Archives

All posts by atomicalex

I read this blog post over on EliteDaily and thought, wow, what an opportunity for some semi-satire…. I decided to stop at the first point, though, because it’s such an incredibly good one.

9. When you try to comprehend sports Pinterest

Seriously. You’re always saying you can’t figure out what we want. Well, Pinterest. Even a cursory trolling of our Pinterest boards will tell you. Pinterest, then shop.

The Pinterest phenomenon is so cool. When I look at my pin board (don’t, it’s boring), I realize that yes, it’s not very big or very girly. But that’s ok, because anyone who wants to know about what I like will quickly discover that the fastest way to my heart is GS parts. Or whole GSs. We post what we like, simple as that. And I like BMW bikes. And VW parts. And watches with carbon fibre bits. And so on. A quick peek at my GFs’ boards shows the same thing – a very clear picture of their hearts’ desires, from hot pink hand-spun alpaca wool to kitschy dolls to AMC body panels. But it’s all there, out in the open.

How guys are missing out on this very clever method of getting to understand what women want is beyond me.

(This is my first attepmt to blog from my iPhone.)

Earlier this year, I picked up a well-used 2001 Kawasaki Super Sherpa, the oddball midsized street legal dirt bike that never was a big seller due to not really being big enough for most guys and there not being that many girl dirt riders out there. Hence, accessories are hard to come by. To remedy the complete lack of storage, I decided to make a tank bag.

Here are some pics.

20140729-192627-69987655.jpg

20140729-192628-69988920.jpg

 

20140729-192628-69988381.jpg

 

20140729-192628-69988012.jpg

20140729-192627-69987336.jpg

20140729-192626-69986951.jpg

 

Edit – a friend asked me how easy it is to fill up the bike with the bag in place. Not hard at all. The safety strap allows me to swing the bag out of the way without losing it.

wpid-wp-1406681160157.jpeg

I wrote this maybe ten years ago, and it still stands. I’ll be deploying this in a few short weeks when my 15YO gets through with the state mandated minimum driving school. In the world of motorcycling, we call this process “learning to operate the controls”. It is very much different than riding, because riding assumes that you can operate the controls (relatively) instinctively. Driving is the same way – you need to learn to operate the controls first. Interestingly, as I read back over what I wrote, I realize that this is also exactly how I learned to operate the controls when learning to ride. I guess I knew something useful even back then!

From the VWVortex – the original thread has long since disappeared into the bit bin, but I did manage to find a quote of the text. I figured it might be helpful to someone, so here you go.

How to Teach Your Fianceé to Drive Stick Shift

Take her to a parking lot with not too many light poles and at least one speed bump. This is a 30 minute drill.
Have her start the car and then let off the clutch until the car rolls. Do this about 10 times – clutch in, clutch out to roll. This will teach her the friction point.

Next, have her add gas at the friction point. This will teach how to launch without driving into the neighbor’s yard. She should accelerate to 10mph each time. Clutch out, add gas, 10mph, stop.

That night: teach her the pattern. Have her practice it while she’s watching TV or whatever. 1-2-3-4-5-6-R. Over and over until she wants to kill you. For added misery, add the clutch drill – Clutch in. Clutch out, gas on. Brake on, then clutch in. Brake off. Cycle back to clutch out, gas in and repeat over and over.

Next day: Speed bumps. 30-45min.

Do the friction point and 10MPH drills for a bit. Then have her roll up to a speed bump. Stop. Do the gas drill with trying to stop at the top of the speed bump. This is the creep up a hill drill. This is the hardest drill.

After 20 minutes of that or if she starts crying, do a bunch of non-running pattern work. Engine off. Clutch in, shift, clutch out.

When she grasps that, do some 1-2-3 shifting around the parking lot.

That night: more phantom pattern/foot work.

Next day: Hills. 30 minutes max. She will be tired after this. Do all drills for 15 imnutes of driving total. Then go find a hill with a moderate grade and ZERO traffic.

Forward launches up hill: First let her roll back several times to get used to the sensation. Then start with the launch mechanics.

Backward launches up hill: Same thing.

That night: more phantom pattern reinforcement.

Next day: Parking lot drills, hill drills, 20 min max, now it’s time for traffic. Use your best soothing voice.

3 hours of seat time and she will be safe to drive it.

The idea behind the phantom drills is to build muscle memory. This means your feet and hands know where to go without you thinking about it. You can do this out of the car, and should do it all the time until you are comfortable with the techniques. Yeah, it looks stupid while you’re doing it, but when you don’t have to think in traffic, you will be thankful for it!

this bike

I previously wrote about moving over from my factory lowered BMW F650GS to a standard CBR250R, and how it inspired me to re-evaluate my dependence on getting my feet down at stops.

