“We carry ourselves wherever we go and we cannot escape temptation by mere flight.”

                                                                                                                                          – Amma Matrona

Are motorcycles getting too big?  Or am I just getting too old to want to man-handle 800+ pounds of metal and plastic?  Or is it something else entirely – am I at a point in life where I see my journey more about discarding than obtaining?

In the Christian tradition, Lent is the period prior to Easter and is meant to be a time of personal examination and reflection, not unlike Ramadan in Islam or Yom Kippur in Judaism.  My own disciplines include fasting and I often engage in spring cleaning, both spiritual and physical.  In other words I try to lighten the load.

But each year I look at my house and I wonder, “How the hell did I ever accumulate so much stuff?”

Each year I lay awake at night reflecting on hurtful actions performed and good deeds left undone, and I wonder, “How the hell did my soul accumulate so much stuff?”

And I now look at motorcycles laden with more and more, and wonder: “How the hell did these bikes become loaded with so much stuff?”

Each summer I take a long ride of several thousand miles and part of the joy is the escape from stuff – physical and otherwise – that I carry around with me each and every day.  I find it a delightful challenge each year to carry less baggage, to determine just how little I can get by on for the time on the road.  And after many years I have learned that I can get by on a whole lot less than I would have imagined. 

It has occurred to me that it is time that I start getting by on a whole lot less of the emotional baggage I carry around as well.  Not the memories, good or bad, which help make me a better person, but the attachment of guilt or pride appended to those memories.  Both weigh me down and prevent me from living fully in the moment, experiencing the moment as it is rather than colored by past successes and failures.  To just see, to just breathe, and to just hear without analysis or dissection or compartmentalization  … isn’t that authentic freedom?

And motorcycling is supposed to be about freedom, right?  But how can you be free if you are laden with stuff inside and out?

In like fashion over the years I have come to appreciate the slow maneuvering of a motorcycle; any fool can twist the wrist and go fast in a straight line.  It takes real skill to handle a heavy bike through narrow spaces at 5 MPH.  So as with the baggage I carry, in the midst of an ever faster world of bits and gigabytes and micro-speeds that allow stock to be manipulated by greedy traders, I am at a time of life when I wish to slow down, for only in going slow can I see, breathe, and hear.

 

So maybe I need to listen again to the Eagles:

 

     Well I'm runnin' down the road trying to loosen my load ...

 

     Lighten up while you still can

     don't even try to understand

     Just find a place to  make your stand

     and take it easy.

Psychological Barriers

There is a ramp leading from the parking lot to my office.  I have permission to park my motorcycle in a non-used, covered entry way to the building, so each day I putter up the ramp to park ... some days puttering better than others.

As you can see from the picture, the sidewalk is five feet wide, with a retaining wall between the ramp and the building and when  I traverse the ramp I face a wall in front of me, and either to the left or right of me. Therein lay the problem.

I love to train with motorcycles so have taken many, many classes on maneuvering my big VN 1600 (750 lbs.) in small spaces.  On a training range I can easily make either a right or left hand turn in dimensions far less than described above and curiously coming down the ramp each afternoon I have no problem with the smooth and easy turn.  But riding up that friggin' ramp each morning I am batting about .500; either I make the turn easily and smoothly or I fixate on the wall and stop or put my feet down.  Every now and then I just bounce off the wall, scraping it with my foot pegs.

And the difference is all in my head.

While living in Arizona I had several training opportunities with the Arizona Precision Drill Team, a bunch of hard core riders (men & women) whose favorite rig is a big Honda Goldwing.  They successfully compete all over the country in precision riding and have the trophy's to affirm their skill.  These are among the best of the best when it comes to handling big, bulky motorcycles.  After one particularly arduous training session with them, during which most of us either dumped our bikes or massacred more than a few cones, the instructor told us a story:

All of the folks on the Team can easily turn their bikes in a circle of less than 20 feet diameter and doing it on the range was no longer a challenge for them.  One of the members has a driveway, twenty feet in diameter, with  walls on both sides and of course the garage doors in front.  So one day the Team met at his house, chatted a bit, and set out to practice tight turns in the driveway as a new challenge.

Not one of them was successful!

Remember, these are experts at maneuvering big bikes in tight spaces at slow speed; they can easily turn those monsters in under twenty feet on the range, but not one could do so in a twenty foot driveway surrounded by walls.

The difference was all in their heads.

Thank God - it's not just me, but all us humans who have psychological barriers that prevent us from doing what we know we can do!  I wonder in what other endeavors I limit myself not by skill or ability, but my head?  And what does it take to get out of my head and trust my skill, to move beyond the psychological barrier that prevents me from achieving success?

I'll keep pondering and I'll keep tackling that doggone ramp, and one day, one glorious day, I will allow my skill to triumph over the limitations of my head!

Love & Hate on a Cold Winter's Day

My mother was born in 1913 and this year would be her 100th anniversary.  She was also part of the civilian group that built the AlCan Highway during the early years of World War II.  I saw pictures of mom during that time - a young woman, married to her true love and doing something of importance - and whenever she spoke of that time, her face would reflect the joy and excitement of that period of her life.

So to honor my mother and satisfy my own need for road time, I am planning to ride the AlCan Highway from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks, AK and then on up to the Arctic Circle, in May.  Riding the Alcan today is not the harrowing adventure it once was, but thoughtful planning is still required if one plans to make the ride on a motorcycle.  And since it is in my nature to think and plan ahead, thus extending the enjoyment of any trip far beyond the actual time on the road, I have been thinking, planning, and working towards my AlCan Adventure.

A big part of the thinking, planning and working involves preparation of the motorcycle.  Last year I bought a Triumph Tiger 800 which, although it has pretensions of an adventure bike is really a roadie with a slight attitude, and more than sufficient for my purposes.  I am adding bits to make the bike more practical for the AlCan journey and said bits include items such as the motorcycle equivalent of mudflaps, a radiator guard, and panniers.  Since the Tiger is chain driven and cleaning and lubing of said chain is vital for optimal performance, it was necessary for me to install a center stand which does not come standard on the Tiger Roadie, and therein lay a tale.

Given that the weather is crap up here in the Pacific Northwest I have had ample opportunity to peruse the internet and various forums in search of the best center stand for my bike.  Seeking a balance between efficacy and economics, I decided to go with the OEM model which met the criteria of working effectively without breaking the bank.  As explained before given my tendancy towards thinking and planning I had read the instructions numerous times, consulted the Tiger forum pages for advice, and even found a well-done how-to video on Youtube; so having picked up the parts from my local Triumph dealer and with all the proper tools and parts set out in front of me, I began the task.

And learned that nobody tells the whole damn truth.  Phrases such as "this is a bit dodgy" or "the tolerances are pretty close" come nowhere near describing the gymnastics required to turn one lousy screw ten times.

Disconnecting old parts and placing new parts took about ten minutes; that was followed by thirty minutes of using every tool I possess along with contortions of my body that I never thought possible just trying to tighten that one friggin' screw.  Having exhausted my full lexicon of slurs for the British, I finally surrendered and set out to appropriate a tool which might work to tighten the new parts into place.  This involved trips to two different auto parts stores thus consuming an hour of my rapidly waning life span, followed by another hour getting my mouth set just right as I endeavored to get on or the other tool into place such that I could actually use it to tighten that one miserable, stinking, cursed to hell screw.  The end result was a definite love-hate relationship with Triumph engineers.

Parenthetically let me note that when I was seeking the correct tool the fellow at the parts store said that he hoped I was at least working in a heated garage, to which I replied that my invective had certainly raised the temperature a bit.  He advised that should I run out of blue language to please call, as he and his mates had plenty of additions to offer.  Seems they had all worked on Brit bikes as well.

Modern engineering truly is a marvel; the tight tolerances allow for magnificanet machines that are sleek and capable.  But at the same time those tolerances make it nigh impossible for the average week-end warrior such as myself to work on the bike because getting to one part often involves dis-assembling the whole bloody thing.  But perhaps that is the moral of the story; to change one part of life usally involves adjustment or dis-assembly of many other parts as well.

Just make sure you have the right friggin' tools at hand ...

The Ural Chronicles

I have been thinking about a sidecar rig for a couple of years now and signed up for sidecar training (you have to have a special endorsement in Washington state). I thought it would be neat to take  each one of my grandkids on a moto-adventure when they reach age 13, and I know full well their mothers would never allow them on the back of a two-wheel moto! Plus I thought it might be a sort of a two-birds, one-stone kind of thing to have a bike with which I could commute AND take off road. So I started looking around and had pretty much decided on a Ural, recommended by a buddy of mine who has one and loves it.

 

A Ural is a Russian made sidecar rig which is a knock-off of a 1939 German BMW R71.  There are various versions of the story, but basically Stalin wanted a durable motorcycle for his troops, so he either negotiated a deal with the Germans or flat stole the bike and had it reverse engineered.  The original BMW R71 was built as a simple and sturdy machine so that, as one writer put it, “the German farm boys could work on them in the field.”  According to the Ural website, “Harley-Davidson also copied the BMW design and delivered about 1000 Harley-Davidson XA (Experimental Army) flat-twin shaft drive motorcycles to the US Army during World War II.” 

So I started pricing out the Ural, deciding what amenities I would like, how much the bike and amenities would cost, and whether my budget would handle any of it.

Then on Wednesday last week I trolled craigslist here in Seattle and found a Ural Patrol listed. I quickly sent the info to my buddy and asked him what he thought. His response was that if I was serious about getting a sidecar rig then I would be an idiot not to buy this one, as it was a steal. Then I got on the Ural forum (sovietsteed,org) and found a discussion about this specific bike, the gist of which was "Doggone it, I wish I didn't already own a Ural, 'cause this is a smoking deal."

Gulp.
So a friend and I headed south on Saturday to have look-see. There is some minor surface rust on various parts, no doubt a combination of Pacific Northwest weather, Russian coating technique, and the fact that the bike was not garaged but only covered under a car port. The engine ran fine, the electricals worked, and the bike is loaded with extras.

Gulp.

So we cut the deal, settled the paperwork, and it was my bike to take home - 40 miles away. Except I have never driven a sidecar rig before, which you would think would be no big deal … but it is.  I have been madly reading about how to drive a sidecar rig for the past couple of weeks and even got a 96 out of 100 on a written exam, but it is sort of like trying to learn to swim on dry land - you may understand the theory but reality is something else.

I have not been this terrified on a motorcycle since I was 15 years old and learning how to ride my buddy Norm Wantland’s Honda CB 160.  Steering a sidecar rig is precisely opposite from steering a two wheel moto; the skill sets do not transfer and in fact actually oppose one another.  My brain knows this, but my muscles don't know this. Thus when I pulled out of the guys backyard into the alleyway, I headed towards a trash can and reactively counter-steered to avoid it - the correct technique to use to avoid a collision when you are on a two-wheeled vehicle.

Except that is precisely the wrong input on a sidecar (see paragraph above!), so I immediately ran over the big-ass trash can belonging to the neighbor next door. The good news is that I then got to practice driving in reverse, to get the bike back off the trash can.

Down the alley I set off, desperately yawing back and forth as the bike pulled left and right - accelerate, pull right; panic, let off throttle and apply brakes, which immediately pulled the bike left. And so on. When I got to the end of the ally I was supposed to turn left, where a buddy was waiting to lead me home, but the bike was pointing right so I said "Nuts, I'm going right and circle the block."

And so it went through town, and since it was raining and I was wearing my helmet, I had to pull down the face shield, which of course fogged up my glasses, significantly reducing sight lines. An inexperienced idiot on an 800 pound machine is bad enough, but a blind terrified  inexperienced idiot in the rain? Sigh.

Soon enough I had to enter the freeway via the on-ramp. Do you have any idea how many people get really mad at you when you are entering an on-ramp curve at only 15 miles per hour because you are terrified you are going to flip the doggone bike? Lots.

Once on the freeway I ran it in the right lane all the way up to 55 MPH and managed to miss only one connecting by-way because there was no way on God's green earth I was going to try to whip across two lanes of traffic to get on the left-side exit. So I went down to the next exit where I had the privilege of pissing off eleventy-seven more off- and on- rampers.

The next forty-five minutes were some of the longest of my life. I was gripping the handlebars so tight I darn near broke them off. My brain kept screaming, "Steer, don't lean; steer, don't lean!" And at each mile marker I would think to myself, "only thirty minutes more, only twenty-five minutes more, only twenty minutes more ... ad infinitum." At last we reached my exit, I took the off-ramp at a legal and not unreasonable 25 MPH, made a sharp right-hand turn safely without requiring two lanes, and motored the rest of the way home. Finally at my street I pulled over to the curb to park so I could open the garage and rearrange the other vehicles, and promptly ran the friggin' sidecar up over the curb because I am not used to having four feet of Russian dead weight hanging off my right side. But I decided to make lemonade and just counted it as my first off-road experience.

Now the bike is in the stable with the other steeds, my heart-rate is close to normal, I have changed my undershorts, and I will limit my excursions to the parking lot until after I complete the three wheel course.

But you know, after my blood pressure returned to normal I started thinking about how too often we settle into a comfort zone and never challenge ourselves.  At some point we do in effect choose to quit learning; we stop trying new things because we think we might look silly and worry about what others may think. 

What a shame!  Little children don't worry about how they look - they just do it!  The excitement of learning something new, of expanding a horizon far outweighs any sense of "I can't do this."  At what point does that creative urge to explore and expand get socialized out of us, I wonder?

So I am going to learn to drive a sidecar rig, even though I will look pretty dumb for awhile (by the way, the guy I bought the rig from actually called me late on Saturday evening and said, "I just had to call - I have been so worried about you since seeing you drive off!") but eventually I will learn how to drive it with skill, just like I did the two-wheeled moto.

So sign up for piano lessons, or take a beginning Spanish class, or learn how to paint ... just don't ever quit learning!

By the way, if you ever hear anybody call a hack rider a sissy because they are riding on three wheels, just hand them the keys to a side car rig and watch them soil themselves ...

Iron Butt 2012

I suppose all of us who ride have some sort of Biker Bucket List.  I certainly have mine and am checking the items off at the rate of about one each year; last year it was to complete a forty hour police motor officer training course and pass the final exam, next year it is to qualify as a Motorcycle Safety Foundation instructor, and this year it was to complete an Iron Butt.

The Iron Butt Association (trademark above) is a group dedicated to long distance and endurance riding.  There are several levels including the Saddle Sore 1000 (1000 miles in under 24 hours), the Bun Burner 1500 (1500 miles in 36 hours), and the Bun Burner Gold (1500 miles in under 24 hours) with various other permutations of those rides.  The creme de la creme of riders participate in the bi-annual Iron Butt Rally which involves accumulating points while traveling 11,000 miles in eleven days!

I have ridden some long distance days, but the longest was only 850 miles in about sixteen hours so it seemed prudent to start my Iron Butt connection with the Saddle Sore 1000.  I had planned on doing it by myself, but it turned out there was an organized and sanctioned group Iron Butt ride planned out of Seattle, so I joined in as it is far more pleasureable to travel with others and a great deal easier to document since there are "official" organizers and witnesses.

So at 4:15 AM on Saturday, June 30th I set off from my home to meet up with 18 other folks in Seattle and begin the test of brain, bike, and butt!  Truthfully I have been spoiled by my past affiliation with the Black Mountain Motorcycle Club in Arizona, which places great emphasis on organization and group riding discipline.  The same emphasis was not placed on this run, which was a bit more like every (wo)man for (him)herself.  We divided up into three groups based on the mileage range of the motorcyle but the three groups quickly dissapated into various other smaller sub-groups, probably a result of the various skill levels evident. Some folks were experienced riders but lacked group riding skills while others lacked much in both areas!  Along with various skill levels there were also many bikes represented including the BMW 1200 GS, various and sundry Harley Davidson's, a couple of Can-Am Spyders, a Honda Goldwing, and even a Yamaha V-Max.  But in spite of skill or ride, some eighteen hours after departing from Seattle we all made it back to the final rally point in one piece and on time, the only breakdown having been that of our group organizer!

The scenery was beautiful and the weather delightful, except of course the final 150 miles which involved traveling over a dark and rainy pass, which is to be expected since that was when we were the most tired and riding the most dangerous!

Traveling 1000 miles (actually I ended up traveling 1100 miles since I had to commute to and from the star/finish locations) in 18 hours allows one a great deal of opportunity for thought and reflection.  Since this was after all an endurance race, I spent a great deal of time thinking about how much of life involves simple endurance.  We speak of genius, hope for luck, and celebrate the overnight success, but the truth is that most achievement is accomplished through sheer endurance and refusal to quit. I believe it was Thomas Edison who said that "success is one percent inspiration and ninty-nine percent perspiration" and my own experience would support this notion.  Completing an advanced education - including graduate studies - is as much about the ability to endure as any native intelligence.  Einstein is quoted as saying "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with a problem longer."  Getting the job you want usually means knocking on more doors than demonstrating any brilliance, and a succssful career often means simply never allowing the vicissitudes of life to hinder your willingness to put one foot in front of the other.

So I have another item checked off my Biker Bucket List, but more importantly I have another reminder that life, like the Iron Butt, is mostly about simply not quiting!  Like Babe Ruth said, "You just can't beat the person who never gives up."

By-pass

I received news the other day that a moto-acquaitance was in a pretty bad accident, leaving him with a punctured lung, broken ribs, and cracked vertebrae.  He is a very knowledgeable and experienced rider and part of a club that places great emphasis on safety and smart riding.  His story is a reminder that bad things can happen to anyone very quickly.

While participating in a group ride he stopped to make a minor repair to the bike and for convenience sake put the bike on the center stand after having put down his side stand.  When he finished the repair he pulled the bike off the center stand and started it up; putting it into gear he took off down the road, having forgotten to retract his side stand.  When he leaned into a left hand curve the side stand hit the ground and did not retract but instead bounced the bike along, in his words, "like a pogo stick."  After a few bounces he high-sided and smashed into a sign post, bending the post and leveling the damage on himself described above.  Needless to say his friends were terrified; they immediately called the paramedics and he was air-liftd to a nearby hospital, where he is now recovering and  awaiting further surgery.

Most modern bikes have a built in safety feature with the side stand: the engine will cut off if the bike is kicked into gear with the stand is down.  This is to help ensure that the rider will not take off with the stand down resulting in the kind of accident described above.  ANY bike can have a problem with the side stand down, the degree of which is determined by the design of the side stand itself.   Based on many engineering factors relative to the size and shape of the bike, some side stands tend to face more forward and are therefore more difficult to retract, while others angle more towards the center.  But to avoid any potential problem, more and more manufacturers are including the cut off switch in the basic design of the side stand.

 

 

My friends bike had such a cut off switch but as is wont with anything electrical, he had been having some problems with the switch engaging inappropriately and so had simply by-passed it.  A long time rider, he was used to not having such a device and had never had any trouble remembering his side stand or if so, the stand had merely retracted upon impact with the pavement.

Until now.  Probably because of the design of the side stand (not inappropriate for this particular bike), the side stand did not retract on impact but instead remained extended, causing the pogo stick phenomenon described and resulting in a very bad crash.

All of us forced into making complicated decisions regarding many aspects of life.  Often we attempt to avoid a particular problem through "by passing" the root issue with what appears to be a simple solution.  While the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) approach can often be effective in certain circumstances, one must ask if the by pass really works in the long run or does it instead lend itself to potentially more disasterous consequences?  At work or in relationship, as in motorcycle mechanics, the simple solution may not always be the best solution, if by choosing simple we ignore the root of the problem.  If we treat the sympton without treating the problem we can often create a bigger problem for ourselves, even if unintentionally.

A Project Bike is always ... a Project Bike!

Last weekend I celebrated the completion of a three year project ... the conversion of a 1986 Harley Davidson Sportster into an Old Skool Chopper.  The original owner was a real gear-head and had hopped up the engine so it was a real get-and-go machine.  The subsequent owner, a young man with more testosterone than sense, thoroughly thrashed the body, but the engine was still a monster.  So by the time it came to me it was in need of a great deal of work and seemed to me to be a wonderful way to learn about Harleys.  And so I did ... more than I really wanted to learn! 

Over the years I did the work I could do, jobbed out other things that were beyond my abilities, until finally last week the finishing touches - forward controls and upsweep pipes - were added and the dream realized.  The weather over the past few days has been beautiful so I have been riding the H-D to work, enjoying the glow of a completed project.

Until Tuesday.  I was stopped at a light and when it turned green I twisted the throttle and the engine died.  Assuming that I had just stalled it (something that has occured more often than I would like to admit) I hit the starter, fired it up, twisted the throttle and got the same result.  It quickly dawned on me that something was blocking the fuel line, which has happened before.  I was purposely running the gas tank low, since I had put some Sea Foam in the tank to help clean the carbs and wanted to run it through.  Obviously there was something alien floating in the tank which was now blocking the flow of fuel.  Nuts.

Having experienced this sort of thing before in my life, I had a couple of coping strategies.  The first was simply to choke the engine, providing more input, which would allow me to get to a gas station, fill the tank, and free said alien to float away from the trap.  Although this had worked in the past, not this time.  So on to strategy #2 - shake the bike back and forth to see if the offending article could be dislodged.  I can only imagine what my fellow commuters thought, seeing me standing there shaking the bike back and forth.  Perhaps that somewhat psychotic looking behavior by a man dressed in black leather explains why there was no honking, in spite of the fact that I was holding up traffic.

Sadly for me, shaking did not work either so I dog-paddled the bike over to the side of the road.  I tried choking it again and shaking it some more, with the same result - nada.  Since I had no tools, nor would I have particularly wanted to dismantle the fuel line and tank by the side of the road, I fell back on the last remaining strategy and called my buddy Pat to bring his truck.  Luckily he was available and said he was on his way.

The day was glorious, so I took off my jacket and waited patiently in the sun.  I later realized it was good that I had no tools with me, as I probably would have thrown them at all my motorcycle "brothers" who whizzed past and just looked at me.  So much for The Code.

Pat arrived, we loaded the H-D (we are actually getting pretty good at loading this particular hunk of junk ... ) and took her back to my house, where she sits awaiting my attention.  Sigh.

The day was not lost, however.  As stated, it was a beautiful day, so I was not stranded in the rain.  I have three bikes in the garage, so I simply jumped on another and made my way to work (a bit late).  And I realized that in all the years and miles, this was only the second time in my life I had to be carried home ... the last time I was fifteen and given how I abused that first bike, it is a wonder that I ever made it home at all!  Given my averages I can expect my next lift home to occur when I am around 95 years old.  Cool - something to look forward to!