustion. I've seen folks bicycling around Seattle with knee and elbow pads on -- it looks a little goofy, but they'll be laughing after a fall. For myself, I picked a Bell Citi helmet, which came away from a Consumer Reports test with good marks, and isn't very expensive. They also make it in safety-freak yellow with reflective straps (guess which color I have). I ride with a variety of different gloves to suit the season, and lately have been riding with a pair of Carhartt work gloves with heavy leather palms and neon orange fabric backs. They're medium weight in terms of warmth, but sturdy as heck, and very visible. Available most places Carhartt gear is sold. More informationThere's a wealth of new-rider information out there. If you haven't found it yet, Bike Forums is a great place to learn and ask questions. Just be aware that like everywhere else in life, there are helpful people and jerks, and try not to let the jerks get you down. You can also use Google to your advantage (that's probably how you found this, if you're not one of my regular half-dozen readers). I'm not going to condescend to you about why you're riding a bike. You're doing it for whatever reasons you have, and I applaud you. Go to it, and do it in safety and happiness. Posted at 21:31 permanent link category: /bicycle Mon, 09 Jun 2008I am pleased to report that the newly installed 80m dipole (this is ham radio talk, feel free to tune out, so to speak) works perfectly. My friend Mark came over this last weekend and stood with his finger helpfully on the 911 button in case I tumbled off the roof, and with his assistance, I got my 80m dipole up. Yessir, 120 feet of wire now hangs off my house. Tonight, I put it to the test. I'd traded email with my parents, who have departed on their next adventure (to Alaska this time), and we set up a time, date, and frequency. I tuned in (3820 kHz, if you're following along at home) at the appointed hour, and there, loud and clear, came, "N7DCU, N7DCU from K7CEJ." I answered back, and we were in business. Their signal was stellar, far better than the last time we talked, when they were in Fiji, at the hairy edge of reception even at full power with a high-gain antenna aimed their way. They had a hard time hearing me, but mostly because they were moored in a marina -- marinas appear to be fantastic sources of broadband noise (which has nothing to do with internet access). We're going to try again this Thursday at 8, and conditions should be much better, as they'll be anchored far from civilization. I'm tremendously pleased with how well this has all worked out, and am looking forward to many more contacts with them using the good ol' standby, 80m. If you're interested in following their adventures, send me email at ian at dangerpants dot com, and I'll get you on the list. They're sending out a message about once or twice a week detailing the trip. You can see the collected messages from their previous South Pacific trip over on their website, svsequoia.com. Posted at 22:32 permanent link category: /misc Sat, 07 Jun 2008Have you ever considered which parts of your life are narative moments? I mean those moments where, in the book of your life, it takes up many pages, maybe even a chapter. It might not be a long span of time, but is some part of your life that's important. This thought occurred to me recently as I was riding my motorcycle back from Portland to Seattle. I'd had a pleasant weekend with my parents, and the weather for my return ride was excellent, if a trifle cold. I thought as I was riding, This is a great moment in my life. I often find that riding a motorcycle brings about that kind of mental state, at least when riding without crowds and traffic. Then I thought to myself, But is this a narrative moment? Or something like that. I imagined the different ways I could write up that time, in the story of my life. The short version might read: Ian hopped aboard his motorcycle, waved goodbye to his parents, and rode up the driveway. Four enjoyable but uneventful hours later, he pulled up in front of his house, the pleasure of the ride suffusing the remainder of the day with a warm glow. Pretty straightforward, some detail, but definitely not a narrative moment. The other way I could do it would be, to take just a moment and demonstrate what I mean, something like this: With a growing sense of anticipation, Ian turned his bike northward on Highway 7, passing through Milton after he stopped to change his lightweight spring gloves for the heavier but warmer winter gloves. Riding immediately became more enjoyable, as some feeling returned to his cold fingers. Milton behind him, the road stretched, straight and open for a half mile. There was a car ahead of him, going just enough slower than the speed limit to legally pass, and of course one of the interesting tidbits of Washington law was that when passing, it was legal to exceed the speed limit by as much as 15 MPH, as necessary to safely complete the pass. He was surprised and delighted as the twisty section of Highway 7 arrived more quickly than he'd remembered -- the engine's eager howl increased in pitch as he rolled on the throttle, taking it into the rarified upper atmosphere of revolutions per minute. The first curve approached, beautifully banked, with perfect pavement, and no traffic in sight ahead or in the mirrors. The bike responded instantly to his commands, and railed around the corner as if skating on razor blades. The engine changed pitch again, as he set up for the next corner. Slide over to hang off the other side of the bike. Set the entry speed. Accelerate into the curve. Nowhere near the limit of traction, but right around the limit of people-do-stupid-things-on-public-roadways, and there-could-be-gravel-around-the-next-bend. It never paid to exceed the stupid-driver limit. The pavement floated by under the tires as Ian shifted for the next corner. Obviously, that's only a short section of the narrative-moment version of that ride home. That second example spanned maybe 5 minutes of riding. Both versions are true, and both are accurate. Both rank as reasonable memories of that ride. At the time, it was definitely a narrative moment. I could have written a book about those four hours, just detailing the feel of the bike humming along, the scenery, the bizarreness of rural Washington, and so on. It was an amazing ride. It was also a completely normal ride, and not really the kind of thing that strikes me as unusual any more. So my memory of it now is basically of the footnote variety. It's still interesting to think about. What will be the next important narrative moment? Posted at 11:09 permanent link category: /misc Sat, 31 May 2008I decided, around the same time that I decided I wanted to grow some edible plants, that I should get a rain barrel for irrigating. Water isn't that expensive around here, but it rains a lot, and paying for stuff that falls out of the sky for free seemed a little goofy, when it doesn't need to be carefully treated to help out plants. So, yesterday, I rode the Xtracycle up to 172nd and Aurora, where there's a nursery which also sells rain barrels. These are actually fairly fancy barrels, with spigots attached and everything. I'm sure I paid more than I had to, at $55 before tax, but I'm picking my battles here. Getting it home was no great feat, and I actually picked up the barrel on the way up to Jesse's house, to retrieve something I'd forgotten earlier in the day. The barrel is this great big black thing, 57 gallons and made of plastic. It looked really impressive on the back of the bike, but weighing in at 10-15 lbs, wasn't much of a load to worry about (other than a brief bout of side-wind, which was more exciting than I'd anticipated). The advice I'd gotten at the nursery was to make a good, solid foundation for the barrel -- 57 gallons at 8 lbs per gallon is 456 pounds, which is nothing to sneeze at. Since the barrel was to go where a downspout has been discharging its contents for years, who knew how soggy the ground would be. So, I resolved to head out to the nearby Lowes, and pick up some foundation stuff. I thought ahead somewhat, but not really enough. My plan was to get a bag of paving sand and some cinderblocks. Of course, when I prepped the house for sale last year, I got rid of a big stack of cinderblocks, but there was nothing for that now. I loaded a plastic crate on the deck of the Xtracycle, to keep the blocks from scratching up the plywood, and headed out. At the store, I picked up three cinderblocks (I'd forgotten how very heavy cinderblocks are), and a bag of sand. The thought of riding unbalanced again was disquieting, so I wheeled my cart around to the garden section, and picked up another bag of compost, as much for ballast as anything else. As long as I was there, I grabbed a few other things I needed: a short section of hose for the barrel, a new hose nozzle to replace the one that'd fallen apart recently, some tomato stakes, a section of flexible downspout, etc. Nothing else of any weight. Loading the bike, however, was challenging. The stuff that went in the sidebags was fine, if a little over-stuffed. The really hard part was the cinderblocks. I'd eyeballed things, and figured that I could fit three blocks in my crate. I was wrong. No matter how I stacked them, I could really only fit two in. I briefly considered leaving one stashed somewhere, and coming back for it -- I probably should have done that. Instead, I worked out a "clever" system whereby I got the whole, 100+ pound load on the bike. The third cinderblock was causing me a fair deal of worry -- the bike would no longer stand on its kickstand, and the whole thing nearly went over as I was trying to get things secured. Finally, I got everything lashed down, and tried to get on the bike. It almost went over again, and it was only by dint of a lot of grunting and swearing that I got it back upright, and my leg over the frame. It was ok for a moment, but the prospect of actually moving filled me with a certain amount of dread. This was way more weight than I'd dealt with before, and it wasn't behaving nicely. It was the way that the bike kept trying to pivot up and over that clued me in. Very gingerly, I set off. I figured I'd either make it home, or come to my senses, and stash a cinderblock or three along the way. The bike swayed with the slightest provocation: the top cinderblock was nearly 4 feet in the air, and about 3 feet from the nearest torsional support. It swayed like a drunk sailor. Possibly a distracted drunk sailor. Pedalling made it worse. I realized that it would be a very slow trip back home. I made the mistake, once, of getting over 10 MPH, and thought for sure the oscillations would have me on the ground. So, through dilligent use of brakes and attempting to time my steering inputs to kill the oscillation instead of feed it (which was hard to do, and which I only got right some of the time), I slowly made my way home. The trip normally only takes 5 minutes, but I'm also not normally trying to balance 50-odd pounds of cinderblock on top of a two-foot lever about which I'm also attempting to balance, steer and accelerate. I think it took 20 minutes to get home, but I'm not sure; I was concentrating too hard on not capsizing. I finally got home, and said to myself, I've got to take a picture of this! But... the bike wouldn't stand on its kickstand, and I ended up having to lean it against the bannister to keep it from crashing over (and probably destroying the disturbingly brittle cinderblocks). I grabbed my camera, and took a couple of fairly unimpressive shots:
They're unimpressive because, although the load was mighty, it doesn't look like much. It would have been a lot more impressive to have video of myself wobbling down the street, trying not to make any sudden moves. You'll just have to trust that it was sufficiently frightening that I won't be doing anything like that again. I felt my body continue swaying for the rest of the night, as if a ghostly load were still cantilevered off my bum. Sort of like having your sea legs. Anyway. Today, I spent a couple of hours digging, pouring sand, levelling sand, installing blocks, pulling up blocks, re-levelling sand (lather, rinse, repeat), and finally stacking my rain barrel in place:
And, as if the universe were rewarding me for my hard work, it rained enough today to deposit an inch or two of water in the bottom of the barrel. It works! Still nowhere near the level of the drain spigot, but it was pleasing that a couple hours of light rain produced such a tangible effect. A couple more days like this one, and I'll actually be able to water plants without spending a cent on water. We'll just ignore the nearly $90 I spent on setting up the barrel... Posted at 19:27 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 29 May 2008
Somewhere between green and black
I've been thinking about it for at least the last year, and I've finally done it: I started intentionally planting plants.   I cleared a section of weeds out from under the south side of my front deck, and planted three different types of tomato plant (an Early Girl, a Sweet 100, and... something else with Health or Healthy in the name), as well as two variegated basil plants, and an Italian oregano plant. I mixed in what ended up being nowhere near enough compost (one bag looked so big in the store!) before planting, and watered heartily. The trick now will be to keep my eye out for weeds. The night after I planted, I had a long, complicated dream about five plants that I had to keep safe. They were planted at the top of a sharp ridge, and at one point may have had people's faces on them. The whole dream was dark and rainy, and I was struggling against dreadful portents which were never quite manifest enough that I could see them. Ah, the joyful symbolism of dreams. Anyway, with any luck, I should have some tomatoes popping up mid to late Summer. These were definitely planted a bit late, but with the weirdo weather we've been having, I'm not convinced that's a bad thing. Posted at 10:02 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 22 May 2008I just finished installing an Origin 8 Space handlebar on my commuter bike:  They're very bendy. I am hopeful they'll help reduce some forearm fatigue I've had lately from my previous, very straight handlebars. Not a bad deal, either, at $25. Stay tuned for updates. Posted at 20:37 permanent link category: /bicycle If you're interested, I'm selling my Goldwing/EML sidecar rig: 
Asking $4000, and I'll entertain other offers. Click on the picture to see the Craigslist ad. Posted at 10:34 permanent link category: /motorcycle An email came across the bicycle mailing list at work, mentioning the Ride of Silence. I hadn't heard of it before, and looked it up. It's a ride to honor injured and killed cyclists, and to make cyclists more visible to traffic. It would be happening the next evening, when I didn't have any plans. So, I figured, what the heck. It sounded interesting, and I definitely support the goals of the ride. I read a bunch of ride reports, and read about how moved people were: dozens or hundreds of riders cruising along in silence, wearing armbands and sunglasses (to hide the tears). Cars stopping, apparently in honor of the ride. Goodwill and such, etc.
There were a handful of cyclists gathered by the time I got there, no more than 5 or 6. To my surprise, they were all older, mostly over 60 as far as I could tell. More cyclists arrived, raising the average age one by one. It made sense, in a way -- young people are rarely as aware of their own mortality.
Interviews done, the reporter wandered off, apparently reviewing her recording, and trying to gather environmental sounds as a pair of bikers rode hesitantly by, wondering why she was trying to get in their path of travel.
As time rolled on, more people arrived, and the average age started getting closer to the population average. Someone thrust a handful of "cuesheets" (a list of turn instructions) into my hand, and bade me pass them on to newcomers, which I did, eventually feeling like a barker selling programs. "Cuesheets! Getcher cuesheets! Can't tell a corner from a crossing without your cuesheet! Cuesheets! Right here!" I suppose it was a fine way to meet a bunch of new people, although I didn't meet them so much as watch them pass by.
We rode off, and there were easily 100 people, probably more. I was disappointed that there'd been no instructions, no rules, no uplifting speeches about why we were gathered. The rules I'd read online were pretty firm: ride single file, follow traffic laws, don't block traffic, 12 MPH max. This wasn't to be a Critical Mass style ride.
People were indeed silent, and the pace was quite sedate, never exceeding about 14 MPH on my little bike computer's screen unless we were coasting down a hill. The route only had three noticeable hill climbs: coming up the hill from Eastlake towards REI, up Queen Anne Ave, and going up Dexter towards Fremont.
The ride wound up back at Gasworks, where half of the riders seemed to be stopping and waiting for something, and half were just riding on, to head on their individual paths. I stopped for a minute, but nothing was happening, and I didn't have anyone to chat with, so I continued on my way back to Fremont and home. I ended up following a pack of racers (I guess) who were clad in identical uniforms as we crossed 34th. There was some ribbing as one of the riders sprinted ahead of the others, and the group accelerated to keep up. Curious if I could keep up with them on my relatively heavy commuting bike, I joined in. Indeed, I kept up, and didn't particularly notice the strain, which was encouraging. At the corner of Fremont and 34th, a car driver shouted something out her window and was rewarded for her pains by one of the racers laying his bike carefully in front of her stopped car and leaning over her window: "What did you say?" There ensued a tense conversation in which I only heard the biker, who was trying to explain how that was a bike lane, and asked if the driver's car was endangered, and things along those lines -- typical angry-car-driver vs. self-righteous-biker stuff. And as typically happens with these exchanges, both parties left feeling injured, the bikers purposely crowding the traffic lane so the car driver couldn't pass, and the car driver speeding off in an angry cloud of exhaust once the way was clear.
