The Ride Report

I was meeting some friends today and I decided to do a nice thing and bring a couple dozen donuts. I got a nice assortment: glazed and jelly-filled and maple bars and etcetera, and I learned something when I took the two boxes of donuts out to the bike: Donut boxes don’t fit in Road Glide saddlebags. Who knew?

Fortunately, I have a new pair of LidHaulers that I put on just the other day, so they got broken in today with the donuts. I strapped one box on each side and hit the highway. All the way up I kept reaching back and checking the boxes to make sure they were still there and each time I felt for them they were there. Those LidHaulers work pretty good.

Along about halfway to the clubhouse I picked up an escort: a California Highway Patrol black-and-white patrol car. He was definitely keeping pace with me — I’d speed up, he’d speed up; I’d realize that doing 85 with a cop in the next lane wasn’t such a great idea and slow down, he’d slow down; etc. It was starting to make me a little nervous. When I finally got to my exit I signaled to get off … and he got off with me. That’s when I knew something was up.

As we sat at the red light at the bottom of the off-ramp, waiting for the light to change and turn left, I started rehearsing in my head what smart-ass comments I’d make when the cop pulled me over. The two main contenders were either to offer him a donut to let me off with a warning, or if he asked if I knew why he’d pulled me over, to answer “You smelled donuts?” I figured I was getting a ticket no matter what, so I might as well earn it.

But then I felt for my donuts again and found that one of the boxes was coming loose. The lid had flipped up and torn off and half the donut cargo was spilling out onto the highway as I traveled. The cop didn’t want me, he wanted the donuts!

I felt much better after that. And for some reason, he didn’t pull me over. Maybe I didn’t have his favorite kind…

I’m strictly a street rider at this point in my motorcycling career. My first taste on a motorcycle was off-road in a farmer’s beet field, but since that day back in about 1975 the only non-pavement riding I’ve done is on gravel stretches of roads being repaved. Homey don’t do dirt.

My daughter, on the other hand, is tabula rasa motorcycle-wise. She hasn’t ridden at all so she’s open to everything, and lately she’s been agitating for an ATV. Much to her chagrin I keep saying no, saying that $500,000 is too expensive. Her ATV, plus the one I’d have to get for myself to ride with her, plus the dirt bike I’d have to get because that’s what I’d really want to ride, plus the dirt bike I’d have to get her so she could ride with me on my dirt bike, plus the dirt bike we’d have to get for my wife to try to get her to ride with us, plus the trailer I’d have to buy to haul them all, plus the new Ford F450 Super Duty Diesel truck I’d have to buy to tow it, plus the toy hauler I’d have to buy to tow the toys and give my wife the amenities of home because Mrs. Homey don’t do camping, plus the motor home I’d have to buy because my wife would hate living out of a toy hauler almost as much as she hates camping and requires the luxury only a Fleetwood Revolution LE motor home can provide… You can see how it all adds up. That initial three or four thousand dollar investment snowballs pretty fast; it would cost at least half a million dollars, easy. So I’ve been saying “no,” but…

But now I’ve been bitten by the Adventure Riding bug. My biggest motorcycling dream/goal/desire at this point is to get into the dirt and play. Reading Neal Peart’s Ghost Rider was the bait that lured me into getting interested in dual sport riding, the documentary Dust To Glory got me to nibble on it, and the Adventure Rider website set the hook. Now I’m dying to get a BMW — a R1150GS, or R1200GS, or maybe the new F800GS (oooooh!) — and head down south of the border for a Baja tour. Unfortunately, finances aren’t cooperating at this point, so all I can do is read about it right now. Which leads me to this…

A group of guys over at Adventure Rider put together an amateur team last year and rode in the Baja 1000, then they posted a collaborative report on it — one of the best damn ride reports I’ve ever read. If you want a taste of what I’m talking about, what I’m dying to do, go read their story. It’s really great reading.

I went down to San Diego Saturday to attend the memorial service for the wife of one of my club brothers, who was killed riding her motorcycle. I was expecting it to be a relatively small affair but, boy, was I wrong. It was huge; there were hundreds of riders there. When we turned the last corner leading to the rally point at the Mount Soledad Memorial in La Jolla, we found a sea of motorcycles, and there were so many of my club brothers there that the hillside looked like it was carpeted with our colors. It was really touching to see so many people turn out to pay their respects.

The guy who lost his wife led us in a prayer, then we all rode over to the cemetery where the memorial service was held. The cemetery is about 15 miles away from the memorial, so several hundred bikes all going there at the same time required some, uh, special traffic considerations. I don’t know if the police had sanctioned it or not (probably not), but we provided our own road guard services, blocking off intersections and freeway on-ramps along the way so the funeral procession could proceed without interruption.