Recently, I rented a stock NC700X for a long weekend in Germany, and it seemed so natural to ride with my feet kind of, sort of down, but not like on the F, which, honestly, I tower over. A good inch or so between me and the seat when standing. Pushing the NC up and over with my left leg and finding the ground with my right foot eventually seemed like what you do. In fact, when I hopped on the F after coming home and my right foot hit the ground while the bike was still on the sidestand, the light bulb really started to glow. When my foot dragged on the ground as I was coming to a stop, there was no longer any question. My bike is too damn low.

What I’m finally figuring out is that it is actually harder to balance a bike at a stop when your knees are bent. The knee bend introduces a degree of variance, some instability, basically extra flexion, into the system. The NC was delightful at stops, partly because the center of gravity is ridiculously low, but also because my legs are straight, and that extra flexion is not there. There is a natural stiffness. I did have to plan some stops, looking to make sure I did not ride up on top of a ridge, rather instead down in the groove so that my full foot would be placed solidly on the the ridge, but even that lost its appeal after a while. I finally came to peace with the idea that taller is actually better for an experienced rider.

I place the experienced rider caveat there, because as a novice, I needed the mental and emotional security of both feet solidly planted on the ground. This is not a bad thing in and of itself – there is no shame in wanting to be comfortable as you grow into riding. The important thing for me is that I have been able to grow out of it as I’ve added experience.

I’ve begun the process of assembling the parts necessary to convert my F from low to normal. I may never make it to Dakar heights, but getting to normal is a big and welcome step. As I master normal, I will open the door to a new world of bike choices. This is cool.

Ah, well, it was good. Actually, it was great. I mentioned the differences between the NC and my F, and one of the biggest ones didn’t hit home until I did. My F is too damn low. More on that in another post!

I took the bike on a planned route in the area of Germany known as Lipper Land. My riding partner from my Alps trip joined me – we enjoy riding together alot. It is not so easy to find other ladies to ride with, so while we are not perfectly matched, we suck it up and ride on! We left from the dealership and headed to her place to group up and load the bikes. Once again, I have to remind: Never take your gear without taking a tank bag. Just take it. Preferably a strap one, as bikes like the NC have no metal up top. I forwent a pair of sneakers, but did manage plenty of socks and underwear.  We rode out to find our little place to stay, the Hotel-Café Waldruh, Rüheweg 8, Holzhausen.

IMG_0560

In Lipper Land, we started the day with a gluten-free birthday cake from my GF- how cool is that. The ride started near the Externsteine, a rock formation that is truly impressive. From there, we headed to the Hermanndenkmal and then off to an artillery range. This was truly neat, although we were too nervous to stop for photos there. The varied terrain was outstanding and the signage was quite threatening.

IMG_0562

IMG_0564

IMG_0567

IMG_0575

From there, we rode north and up and around several cities about 30km north of Detmold. The winding roads were fun and we enjoyed quite a bit of forest riding. This was more than welcome as temps were over 30°C both days. We came around the eastern side of Lipper Land and found the Köterberger Biker Treffpunkt, one of hundreds of little stops that welcome riders with a hot meal and clean bathrooms, along with plenty of parking and a nice view (and this sweeeeet Guzzi!). Then, it was back to our little hotel.

IMG_0578

IMG_0579

The route home took us on familiar roads through Westphalen. We stopped for lunch, then some sweets later, then for a break in the shade, then at another Bikertreff, the …..

IMG_0584

IMG_0585

IMG_0591

IMG_0576

IMG_0577

IMG_0593

IMG_0592

Getting the NC in motion was so easy and riding was so pleasant that I stopped everywhere to take pictures. It started with the Global Multi-Grab from ADVrider.com – a game where riders take photos of their bikes with a list of objects or locations. I started with a list of farm-y stuff, and ended with a holiday list, which I grabbed in short order.

First, a haybale man.

IMG_0595

Then, irrigation in progress and a tent.

IMG_0596

Some wildflowers…

IMG_0598

IMG_0601

A windmill.

IMG_0600

A community picnic.

IMG_0602

On monday afternoon, I rode down to Köln to visit a friend, and then rolled back into my hotel about 15 minutes before all hell broke loose in Düsseldorf. The worst storms in ten years blew in and fortunately left the bike untouched. As I looked out the window, the midwesterner in me said “wow, that looks like tornado weather”. And so it was – the transit system was shut down for almost three days, with very few trains running at all due to the number of trees and wires down. Thank goodness for lane splitting and filtering!

I returned the NC700X to the dealer with a bit less rubber and a lot more smiles. For a weekend rental (or even for longer, seat issues aside), I’d go for it again. The turn-in process consisted of a quick walkaround by the gentleman I did the original paperwork with and a quick “thank you, we are done here”. What about the extra 200kms? “Have a good day. Email me if you want to do this again. I will arrange everything for you.”

What a birthday, hmmm?

Having learned to ride in Germany, home of so many twisty roads and so friendly to bikes, I find nothing beats a weekend over there with a bike. Work travel over a German holiday weekend (that coincided with my birthday) afforded me the opportunity to have a long weekend, so naturally, I needed a bike.

One thing about Europe – bike rentals are easy to come by. Not always cheap, but practically every dealer and even some of the car rental shops (Sixt) will gladly rent you a bike if you can show that you’ve had your license more more than a couple of years. I emailed around prior to arrival looking for a G650GS, but no one rents those, and a lowerred or low-seated F700GS also was not materializing. So I called up my old Honda dealer and asked what they had. I was surprised to be talking to the same guy I bought my CBR from! He was surprised, too, and accidentally gave me a pretty ridiculous price on an NC700X for three days, with 900kms included. Extra kms would cost me 0.25€ each, no major disaster. As Germany is similar to the US in that for every hardcore rider, there are probably at least five bikes that see 500kms per year tops, the limit is not that low.

I went and checked out the bike, mostly to make sure it was not ridiculously tall like the F twins. Or, at least, tall for me. My F single is low from the factory, and that has its pluses and minuses. It’s made me profoundly lazy, for one thing. The CBR was a bit taller, but eventually the shock wore out a bit and my feet were right back down on the ground. Enter the Super Sherpa, which is supposed to cure me of this high anxiety, but it’s still in pieces in the garage. There was that bruising hour with the XT225 in the end that my right calf is still telling me about… So now I want to ride, and my potential rental is not quite a tippy-toe bike, but it is balls-of-the-feet or slide-over-a-bit-to-the-side high. Hmmmm…

I decided to go for it.

I got a Darkness Black NC700X that was clearly a trade-in. It had a chopped off exhaust and carbon fibre vinyl accents. 13076kms on the odometer. Very sticky tyres, stickier than I would normally choose, but hey, it’s a rental. Beggars can’t be choosers. Honda’s Rent-A-Bike program (yes, it’s actually named that) allows dealers to take bikes out of inventory and tag them for use as rentals. The program has a price for everything from a 50cc scooter all the way up to the Goldwing and includes all of the street-legal bikes and a few dirt bikes. You need only find a dealer with the bike you want available for rental.

The NC700X is, in my opinion, Honda’s take on the old BMW Scarver. A weird form factor with the tank under the seat and a ‘frunk’ – a locking storage bin where the tank would normally be. Like the Scarver, the battery is up top, but the weight is all down low. Honda laid the engine almost completely on its side, bringing the center of gravity of the bike to unheard-of lows. Why is that important? It makes the bike effortless to balance, which frankly makes calling it a taller bike a complete and total farce. It balances like a 300 pounder. You feel the real weight of the bike when you need to push it around, but otherwise, you’d never know it was there.

The frunk is far larger than I expected and packs quite a lot of junk. Had I had the brains to bring my tank bag with, I could have easily gone out for three or four days between the two containers. Two and a half was pushing it with minimal packing. However, for everyday grocery getting and whatnot, it’s probably not that bad. I easily fit two tall 1l water bottles in along with my GF bread and clothes. Actually, if I didn’t have so much auxiliary crap, I probably could have made a few more days worth of clothes fit.

It took me a good 350kms on the bike to get my posture to a stable and comfortable place. The seat sucks. Coming from my Farklelounger BMW, a Honda is a rude awaking for one’s butt. And thighs. I don’t know if it possible to have less butt-friendly seats than the stock Honda ones. I did eventually figure out how to perch on it to minimise pain and maximise whole-body comfort. The NC is billed as a tourer, a style of bike I have no experience with. I found that rather than the usual dual-sport sitting up I do, a more standard position gave me the ergos to ride pain-free and well.

Riding was interesting. I felt the weight of the bike as I pushed it through tighter curves. Through sweepers, it was effortless. Slow speed manoeuvers were tentative, but I attribute that more to being aware of my unsure footing and really not wanting to drop it.

I’ll have more on this experience in a few days, after I return the bike and decompress. Ride report and pics, too, as I was able to hook up with with my riding partner from the Alps trip to ride all over LipperLand. We hit some of our favorite roads and biker stops on the way home, too.

I had two full, long, German riding seasons under my belt, and over 35,000kms between two motorcycles. Then, last December, something happened. I stopped riding due to Michigan weather, and in the ensuing three months, bam! I lost that thing that makes motorcycling so much fun, that makes riding the paradise it is, and that shifts the rider’s paradigms so far off the straight and narrow. I lost my lean.

It’s almost comical to think of a rider with that kind of experience to be missing something. At least, I feel it is. I could feel it creeping up on me as time wore on. My balance was changing, and I could feel gravity again. Riders don’t feel gravity like drivers do. We feel downward force, pressure on our feet and butts. Downward, instead of earthward. Downward, instead of sideways. For a rider, sometimes downward is rather sideways. This is lean.

Bernd Spiegel addressed how humans interact with lean in his book “The Upper Half of the Motorcycle”, now (finally) available in English. Humans are simply not engineered to lean. It’s a fact. At about 20°, the human brain goes into some sort of disaster recovery mode and attempts to right itself, dragging the body along. Motorcyclists must fight this recovery attempt until their brain is trained to accept the higher lean angles achievable on the bike. We must teach our brains to decouple the horizon from the downward forces we feel, to allow the horizon to float and shift freely as our bodies fall into lean. For example, the pegs on my F650GS do not touch the ground until I am a good 45° over. That is more than twice the lean angle my brain is programmed for. And it’s a weird and uncomfortable place to be, until my brain is acclimated to it.

Lean is one of the things that fall into the use-it-or-lose category. If you are not leaning over from an early age, or do not continue to lean over, your brain slowly reverts to disaster mode. Mine did. And I knew it was happening, making it all the more noticeable as time and snow dragged on.

So I decided that even with a running bike (well, not quite, but mostly), I would do a BRC before taking the big girl bike out for a spin. Even at parking lot speeds and on the little bikes, I was conscious of lean. Pathetic, I tell you. Completely pathetic. And then when I pushed the F out and took my first corner, oof. What a zoo. My eyes were looking for the horizon to bend, but my brain was going crazy. NO! No! Stop! You are going to fall over! It took everything I had to remind myself that the bike was going to be fine and I was going to be fine. It wasn’t fear – not at all. It was a sense that something was fundamentally wrong and needed to be corrected. That inputs were mixed and unsortable. Expectations were clearly not being met. The basic riding instincts were still there. I knew the bike was capable. I still felt normal and was executing the correct techniques, but my stupid brain was not accepting what my body was telling it. Even at a lousy 15°, I was flaking out due to the mixed signals fighting in my head to be heard. Parking lot practice was not fun, not easy, and not rewarding, something completely new to me. I usually love doing PLPs, pushing the bike down under me and crossing up, goofing off at slow speeds, and so on.

It took me a solid week of riding to get my brain back onto the right track. A few hundred kms, (finally) finding a (sort of) twisty road, and continually forcing myself to relax and let my rote skills do their thing. This forcible overriding of my brain’s natural instincts was not easy, but over the course of the second week, I noticed that I no longer “felt” lean as much. My brain was no longer immediately freaking out. I could corner without feeling like something was wrong. This improvement continued over the course of the further two weeks. Eventually, I was riding a new road and came up to a tight left-hander. It was signed, a sign I ignored. Oops. Not really, because my rote riding skills include lifting my chin and pushing that bar end. I was in and out of the corner and on to the next one before my brain had a chance to process the deepest lean I’d managed since climbing back into my saddle. No pegs were dragged, but a slight, residual feeling that I was over on my side lingered. Nothing like the abject neural frenzy of the first week. The rest of the ride was spent in wonder about how I’d managed to ride for a month without trusting myself and my lean.

1500kms and a lot of cornering later, I finally have my lean back.

I hope that this will not repeat itself next year. I don’t ever want to lose my lean again.

It doesn’t sound like a “salad” at all. Greens, fried potatoes, and fried eggs. Most people I talk to tell me that it completely defeats the purpose of eating a salad.

No, not at all. A deftige Bauernsalat – farmer salad – is one of the Rhein region’s true culinary delights. It starts with some field greens, placed on one half of a plate. Dress them, then add vegetables of your choosing. Top with cubes of fresh cheese, a wonderful feta-like preparation. On the other side, bring on the Bratkartoffeln, those strange yellow potatoes that have been boiled and fried with plenty of salt and spices. Top those off with two Spiegeleier – sunny-side up eggs. It goes from just salad to meal in no time at all. And it’s yummy.

It does not defeat the purpose of salad at all. It makes just a salad into a real dinner.

“STOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!” I yelled. We were in our temporary apartment in Germany, I was in the shower, and someone had decided to wash dishes. Oh. My. God. My skin was suddenly peeling off thanks to alternate bursts of freezing cold and boiling hot water.

The German conciousness includes the perjorative term “Warmduscher” – literally a person who likes hot showers, or moreso, a person who eschews cold ones. Basically, a person who likes comfort. After all, who could possibly want to be comfortable? That would be inefficient and self-centered, right? I don’t mind being uncomfortable, sleeping outdoors is fun, and come on, I ride motorcycles until the roads ice up. The elements are not foreign to me. But that abrupt switch from nicely hot water to cold (or worse, even hotter) in the shower? How about NO.

The demand for energy efficiency, combined with a lack of caring about whether a shower is a nice place to be or not led to the demise of the (apparently) horribly inefficient hot water tank in Germany. Enter the Durchlauferhitzer – an extremely efficient version  of the basic in-line on-demand water heater. It is a horrible little 5 to 20l electronic confection that claims to deliver hot water exactly where and when you need it. It does, with one caveat – it’s pressure drop actuated – so FSM help you if there is more than one fixture connected to it. Unlike on-demand units in the US that regulate the outlet water temperature and pressure to maintain some semblance of control at the faucet, the German variety of the unit is either on, or, off. And because it’s pressure drop actuated, getting any control at the mixing valve is a delicate ballet of pressure balancing. Wait. They don’t have pressure balancing mixer valves over here, either.

Hydraulisch-geregelter-Durchlauferhitzer-Bild-Vaillant

We moved into the house eventually, and my hopes for Fernwärme (city steam) were dashed. Three of the miserable little devices were installed instead of a single hot water tank or simple valve in the basement. The device in the kitchen was the most damned of all of them – a 5l unit that delivered what amounted to either cold water or steam. In steam mode, one had about five minutes of dish washing and rinsing time before the it was back to cold water. Fifteen minutes later, the steam was back on. No amount of twiddling with the dial produced any temperature other than scalding or cold. So much for adjustability. It looked adjustable. I guess that was good enough.

The unit on the upper floor was equally useless. It had two settings, both of which were at the mercy of the incoming water temperature. Eventually, we gave up on it and allowed the boys to shower on the first floor, where the installed 20l unit had not only a temperature dial to set, but a selector to choose how many of the three heating elements one wished to use! We monitored the seasons and the weather in the nearby mountains in an attempt to predict how to adjust the dials to achieve that elusive hot-but-not-scalding water. This unit was so sensitive to pressure drop changes that we did not do anything with household water when a shower was underway. Eventually, we found it best to use it as the thermal control for the shower and just run the shower valve straight hot, avoiding most pressure drop issues.

One thing we found with each of the horrible little misery machines was that they leak water out of the outlet side when heating. Not a problem when you are running water, but when not, there is a constant drip. Because the water is hard as a rock, you get constant calcium buildup. I’d post a picture, but honestly, who wants to see that? The time spent soaking various parts of faucets and other water-use devices in vinegar and other forms of chemistry became measurable as time in the house dragged on. The chiseling of hard water deposits out of the toilets was a special task reserved for the boys.

The one place that we did not have to worry about calcium buildup was the dishwasher. German dishwashers include a built-in water softener. You pull out the racks and add salt to a container in the base of the tub. I was shocked by this. I refused to believe it was required. Then, I had to clean the filters. OK, where’s that salt? Of course, the lack of a soft food disposer didn’t make that job any easier. Over here, you do have to wash the stupid dishes before you put them in. Mind-boggling. I did not expect the stupid dishwasher to be a Warmduscher. I expected it to wash my dishes without needing help.

geschirrspuelmaschine-salzbehaelter-121683768836_23603

Ironically, one cannot turn off the heated dry cycle on most German dishwashers. Who was that carrying on about energy savings?

I won’t miss the water in Germany with all of its issues at all. I will go home to my 50 gallon gas-fired hot water tank full of nice, naturally soft Great Lakes water. I will stuff my dishwasher with dirty plates, turn it on, and use the time I’ve saved by not washing them first to take a long and just-perfectly-hot shower without worrying about temperature fluctuations. I will be a Warmduscher in the literal sense. And it will be glorious.