I was pleased, overall, that the pace never got up. The riders were admirably quiet, although with all the traffic noise around us, the difference between a hundred silent riders and no riders was negligible. The silence of the riders didn't appear to excite the stares and interest of pedestrians or drivers as the online reports I'd read suggested. Car drivers didn't seem annoyed in general, although there was at least one honked horn followed by a roaring of engine as an annoyed driver blitzed past in his Jeep during the ride. I guess I'd call the ride a success, and I'm certain the organizers will. It was an impressive collection of riders, and I can only assume that they showed up because they also believed in the goals of the ride. I was disappointed that to me, it just seemed to be a bunch of riders following each other somewhat willy-nilly down the road, who happened not to be talking. The lack of any other form of unity (for instance, riding single file, wearing sunglasses, wearing armbands, etc.) left me feeling like I'd gone on a lightly paced recreational ride, rather than having made any sort of symbolic contribution, or any connection with anyone. (The rest of my pictures can be seen in the gallery.) Posted at 08:46 permanent link category: /bicycle Mon, 19 May 2008This Sunday, I decided I wanted to finally go get an archery target. They sell these blocks of layered foam that work well, and at least theoretically don't get torn up too quickly. It's been ages since I shot my Magyar horsebow. So, I got the Xtracycle down and prepared for the ride over to GI Joes (now Joe's Sports, apparently) in Northgate, where they stock this kind of thing. I dread riding to Northgate, though. The roads to Northgate (a local shopping mall) from my house fall into two categories: terrifying, and long; at least on a bicycle. The main drag is Northgate way, which runs east to the mall, bordering the north end of the mall proper. It's the obvious choice in a car. Unfortunately, Northgate Way is a four-lane, "30 MPH" (but actually 40-50 MPH) road occupying the space of a spacious two-lane or comfortable three-lane road. There are no shoulders. There's a narrow, frightening asphalt excuse for a sidewalk along the north edge, covered in cracks, broken glass, tree-root furrows, and with overgrown blackberry bushes taking up big chunks of it. Traffic flies along the road, which includes a J curve that scares me in any vehicle except a motorcycle (which is narrow enough to give room to the car in the next lane, since someone around me invariably crosses the line). The other choice is to travel south to 92nd (Northgate Way could also be called 105th or 110th, depending on which side of the curve you're on), where there's an overpass over I-5. Oh, did I mention? There's a major freeway in the way. Going 10 blocks south isn't a huge deal, but it involves more hills and more distance, so it's not my favorite choice. It's also essentially traffic-free, at least compared to Northgate Way, so it's a good choice that way. I ended up going down to 92nd on the way there, and taking Northgate Way (and that terrifying little "sidewalk") on the way back. The trip didn't seem as long as I'd been making it out to be in my head, and when I got back, I saw I'd only added 4-5 miles to the odometer for the whole trip. It's amazing how the quality of a road changes its perceived length, at least on a bicycle. I guess it's true of cars and motorcycles, too: a good road seems to fly by, but a bad road takes forever to traverse, no matter how fast or slow you're going. Posted at 10:23 permanent link category: /bicycle Wed, 14 May 2008I did my first full trip to Costco on the Xtracycle today:
The return trip (including a stopover to see Jesse's newly expanded backyard) was about 7 miles with an extra 70 lbs on the back of the bike. It perpetually amazes me how well that thing deals with huge amounts of weight. Posted at 23:54 permanent link category: /bicycle Tue, 13 May 2008
Tivoli Model One power consumption
One of the radios that immediately catches my eye is the Tivloi Model One, which I like for its spare design, and potentially very power-friendly circuitry. I have a coworker who has one in his office, and I've been admiring it for years now. When the boombox shut itself down for a couple of days recently, my half-hearted search took on a sharp new focus. The boombox uses 2W of power, as previously reported, while the big stereo in the living room produces the same amount of sound while playing my favorite radio station for the shockingly large 80-100W. A replacement would ideally use about the same 2 watts of power. This led to the question: how much power does the Tivoli actually consume? Well, having ready access to a Kill-a-Watt, I decided to find out. My coworker (also interested to know the answer) gladly let me plug his Model One into the little measuring gizmo, and we had our answer: it used 2W while switched off, 3W while on but turned all the way down, and 4-5W for as loud as we wanted to try it in an office environment (perhaps 1/4 travel on the volume knob). That's not very much, but 2W while switched off? Come on! This thing has a clicky off switch. It's not some software switch. As far as I know the circuitry inside is all analog (and therefore needs no power to know what to do when it switches on). My best guess is that the power switch actually switches the power coming out of the power supply, rather than turning off power at the power supply inlet (ie, shutting off the AC cord). This leaves the power supply on all the time, which needlessly consumes power. Now, 2W doesn't sound like much (and it isn't much). But over time, it adds up, particularly coupled with all the other little 2W draws that end up living in your house: clocks, microwaves, TVs, anything with a remote control, computers, etc. I have about 6 devices like that in my house (clocks, microwave) that are constantly drawing power. I don't want to add more. Fortunately, there is a solution to this dilemma, at least for something like the Model One: cord switch. Works great, and the radio will never miss the power. It's easier than unplugging the cord every time, too. Am I a nerd? Worried over nothing? Perhaps. It's nice to think I'm helping reduce energy use, though. Posted at 14:30 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 06 May 2008I've got the race report sort of finished. All the text is done, but I haven't yet uploaded the few pictures I have. I'll be updating it in the next few days. If you'd like the pictureless version: Race-day report, May 3rd and 4th 2008 Check back, and I should have pictures inserted by the end of the week. Posted at 22:30 permanent link category: /motorcycle I left work today somewhat annoyed: a server for which I'm responsible was being finicky, and had attracted the attention of some folks much higher up in the organization. Not really the kind of attention you want. I got on the bike and headed out, taking my usual route. I ride up under the Aurora bridge, then jog over to Linden. On about 44th, I jog over to Fremont Ave, and then follow the main road around the south end of the Zoo. Lately, I've been short-circuiting the light at 50th and Fremont by taking a left at 49th, and popping out on 50th a few blocks up. It's a particularly good path when there are no cars waiting at the light -- the bike doesn't trip the light, so I end up waiting forever. Only this time, I was in a pack of bikes, and the light timing was about right, so I went through the light (which turned green just as I pulled up to the last car in line), and went straight from Fremont to 50th. I rode a couple of blocks, when my eye was caught by an odd sight: someone was lying on the grass on the far side of the street. In fact, it was a cyclist, and their bike was lying on its side, in the middle of a parking spot. That's not right! I pulled over as she was struggling to sit up and asked if she was alright. She didn't really answer, and I wasn't sure she'd understood what I said. I had a moment of curiosity: did she not speak English? Had she just fallen off her bike? Concussion? So I quickly laid down my bike on the grass and knelt in front of her. "Are you ok?" I was trying to remember any of the first aid I learned so very long ago. She clearly heard me speaking, but didn't say anything. I asked again -- rendering first aid to someone when they don't need it is embarrassing. She finally nodded, and said, "I'm ok." By this time, a small crowd had gathered -- I was amazed at how many people were suddenly on this small, infrequently used sidewalk. She sat further up, and as one of the women crouched down and started asking her questions, I went over and grabbed the fallen bicycle, getting it off the road. The story gradually unfolded: our mystery cyclist had epilepsy, and had felt the onset of a seizure. "I have an aura," she explained, "in my hand." I'm not entirely sure what that meant, but aside from some apparent confusion, she seemed ok. She'd apparently felt the seizure coming on, and had quickly gotten off the bike and onto the grass. I'd found her in a classic chalk-outline pose: on her back with both legs bent in one direction, one arm up near her face. The cyclist instructed the woman who'd been talking to her that her phone was in the top of her saddlebag. The woman pulled it out and handed it over. The cyclist called a friend, still sounding dazed, and apparently got voicemail, explaining that she was going to leave her bike at the friend's house. At this point, the helpful woman offered to drive the cyclist home, which offer was accepted. I helped load the bike into the woman's car, and the cyclist slowly got into the passenger seat. They drove off, and I set off on my way again. I'm not sure what lesson I take away from this, exactly. It was thrilling, in a way, to see the number of people who stopped to see if they could help. One bystander asked if we (the cyclist and I) were together, and when I said we weren't offered that she lived in the building right there, giving her apartment number. "Let me know if you need anything," she said, and walked on. A man had pulled his car over, and offered a ride, moving on when it became apparent that the situation was in hand. The helpful woman who eventually drove the cyclist off was obviously happy to be helping. It was pleasing to see that kind of response (although a cynical part of my brain was wondering if it would have attracted quite the same crowd if the cyclist had been an overweight 60 year old man instead of an attractive mid-20s woman). Of course, it also prompted me to think that I don't possibly have the kind of currency in first aid that I should. Fortunately, that's a thing I can correct pretty easily. I think our collective response was right, though -- the cyclist, although dazed, didn't obviously require assistance beyond a ride back to her house. She was slowly coming back to herself, and an epileptic seizure is one of those things that happens every day all over the world. I did find myself feeling a trifle smug at the other cyclists I encountered as I rode the rest of the way home. "I helped a fallen cyclist today. What did you do?" I didn't say it out loud, though. It's not like everyone comes across a body lying in the grass next to a bicycle on its side. You have to take these opportunities when you come across them. It did occur to me that of the four cyclists who passed by that spot within seconds of each other, I was the only one who stopped. Ok... maybe a little bit smug. It was also a nice way to be reminded that, although work is important, and what happens there has meaning, it's not the end of the world. Finicky servers take a far second place to real people. Posted at 18:52 permanent link category: /bicycle The results for this last weekend have been posted over at the WMRRA site. Somehow, I came in 17th out of 22, despite having failed to finish the first heat, and coming in either dead last or next-to-last in the second heat. The scoring system is causing a lot of unhappy discussion among the Vintage 160 folks -- it seems to be done almost at random. Transponders don't seem to work (for instance, mine tested fine at the little tester at Registration, but I didn't get a single ping on the track). Lots of other folks from Vintage were having transponder problems too. Anyway, I've got a race day report brewing, and I'll post it here when it's finished. The extremely short summary: I worked corners Saturday and didn't die (although I almost froze after it started raining). We were late on Sunday, and I couldn't do the practice due to a leaking petcock (fuel all over the engine, potential fireball territory). I started the first race, but had to exit early when my brake pedal decided to depart the bike. I finished the second race, but the bike seemed to be a little down on power. My overall impression from Sunday was, "Why am I doing this again?" It wasn't any fun. I was very frustrated at the bike -- when my skill is lacking, that's fine. When the bike is so broken that I can't even get to the point of checking my skill, that's annoying as hell. I'm not giving up yet, but I can't really say I'm having a good time yet, either. Posted at 09:57 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 30 Apr 2008I just discovered this:
$40 at Amazon. Are you kidding? Already ordered. Posted at 16:16 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 24 Apr 2008I broke a spoke on my commuter bike's rear wheel last week, and went down to the local shop to get a new spoke. Success. Wheel re-tweaked to run as straight as possible, given the dented rim. However, this is the third spoke in the wheel to break, and they've all broken adjacent to each other on the hub. I'm not sure what this means -- maybe the wheel-lacing machine was having a bad day or something. But with nearly 2700 miles on it, that wheel's probably due for a serious refresh. Dented rim, cheap spokes, cheap, unrebuildable hub. So, I grabbed my obscene fan of "commuter bucks" (I get $30 a month through a county incentive program for commuting by bike, which $30 is given out in cashier's checks redeemable at, among other places, REI), and headed down to the REI store north of downtown. They have a large bicycle section, and a call had confirmed that they'd either have my parts, or would be able to order them. I picked up a 36-spoke hub of the Shimano persuasion, a surprisingly cheap rim, and a set of stealthy black spokes. Of course, I got home and started putting things together, only to find that my surprisingly cheap rim was a 32-spoke rim. D'oh! Back to REI, where I traded the rim for one with the right number of spoke-holes. The new rim required different sized spokes, so I traded the spokes in too, only... they didn't have the right size. Their spoke collection didn't go that short, unless I wanted to compromise on color or type. I didn't (wanted to match the front wheel's color, and wanted to stick with the more-durable double-butted spokes), so I just returned the first set of spokes. I figured that I could find the right spokes locally, ideally by calling back my "favorite" local shop. So, standing just outside the REI door, I selected their number from my cellphone's saved numbers, and gave them a call. "Hey," quoth I, "I was wondering if you have black, double-butted spokes in stock." The answer was quick, and surprisingly forceful. "No." "Oh," sayeth I, "then can you order them for me?" "No!" It was like I was asking the person on the other end of the connection to quickly break a finger or two, rather than passing them $45 worth of business. Surprised, I asked why, and was given a vague explanation about having to order "all the sizes." I hung up the phone (well, folded up the phone, whatever) feeling like I'd offended them. I tried another, larger shop, but no luck there either. The first shop had recommended another place I'd never been, but I didn't have their number. The next time I got near a computer, I looked up their details, and gave them a call. Indeed, they did have my spokes in stock, for the same price as REI. Fine, I'd be there that afternoon. I arrived at 5 (two hours before closing), mentioned that I had spoken to someone about spokes earlier, and prepared to get my spokes and go. Amazingly, it was nearly 6 pm before I finally left the shop, between all the casual asides, distractions, confusion over what exactly I wanted, how big was that rim again? and so on. As if to put a bow on the whole experience, the man behind the counter said, "Now, we're a cash-and-carry organization...." Of course, essentially all the businesses I normally deal with take debit cards, and I'm no longer in the habit of carrying around much cash. I certainly didn't have the $52 to pay for a set of spokes and rim tape. Fortunately, he agreed to "make a special case for you," and take my check. The first shop I called, which I've dealt with extensively, always seems to be peopled with surly people who strike me as being unhappy that I'm bothering them. Certainly not friendly in a way you might expect after having been a customer for over 8 years. The shop where I found my spokes is also a workshop co-op, and had that sort of benevolent, cluttered junk-everywhere feel of a hippie commune dedicated to human-powered transport. The guy who seemed to be in charge could easily answer to the description "biking curmudgeon." I didn't go in expecting an efficient German machinist shop's level of professionalism, but I was surprised by the place. The sudden announcement that my fake plastic money wasn't welcome just kind of finished the whole thing off. It all made me think, "Is everyone who runs a bike shop a complete freak?" The answer, of course, is probably "Yes." Posted at 12:29 permanent link category: /bicycle Fri, 18 Apr 2008
More pictures... of the crazy!
Ok, really. This picture was taken a few moments ago. Look at the date. Really. What?