I helped block traffic along the way myself, and it was impressive to watch that line of bikes go by. Riding two-by-two at about 30 mph, it took at least five minutes for the whole procession to pass. I tried to count the bikes going by but I couldn’t keep up and gave up when I hit 250, which was at about the halfway point. It was impressive.

There was a cranky old guy in a BMW at the front of the line at one intersection I was blocking and I don’t think he appreciated the wait — at one point I made eye contact with him and he flipped me off and mouthed “fuck you” to me. I was a little surprised (and impressed) by that — he looked to be in his 70s and a little too old for that sort of behavior, but I recovered quickly and returned the favor.

Following the service there was a big party at a local VFW hall, then I and the guys I rode down with saddled up and headed back home. I pulled into my garage just as dusk was falling and barely beat the rain. My daughter was hugely impressed that I had ridden to San Diego and back in just one day.

275 miles, a funeral, running traffic breaks for a 500-motorcycle funeral procession, a party, and an old man giving me the finger, all in one day? I guess maybe it is a little impressive — if you’re 11. I just thought it was cool.

I rode over the hill into Hollywood for lunch yesterday, to a little hole in the wall hamburger joint on Santa Monica called Irv’s. Irv’s has been around just about forever (check out this LA Weekly feature on it for details) and the food is pretty good too. But the reason I’m posting about it is this:

Sonia (the owner) apparently does these little plate illustrations for everyone, but I’d never noticed it before. It made me smile because she captured me so perfectly and with such economy: big head, sunglasses, bald. It’s not quite a police sketch artist kind of thing, but it’s definitely me.

I have no idea why it touched me enough to make me save the plate, fold it up and put it in my pocket, bring it home, scan it, and then write about it here. It just did.

This is the goofiest thing I have ever seen. A cage on a motorcycle to protect the passenger — with seatbelts, fer fux sake. WTF? Just take the damned car if you’re such a puss — and sell your bike, because you don’t deserve it.

As promised in an earlier entry, I finally got around to taking pictures of my camera mount. Inspired by this how-to on making a smaller camera mount here, I made a heavier duty one for my Sony TRV22 video camera.

I used a T section of PVC pipe cut in half and mounted on my crash bar with hose clamps. I threaded a PVC plug into the T-extension, drilled a hole in it, ran a screw through it, and bolted it to a heavy piece of angle iron for the camera to mount on. Then I spray painted it all black — because black is faster. So here ’tis, my roughly $15 motorcycle camera mount. (And, yes, I know the bike is dirty. I ride it, not wash it.)

Here’s the side view:

An angle from the front:

…and from the rear:

The camera from the side. I couldn’t get the handstrap off the camera without cutting it, so I left it on and rigged it up as a safety line. The velcro strap wrapping around the camera vertically is also a safety because redundancy is your friend. Also, redundancy is your friend.

…and a 3/4 view of the camera mounted. The microphone windsock professionally installed with consumer-grade Scotch tape is the ear covering from a set of United Airlines headphones. I knew hanging onto those things would come in handy some day. Also, that’s a wide-angle lens on the camera. $40 at Best Buy.

One thing I really like about this rig is that I can look down through the fairing and make sure the camera is on and recording (or find out that I left it off or forgot to hit “record”)

…and finally, a couple of wide shots so you can see exactly where it sits on the bike.

I have a remote control for the camera, but it’s actually easier not to use it. I put the camera in “camera” mode when I put it on, then lean over and hit the “record” button when I’m ready to start taping. It’s a bit of a reach to get to the button so I only do it when I’m stopped, but that’s what editing is for.

Here’s some video I shot using the mount. It’s rock-solid:

In the seafaring world, the passage of time is marked by ringing a bell every half hour. Starting at midnight, 00:30 is one bell, 01:00 is two bells, 01:30 is three bells, and so on. This progresses up to eight bells, marking the end of a four-hour watch for the crew, then it starts over again. Hence the saying at end-of-watch that “Eight bells and all’s well.”

In the motorcycling world, bells are mounted on bikes to guard against road gremlins. The story goes that these gremlins grab onto bikes as they go by and they cause all manner of problems: electrical problems, mechanical breakdowns, bad luck, accidents, etc. But if you put a small bell on the lowest point of the motorcycle, they’ll grab onto that and get caught in the hollow of the bell, where the ringing will drive them nuts and they’ll let go and drop off the bike before they can get up to any mischief. So the bells guard against the gremlins and bring good luck, and they’re supposed to be even luckier if they’re received as a gift from a friend or loved one.

In my world, I go through motorcycle bells like a fat kid goes through Twinkies. I keep losing the damned things. They come with a little leather string to tie them to the bike, and I used to think the strings were breaking. But then I mounted one with a plastic zip tie and I lost that bell too. They just … disappear.

