Long Way Around

In the cold months we often need a little riding inspiration - how about a trip around the world on bikes? Check out the documented "Long Way Around" with your favorite Jedi Knight Ewan McGregor and his pal Charley Boorman. I was very pleased with the first few episodes that went through some very rough areas in Asia and even enjoyed the "brit's" view of a trip across North America. Makes planning my cross country trip seem much more approachable.

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;


If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;


If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son! 


Rudyard Kipling

Some minor plans

Clean profile with solo seat

Some random thoughts on making minor improvements to my FLHTP:


Windscreen

With the stock windscreen I got wind buffeting when over 60 mph. I don't know if this is normal for others, possibly I just have a taller than average torso, but it's a real distraction. Looking for a taller windscreen.  However, previous experience with a large windscreens has shown there is a very narrow sweet spot between not enough and to much - the later can lead to an annoying vacuum effect that pushes you into the screen/bar for endless push ups. Considered an after market windscreen that is higher but narrower and tapered. Time will tell.




Passenger seat

While I really like the single seat look, there have been a few times where I'd have like to been able to take a passenger. If I didn't have the nice air seat I'd likely have gone with one of those tapered "once in a blue moon" passenger seats suitable for quick trips only.

But I did like the air seat - consider it one of the better features of the bike - so I  found a passenger seat that matched - item number 79436 at motorcycleseatdealer.com. A quick placement of the seat indicated I'd need a the mounting bolts and had been cautioned that the passenger seat might interfere with the travel of the police air seat - time will tell as I just haven't gotten around to mounting it yet.



Passenger pegs

If putting on a passenger seat, then putting on the passenger pegs is a must. For pegs, seems I'd need to first get the tour bike extensions and then the pegs. The plan was to get simple bar style pegs in order to (a) easily fold up out of the way, (b) keep the minimal appearance, and (c) act as "reverse highway pegs" for those long rides.





Undecided on a tour-pak

As mentioned in a previous post, without the police radio box, the rear deck is not overly attractive and the police side bags make mounting a standard tour-pak a custom process. What I do like is that the space between the bags, and between the single seat and the tail, is very generous for strapping down a travel bag (I'd used both a sports bag and my old US Navy sea bag). I also liked the clean lines without the tour-pak look and also the ease of swinging a leg over. Again, time will tell.



Backrest

I haven't seen a backrest for the police air seat. Makes sense since the seat travels - guess the back rest wouldn't? Probably just haven't look long enough, but to be honest I'm not sure I'd want a rider backrest ... never had one so do't know the pro/con of the choice.

No decision yet on a passenger "sissy bar" backrest. From previous experience having the sissy bar adds a nice mounting point for luggage, adds confidence for passengers, but detracts from the bikes lines.  It is also redundant with a tour-pak back rest.

An option that others have expressed was to swap off the tour-pack for a sissy bar when the need arose.  However, storing the bike in a public garage doesn't lend itself to switching components to fit the ride - there is nowhere to store the components that are taken off.

Plan to wait until after mounting the passenger seat to make a decision on the sissy bar/trunk issue.

Working 20 stories up

Look close at the photo, the two guys in the middle are repairing the brick work 20 stories up the side of a the Graybar building.  I took this picture while on a conference call at work. Certainly puts the day to day work hassles in perspective.

What is crazy - at least to me - is that I once worked in a similar environment.

When in the Navy and station on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. America, my shop had responsibility for maintaining (nice way of saying chipping and painting) the top mast which was nearly 200 feet above the water.  The logic was that we were computer and electronic technicians, some of our equipment (radar, radios, other not to be defined stuff) was up on the mast, so who better to tend it without breaking it than a bunch of geeks?

When up on the mast, it would be the tallest structure around, you could see the curve of the earth, and the planes below on the flight deck would look like model toys. Hard to imagine I was once skinny enough to fit through all the tight spots and fit enough to climb that high up (no motorized winches for us geeks!).

I have some pretty amazing stories from working on the mast.

The best story, or rather just the best experience, was just eating a box lunch overlooking the harbor in Cannes France - incredible view on a perfect day. The worst was helping to recover a co-worker who'd slipped, was saved by his safety line, but lost his nerve to get down. The funniest was when a colleague, who was told he had to stay up "till all the paint was gone", promptly hurled the ten gallon can over the side from 20 stories up, barley missing the flight deck on the way down! And the weirdest was turning around to see the CO had climbed all the way up to the top of the mast, saying he was there to check on the job we were doing (but more likely there to just check out the view).

I wonder if these guys will be remembering working here in thirty years?

Mark Twain quotes

A collection of quotes from Mark Twain (aka Samuel L. Clemens):

• A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.
• Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.
• All generalizations are false, including this one.
• All right, then, I'll go to hell.
• Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
• But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
• Buy land, they're not making it anymore.
• Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear
• Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first.
• Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
• I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
• It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
• It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.
• It is easier to stay out than get out.
• It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
• Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head.
• Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
• Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.
• Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
• Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
• The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
• The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.
• The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.
• The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.
• The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.
• The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.
• The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.
• The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
• The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.
• There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
• Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does all the work.
• To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.
• Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
• We have the best government that money can buy.
• When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
• When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear.
• When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.
• When red-haired people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.
• When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

Captain Morgan

I was going through some old photographs and saw this one of me which caused be to say hmmm.

First, nose buried in a book. I was and still am a major book worm. Nothing changed there.

Second, wow, I'm rather skinny back then - or at least compared to now. Odd that I never thought of myself as skinny.

Third, that couch I'm sitting on, oh the memories, it was crate furniture that I purchased for around five bucks from a thrift shop and it smelled like cat pee, though I didn't know that until I lugged it back to the bare bones apartment.

But mostly, I noticed that I'm wearing a Captain Morgan Spiced Rum shirt, and in the foreground of the photo, there is a huge bottle of Captain Morgan Spiced Rum!

I don't recall if this photo was staged, I wouldn't be surprised if it was as I was a budding photographer back then, but it amazes me that I was a "captain" before being a captain was cool. Okay, maybe cool is stretching the point. Still, this is over 25 years ago and I still like that rum.

I'm not sure what that says about me, other than I like that rum, but through it was interesting.