Posted at 19:06 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 17 Apr 2008There's a huge tall bush next to my driveway, which produces stunningly beautiful flowers. They last for a few days, then turn brown and gross looking, which lasts for more than a month. I managed to grab a few pictures this morning, before the month-long stink sets in:
Posted at 13:13 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 16 Apr 2008I picked up a fire extinguisher yesterday, to have at the race pits -- we neglected to have one at the first race, which was a terrible idea, and we're fortunate it didn't come up. I don't think it normally does, but we looked along the line, and no one had an extinguisher in the vintage section. Yow. Anyway, curious today what the ratings meant on my extinguisher, I started Googling around, and came up with the following tidbits:
On this last note, I am reminded of an anecdote I read somewhere: A Navy ship was in port for repairs, and against all safety practices, a welder was working above an open hatch, with someone down below him. He was doing electrical welding, which uses argon as a shield gas. Argon is heavier than air, and displaces oxygen nicely, producing excellent, rust-free welds. The sailor down below was happily doing whatever he was doing, but suddenly noticed it was getting harder to breathe. Argon is also either difficult or impossible to smell or otherwise detect (I'm not sure). He climbed up out of the hatch, in something of a panic, either not knowing or not understanding the implications that someone had been welding above him. The welder took one look at this sailor, and immediately understood what was going on. He dropped his equipment, picked the man up bodily and rushed him to the side of the ship. There, he stood the drowning man with his back to the water, stepped on his toes, and pushed. The sailor flopped over backwards, the water swaying sickeningly over his head, his knees hooked over the ship's railing. However, his lungs suddenly worked again: the argon had drained out. It was so heavy that he couldn't breathe it out, but put his lungs upside-down, and it trickled out like water. The welder pulled him back up, and apologized profusely. Retelling the story here, it comes out sounding wrong on several counts, but I always found it to be an interesting illustration of the obscure dangers presented by working with things like argon or halon. I'm not sure I'd have the presence of mind to stand on my head if I were caught in a data center when the halon was released to put out a (real or imagined) fire. It's pretty easy to see why halon-protected areas tend to have big warning signs and require training, though. Back on fire extinguishers, an important safety tip I have picked up over the years: give your dry powder extinguishers a shake every month or so. The powder settles to the bottom, and if you leave it long enough, it's trying to shoot out a stream of caked baking soda, which naturally does almost nothing to a fire. Just grab it, turn it upside down, tap the bottom a few times, and shake it around a little. This gets the powder loosened up, and will make it much more effective at actually putting out the fire. In 2003, I participated in a quite enjoyable fire extinguisher training session, with resulting impressive pictures. Posted at 15:48 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 14 Apr 2008I put these pictures up last week, and then promptly forgot to link them: You'll note the red shipping grease (which has the consistency of dried gum when cold), and the well-bent hold-down screw. The other hold-down screw broke off entirely, and I ended up having to back out the broken stub with a pair of pliers. At least I didn't need the screw extractors... I've almost finished my most blingful demonstration of my burgeoning lathe skills. I'll post photos when I'm done. Posted at 17:32 permanent link category: /misc Brandon Bones of Studio 819 Photography was on hand at my first race, and managed to capture a few of me dorkishly overshadowing my tiny bike, like a gorilla riding a tricycle. Take a look. Pretty cool. The real question is, do I want to blow cash on a picture of My First Race? Posted at 14:07 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 06 Apr 2008For the last few years, I've been vaguely craving both the mini lathe and mini mill sold at Harbor Freight. These are great tools for fabricating all varieties of parts, usually out of metal. Every couple of months, the craving would sharpen, but it was always tempered by the terrible knowledge if I actually plunked down my coins on the barrel head, that expenditure would be a mere gateway: $400-500 for the device itself is just the start. In the case of the mill, you immediately need $50-200 worth of clamping devices, at least one cutter at $10-20 each for cheap/small ones, and innumerable add-ons and accessories at $10-100 each. The lathe isn't much better: you can get by with materials to work plus a handful of $1 each tool blanks. I already have a bench grinder, which is the only other tool you just gotta have, but things really take off when you start thinking about all the bits and bobs that would just make it so much easier to work with. Somehow, in late March, I managed to blind myself to these financial objections, and ordered one (1) 7x12 mini lathe. It arrived on April Fools day, a day I carefully prepared the garage and worked from home (actually managing to work a full day around several multi-hour sessions in the garage -- it was a long day). I leapt out the door within seconds of the big brown delivery truck crunching to a stop on the gravel in front of my house. I'd hung up a sign instructing UPS to put the box in front of the garage, but I was out and talking with the driver before he had a chance to even see it. We gently set down the crate in the garage. Within half an hour, I had the machine up on the bench, gently brushing off the heavily-applied red packing grease. It would have been much quicker, but I first had to discover that one end of the lathe was attached to the crate by a much-abused bolt -- it was bent to a 30 degree angle, and looked particularly comical as I caused the crate to orbit the lathe very slightly with the unscrewing motion. Fortunately, the lathe I ended up selecting was a relatively screamin' deal. It turns out that there's one factory in China pumping these things out, and they sell them to about 10 different US retailers, including Harbor Freight. The main difference is what color the lathe is painted. However, in the case of the Cummins lathe I ordered, it's also in what comes with the lathe itself. Cummins throws in a goodly assortment of accessories, and charges $70 less than Harbor Freight. Shipping (the only option unless I wanted to wait for one of their "Truck Sales" to come to town like some kind of handyman's circus) was $70. That brought the total up to HF's list price, but at HF I'd also have to pay tax, which wasn't the case with Cummins. In all, a good selection, since I'd have to spend another $100+ to get all the accessories they included. By the end of that day, I'd done my first very tenative cuts, turning down the radius of a piece of 1/4" rod just to see if I could. By late this week, I'd turned a piece of that rod into a new shift linkage rod to replace the abused and bent up thing that was still almost working on the race bike. The key trick there was that the linkage rod requires a left-hand thread on one end. I don't have the requisite tool for that, and to purchase one would cost about $25. I might use it two or three times. So instead I blew $500 on a lathe! Of course, the lathe has already proven its worth. I was able to do the left-hand thread after a couple false starts on test pieces. I was able to make up a new spacer for the shift lever which will eliminate one of my key complaints with the "special bolt" Honda sold me, which was shaped such that it couldn't be tightened down. I now have a shiny aluminum spacer which will allow the bolt to be tightened, so I don't have to worry so much about the shifter falling off the bike at an inconvenient time. Say, while trying to upshift in a tight pack of racers. I've got several other jobs in mind, and I have a feeling that this lathe will become a trusty companion as I progress in life. You never know when you're going to want something cylindrical. Posted at 10:10 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 03 Apr 2008I've got my race day write-up posted now. Check it out. Posted at 11:41 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 02 Apr 2008I've got photos posted here, and WMRRA has results posted here. Enjoy! Full race writeup coming soon. Posted at 15:56 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 30 Mar 2008Full write-up to follow soon. The day was essentially a success: I didn't fall down, I completed all the practices and races I went out for, and the bike ran great. There were problems: the footpegs are seriously wimpy, and I keep bending them; the handlebars are set at the wrong angle, which will take some welding to properly fix; the seat needs to be fastened down much more robustly than it is. However, that's a teeny tiny list. The weather was freakin' cold in the morning (I have pictures with snow coating the trees), but ended up being sunny and almost not-frigid by the end of the day. The two races were held on actual dry pavement. In race one, I came in dead last, due to a variety of factors. In race two, I came in 12th out of 20, but most of the people who came in after me didn't actually finish, they crashed. Fortunately, I was so far behind them, that by the time I got there, they were well off the track and wandering around collecting pieces of bike. So, practically, I came in last, but the score sheet says 12th out of 20. Rejoice in a fiddling technical victory! My best lap in race two was two minutes and 22 seconds, which isn't terribly far off a real race pace (which is more like 2:10 to 2:05). Jesse also did well, although he sat out race 1, having heard a bizarre and potentially ominous noise from his engine. It turned out to be absent once he got back to the pits, so who knows what that was. I actually kept pace with him for about a lap in race 2, but it was probably my fastest lap, and his slowest. I had a good time, and I'm looking forward to the next one. I have some issues to fix before then, but before I do that, I'm going to take a good solid week or two off from working on the bike. I've done enough. Now it's down time. Posted at 19:31 permanent link category: /motorcycle Today's the day. I'm up well before oh-dark-thirty. We tech at 7 am, rider's meeting at 8:30, then a practice or two. My race heats will be at 1:45 and 3:00 pm today, as you can see here. To get to the track, just follow the directions. I believe the gate entry fee is $10 this year, although I've heard varying reports. Be prepared to sign away a surprising panoply of rights when you arrive. Racing is, apparently, dangerous business. Jesse and I got the bikes loaded yesterday in shockingly shining sunshine (of course we decided not to go to the track yesterday, since the weather was so likely to be cruddy, so it was nice yesterday, and will be terrifying today). Jesse will be here in about five minutes, so I have to go get my stuff together. See you at the track, you hardy souls! Posted at 05:54 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sat, 29 Mar 2008I finally got off my lazy keister and made another CL175 video installment. This one is about the dyno time I had last Tuesday. It was a lot less mental inertia to overcome in order to get this done than it is to even consider going back 10 tapes and trying to figure out what the heck I was doing in late November. Enjoy! Posted at 06:49 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 28 Mar 2008Tomorrow is my first race day. The CL175 is pretty much ready: the new coil from the dyno run has been firmly attached in place, everything that needs to be safety wired has been so wired. I've even oiled the chain. All systems go! Well, almost. Here's a picture from just before 2 o'clock today: It seems someone neglected to mention to the weather gods that I'm supposed to be zipping around a racetrack tomorrow on a motorcycle with 2" wide tires. I've talked to Jesse, and he's no more excited than I am by the prospect of loading bikes in the snow and driving 50 miles only to stand around under a meager half-tent thing for six hours. There's dedication and then there's dedication. I'm all for racing in adverse conditions, but snow is one ad too verse. I've ridden in snow before, in many layers and heated clothing. It sucked. The idea of doing it with nothing but perforated (aka, ventilated) leathers and some thermal underwear is pretty much a non-starter. So, we're now thinking that maybe waiting a day will be a fine thing. It's supposed to be better on Sunday, with NOAA even hinting that there might be sun breaks in the afternoon. Raar! It may be that I have to wait a little bit on my first motorcycle race experience. Posted at 14:07 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 26 Mar 2008After a slightly mad scramble to get myself and the CL175 down to Twinline, we arrived right on time. Jesse came with me, rolling his eyes when I said it'd probably take two hours. Little did he know. Twinline is situated in an industrial district south of downtown Seattle, and occupies a small but well-organized space. Well, it's small for a workshop, perhaps 1500-2000 square feet. Ian (the head honcho, for lack of a better term) was out when we arrived, but we were instructed to roll the bike up onto the dyno, which was in the back of the shop. The dyno itself is a big metal box with a substantial roller on one end. The bike is rolled up on top of the box so that the rear tire sits on the roller, and the front end is strapped down so it doesn't move. There's a computer attached to the roller, with a rat's nest of cables snaking around hooking various things into the system. Ian's setup now includes an air/fuel mixture readout in addition to the spark pickups to determine RPM. We got the bike all strapped down and hooked up. I'd asked Jesse to do some filming for me, but he was more interested in talking shop, and was uncomfortable jamming a camera into people's faces, so the footage I got is almost all tripod-mounted. Even then, I didn't film the majority of what happened, since I was too busy solving problems and working on the bike to operate the camera. The story of my life. The first run was fine, but a little weird. The spark pickup just plain didn't work, so we had no indication of RPM, which is a fairly important part of the process. Still, we got a power curve out of it -- the engine produced a stunning 11.14 HP. (That's not very much.) The second run was really exciting. Something was wrong with the engine, and it was producing thrilling gouts of flame out of the exhaust, running quite rough. Ian stopped the run, and we talked about what it could be. After a minute, we decided it was probably the coil, and set about testing: indeed, something was odd with the coil. Every once in a while it'd produce a big fat spark, but the rest of the time was producing really weak sparks. I also recalled that the right sparkplug cap seemed increasingly loose, so that it could be rattling around on the sparkplug, effectively moving the spark from the end of the plug to the cap. Not terribly useful, and it would certainly produce the flame-exhaust we were seeing. The end effect of this was that I bought a new coil from Ian for way more than I would have normally paid. It's also a better coil than I would have gotten, so at least that's one thing I'll never have to think about again on this bike. It did sort out the rough running, though. Of course, the new coil didn't fit where the old one did -- it was considerably larger, and had different mounting holes. So, we did what any good bodger does: ziptied it to the frame, to sort out later. Ian made up some cables for it out of the ridiculously expensive matching sparkplug wire, using his ridiculously expensive crimping tool. As an interesting aside, he mentioned that he's still at least a year away from actually being able to pay himself. Running a small independent motorcycle shop is no way to quick riches. By this time, it was probably 10:30. Figuring out how to solve the coil problem took up at least half an hour, probably more. We'd wasted a lot of time trying to sort out the RPM-recording problems on the dyno. Ian got it second-hand, and I was actually his first paying customer for the dyno. Finally, we were in the position to do what I'd showed up to do: get the jetting sorted out. The first real jetting run showed some wacky results, so we re-did it. It started making a bit more sense, and we were able to see: the engine was running too lean at high speed, which makes logical sense (finally!). We swapped out parts to fix that, going from #90 jets to #92 jets, basically up a size. That helped, but wasn't enough. There were no #94 jets in the shop, so Ian gently drilled out my #90 jets to approximately #94 size. This is not the best way to do it, since jets have a venturi-shaped cutout, but it was closer, and looked about right. Unfortunately, doing the air-fuel mixture check on the second (right hand) cylinder showed that something extremely wacky was going on: it was all over the chart, literally describing a spastic sine-wave, like a rhythm-impaired earthquake. Some probing and prodding produced the conclusion that something was probably jammed up in the right hand carburetor, which was preventing it from filling properly sometimes, and overfilling it other times. Another thing to fix. The final dyno run must have been around midnight. I think we did 14 runs in all. The best (ie, highest power) run we got was 11.81 HP. Not, in other words, very much. Still, between the first and the best run, we did manage to increase power by about .7 HP, which is a whopping 6% increase. More importantly, we were able to get the torque curve to look really good: flat from about 5k RPM nearly to redline, at around 7.5 lb-ft. It doesn't sound like much, but the bike and I will probably weigh under 450 lbs as we plod down the track. It was nearly 12:30 by the time we left. Much later than I'd wanted to stay, but it was all worth doing. The one aspect I wasn't as fond of was that I was very aware that time was literally money. Ian charged me shop rate ($80/hour) for what we were doing, which was the special "first dyno customer" discount. Even so, it meant that pausing and deliberating on a problem cost a dollar thirty-three a minute. Thus I was inclined to do things quickly. This combined with the increasingly late hour to make mistakes more common than they should have been. Fortunately, there were no important mistakes, but it's definitely not my preferred way of working. The night ended with me riding the Ninja 250 home (having dropped off the race bike at my house with a longing look at the front door, which I was still at least half an hour from entering) at about 1:15 in the morning, through pounding rain. I finally got to bed around 2, and spent a restless night once again trying to solve motorcycle problems in my dreams. Tonight is dedicated to figuring out my coil and carburetor problems. Perhaps once I've got those solved, I'll sleep better. Posted at 12:41 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 25 Mar 2008First off, no one was hurt, and there was no damage. If you've been following along, you'll know that I've been preparing this old Honda CL175 for racing duties. I'll be racing in the Vintage 160 class. Last night, I finished off the seat (which looks much better, with about an inch of padding, a bum-stop, and mediocre quality vinyl covering the whole thing). But I noticed as I was working on it that my hinge arrangement leaves something to be desired, and was already torquing against the seat uncomfortably. I worked on it, and worked on it, but couldn't seem to make a difference. It was like I was staring at the problem, but couldn't work out the solution. Then, it was time to race. I got myself set up on the bike, and took off in a roar of engine noise. For some reason, I was alone on the track, but I figured it was alright, I was probably just the first person there for that practice session. It was all going well, but then in the middle of turn 2, something went very wrong, and I found myself sitting in the brambles at the side of the track. I couldn't remember how I'd gotten there, exactly -- one moment I was riding around the track, and the next I was in the weeds. I was alright, but my Aerostich suit was ripped. Someone, who was helping me up, mentioned that surely I shouldn't be wearing a textile suit on the race track. I agreed, but what could I do? There was a big flap hanging off the suit, but I was unharmed. I tried again, but once again, the bike mysteriously ejected me on turn 2. There was nothing on the track, that I could see. There didn't seem to be any problems with the bike, but I was on the side of the track again. No one would tell me what had happened to my bike, they were more worried that I was hurt. But I was fine. Of course, around this time, I woke up enough to realize that I was having an anxiety dream. I seem to have anxiety dreams all the time, although it's much more common for them to focus on how I've slacked off on a college class, and now it's too late to go join it again. I probably have that dream once a night or more. Lately, there have been a lot of trips to Edinburgh involved, and invariably I end up skipping out on 3 of the 4 classes I signed up for. What's interesting about this crash dream is that this is the first-ever anxiety dream I've had about motorcycle riding. I don't feel especially anxious about being on the track, but I can't shake the feeling that the other racers could be a problem. I know they're not -- I've watched vintage racing for years. It's just one of those "tackling the unknown" things that seems to crop up. A very positive aspect of this whole racing experience (he said before actually doing it) is that it's challenging my conception of myself. I'm not a competitive person. I don't like being in contention with other people. Yet I'm taking on this role of racer, where the whole point is to do better than others. Of course, when I say, "I'm not a competitive person," what I really mean is that I'm fiercely competitive, and I don't like that about myself. I keep it from coming out in almost any situation. So this whole racing thing embodies a kind of rock-and-hard-place situation for me. I'm interested to see how that turns out. I'm fully prepared to come in last. I'm also secretly prepared to shock everyone by winning my first time out. Riiight. Stay tuned. The racing starts this weekend, and I'm sure I'll have some kind of report early next week. Posted at 14:49 permanent link category: /misc I don't normally post link-fests, but I just read through this article, and found it interesting in that grim, Schadenfreude sort of way: Hype Machine: Searching for ZAP's Fleet of No-Show Green Cars [Wired] Posted at 10:12 permanent link category: /misc Sat, 22 Mar 2008Well, maybe not totally done, but done enough to race with.
I got the belly pan attached today, which was the last major operation to be completed. The numbers are attached, the belly pan is on, and the seat is.. well, not finished, but good enough. You can see more pictures of the bike in race-ready trim in the gallery. I still have at least one thing to do: I need a catch-can for the crankcase breather and carbeuretor overflow drains. This will most likely be a soda can zip-tied in place, just to be really high class. But at least it won't melt. Other than that, it's pretty darn ready to race. I'll be taking it to Twinline Motorcycles next Tuesday for dyno testing, to get the jetting spot-on. I don't think it's very far off, but the gummint is giving me money back this year, so why not spend it slightly frivolously? I'll also be interested to report back on how many ground-pounding horsepower my rebuilt engine can generate. I'll guess between 12 and 14. So, hooray for getting stuff done! Posted at 18:57 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 21 Mar 2008One of the things that I'm surprised by is that I haven't really seen any other regular bicyclists on my route. It's a popular route, being largely flat from 80th to about 45th, a span of several miles. It has nicely marked bike lanes, and is very low traffic due to a high stoplight density that affects cars much more than bikes. Yet in the year and a half I've been commuting daily, I've only found one person who is consistently riding a bike other than myself. I think of her as the girl from the other side. She's always riding north as I'm riding south, in the morning. I've never seen her going the other way. She is perhaps most remarkable to me for the way she dresses: a medium grey parka coat with a fur-lined hood, tall black cavalry boots, and usually some kind of dark pants. Honestly, I never get a very good look at her, as we're passing on opposite sides of the street, and I only see her for a split-second with any proximity. The only reason I'm sure about the boots, even, is that I passed her as she was stopped in front of a coffee shop. She makes almost no nod to the fact that she's on a bicycle, which is what first recommended her to my attention. No helmet, no lights, dull, hard to see clothing. I would be surprised if her parka were particularly waterproof. This morning she was wearing a white knit cap, and I was able to make out brown bangs poking out underneath the cap. Her bike is some kind of cruiser, reminding me of the old Schwinn 3-speeds my grandparents would keep in the garage for my brother and I to ride when we came to visit. It has a basket on the front, a detail that I only noticed this morning. She never looks happy to be riding. She always faces straight ahead, never looking out of her path. I'm pretty sure she's not aware of me passing her every day. Not a good riding habit, unfortunately, and if I've interpreted correctly, she's bound for an accident sooner or later: although Greenwood is a fine bicycling road, it's also absolutely packed with parked-in intersections. I use my very loud horn a lot, just to make sure they see me. I realized today, as I was riding in, that the girl from the other side is the only regular rider I've seen. Of course, there are probably many more riders going south than going north, and they are probably going earlier than I am. I've now seen one other rider twice: a 20-something man on a folding bike. Twice isn't much of a percentage against 300-some days. I've lately met a few regulars going down Dayton (which is not as bike-friendly a road as Greenwood south of 85th, but is better than going up Greewood north of 85th, where it's steep and there's zero accomodation for bikes); they are older, probably past 60, but I've only seen them in the last few days. There will certainly be more bikers on the road as the weather warms up into summer. However, I remain impressed that the one reliable, regular cyclist I pass is the girl from the other side, pedalling along in her grey parka with the fur-lined hood. Posted at 23:03 permanent link category: /bicycle Sat, 15 Mar 2008I had a work thing happening at 11:30 tonight, so I figured I'd blow an hour in the garage, after I'd finished watching my latest Netflix disc at 10:30. (Negima, Magic 101 or something; fairly typical anime, I guess.) So I trundled out to the garage, and set about the tasks I knew I had: retorque cylinder head; adjust valves; check compression. The first two went well enough, if you discount the copious gasoline spill that resulted from trying to empty the tank by removing the petcock (note to self: just be patient next time). By the time I got around to checking compression, it was 11:20. I screwed the compression tester into the left cylinder, and tried kicking over the motor. With the bike up on stands, it's surprisingly tall, and between that and a weird angle, I managed to let the kickstarter fairly mangle my leg: I'm now sporting an angry abrasion on my shin, and a throbbing proto-bruise on my calf. The real kicker, though, (so to speak) was that the compression gauge read a paltry 120 PSI. 120 PSI!? Between the throbbing leg, the late hour, and the baffling compression test, I went to do my work with anger in my heart. It was supposed to read 140-170 PSI if the engine is normal and healthy. 120 meant that all the rebuilding work I'd just done was completely in vain! I did my work (very minor, as it turned out), and got up to return to the garage. I swore to myself, "I'm just going back to lock the door," since I knew I was definitely too tired to do anything more tonight. But I got there, and as I was regarding the traitorous motorcycle, a random synapse fired: I'd forgotten to open the throttle! You always do a compression test with the throttle wide open, otherwise you're guaranteed a low reading. Renewed with this momentary inspiration, I tried again, and was richly rewarded: 160 PSI. The right cylinder read 165 PSI. That's so much more like it. Way better than 120 PSI. But now, it's definitely time for bed. Posted at 00:08 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 13 Mar 2008I'm one of these people who's got a sort of sparse utility belt -- I have a big multitool and a flashlight in little holsters on my belt. The flashlight holster in particular looks exactly like something a policeman would wear. So I'm in at BF Day Elementary, tutoring today. My normal student pushed too hard, and I found myself working with a new kid. This kid, whose name I never clearly heard (not uncommon in this situation) is black, and speaks with some kind of African accent. I think he's in 4th grade, but I'm not sure. I sat down to help him with his math assignment (a graph-reading assignment involving a feisty flea's ability to bench-press dog hairs of varying weight). It's pretty common to get attitude from these kids, of some variety. Maybe it's just me, maybe it's them. I'm not sure. This one was generally accepting of my help, but a couple minutes in, I saw his head crane around to look at my belt. He looked back up at me, an odd expression on his face. "I'm not a cop," I said, guessing what was on his mind. Someone a year or two ago immediately accused me of being a cop, and hid from me. "How did you know that?" he asked, wondering that his private thoughts had been intercepted. Not waiting for an answer, he continued, "Are you sure?" "Yes, I'm positive I'm not a cop. I work down at Adobe," I said. "Adobe hut?" "No, Adobe Systems. We make software." I thought this was the end of it. We settled down to the feisty flea again, and I led him to the answer for each question, as I do every time -- I never tell them the answer outright, but generally have to resort to such hugely leading questions that I might as well. Then another tutor showed up (I was nominally helping three kids, but the other two seemed pretty self-contained for the moment). The volunteer coordinator had my student and one of the girls go off with the new tutor, and I was left with the other girl. However, before he went, the boy I was working with got more excited about accusing me of being a cop. "You're a cop!" he exclaimed, half way between excited and horrified. Then he laced his fingers behind his head, and put his forehead down on the table. I was at a complete loss for words. "Aren't you going to arrest me?" he said, looking up, his face pressed against the table. "Why would I arrest you?" I said. "You're a cop!" He turned to face down again. I really couldn't tell if he was playing or not. I turned to work with the girl, which took up the rest of the session, and the rest of my attention. I'm afraid the whole encounter was terribly depressing. I was raised to believe that the police were who you went to when you wanted help. Obviously this kid thinks the police only exist to arrest people. The problem is, I don't think that's just based on hearsay or watching TV. And that, I must say, is tragically, mind-alteringly depressing. Posted at 23:11 permanent link category: /misc The quick update on the race bike can easily be summed up: things are generally going well. However (the purpose of this post) -- it's also possessed. I discovered a big jetting problem yesterday, and corrected it: the left float was hanging up on the bowl gasket, which was making things all kinds of screwy. So I figured tonight, I could go out and see where things are knowing that I'd solved one of the weird problems. I warmed the bike up, and took it out to a big empty parking lot, so I wouldn't be annoying anyone. I sat there with a tiny screwdriver, and started playing with the idle settings. This bike has two idle settings per carb, and two carburetors. One setting is the idle speed, and the other is the mixture. It was idling alright, but I thought it was probably super-rich, since I'd richened it considerably last night. So, I started adjusting the right carb in the direction of lean. This should, in an ideal world, make the engine run slightly faster then slow down as you pass the ideal mixture. To my dismay, I turned the screw all the way in, until it was seated, and the engine didn't change pitch one iota. I backed the screw out a turn or two, and moved to the other side. Tried the same trick on the left carb. Turn screw in, turn screw in... engine dies. It never sped up. So I backed it out again, re-started (good thing these bikes are so easy to kick-start), and pondered. I swapped sides again, and tried turning up the right idle speed screw. The sides aren't linked in any way, so each adjustment as to be made to match as closely as possible. I was breaking away from that, but I was trying to figure out what was going on. The idle speed went up, as I had expected it would. I returned it to normal, and swapped sides. On the left, I turned in the screw, and in, and.. the engine died. Now, what should have happened is that the engine speed should have gone up, exactly as it did on the right. I played with it some more, but couldn't really make sense of it. I rode around a bit, and got some gas (discovering that even despite my throttle-heavy breakin style, the bike had turned in around 67 mpg). I tried adjusting the idle again sitting at the pump, but it got even weirder, dying with a little pfut!. I think at that point it was getting pretty warm. So I rolled on home, my head abuzz with question marks, but no answers were forthcoming. I'm totally boggled how the bike could act like this. There's got to be some factor that's completely messed up. I guess my first tasks tomorrow are to check compression, and adjust the valves. I can't think what else to do: the float levels looked good (I even checked with the "visible fuel" method where you jam a piece of tubing into the float bowl drain); the spark plugs looked good, perhaps a bit on the dark side; the new air filters are fitted, but didn't appear to change the mixture or performance at all. It should be working like a new bike, but it's definitely not. At least the problem is with idle. That's essentially the last thing this bike will be doing while racing. However, it does seem like it points to other problems that may come around to bite me in other operating modes. Hopefully I can get it all sorted out. Posted at 22:56 permanent link category: /motorcycle Tue, 04 Mar 2008I went out for my fourth breakin ride tonight, in high spirits. I'd put 56 miles on the newly rebuilt engine, and aside from fouled plugs the last time, it was going pretty well. There was some initial trouble with jetting, which I was able to solve by making a simple adjustment to the carburetors. Eventually, the idle got pretty terrible, and I had to keep the engine above 4000 RPM at stoplights or it'd sputter and die. Fortunately, that was mostly solved by replacing the plugs. Then, at about 9 miles into this ride, I noticed that the rear brake (the only one that lights the brake light) felt strangely soft. I pulled over to investigate, and discovered that a vital nut, which was part of the system that held the brake steady, had disappeared, and the brake plate was rotated around -- that explained the strange softness. I retrieved the special bolt, which was fortunately still there. Of course, the problem with this is that someone (such as myself) should have safety-wired that nut in place before the first time the bike was rolled out of the garage. When I stopped to grab the bolt (having not realized at the first stop that it could now disappear as well, which would have actually been quite disasterous), I also noticed that the left rear turn signal was hanging at an odd angle: its mounting bolt was backed most of the way out. I tightened it as best I could, and decided that it was definitely time to go home. I made it home without further incident, although when I got to my garage, I noticed that I had arrived in a much more substantial cloud of smoke than I liked. I shut the bike off, and a quick inspection revealed that the front of the engine was covered in oil. Once I got it inside and under the light, I could see that the special bolt which holds the camchain adjustment had disappeared as well. Arg! Again, some certain bike rebuilder should have double-checked that the locknut on the special bolt was tight so it wouldn't vibrate out (although I thought I'd done this). So, all told, not the best ride tonight. And now I see that Bike Bandit (a parts website) lists the special bolt I lost as being discontinued. Double-arg! Definitely done for the night. Posted at 21:42 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sat, 01 Mar 2008I just got in from my first breakin session with the CL175. It runs! I got the oil in, and the gas tank full of not-too-old gas. Started the camera rolling to catch the historic, momentous event. Turned on the gas, waited. Sure enough, one of the carbs overflowed, interestingly, through its actual overflow tube this time. Removing and reinstalling the float bowl seemed to solve that -- the carbs have been living on their side for a long time, I'm not too surprised something got slightly out of whack. Turned on the gas again, no more leaks. Turned on the key. I'd already checked to make sure I had spark at both plugs. And started kicking. And kicking. And the kickstarter kept slipping off my foot, and coming back to whack the back of my calf, which is now throbbing unhappily. So I came in and got boots on, which have a more-definite heel, and provide protection higher up my leg (although not actually high enough). More kicking. Yep, more kicking. Fortunately, I was starting to get the interested little pops and kerfuffle noises that suggested it was getting close to firing. Then, it did! Didn't stay running, though. I played with the choke and throttle position, and finally found a combination, along with a lot more kicking, that got it to fire off and run. Finally, after a few episodes of, "Ooops, guess the idle speed isn't set quite right," I got it to settle down into a nice idle. The throttle cable needs to be rerouted somehow, as it's raising the engine speed and binding up at full lock of the handlebars, but it was really running! My breakin regimen calls for running at idle for about 10 minutes, to get the engine up to operating temperature. Along with the aid of a big fan, I let it run. Around 8 minutes in, as I was revving the motor a little bit, trying to determine the problem with the throttle cable routing, I heard a loud, dismaying CRACK! noise. It obviously came from the bike, but I couldn't tell if it came from the engine or the exhaust. It could have been a backfire, but sounded much more like a bolt breaking. After I turned off the engine, I crawled around with a flashlight, looking for anything that was obviously broken, but didn't see anything. The engine ran perfectly both before and after the noise, so it wasn't something big, like a valve snapping or something (although I would probably do well to take a look at the valve train before too long, just to be sure). So now, I have about four hours to sit back and do something other than operating the CL175. Perhaps I'll actually (gasp!) work on putting together the next video installment. Maybe after lunch. Posted at 12:34 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 29 Feb 2008The race bike progresses very well. I confirmed that the cam timing is correct (well, at least that the camshaft is as aligned with the crankshaft -- there's an alignment dot on the right side of the camshaft gear). I've replaced all the case screws I'm likely to replace. I have three things that aren't yet done before it's streetable:
Fortunately, of all those things, only the third really stops me from starting the motor tomorrow, and it's not a sufficiently big deal that I'd have to delay too much. It's important, yes, but much more important than cleaning it now is that I want to be able to clean it mid-breakin. Speaking of breakin, I'm going to follow the same procedure I did with my current Ninja 250. It worked really well for the 250, so I don't see any reason to avoid it on the CL175. It's described, at least in abstract, in this article. The basic summary is to progress through a series of increasingly-strenuous runs, starting with idle, and running up through full-power up-to-redline blasts. Once again, I'm glad I'm riding a little, underpowered bike -- doing this kind of breakin on a "real" street bike results in super-legal speeds, commonly even in 1st gear. I'm looking forward to trying to start the wee beastie tomorrow. All I really have to do is button up the case again (it's apart on the clutch side as I dealt with clutch springs), pour in oil and gas, and start pushing/kicking. I have no idea how difficult it'll be to start. I think I left the carburetors in reasonable adjustment... Posted at 23:40 permanent link category: /motorcycle I finally caved and got an iPod last night. My old MP3 player finally pissed me off enough that I don't want to mess with it any more. Anyway, the iPod is a demanding beast, and requires that it basically sync with one computer. All my mp3 files are currently on my work computer, but that's not a good situation to carry forward with the iPod for a variety of reasons. This led me to wonder, as I was loading my mp3s up onto an external hard drive, what exactly is the bandwidth of my bicycle? It's a 500 GB drive. It takes me 30 minutes to ride home. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that the drive is 100% full of data. 500 GB/30 minutes is 16 and 2/3 GB per minute. Divide that by 60 to get seconds, and we get .277 GB/s. Multiply by 1024 to get megabytes, and I see that my bicycle is capable of 284.4 MB/s, or 162x faster than my 14 Mb/s (small b means bits instead of bytes, or a factor of 8) internet connection. Not bad. Posted at 10:53 permanent link category: /bicycle Mon, 25 Feb 2008So, I see that email to me is trickling in with some hefty delays. Just in case you've sent me email telling me I won one meelion dollarz and are surprised I haven't showed up to claim my prize, that might have something to do with it. I'm guessing this is temporary, but for the moment, text messages and phone calls will reach me much more reliably. Posted at 16:15 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 24 Feb 2008
Now that's what I call progress
For the last few weeks -- well, call it a month -- the CL175, my some-day race bike, has been languishing. The motor sat spread across the workbench in a cacophony of little pieces. The frame sat desultorialy, looking like the sad shadow of the bike it once was. It looked, really, like it needed some pedals. Possibly a wicker basket with some plastic flowers on the front. It was suffering from the Agony of the Order Delay. I would try to do something, then discover that in order to do it (or do it right), I needed some parts. The problem is, every time I needed parts, it added another week's delay as I called the local dealer, they called the warehouse, and the lumbering wheels of commerce turned, one agonizingly slow cog-stop at a time. Eventually, the dealership would get my parts in. Finally, this last week, I had all the parts I thought I needed: new wrist pins and circlips for the pistons; new exhaust valve stem seals; miniscule washers mysteriously turned up after I figured I'd lost them. On Saturday, I started in. Pistons on connecting rods. Circlips in (after an appropriate amount of grunting and cursing). Piston rings aligned. Then the big step -- the cylinders went on. These are the same cylinders that, back in early January, I was so concerned might take forever at the machine shop. Hah! Instead, the machine shop took two days (unusually fast), but I ended up waiting on parts for nearly two months. With the cylinders on, why not (gasp!) proceed to the cylinder head? Why not indeed! After the long delay, it felt like I was moving at light speed, and I was paranoid I was forgetting something, but it all came together beautifully. By the end of Saturday, the engine was whole, looking all shiny and new on top of the bench. I even had the valve clearance set and the ignition timing adjusted.
So this morning, I called Jesse, and he came over, making a diversion from his errands for the day. Ten minutes after he arrived, he was hopping back in his truck: the engine was in the frame, and the two-person part was finished. With terrifying speed, the pieces went back on the bike, which brings us to now: it basically looks like a motorcycle again! In fact, I spent the last far-too-many hours of the day mucking around with this POR-15 tank sealer, hoping to seal in the rusty crud that seemed to be causing problems for me earlier. I think it's done now, though, and all that's left is 4 days curing time before I can pour in gasoline, and call it all done.
In fact again, I believe that leaves me with exactly one task to be completed before the bike can be ridden again: the shifter linkage. This is a matter of finding some material to weld in place, and welding it. The work of an hour or two, at most. The bike is almost rideable again! I can tell you, the excitement chez Ian is palpable. I'm the only one palpating it, but it's palpable, take my word for it. A couple hours of cutting, welding and fitting with Jesse's help, and I'll be on the road again. I'm aiming for... oh, about Thursday night. Posted at 23:29 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 22 Feb 2008J. and I did manage to get together this week, and we had a blast. No particular weirdness involved. The goal and import of our meeting was to trade life stories. Naturally, in the 3 hours we talked, we barely made a dent, but it brought me to an interesting conclusion: I now know more about J. (a comparative stranger) than I do about many of my good friends. The thing is, it's been great. Hearing someone else describe their life is amazingly entertaining. But it occurred to me that in addition to doing this with J., I want to hear the life stories of all my friends. General arcs, details, whatever. It's something that I'm going to pursue (although my vocal cords need to recover from all that talking -- I probably talked more during those three hours than I had for the entire previous week). On top of any personal goals, I wanted to encourage you to trade life stories with your friends. If you haven't already done it, it's great fun. Everyone's life is packed full of stories, and when you sit down with the intention of telling those stories, the most amazing things can come out. I even considered trying to convene small groups of people to cut down on repetition, but decided that really, this is an activity which should be done one-on-one. We didn't pursue a particular strategy, but what we ended up doing was trying to trace the whole thing in general details -- "I went to school here, lived there, met this important person at this other place." This would invariably highlight a zillion more-detailed stories just begging to be told, both in the teller and the listener. We'd occasionally briefly interrupt with things like, "That reminds me of my first motorcycle, but in a minute. Please continue." The referenced story would come next. Probably the hardest part was keeping track of where on the continuity each story fell, and how it interacted with the others around it. Of the stories in my life that I'm interested in relating, I might have touched on 15% of them, and explored perhaps 5% in any detail. It was a very engaging and entertaining evening. I'm looking forward to doing it again, both with J. and with other friends. This is definitely a years-long project if I really pursue it. Give it a try! Life-story time is fun! Posted at 09:32 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 20 Feb 2008Wednesday morning is garbage pickup, so Tuesday night is the traditional time to shuffle out with the noisome cans. I went through the dance, gathering up garbage from the various cans around the house. Took it out to the can. I even stopped into the garage, where the can has been getting a trifle full. I'd been working in the garage earlier, trying to make any progress on the CL175 (progress: essentially none that night), and had taken a can of Coke with me. Collecting the garbage came later, but I had it in my head that I'd also retrieve my Coke, which I'd left in there. Of course, this necessitated unlocking the garage, gathering the garbage, locking the garage again, slapping myself on the forehead, unlocking the garage, grabbing the can of soda, locking the garage again. Finally feeling sorted out, I made my way up the steps of my deck. Somehow, as if a tiny demon had snagged my foot with a tiny but strong grappling hook, my foot got stuck passing the last step. I stumbled and tried to pull my foot forward, but it was stuck fast to something. I couldn't stop my forward momentum, and came down hard on the deck, landing knees first, then crumpling up so my ribs were pressed hard against my left leg. In a testament to the weird-ass priorities that seem to sustain me, the soda can landed upright on the deck, mostly unspilled, slightly crushed when I'd reflexively grabbed it tighter. I sat there, doing a quick probe. I found nothing broken, as I watched the fizzy liquid expand in an angry carbonated mushroom cloud. I got up again, both knees aching, and the left side of my ribcage feeling abused. I thought I might have broken a rib, but breathing deeply didn't hurt, and the only thing that's hurt since is leaning into the same position (such as to tie my shoe), so if it's broken, it's a pretty benign break. I got up, and went inside, pouring out the now-flat soda, and flopped onto the couch to watch the copy of Taming of the Shrew from Netflix that I've had sitting around since early December. Later, I was getting ready to shave, getting a new blade out of its packaging. I converted to a double-edged razor a while back (the old-timey kind, with the flat metal blade you drop into a butterfly door). I misjudged getting it out, and felt the odd, painless strangeness of metal cleaving flesh. It didn't even go in far enough to draw blood, but my thumb now bears a tiny flappy testament to my klutz-for-a-day nature. Fortunately, I managed to get to bed without causing further damage to myself. Here's hoping today will be less generally klutzy. Posted at 11:46 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 18 Feb 2008My Saturday was much more successful than the previous week. I was able to swap both tires, and get the brake pedal mounted. The brake pedal now has 3x the travel it did the first time, and a bit more travel than Jesse's installation. Getting the tires done was nice, and I was able to safety wire a bunch more stuff in between all those tasks. The big safety wire thing I haven't tackled yet is the fork oil drain bolts, because the forks have fresh oil in them. It seems slightly wasteful to dump it, but I also have a much more precise delivery method now, so it's probably worth refilling them exactly. Probably what I should do there is wait until I've got the bike back on the road, so I can get some use out of the oil, and do the forks in the week before the race. Anyway, technical musings aside, it was nice to have a productive day. Sunday was spent on an actual ride, with pictures and everything, but that's the subject of another entry. Posted at 10:31 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sat, 16 Feb 2008I am very pleased to say that J. and I have reconnected, and she was eventually able to dredge up memories from our brief, fateful interactions at Godfather's Pizza, half a lifetime ago. If you're curious, I can't think of anyone I know, except Peter from lunch on Monday, who's met J. So, no, this isn't someone you know. I'm looking forward to hearing her life's story. It's a very strange thing to meet someone who was so important to you long ago, and get to know them all over again. My challenge now is to meet J. as she is now, and not with some weird overlay of the fantasy of my memories (the word "fantasy" being used in its classical sense, ya pervs). I'm looking forward to the challenge. I've formulated a theory over the last few years that at this age -- my junior high and high school years -- I was very self-defeating. I've found myself longing for the chance to talk to people who knew me then, and who might be able to provide me with insight and perspective on how I appeared to be acting. I've already gotten a small dose of that from J. in email (my bold-for-me, Cure-cassette declaration was interpreted as "you're weird," and found to be insulting), and I'm looking forward to hearing more. I'm guessing that this is something other people have experienced, but the chance to re-meet and re-learn someone's acquaintance is a novel and appealing opportunity. How often do you get to peel back the mists of time (he said, mixing metaphors strangely), and meet someone again, for the first time? Posted at 11:29 permanent link category: /misc This has been a week of frustration on the motorcycle front. Last weekend, I went to put together the CL175's cylinder head, and discovered that I was missing two little but vitally important washers. Searching failed to uncover them, and I resigned myself to ordering them from Honda. They're a very odd size, so I didn't figure I'd have any luck finding a generic replacement. While on the phone with University Honda, I discovered that, in fact, I was also missing the very important valve guide seals I thought I'd bought a week before. So, I ordered those too. With any luck, they'll be here next week. Turns out I'd been sold a pair of o-rings that were close, but not actually related to the seals. So, I figured I could at least get the cylinders together and ready for the cylinder head to be finished. I got out in the garage, set up the camera, and started putting parts together. The rings went on the piston, no problem. The wrist pins fit in their bores. I got the right order of piston, circlip and wrist pin after a try or two (all carefully captured on film, of course), when I discovered that the second circlip to go in (which holds the wrist pin and keeps it from moving around) was a really... loose... fit. That is, it didn't snap cleanly into its little groove. I thought about it, and realized that this means I'd have to modify the wrist pins. Rather than taking a grinder to parts of my engine, I got on the F-160 mailing list to try to sort out what I should do. Long story short, I ended up ordering new wrist pins and circlips, after discovering that the clips I have are of the "Dear god, don't use those!" variety, even if they had fit right. I wanted new wrist pins anyway, and the only reason I hadn't ordered any is that I'd incorrectly figured they were unavailable, and hadn't realized there would be non-Honda parts in the world. So, I ordered those too. Another week. Jesse and I had a good time putting together that brake lever I posted pictures of earlier (scroll down a little bit), and of course I immediately managed to drill its pivot hole in the wrong spot. Of course again, my hole was close enough to the correct location that I couldn't just drill the new hole and be done with it -- I actually had to have Jesse weld a plug into the hole so I can redrill the pivot. That'll happen today, most likely. As long as I had the brake lever in almost the right place, I decided I could try shortening the actuating rod a couple nights ago. I did a bunch of holding-up and eyeballing and figuring in my head, and ultimately decided that, actually, I couldn't do anything with it. I have to get the engine back in place and a chain on the rear wheel before I will know how long it needs to be. I hung up the actuating rod and looked back at the bike, wondering what else I could do. Ah-hah! I thought to myself. I can drill safety wire holes. So I pulled off a couple bolts and started drilling out holes. Then, while drilling one of the bolts for the front brake, the drill bit started making familiar crunching sounds. But I was almost through the bolt.. Surely it'll hold! No. You know, any time you find yourself thinking thoughts like that, you're just doomed. Sure enough, the drill bit broke off just as it was poking through the far side of the hole. So close! So I grabbed a punch to see if I could push the broken end of the bit out the other side. A couple taps with a little hammer, and my punch, halfway into the bolt, broke off. The drill bit poked out a little bit, but my efforts to pull it out with pliers failed, and ended up rounding it off so I couldn't get a grip on it any more. Argh! Finally, I realized that I had bags full of replacement bolts, dropped the accursed, drill- and punch-filled bolt into the trash, and drilled the new bolt without any travail. Of course, I didn't have a drill bit that would work on the associated nut any more, having just broken it off, so I gave up in disgust and went inside. So, I've definitely had better luck while working on the bike. Fortunately, today I have a new stock of drill bits, and the brake pedal pivot has been filled in beautfully and the plate painted. I'm ready to tackle it all again, and this time, I'm sure it'll work out better. Right? Posted at 11:05 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 15 Feb 2008I've been on a classics kick lately, going back and re-reading some of the classic literature that I managed to avoid during my formal education. One of those novels was Moby Dick. I have to admit, I started this book with some trepidation. It's reputed to be dense and difficult to get through. It pretty much lived up to its reputation. I won't go so far as to say it's not worth reading. I found it interesting at times, and it's certainly a cultural touchstone. It wasn't exactly a chore reading it, but it was definitely heavy, and difficult to get through. I found myself wondering at times why Melville was using the sort of language and construction he did. What I got out of it was a decent grounding in 19th century whale hunting, and exposure to a style of writing I hadn't read before. I doubt I'll ever read it again (unlike Pride and Prejudice, which I found to be engaging once I got over my initial "they're so rich and whiney" reaction). Next up: Rob Roy, fulfilling some kind of Scottish requirement in my classical literature. Posted at 15:25 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 11 Feb 2008When I was but a wee sprout, I made a mistake, and caused a humongous white van to crash into my little Mazda. Oops. As a result of that accident and the monumental $125 ticket which resulted, I found myself in the position of needing a job. I interviewed around the local culinary establishments, and shortly found myself working as a dishwasher at Godfather's Pizza. This is a now-deceased brand of pizzerria whose ads featured a big-lipped old guy in a fedora exhorting customers to "Do it!" in re the eating of their pizza. The particular Godfather's I worked at was in thriving downtown Woodinville. It featured as normal a cast of misfits as I believe you'll find working in any restaurant of similar prestige. My memories of all this are somewhat vague, so I hope I am not fabricating too much. First, there was the manager, good ol' Bob. (I can't remember any of their names except one, so I'm just going to make them up.) Bob, at the time, reminded me of a somewhat incompetent Moonlighting-era Bruce Willis (current at the time). He had that same balding, smirking look about him, except that he was nowhere near as clever as Bruce. He was also a bit on the bossy side, except that he wasn't very good about following up on his orders, so they tended not to be paid much heed. One of the most memorable of my fellow pizza-slingers was Colette. She actually lived down the street from me, which was remarkable because there were very few people my age who lived anywhere nearby. One reason she was so memorable to me is that she dressed exactly like Boy George (complete with lack of chin and everything), a look which was guaranteed to freak out my sheltered, 16 year old self. It was a look that I now identify as pre-goth, and is one I've even tried for myself, later in my misspent youth. I didn't find her even slightly attractive, which is notable, as at the time, I seemed to find at least half the female population of Woodinville highly desireable, as I've mentioned in the past. There was a moment, one day, when Colette and I were on break at the same time. Break consisted of 30 minutes during which we were allowed to consume one (1) Personal Pizza with as many as two toppings, and a soda, as part of our compensation. Anything else we had to pay for at full rate. In any case, Colette and I were sitting at a table in the nearly-empty restaurant. We may have been having a discussion, but I don't really recall. Suddenly, she spoke up on a complete tangent. "You know," she said, "I'm not addicted to crystal." I looked over at her, goggle-eyed, unsure what she might be talking about. How could a person be addicted to a class of minerals? "People say I am, but I'm not," she continued inscrutably. Moments later, she gathered her miniature pizza plate and glass, and walked back down to the counter to go back to work. I was completely mystified by this non-sequitur. It was only years later, in college, that I had any clue what she was talking about. I'd only ever interacted with her at the Godfather's, and had seen no indications of drug use. There was another girl who left a vague memory, who we'll call Kimmy. Kimmy had huge frizzy curly hair, which was apparently all the rage at the time. She wore a black leather jacket, which frequently hung on the coat rack in the hallway back to the walk-in refrigerator. Kimmy also smoked, which bothered me. I didn't feel any particular connection to her, but I had this stirring deep in my soul that I didn't want her to kill herself with cigarettes. This manifested one day when I walked across the parking lot to the Albertsons, and purchased a pack of gum. We'd had a discussion about smoking some days earlier, and she'd mentioned that when she was chewing gum, she smoked less. It was 25 cents, but my finances were up to the challenge. I furtively slipped the gum into her jacket pocket, in a short-sighted attempt to be helpful. For days, I didn't see any evidence that this had been noticed, and she seemed to smoke as much as ever. Finally, I asked her about it, and she said, "Oh, no, I didn't find any gum in my pocket." At this moment, Bryce spoke up: "Huh, I was wondering where the hell that came from!" Bryce was another character from our little ensemble. I had actually blocked him out until I started thinking along Kimmy's story line. Bryce was a young man with a cruel, bullying streak a mile wide. His face was fixed in a permament, superior sneer. The only problem was that he was built like a hatchet, with a frail, thin body topped by an enormous, distorted face. His chin was promiment enough to prompt us to compare him unfavorably to the "Mac Tonight" McDonalds ads which were running at the time. "Mac" was a sort of life-size mannequin with a quarter moon for a head. The shape of his head was actually a crescent, as if someone had cut a 1/10th wedge of the moon and scraped out the seeds as from a cantalope. Bryce was convinced he was superior to everyone. One of the ways he liked to prove this (and, which wasn't based upon sneering) was in his driving. He'd shift his automatic-transmissioned car into 1st, for instance in a parking lot, and gun the motor. The car would scream forward, howling in pain, until he smugly bumped the shifter into the second gear position. The motor would gasp in relief, and accelerate into the stratosphere again before Bryce would cruelly jam the shifter forward to the next position. I was fortunate in that I never witnessed one of these travesties against machinery. No, I discovered this because Bryce proudly described his driving style to me in loving, sneering detail. In another class entirely from the in-store workers were the delivery drivers. You had to be 18 to be a delivery driver, so they were like some kind of unattainable demi-god to me, at 16. From this side of 18, it's a ridiculously small difference, but at the time, it was incomprehensible -- they were out of highschool, and could drive for a living. And they got tips. One of the delivery drivers, Jason, was sneeringly superior, but unlike Bryce was actually superior in some important ways. He had, for instance, a girlfriend. He smoked (this was something that made him seem even further from me, even though I viewed it negatively even then). When I later saw Top Gun, I would recognize Val Kilmer's character as a higher order of Jason: smug, superior and confident, but with some reasonable justification. The other delivery driver I remember is J. We'll avoid full names here for reasons which will become clear in a moment. She was 18, smoked, and filled with all the self-confidence which clearly accompanied these facts. She was also possibly the most stunningly beautiful woman I'd ever met in person, with clear, alabaster skin, fine features, and straight, light brown hair that was either pulled back into a pony tail, or on rare occasions, hung down to her shoulders, framing her angular face beautifully. When I later saw pictures of Jodie Foster, it put me in mind of J. On top of being 18 and a delivery driver, she was a fan of a wide variety of music I'd never heard before. In particular, she had a tape of The Cure's album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me that she loaned to me one day after expressing shock that I'd never heard of the band before. She was, now that I think about it, one of the earliest non-classical musical influences I had. I loved to go on break with her. She always had great, irreverent stories to tell, and would tell them with this confident laugh. I was, needless to say, completely smitten with her. Unfortunately, she had a boyfriend. He referred to her as his "china doll," which was a good description of the quality of her skin. She described doing things with him which are best not retold in a family-friendly environment such as this, but were extremely tittilating to me at the time, and did not make it easy for me to "be cool" around her. She demonstrated her "thunder god" impression by taking a deep drag off her cigarette, and then blowing it out through her nose and the corners of her mouth so that it streamed out in four diagonal jets. I have one distinct memory, of the aforementioned tape, which I must have listened to for weeks before returning it. I recall preparing to return it, and carefully cueing the tape so that "The Perfect Girl" would play the next time she listened to it. It was a half-hearted attempt by any outward measure, but to me at the time, it was a bold, heart-thumping declaration of love, which was also carefully subtle enough to cause absolutely no embarrassment if nothing came of it. Nothing, suffice to say, came of it. We probably worked together for a period of a month or two before one or the other of us stopped working at that Godfather's Pizza. It's in the nature of crappy fastfood jobs that there is a high turnover rate, as Bob loved to carp about. She moved on or I moved on, however it worked, and that was that. Shortly thereafter, I moved to Oregon (where I was told while applying at a Portland area Godfather's that my previous experience at the Woodinville store was worthless, because apparently all the Washington stores were run by undisciplined babboons instead of managers; since I would have had to start over at the lowest form of grunt, I passed and got a job at Burgerville. So much better, clearly). As the years passed, I would occasionally remember J, and wonder what had happened to her. I had a pessimistic feeling that everyone I'd known in Woodinville wouldn't amount to much, which in some cases such as J.'s, caused me real regret. Fortunately, I've been proven wrong in this pessimism in recent years, which is nice. Before too long, I forgot her last name, and by the time I got to college, I figured she would have gotten married anyway, so there was no real way to track her down. It was always idle curiosity anyway, so I never pursued the thought beyond idle fancy. Today (fast forwarding just a few years), I walked in to eat lunch at Blue C Sushi as I do essentially every day. I'm well enough known there that the manager and servers and I regularly joke about pretty much anything that comes to mind. I sat down (not having a customary spot) with my well-battered copy of Moby Dick, and waited for something good to come down the belt. I looked at the other patrons around me, and thought I saw a familiar face. It looked like it might be a friend of Jesse's, but I couldn't be sure. I kept my face in my book, and waited for my sushi to come around. When the belt had completely cycled past me, I asked a chef for a salmon maki. By this time, Peter (Jesse's friend) had recognized me, and we'd greeted each other. Peter was talking with someone next to him, so I let him get back to it. As I accepted the plate from the sushi chef, Peter's companion looked at me, and said, "That's the way to do it." "Indeed," I replied (or something equally innocuous). In a few moments, I got sucked into their conversation, and put the book down. I mentioned my adventures in welding from last night, and Peter's companion said, "No way!" turning fully towards me. She explained that she has a 1976 Honda CB360 that she's having restored right now, using one of the shops in town, and we traded memory and "ums" back and forth until we'd filled all the details in. I told her about this vintage racing thing I'll be doing, and she seemed really interested. I told her to come down and see a race, how to find the schedule on the WMRRA page, and so on. Our conversation quickly dominated, as this woman and I chatted vintage bikes and racing. Peter followed along, amused, but uninvolved. The sushi plates slowly ground past. At some point in this conversation, I was looking at her profile, and thought to myself, "She has a really nice profile. It kind of reminds me of J, from Godfather's." I didn't actually go so far as to fully form her name or the restaurant or anything, but I had the impression in my head. I started searching her face a bit more closely, and realized with an increasing sense of disbelief that she shared a lot of facial features with J. Eventually, she hailed a server, and got her check. She pulled out her wallet to get her card, and I found my eye drawn to her driver's license, which was facing up at me from the table. I was suddenly intensely curious, and read the last name. It wasn't exactly familiar, but seemed to ring a bell from long ago. Before she could get up, I said, "I have a weird question for you. Did you grow up in Woodinville?" She looked up at me and said, "Yeah," with an unreadable look on her face. "Uh-huh," I said, pretty sure my theory was right. "And did you work at Godfather's Pizza when you were maybe 16?" "Yeah," she said, "that's freaky, how do you know this?" "I worked with you," I said. "I worked there at the same time. You don't remember me?" "No." Not too surprising, overall. At the time, I was the most unassuming nobody anyone could strive to be. I actually would have been surprised if she'd remembered me. I described myself a little bit more, but it didn't ring any bells. She handed me a business card with an email address scrawled on the back. "Send me an email with the race schedules," she said, as she got up. In a moment, she was out the door and gone. "So, you didn't know her?" asked Peter. "Like, you haven't talked to her recently, you really just met her for the first time in a couple decades?" "Yeah," I replied. "That was really weird. I thought she was your coworker or something." "No, we just got seated next to each other, and started talking. Huh!" Huh! indeed. When I got back to work, I put on the MP3 of Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, and didn't stop grinning for the rest of the day. Posted at 20:07 permanent link category: /misc I don't have time for a full update right now, but I wanted to get these pictures posted: That's a brake pedal for the CL that Jesse and I made last night. He made an identical one for himself. I think they came out pretty well. We spent about 6 hours in his garage. Cutting, filing, welding, grinding, shaping, etc. It was great fun, and makes me really want a gas welding rig. We also put swingarm spools on my swingarm, but I don't have a picture of that yet. Posted at 15:15 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 08 Feb 2008My, how the time flies:  Posted at 09:59 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 07 Feb 2008It's been a while since I've mentioned the ol' CL175 race bike, so I figured I'd post an update. I turned the cylinders over to Autosport Seattle a day or two after getting the engine apart, and they had it back in a shockingly quick timeframe. Maybe a day or two later. Woot! No problems reported, and the cylinders are now well-greased and sitting in a plastic bag until I can get it all put back together. In the mean time, I spent a surprisingly large amount of money at Tacoma Screw to get a mega crapload of stainless steel socket head capscrews for the engine sidecovers. Many of those cover screws had to be removed with the impact driver, a lot of penetrating oil, and even more swearing under the breath. Apparently Honda was fond of some fairly terrible alloys for their screws in 1972, and many of them stripped out, although none so badly that I've been unable to remove them one way or another. Socket head capscrews have the distinct advantage of taking a hex wrench, which is very hard to strip out, unlike a Phillips head. While the engine has been apart, I've also taken the downtime to replace little bits and bobs, such as the kickstart oil seal. I tried to check the clutch and clean out the "oil filter" (apparently a weird centrifugal thing which you're supposed to muck out every 5000 miles), but was thwarted by my inability to stop the crankshaft from moving -- with the timing chain in its current state, moving the crankshaft is impractical. I guess I'll get to that after the engine's back together. I took the head to Hill Machine Headworks in Ballard, and they did their typical excellent job, but there was one Issue. When I dropped the head off with them, I said, "Please put Helicoil inserts in the spark plug holes," in addition to all the normal stuff. What I'd neglected to mention to them was that we'd already taken out the old Helicoils. So, they happily bored the hole yet bigger, and put in a new insert. To understand the problem, let me explain what a Helicoil is (skip this paragraph if you already know). A Helicoil is essentially a carefully-shaped spring, which acts as the outside threads on a hole, and is usually installed to repair damaged threads. When you muck up the threads on your hole so badly that they don't hold whatever they're supposed to hold any more, a Helicoil is the fix. Of course, if you have a 12mm hole, you can't just bung a spring in there, and end up with a 12mm hole again -- the spring/Helicoil would have to be infinitely flat, which is impossible. So what you do is cut the hole a little bit bigger, and re-thread it in the next bigger size; for example, 14mm. Then you put in this spring which is 1mm thick, reducing the hole back down to 12mm (the spring thickness counts twice). It's a great system, and when properly done, results in threads that are commonly much stronger than the originals. Well, Jesse and I had carefully removed the 12mm Helicoil from my cylinder head. That left a 14mm hole. When I dropped it off, I said, "And put in new Helicoils," without actually saying, "It's already threaded to the right size for the 12mm insert." So they found a 14mm hole, and figured I wanted a 14mm hole as the result. Out came the 16mm tap, and zip zap zop! more material removed from the sparkplug holes. In went a new Helicoil, and good as new! Imagine my surprise when I went to put in the old sparkplugs, and they went into the hole with no contact... This caused a fair amount of consternation at the machine shop, to say the least. We sweated out options for about 20 minutes, and I finally left, promising that if I couldn't find 14mm sparkplugs, I'd be back to see about getting a set of brass inserts made to resize the holes back down to 12mm. Fortunately, I quickly discovered that not only are 14mm sparkplugs available, they're actually more common than the 12mm variety. So, mostly yay! Let's hope they share the same basic sparking characteristics. That's pretty much where the engine stands right now. I've been getting more parts in, like a belly pan (to catch any inadvertently dropped oil and prevent it from lubricating the tires of the racers behind me -- that would be very rude), a new shifter assembly, and soon, more new tires. It turns out that the new tires I so laboriously levered on in the last video are actually the wrong kind... sigh Speaking of video, I haven't made any progress on that front. I've done some shooting of the ongoing work, but not as much as I'd hoped. Hopefully I can set the camera running for putting the engine back together -- taking it apart was such a whirlwind that I didn't want to break our momentum to get a camera involved. I've got three more tapes to review and turn into episodes, but I don't expect I'll get another one out for a month or two. Speaking of timing, the deadline for having the bike finished has shifted slightly. The high muckety-mucks at WMRRA fortunately decided that forcing novice vintage racers such as myself to do the New Racer School (the on-track portion) with a bunch of novices on big, fast modern bikes was a really bad idea. My little bike, when finished, will top out around 75-80 MPH. Modern sportbikes top out around 130-150 MPH and accelerate 5-10x faster. Now, put novice riders on each, and put them on the same track. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn't it? So, I will be participating in a more informal mentoring program. I'll still do the classroom portion of the New Racer School, but my on-track training will be handled one-on-one with a more experienced vintage racer. This strikes me as being a much safer way to go about things. It also means that Jesse and I are on the same schedule for getting our bikes ready, which is nice. Plus, of course, I don't have to blow $300 on the "please don't kill me" track day. I still have a lot of work to do on the bike, but it still looks feasible. Starting this Sunday, I'll have a lot more free time, and will be focusing on getting the engine back together, and getting everything safety wired. Then once that's done, I can break in the engine, sort out any further problems (please, no further problems!) and do the remaining race-prep. That should be fun, because it involves things like hacksawing off the muffler, and stripping off all the lights and street gear. So, there's the (somewhat lengthy) update. More news as it happens! Posted at 22:27 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 03 Feb 2008Today, I will leave you with pictures of young Miloš, who recently tried eating a kidney bean, with hilarious results: Posted at 11:04 permanent link category: /misc Fri, 01 Feb 2008This is just a quickie. If you're interested in helping to choose the Democratic candidate for president in the state of Washington, you need to know this: the primary vote doesn't count for Democrats. From the Democrat's page:
Why is Washington State having Caucuses and a Primary? If you'd like to help choose the Democratic presidential candidate, head to the caucus on Saturday, February 9th. You can find your nearest caucus location here. The Primary vote on the 19th will only determine Republican delegates. Posted at 14:20 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 29 Jan 2008
Of snow tires and winter gloves
The crazy winter weather has brought us a few days of maybe-snow, which have prompted me to load the snow tires on the bike again. This second take on them has been interesting. Now that I know what to expect, they're not as hard to ride on as I'd first thought. They're definintely more resistant to going forward. I probably drop two or three miles per hour off my average speed while I'm using them. The weirdest thing is the way they feel riding on dry pavement (which is pretty much all I've done -- thanks Seattle weather!). The studs make an odd gravel-crunching noise as I ride along, and I can make them noticeably louder by pedalling hard, or braking aggressively. What gets really strange is going around a corner. There's a lean angle that's about comparable to my comfortable turn rate where the tires seem to shift, and get squirmy. It's almost certainly the point at which the tire rolls over onto the row of studs, so that there's more metal hitting the ground. There's no evidence of slipping, but it's a very disconcerting feeling. These things all combine to make me want to get the tires off as soon as possible. As I thought the first time, I'd leave them on if there were any reasonable chance of encountering ice, but given the mid-30s and higher temperatures Seattle usually experiences, they're an unwelcome distraction. A few weeks ago, I stopped into REI, and looked over their selection of cold-weather gloves. I first selected the Novara Cold Front gloves, attracted to their cold plus wet claims. They felt a little strange (oddly slippery, with a slick, smooth fabric), but I bought them. I rode away from the store with my new gloves on. Within a couple hundred feet and a couple disgusted glances at my hands, I turned around, locked up my bike again, and returned the new gloves. They're constructed with multiple layers (inner, gore-tex or something like it, and outer), and each layer feels squidgy against the next. The end result is that it felt like I was grabbing the handlebars through a layer of wet hair gel. It wasn't exactly slippery in the sense of losing my grip, but it felt like I had a very tenuous connection to the bike. Very disconcerting. In exchange, I grabbed the $10 cheaper Novara Headwind gloves. These are made with a thin layer of neoprene over the top, and a thickish layer of leather for the gripping surface. They didn't feel like they'd be quite as warm, but there was no doubt that they'd feel much more secure. I rode off, and was sufficiently satisfied that I made it past my first U-turn location. However, I quickly realized that these new gloves, while nominally designed for cold weather, were noticeably less insulated than the old, falling apart pair of Activa gloves I was trying to replace. That's not very helpful. I haven't returned them, and may not. For all that they're less insulated, they're still decent gloves, and will be useful. A large part of the year sees temperatures between 40 and 60 degrees, and these are the perfect gloves for that temperature range. They're also nominally somewhat more waterproof than the Activas, which are definitely not waterproof. The one time I had the misfortune of riding in on a really cold and wet day with the old gloves on, my hands were frozen solid. Someone (I can't remember who it was now, maybe my friend Josh) said they have a coworker who swears by alpaca-wool gloves for winter bicycling. I'd have to find the right gloves to believe that. As much as I want my gloves to keep my hands warm, they also need to protect me if I fall for any reason. I think I'd be more inclined to look into lightweight motorcycle gloves for serious winter bicycling. I'm fond of wool, but abrasion resistance isn't really one of its strong points. Posted at 19:24 permanent link category: /bicycle Mon, 21 Jan 2008After another Seattle-ish one-day bout of snow, I decided to try out my fancy studded bike tires. I levered them on their rims last Friday, and rode into work. It was a difficult ride -- the studded tires (Nokian Hakkapelitta W106s) weigh about double my normal tires, and have much higher rolling resistance. When the weather cleared up, I determined the normal tires had to go back on. So Sunday night, I put the normal tires (Vittora Randonneur Pros, which need to be replaced soon) back on. While I was in there, using my shiny new workstand, I also pulled out the brake pads to see if they needed to be replaced. They seemed alright, so I shoved them back into the calipers, and put the bike away for the night. This morning, it was blazingly cold out. It had been very clear last night, and my outdoor thermometer read 29° F. I bundled up, wishing that the weather would make up its mind so I could pick a tire and stick with it. But there was no ice on the ground, so I hopped on the bike and pedaled off. The brakes felt a little weird, like they weren't biting well enough, but I figured that was just due to the cold, and kept riding. I took the less speedy but less windy route down to Greenwood, and ground slowly up the hill past 85th. The flat section, from 80th to 56th, passed without incident. As I started down the slight incline that becomes the Fremont Avenue hill, I blasted past another rider since I hadn't had to slow for the light, and she'd been stopped. I glanced back to make sure I wouldn't cut her off when I pulled back to the side of the road, when I heard something go clink! as I turned my head back. I saw something skitter off away from me, but figured it was yet another piece of road jetsam. Things have a way of getting under a tire and doing a really good impression of something falling off the bike. I joked to myself, "I hope that wasn't something I needed," about the skittering object, and started powering down the hill. Something niggled at the back of my head, and I decided I'd better test the brakes. Good thing, too, the front brake wasn't working! Eeek! I eased off the downhill power pedalling, and started slowing. The rear brake worked fine (actually, it seemed kind of weak too, but it was still working), and with some planning, I came to a safe stop at the mid-hill light. The second half of the hill was taken much more cautiously. The rear brake, even at its best, is a mediocre way to slow the bike, and the cold seemed to have sapped the brakes of their strength a bit. With no small amount of luck, I made it to the light at 36th, and pulled to a stop. The road flattens out after 36th, so I was out of the major danger zone. I was also less than 1/4 mile from my destination, but I thought I'd ride by the local bike shop to see if they were open, and could sell me new brake pads -- I'd decided that I'd somehow dropped a pad on the road at the top of the hill. I rounded the corner towards the shop, when I heard another clink! skitter, and with a start, grabbed the rear brake lever. Nothing. I said something along the lines of, "Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" as I vaulted over the toptube of the bike and landed on the pavement, executing a clumsy but effective Flintstones-style stop. I turned around and spent a few minutes looking, but couldn't locate the AWOL pad. Freaked out now, I stood one foot on a pedal and rode my bike like an ungainly Razor scooter the rest of the way to work, walking down any incline of any length or slope. Once I was safely at work and had figured out a rescue plan (calling upon my Flexcar membership to go retrieve the new pads I had sitting in a drawer at home, since all the local bike shops are apparently closed on Mondays), I started thinking. What I realized is that I'd become complacent. When I put the brake pads back into the calipers last night, I didn't follow the directions, which are pretty explicit -- insert the pads until you hear a distinct click! Instead, I'd inserted them until they seemed about right. Well, as you can doubtless guess, that wasn't good enough. The calipers hold the pads so that if they're not securely in place, they will gradually slip lower and lower until eventually some bump in the road causes them to go clink! skitter out of the caliper. When I went to replace the pads tonight, I found one remaining pad out of four in place. That's... not a good record. I realized that I should have taken the reduced bite this morning as a warning sign -- the pads were slightly out of alignment, and so they weren't making full contact with the discs. I should have known that, but I weirdly assumed it must be the cold. They've never been affected by cold before. There's no reason they should have been this morning. I was, to put it mildly, extremely lucky. It's a rare event that I need to brake hard for any reason, but to be without that ability, particularly as I embarked on one of the bigger hill descents in Seattle, is a sobering thought. To lose one brake is bad enough, but to have both go on the same ride is just frightening. It's also absolutely hilarious, in a way that was best demonstrated by the first Werner movie (if you weren't in Germany in the early 90s, you probably won't get the reference, but that's fine). Werner is riding his ridiculous clapped-out scooter down a hill towards his jobsite. The hill gets steeper and steeper, and he's pleased to have any headway after the poor scooter coughed and spluttered on the way up the hill. As the moment to brake comes, he gives the handle a squeeze, and the film goes slo-mo. The brake lever explodes into several separate pieces, which tumble gracefully past Werner's face, the threads on the screws carefully drawn in. He turns to watch the departed parts disappear behind him, making an "Oh... crap!" face. The film speeds up to normal speed again, and he explains, "My brake just took itself apart!" in the clever observant way of all people who are about to enter a world of pain. And, as if to prove to me that anything's possible, I found the exact scene, posted to YouTube. Viva la Internet! The relevant scene starts about 40 seconds in. So yeah, now that I know what happened, that's kind of how I should have felt watching that first brake pad skitter across the road away from me. Posted at 21:10 permanent link category: /bicycle Thu, 17 Jan 2008As a conversation piece, I have a couple of pistons sitting on my desk now: 
On the left, a BMW R100 piston; on the right, a Honda CL175. That's the right-hand piston from the CL 175 on the right, with the huge sparkplug divot in it. For reference, the CL175 piston is just a little bit bigger than a shotglass, and the R100 piston is a little bit bigger than my fist. Posted at 12:26 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 14 Jan 2008With amazing speed, the awful minivan has left my life. That's what ya get when you post things for far below their apparent value on Craigslist, I guess. In all, I had about 6 people call or email on it, and fully half of them didn't understand that it had a broken head gasket. The guy who actually bought it was the first person to call me last night, who stood me up this morning when he was supposed to come look at it. So, note to self when posting to Craigslist: assume a 2nd grade reading level, and ADD on the part of the reader. Bulleted lists are the order of the day. But at least it's gone. Posted at 20:34 permanent link category: /misc
Craigslist shoppers: not so literate
So, my $1000 Previa has generated a surprising amount of interest. In the last 12 hours, I've had four contacts (and possibly more in email that I haven't looked at yet). The first one, and the most literate so far, was someone who wanted to come see it. He'll be here in the next hour or two. No real problems, although he managed to call when I was outside near traffic, and between the traffic noise and his accent, he was a little hard to understand. The second was perhaps the most hilarious in his in ability to use written language. His email to me read: hi there do u still hv your van i hv the money and will buy it and will buy it, No further comment necessary. The third started to illustrate the "can't really read" trend, when I got a phone call that went like this: Him: Hey, I'm calling about the Previa, is it still available? Me: Yeah, although I've got someone coming to look at it tomorrow morning. Him: Ok. How many miles on it? Me: [thinking: "That was in the ad 3 times"] ... two hundred thousand. Him: [aside, off the phone] Two hundred thousand, I told you. [back to me] And does it have any problems, with the engine, or the transmission or anything? Me: [now seriously questioning his ability to read] Did you read the ad? Him: Not the whole thing, no. Me: Well, it has a broken head gasket, although everything else is in pretty good shape. Him: Oh. Really? Ok, well, thanks. [click] Now, in the second paragraph of the ad, I state very clearly that it has a broken head gasket (actual phrase: "a gaping hole in the head gasket"). In the third paragraph, I explain that this van needs an owner who wants to install a new engine, and I go on to explain about what that would cost for a moderately skilled backyard mechanic. The next call was perhaps the weirdest. I tend to take a long time to wake up, so I had specified, right next to my phone number, that callers should limit themselves to 9 am to 10 pm calling hours. Naturally, the phone rang this morning at 8:27 am. I should have been awake, but wasn't really. I asked him, "Did you read the ad?" and went on to check his reading comprehension. He had in fact read the ad (and knew about the head gasket, most importantly), but had somehow missed the fact that those numbers after the phone number might have meant anything. Clearly, I overestimate Craigslist shoppers. Next time, I'll just list everything in bullet-point form. Perhaps I'll rmv mst vwls just so it looks more like what they're apparently used to. Posted at 09:02 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 13 Jan 2008
Psst, buddy: wanna buy a minivan?
Yes, the minivan is up for sale. To the previous owner, who somehow neglected to mention the whole "gaping hole in the head gasket" issue? Fie upon you, sir. Posted at 17:09 permanent link category: /misc Fri, 11 Jan 2008For Christmas this last year, I got two DVDs I've been vaguely wanting for a while: seasons 1 and 2 of the Venture Brothers. The show is a fairly smart and tongue-in-cheek cartoon about the adventures of a sort of anti-hero Johnny Quest-like family. Fortunately, for the purposes of this discussion, you don't really need to know anything about it. I had enjoyed watching the show on TV, back when I was still blowing my $30 a month to the satellite TV company. It was even more enjoyable to be able to watch them again, in order, and back-to-back. Being a professionally produced DVD, they also had a bunch of extra features, including creator commentary. As is usually the case with these things, they essentially gathered a few of the people involved with the show in a room, started playing the episode in question, and recorded whatever sounds they made as a result. Sometimes these commentaries are really insightful into some aspect of the show, sometimes they're really a waste of time. I started out kind of annoyed at the commentaries. Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick (the co-creators of the show) are the primary commenters, and they would go frustratingly off-topic as the episode played as an occasionally beguiling distraction in the background. I could hear traffic outside the window, the distinctive clink of Zippo lighters being deployed, and so on. For the second season, they'd mysteriously arranged the microphone so that one of them sat right next to it, and the other sat some distance away, putting the distant one's voice slightly below the level of the quiet episode sound playing underneath. As I listened more, however, I became increasingly fascinated. These weren't two aloof jerks who thought they were god's gift to cartoons, they were just a couple of guys. At one point, Mike Daisey showed up in a commentary. The same Mike Daisey I visited in his tiny New York basement apartment when I went to New York with Flaming Box of Stuff lo these many years ago. That was really the moment it hit home -- if they lived in Seattle, it was likely that I'd know these guys, and they'd just be, well, guys. With my love of behind-the-scenes-ness, I'd probably even be friends with them. I started to feel like I knew them. I could picture (particularly with the help of a special features tour of their studio) being in the studio, seeing the stacks of paintings (Doc is a painter who's doing the cartoon thing as a kind of side project, and he seems to be a painter in the same way that I find myself on two wheels -- there's no way to stay away), smelling the cigarette smoke in the air, moving carefully between the unstable piles of clutter. They became just some more people in my life. In the commentaries, including some with James Urbaniak, the voice of one of the main characters, there's discussion of various blogs they keep. This sent me out to where I quickly rounded them up, and read through them. James in particular is a prolific writer, and has an engaging personal style that, again, brings him close to the reader. Of course, I don't know them. It's unlikely I ever will (although the thought of begging an introduction through Mike, whom I know only passingly, occurred to me). And that setup, all those words you just ploughed through, are background for my musing: fame is really weird. A related thing happened to me with, for instance, Bald Faced Lie. I had seen them on stage, heard them on the radio, even seen some of them on local TV. They were larger than life, yet when Sibyl introduced me to them, they were just folks. Really nice folks, and we ended up working together so well that I was a member of the company for the last few years of its existence. I was able to contribute materially to Speechless, which I consider to be the best comedy show, and possibly the best show of all I've ever worked on. Through BFL, I met Bill Radke (whose show Rewind was probably my favorite news-comedy show on the radio) and was one degree away from Bill Nye, a perennial favorite from Almost Live to The Eyes of Nye. One day, I walked past Bill Nye crossing the street in Pioneer Square. I had a sudden urge to call out, "Oh, hi Bill!" as if we were old friends. I didn't, because, of course, we aren't. I've never actually met him in person before, but I felt like I had. All of which leads me to say, fame is really weird. It must be a very odd thing to have people recognize you and act all chummy, when you've never met them before. I can't even imagine going to a convention (such as both Doc and Jackson have done) where you're the object of fanboy/fangirl interest. It must be surreal, tiring, and thrilling/terrifying all at the same time. The only glimpse I've had into this world of fame (of which I want no part, despite my narcissistic ramblings on this petite leaf of the massive tree-of-life we call the Internet) was related to me by Sibyl (ex-girlfriend, and stylist extraordinairre) the last time I got my hair cut. The topic came up that Jesse (my best friend, and fellow motorcycle nut) and I always seem to come in to get our hair cut at very similar times. In fact, this last time, he and Basil (who was in BFL, also a friend of mine) had crossed paths. Jesse and Basil have met at my parties on many occasions, and they'd struck up a conversation of several minutes before Jesse left. "You know Jesse?" asked Sibyl of Basil. He smiled in a dazzling grin, and said, "I have no idea who that was." Basil does the fame thing pretty well, even if it is only the fame of having a friend in common. So, Jackson or Doc or James, if your wanderings on the web have mysteriously brought you to this place, hats off on a job well done on the show. Keep up the good work, and stay personable. Posted at 23:57 permanent link category: /misc If you would like to be a useful member of the flying community, this may not be a good way to help your fellow pilots. I got a new comment on my 4th of July flight video, which read as follows: So let's do the math. 500' terrain / obstructions. 1500' Class B. 5 miles from BFI. Flying under SEA final. At least 3 network helo's. Maybe another Police helo or two. And then, flying, watching and operating a camera. Hmmmm. You must be one of those guys setting my TCAS off. I taught out of BFI for years. You're not set to deal with everything. That's why the pros have a pilot & film crew. This is, in essence, aviatrical condescension. Pull out a bunch of jargon to wow the non-pilots, and end with the implication that I'm not a pro. Well, good catch, dude. I'm not a pro. I'm also not an idiot. I replied to him in a private message (which is how I would have expected his criticism to arrive at my door, or at least that's the polite expectation), which I won't recount here in all its tedious defense of my professionalism (whether actually a paid professional or not). Because I'm not an idiot, I was flying the plane while my passenger operated the camera. Because, you know, not an idiot. Implying that I am one in a public forum without all the evidence in front of you (particularly without my having been an idiot in the first place) is a great way to get on my bad side, and not much else. So, now that that's over, it must be time to eat some ice cream and reprise some Venture Brothers... (For those keeping score:
Posted at 22:57 permanent link category: /aviation Possibly one of the most reality-jarring moments I've had in recent memory was when I was listening to the radio. I was happily following along to Marketplace on the local NPR station. Markets, numbers, etc. It's the only way I've ever been able to stomach financial news. Then, the story ended, and they cut to some quick interstitial music. I felt my face freeze as I tried to identify it -- I knew the melody, but it was... wrong.. somehow. Then it hit me. They were playing an adaptation of Hong Kong Garden by Siouxsie and the Banshees, for string quartet. Suddenly, I felt, well, not old exactly, but very bizarre, as if reality had skipped a little bit. A similarly odd moment hit me recently as I was perusing the blog of Jackson Publick (one of the creators of The Venture Brothers, about which more later). Livejournal apparently encourages bloggers to list their current music, and Jackson had listed: Current Music: "Into the Light" - Siouxsie & The Banshees Weird. Mostly, it's weird because I never seem to meet other fans of Siouxsie (which is, in part, because I'm not an overt fan, and also, you know, the band's been history for years now). Not that I met Jackson, but reading another person's blog is a bit like meeting them. More on that later, too. So, of course, now I have to say: Current Music: "This Wheel's On Fire" - Siouxsie & The Banshees Posted at 09:37 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 07 Jan 2008Jesse came over yesterday, and helped me get the engine out of the CL. In all, we ended up spending about 6 hours unbolting parts, draining oil, lifting, and disassembling. By the time we were done, the engine was in three major pieces (crankcase/transmission, cylinders, and head). A quick inspection looked good, but upon peering closer, we discovered some exciting stuff. That's not a good kind of exciting, but I'll be replacing all the damaged parts, so it's not a big deal. The first thing we did was to look at the cylinder bores. They were pretty clean, but the right one was a bit rusted. This is the cylinder which is uphill when the bike is on the sidestand, so it's more likely to let rainwater in past a sparkplug, or have crud fall in when the sparkplug is out. Still, the bore looked good enough that I wasn't too worried.
The next thing we noticed was that the top of the right piston had an odd-looking dent in it. After pondering it for a moment, I realized it was from a too-long spark plug. Someone had installed a spark plug that was so long that it left a deep divot, and three lines of thread impressions, in the top of the piston. It must have been half an inch too long, which is really long. Jesse pointed out that some previous owner had installed Helicoils in the heads, to repair or prevent spark plug threading problems. This is generally a good thing, since aluminum heads' spark plug holes are pretty easy to mess up, and they're a pain to fix. Unfortunately, the inserts were far too long, protuding into the cylinders by several millimeters. This poses a number of problems. The first one that occurred to me was that the exposed coil (which is nothing more than a fancy spring) would heat up to red hot, and lead to pre-ignition. My guess now is that this helicoil business must have been done pretty recently, or it would have burned a hole in both pistons. The next problem we discovered was that the helicoil was long enough to hit the piston. There are indented rings visible on both pistons, although the left piston is more clearly marked. I think it was the right helicoil which looked all melted at the end, suggesting it had been shedding chunks of coil into the combustion chamber. This theory was confirmed by other evidence.
The left piston was actually the more frightening, from the helicoil standpoint. It has a little silver spot at one point in the circular impression left by the coil, which is where the melting-hot end of the coil was probably liquifying a little bit of piston on each stroke, spattering it across the top of the piston as little bright flecks Jesse pointed out to me. That couldn't have continued for too long before it would have put a hole in the piston, and racing with it like that would have certainly led to piston failure. After I started cleaning up the head, I discovered more divots on the right side -- this time on the top of the combustion chamber. Something big (like a small nut, or possibly a broken-off spark plug or hefty chunk of helicoil) had gotten in there and been rattled around. It didn't cause any serious damage, though, and I was able to grind down the walls of the craters so they won't provide pre-ignition points. Also on the head, Jesse pointed out to me that the bike must have been run for many thousand miles without having had the cam chain tensioner adjusted. It's a simple adjustment, just loosen a bolt, and let the spring take up the correct tension, but it's supposed to be done every 500 miles or so. The head has two deep, camchain-width grooves cut in it now, although fortunately they won't cause any problems. There were also good things we found. The head and valves appear to be in really good shape (minor divots and grooves aside). The cam and rockers are in beautiful shape, and it looks like I have all the important spare parts I need. The inside of the crankcase looks good. I was able to remove the starter and substitute my newly procured starter plug, which will save at least 10 pounds on the bike. It's still got a kickstarter, and push-starting is easy, so the starter won't really be missed.
The cylinders are even now sitting in the queue at Autosport Seattle, and should be done in a week or two. I'm going to take the head into Hill Machine Headworks (which is the same shop that did a beautiful job on my R100 heads lo these many years ago) as soon as I've got it cleaned up. I've started on the head clean-up, but I need to get together with Jesse again and remove the valve springs and valves before I can make much more progress. This also gives me a good chance to do things like drill a variety of important bolts for safety wire, and work on a laundry-list of other projects on the bike. I'm glad to be back from holidays, and making progress on the bike again. Of course, I'm worried about time: my new racer clinic is on March 19th, which represents a very definite deadline for getting the bike race-ready. Two months feels like a very small amount of time, although I'll be much more sanguine about things once I get the head and cylinders back from their respective shops. It's the "I have to wait for someone else to do things" factor that worries me right now. No time like the present, though. I'm back off to the garage to continue grinding carbon deposits out of the exhaust ports! Posted at 19:47 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 04 Jan 2008The wind is at my back. The tiny, frail arrangement of tubes and cables, tires and spokes beneath me hums. I am flying. Up the hill, parked cars whiz past, hulking dark forms, loaded like traps to spring in my path, but they cannot catch me. The tires glide effortlessly along the broken, dark pavement. Glittering glass. Crunch. But it does not matter. Level ground now. My legs strain against the grasping, protesting hands of reluctant mass, and I fly faster. Faster and faster. The wind laughs behind me, urging me on. Cars slow down and start flowing backwards, like a wheel spinning faster yet seeming slower. Brakes whirr against their miniature discs, slowing for a pedestrian foolish enough to put herself in the path of my flight; the light-trail behind me swerves, tracing my path to the dismay of any competitors. Pick up the pace, legs ache so beautifully, chain thrums against the sprocket, spokes elongating in the wheel as the watts flow in, stroke after relentless stroke. Cars slow again, but I fly past, gliding over rough pavement, my eye wary, always looking for those caged, sleepy drivers. My lights wink out at them, I am here. The stoplight stumbles from red to green with a silent ker-chunk of miniature relays, and whumm goes the chain as I pick up speed. Downhill now, the wind whips past my head. In my ear, the radio whispers of Huckabee and recession, McCain and musicians, but I don't hear. It's not important right now. The night flows around me, darkness pouring over my arms, sleeves rolled up to dissipate heat, heating the world as I pass with the quiet zzzz of the freewheel. Uphill again, straining against gravity, but gravity will lose this battle. Over the cracked sidewalks, headlights glaring angrily at no one and nothing, the oncoming cars locked into a crawling hell of their own making. Beneath me, the thrum-thrum of pedal strokes. Click, click and snick, snick, up through the gears, each one allowing a bit more speed at a slightly higher cost. The night swirls around me again, the dark air drowning out the chatter of pundits. Around the circular barrier. It slows the cars, but I barely deviate from my course. Left. Right. Nothing coming. Go. With the thrum of the chain, and the gentle caressing sussuration of the liquid darkness, the noiseless, watching zzzz of the freewheel, the silent bright quickness of the light, darting and scattering off debris in my path. With the aching strain of legs, the breath rushing in and out.... This is what I call a commute. Posted at 18:36 permanent link category: /bicycle Thu, 03 Jan 2008And now, a bit of story time with Ian. Way back in junior high school, I was a sad little kid. I was convinced no one liked me, which naturally reflected back on me in the fact that no one seemed to like me. Shocking, I know. Anyway, one of the things that happened is that I developed a sort of panoply of crushes on different girls in school. Each of them was completely sincere, but also as completely unexpressed. I'm probably the only person who knew what was going on in my head. That's a good thing, of course, because had I expressed them, I probably would have created all sorts of problems for myself. In any case, one of the girls I found my eye favoring was K. She shared a math class with me for many years, and I think I sat behind her in the 7th grade class. She was very attractive, with dark hair cut in a bob, and an easy, genuine smile. I was, naturally, completely incapable of talking to her. We continued sharing math classes through the curious machinations of fate. Nothing ever came of the crush, although I did finally work up the courage to ask her to sign my yearbook in 10th grade, just before I moved to Oregon, completely abandoning my suddenly burgeoning social skills. (Yes, asking her to sign my yearbook represented serious progress. It's ok, I'm much better now.) Fast forward numerous years. This will seem random, but bear with me (it's still pretty random, but it does all join up). Now in college, I met B. She was my first real girlfriend, and we shared a relationship that lasted years. Shortly after we started going out (and being very serious despite the mere months we'd been together), I went to Scotland for a year. It was something of a shock to the relationship, but we seemed to be able to manage it through the exchange of long emails and the occasional high-priced phone call. Eventually we worked out that we could send microcassettes back and forth in the mail at a pretty cheap per-minute rate compared to the phone. One morning, for one of our strictly meted phone calls, I realized that she'd been mentioning the name of a male friend rather a lot. Long story short, she admitted that she'd slept with him numerous times in the last week, but was still in love with me. Even longer story short, I spent the next two weeks about as miserable as I've ever been. She ended up flying to Scotland a couple months later, and everything was fine. We never talked about the infidelity again, and it wasn't an issue. We went on to have several happy years. We broke up eventually, but we'd both seen it coming, and despite my strong reaction to it, it was for the best. We had dinner years later, and although it was interesting to see her again, we didn't have much to talk about. No hard feelings on either side, but there were good reasons we weren't still going out. One of the things we discussed during our years together was our mutual dislike of marriage as an institution. There are reasons for it, but I won't divert into that discussion just now, let's just establish that it was one of the many things we agreed on. Fast forward again, to this morning. For some reason, I found myself wondering where K (my math class crush from jr. high) was. I do this occasionally, and listlessly poke around to see if I can find the person I've suddenly remembered. This time, Google combined with a relatively uncommon name hit the jackpot. I found K's wedding announcement from 1996, and a moment later had found her current business's website. She's living a few states away with her husband and three young children, and it looks like life is pretty good for her. After a moment's deliberation, I composed and sent an "I don't know if you remember me..." email. To my happy surprise, I got a reply a short while later, and she not only remembered me, but sounded pleased to hear from me. Encouraged by this, I sent her a brief recap of my life between the last time I'd seen her and now. Chuffed by the success of this venture, I figured I'd try looking B up. I still think about her, and wonder how life is treating her, so why not? I quickly found a site mentioning her, and it seemed to be a listing of where this person I'd found was registered. I figured I'd gotten someone else with the same name (improbable, but I guess it could happen; B has a pretty uncommon name). I looked around the site a little bit more to make sure I'd found the wrong person. As I looked, I realized that, no, this was the right person. It was the same B. I further realized that this was her wedding website. That was a bit weird, but as nothing to the shock I felt when I realized that she'd gotten married to the guy who had been the recipient of her attentions while I was in Scotland a decade ago. The world seemed to tilt sideways to gravity. B got married. To that guy! My head felt strange, it was as if gravity had split and was tugging me two different ways. The rest of the day passed in a kind of haze, my mental state and reality seeming to come at each other from odd angles. Now that I've had most of a day to examine my reaction, I recognize that it was mostly combined shock that she'd gotten married at all (and used the phrase "united in holy matrimony" no less -- she's completely atheistic last time I checked) along with suddenly resurgent memories of how I felt for those two weeks in Scotland, swaddled in hitherto incomprehensible grief and impotent rage. Those feelings and memories have long since faded into the background of my life, so it was odd to feel them again, even if it was only a shadow of the real emotion, a mere whisper of the true feelings. Further examination, once the feelings faded back again, reveals happiness. I find that I'm glad B found someone she loves enough to marry (considering her previous aversion to the idea). I'm also perversely glad that my two weeks of hell in Scotland weren't for nothing. She wasn't hooking up with some random swain who didn't matter to her -- that was the man she'd go on to marry, a decade later. I still have an unreasoning dislike of him, but that's not based on rational thought, it's based on emotional impressions that are now so much ancient history. I may have exchanged ten words with him in my life. Probably the worst part, once the emotions had receded to the background again, was that she didn't invite me to the wedding. I don't know whether it was from forgetfulness, or a calculation that watching that particular union might not be a tasteful thing for me. Either way, I'm a trifle miffed, although I also think I understand. It doesn't matter anyway, the event is months old, and it seems likely that we'll never be in contact again. I now find my head swirling with fond memories of both K and B, clashing with an odd feeling of unreality after (somewhat masochistically) reviewing B's wedding photos. My head is a very strange place for me to be right now. As if to cap off a supremely weird start to 2008, I received email near the end of the day that one of the musicians I'd been playing with on and off has died. He was around my age, and seemed like a very nice guy and a skilled guitarist. I don't know the cause of death. This recalled the beginning of 2007, when I discovered that my long-time friend Kjersten had been killed in a drunk-driving collision in Oregon. Kjersten was also a skilled musician, and a valued friend, although we hadn't been in contact for many years. I really didn't know this guitarist well enough to be deeply affected by his demise, but I can't sit unmoved by the death of someone I knew, even in passing. In all, this has worked out to be a really weird, square-peg/round-hole kind of a day. To K, if you're reading this, thanks for the pleasant response to my email: that was a bright spot in what clearly ended up being a bizarre day. Posted at 20:03 permanent link category: /misc Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |
I've been looking around at potential replacements for my slowly
dying kitchen radio: an Aiwa boombox that must be 15-20 years old. It
sometimes just stops working. A sufficient quantity of caveman-style
thumping seems to bring it back to life, but one of these days it's
going to stop working forever.