So after going through two bells in just a month or two, I “improved” the latest one to make it more permanent. I used a key ring, that little metal circle you feed the keys through that’s also attached to your alarm remote. That, I thought, would be pretty damned permanent. Leather straps might break down and disintegrate from road grime, and plastic zip ties might somehow get cut by the metal of the bell vibrating against it, but a metal key ring would stand up to just about anything short of a wire cutter. At least that was the theory.

Wrong. Just the other day I noticed that — again — my ride bell was gone. The metal key ring was still there and looking good as new (if a bit dirty), but the bell was just gone. Color me baffled.

Now, I mount my bells according to tradition, at the lowest point of the bike, which on my Road Glide tends to be the kickstand spring under the left floorboard. This kinda sorta puts them in a position to scrape the ground during aggressive left hand turns, and with the leather strapped ones I figured this was what was happening — they were getting torn off when I was scraping my floorboards in the canyons. Common sense might dictate choosing a different spot, but I kind of like the tinkling sound they make when they scrape. So I stuck with the same spot but went with the metal key ring instead. Because like I said: that’s more permanent. But now, I don’t know. Something weird is going on.

I figure that missing bell is what caused my throttle cable to break, by the way. I’m attributing every bell I’ve lost to a major problem avoided: a gremlin who was going to cause an accident or a blown engine or whatever got caught in the bell and had such bad juju that the weight of it took the whole damned bell with it. So I figure this latest bell was taken by a major issue avoided, but it left my bike unprotected and that’s when the throttle cable gremlin climbed aboard.

Well, I’ve fixed the throttle cable and now I’m also stocked up on bells. I was at the dealership today buying yet another part for the throttle cable repair (every project, mechanical or otherwise, always requires at least two trips to the store) and I picked up a bell for myself while I was there. Then I found out when I got home that my wife had gotten me a bell on her own at the same time, and had in fact decided to get me two of them since I’ve been blowing through them so fast lately.

So now I have not one, not two, but three riding bells — and that’s where the tortured nautical reference I’m using to title this entry comes from: It’s three bells and all’s well.

For now…

I was riding with some of my club brothers this afternoon on the way home from our meeting when ***plink!*** my throttle cable snapped. One minute I’m accelerating my way through a turn, the next my throttle is twisting freely and not doing a damned thing and I’m slowly coasting to a stop because all I can do is idle.

Not good.

Fortunately, I immediately knew what was wrong with it because the same damned thing happened three months ago, almost to the day. Unfortunately, this time it didn’t happen in my front yard. I broke out my tool roll and opened up the throttle assembly to try to jury-rig the cable with a knot to hold long enough to get it home, but it just wasn’t happening. The cable was fraying and wouldn’t knot neatly enough to fit in the ferrule, and when it did manage to fit it wouldn’t hold. We dicked around with it for close to an hour.

By “we,” I mean several guys from the club. First it was just the four of us who were riding together working on it. Then another brother drove by and pulled over to help. Then Prospect #1 pulled over in his pickup. Prospect #2, who’s a chronic fuck-up, stopped to ask if we needed help, but we lied and told him everything was fine — we had enough trouble on our hands without him adding his own special blend of clusterfuck. We ultimately ended up with six guys standing around looking at it, which obviously meant it was broken.

Meanwhile, all this was happening during a break in the torrential downpour we’d been enjoying all day, and ugly, even more ominous storm clouds were closing in. Plus, it was about 4:30 pm and it was getting dark. Also: cold. So we gave up and decided to throw the bike in Prospect #1’s truck and get it home that way so I could fix it in my garage later.

Prospect #1 and I drove to my place in the truck, while the other guys rode behind us on their bikes. The skies opened up and dumped on us. It was raining so hard that the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up and we could hardly see the road in front of us. Behind, the guys on bikes were just getting hammered by the weather. I don’t think I’ve ever been gladder not to be on a bike than I was on that ride home.

When we got to my place, I got out of the truck all toasty warm and dry and walked over to them, dripping wet and freezing, and innocently asked “Hey, you guys didn’t get wet on the ride over here, did you?”

This is the response I got:

In the addiction and recovery community, it is said that the first step towards recovery is admitting that you have a problem. The following quiz, ganked from Brain Bucket Magazine by way of Atlas Rider, is supposed to help figure out if you have a problem with MAS — Motorcycling Addiction Syndrome. Come, take the quiz with me:

• I have gone riding when I was depressed, or to cheer myself up.
  • Yep, been there, done that.
• I have gone on riding binges of several tanks of gas or more in a day.
  • Yep. I burned many tanks of gas during my Colorado trip, and I’ve been known to fill up several times in a day when I’m out riding with friends locally.
• I ride rapidly, often ‘gulping’ roads.
  • My normal cruising speed is 85. Does “rapidly” apply?
• I have sometimes ridden early in the morning or before work.
  • How about riding early in the morning to work? Guilty.
• I have hidden bikes in different places to sneak a ride in without being seen.
  • Almost, but not quite. I was thisclose to buying a bike when I was
    a teenager living at home, and I planned to keep it at a friend’s house
    to hide it from my mom. Unfortunately, the guy sold it to someone else
    before I could raise the money.
• Sometimes I avoid friends or family obligations in order to ride motorcycles.
  • Hmm… What are the odds my wife will read this entry? Ah, fuck it.
    Yes, guilty, I have ducked out on family obligations to go riding with
    friends.
• Sometimes I find myself analyzing sections of roads as if I were riding, even while in cars.
  • Constantly.
• I am unable to enjoy myself with others unless there is a bike nearby.
  • Occasionally. I fit in better with other bikers, so I’m always a little uncomfortable around those who don’t ride.
• At a boring party, I will often slip off unnoticed to go riding.
  • I don’t go to boring parties.
• Riding has made me seek haunts and companions which I would otherwise avoid.
  • Definitely true. I wouldn’t go half the places or have most of the friends I have today if motorcycles weren’t involved.
• I have neglected personal hygiene or household chores until I have finished a ride.
  • Guilty on both counts.
• I have spent money meant for necessities on accessories instead.
  • Accessories are necessities.
• I have attempted to complete an Iron Butt ride.
  • Not yet, but I have plans, big plans.
• Most of my friends are unapologetic motorcycle riders.
  • True.
• I have sometimes passed out from a night of heavy riding.
  • Never done that, but I have gotten “the nods” while riding.
• I have suffered ‘blackouts’ or memory loss from a bout of riding.
  • See above.
• I have wept, become angry or irrational because of a road I have ridden; or, worse, NOT ridden.
  • Yes, but more with my performance riding a road than with the road itself.
• I have sometimes wished I did not ride so much.
  • Uh, no.
• Sometimes I think my riding is out of control.
  • It has been in the past, but lately I’ve managed to keep the shiny up and the rubber down like you’re supposed to.

Brain Bucket’s article closes saying, If you
answered ‘yes’ to three or more of these questions, you may be a
motorcycle addict. Affirmative responses to five or more indicates a
serious problem…professional help is strongly advised. Eh, I don’t think so. I think I’d be concerned if I didn’t answer Yes to most of these…

I may be a motorcycle addict, but I don’t see that as a problem. It’s more of a virtue, actually.

One of the great benefits of riding in California is lane-splitting aka “lane sharing” or filtering or white-lining — in other words, riding the gap between two lanes of cars that are doing the tired old traffic jam thing. It’s illegal in most states, and while it’s not technically legal here, it’s also not technically illegal either. We get to do it here and the Highway Patrol looks the other way. This is a very good thing, because the traffic is so bad that you’d never get anywhere if you didn’t do it.

There are some people who don’t like lane-splitting. I believe they come from one of two camps: jealous cagers or scared riders. Jealous cagers can’t stand to see anyone getting something they’re not getting too. Just as crabs in a bucket will pull back in those making an escape, jealous cagers think that if they’re stuck in traffic, you should be stuck in traffic too. They can’t stand to see you getting somewhere five minute faster than they can, and they don’t realize that the motorcyclist lane-splitting past them is actually helping everyone go faster by not adding one more vehicle to that line of gridlocked cars.

Scared riders think it’s suicidal to lane-split because they don’t have the courage to try it themselves. They don’t realize that it’s actually more dangerous to be sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, waiting to get squashed by an SUV driven by a cell-phone using, make-up applying, kid-wrangling, suburban housewife when she rear-ends the car in front of you — through you.

Me, I love lane-splitting. My friend Slider commented the other day that “Every time we talk about lane-splitting, you smile.” I couldn’t argue — I was smiling at the time. I think lane-splitting is fun. You have to concentrate like hell, be in complete control of your motorcycle, read traffic like a mystic, constantly and instantly judge closing speeds and the size of gaps, and it’s a continuous gut-check. It’s riding at a higher level and I absolutely love it.

Of course, I’ve had some practice. I had a job a few years back where I commuted 65 miles each way 5 days a week through the worst traffic LA and Orange County has to offer, from the San Fernando Valley down to Aliso Viejo. If I hadn’t lane-split it would have taken me hours to get to work. As it was, even with the splitting it generally took about an hour and twenty minutes each way. I rode that commute in sun and rain and wind and darkness and cold and heat and every weird weather pattern Mother Nature could muster. I rode through Sigalerts and construction delays and and even the occasional miraculous day of almost no traffic. And through it all, I was lane-splitting. You do it as much as I did, you’re going to get good at it.

I rode over to my mom’s house this afternoon to do some chores around the house for her, and I got to do some lanesplitting on the way over there. I also happened to have my camera rig mounted so I filmed the ride, then I uploaded it to YouTube this evening. Check it out: