Now a total of 10 cylinders of bikes!

So I had 8 cylinders of bikes (a V4 and an I4), but now I added 2 more! This one is a boxer twin :)



I wanted one for a long time, and was finally able to buy one. It's a BMW R1200 GS. I like the Adventure better, but even this one is a little on the tall side for me, and the Adventure is even taller. I'll try my best to give it all the features of the Adventure though. Watch for modifications in the future.




It had 9 miles then, but now has about 160


I think I can fit one more in that space

WCRM 2006 - Day 3

Day 3 of the WCRM, Sunday, I just headed home. I headed down 101 and kept my speed reasonable, as I didn't need another ticket. elseanno and Shay passed me soon after (they filled up at the same time I did, but I left earlier). It was intermittent rain, but no traffic until I got to Santa Rosa. I filled up in Santa Rosa, and then lanesplit through traffic on 101. The only other traffic I encountered was at the 580/880 split in Oakland - I just lanesplit there too. The rest of the ride was uneventful.

I had a great time at the WCRM (performance award notwithstanding), and can't wait to do it again!

WCRM 2006 - Day 2

On the second day (Saturday) I went for what seemed like a good ride - highway 299. This road is great! 299 has nice long sweepers and excellent pavement. It was wet in places, but still great. I left late (because I like to sleep in) and ZX11Andrew tagged along. I let him lead, since he's much faster than me. We headed up North to Eureka/Arcata and made a right onto 299. That was fun! We enjoyed this for about 30 miles, railing through corners and passing the occasional cars (legally, thank you very much). The fun stopped after 30 miles. We met a CHP going the other way. We were going around a right-hand curve, with the mountain on the inside and a cliff on the outside. My theory is that the CHP had the radar on all the time, but our radar detectors (Andrew's V1 and my Passport X50) didn't see him because there was nothing for the radar signal to reflect off of in order to go around the curve. Anyway, our detectors were going full blast when we saw the car, but it was too late by then. I saw the red and blue light come on and saw the cop turn around behind me.

I slowed down and pulled to the side, when the cop passed me and just said "Follow me" through the loudspeaker. He caught up to Andrew and pulled him over, and told me to pull over too. We both got tickets :( . Hopefully I'm eligible for traffic school, I haven't had a ticket in a while (and never in Cali).

Andrew, after the cop left:



We stood and talked for a while, and I decided to turn around and go back, while he continued on to complete the 299-3-36 loop. He later told me that he saw 6 or 7 more cops along 299, but the rest of the loop was clear.

I headed back to Fortuna and stopped by a shopping center. I got some ibuprofen at Safeway, and a mono audio cable at Radio Shack (to connect the radar detector to the Starcom). Came back to the hotel, unloaded the bike and walked over to Subway to get lunch. I ate lunch sitting outside and talking with a few people who have also returned by now. I was just killing time until dinner at the brewery.

As we were standing there talking, a BMW KLT pulls up - it's USA MEDIC! I didn't know he was coming, but he and a friend (Eddie) just went for a ride that day and came over on a whim. They decided to stay at the hotel until the next day.

BMW KLT (LT = Light Truck :) ):


Lots of FJR's were there:


USA MEDIC and his KLT:


A GS:


More bikes:




Then I walked over to the brewery. DantesDame just pulled up:



We all had fun at the brewery. The food was good, the beer was good, the conversation was awesome! (And the waitresses were cute :) )

Here's (clockwise, starting from the front center) miles, Thatman, MsLusty and bluepoof:


ST.N'ers at other tables:








Left to right, MsLusty, bluepoof, Zarly, DantesDame, n2q:

WCRM 2006 - Day 1

WCRM (West Coast Regional Meet) was fun. Mostly. Except for a performance award :( . But that was on the second day, so here's the first.

WCRM is a meet we have every year at ST.N. This one started out for me on Friday afternoon, when I left work right after lunch and went home. I spent the previous night trying to get the electrified tankbag set up with the radar detector and the Starcom. By 1 am I had everything in the tankbag wired up, but realized that I need to do major surgery on my helmet to put the headphones in. Being 1am, I gave up on that idea this time. Back to Friday, I still had to pack and I was trying to leave ASAP. I packed in a hurry and left around 1pm. I realized later that I forgot to take any water, snacks or ibuprophen. That's what happens when you are in a hurry.

I rode North up to SF, where it started raining. On through SF and over the Golden Gate bridge and I continued up 101. It was raining pretty hard by now, and there is ALWAYS traffic around Santa Rosa. I must've lanesplit 50 miles that day, in the rain. Further North the rain stopped, and by the time I got to Willits it was just cloudy. I stopped in Willits to fill up and get a snack and some water. While standing outside eating, I discovered that my phone, that I usually keep in the right top pocket of my Aerostich, got wet. It wouldn't even turn on. Great... hopefully it dries out and works again later. Note to self - the 'stich is losing its waterproofing and the spray-on Nikwax stuff didn't help much. Need to wash it with the wash-in Nikwax before leaving for the National.

I left the gas station in Willits only to find some traffic backed up. The cause was a single traffic light further up ahead. Grrr.

After getting through that, I headed up on 101, and other than a short section of single-lane (they were repairing a bridge), the ride was uneventful. I got up to the Holiday Inn in Fortuna and checked in to my room. The hotel apparently has wireless as well as wired Internet, but I couldn't see the wireless AP on my laptop. And of course I didn't take an ethernet cable with me, either. I'll buy one the next day.

A bunch of ST.N'ers were already at the Eel River Brewery a short walk from the hotel.



I ordered a local stout (they didn't have Guinness) and was about to order food, but bluepoof was struggling with the huge burrito she ordered - she could only eat about a quarter of it. She offered the rest of it to me and I consumed it. Pretty quickly I might add, I was hungry :)



Jim the Explorer demonstrating contersteering - push left, crush beer can on forehead, go left:

A few more notes on the Jeep thing...

I drove a bunch more today in the Jeep, and now have a few things to add about it.

• It needs an alignment - the steering wheel is slightly turned to the right while driving completely straight.


• I figured out what the slight vibration on the highway is. I thought it was because of unbalanced wheels or the type of tires, but now I think I figured it out. It vibrates a little while operating on just 4 cylinders on the highway. You get a normal V4 vibration, just like my VFR :)


• The nav system screen is a bit hard to see when it gets hit by direct sunlight at the wrong angle.


• I wish the seats had more lumbar support - I get a little tired sitting there, even though the lumbar support that it has is adjusted all the way out.


• Neither the gas cap nor the filler door lock. WTF? In addition, the gas cap is attached by a little plastic string thingy, which makes it hang touching the side of the truck when it's open. Again, WTF? I just ordered a locking gas cap, which should solve both issues.

Overall, I still like it a lot. I got my phone connected to the bluetooth thingy, and now I can talk on the phone through the car's stereo system - I tried it out today. Works great! Got a phone charger for it, the phone battery seems to drain faster when using bluetooth.

2 wheels too many?

Bad, BAD Hemi!! It makes me do bad things. I'm gonna go order a Valentine One right now.

Ok, I just ordered a Valentine One. With remote display. Why? Because I just traded my MR2 for a Jeep Grand Cherokee with a 5.7L Hemi V8. And this Jeep is deceptively fast. In an MR2 I could tell when I was going fast. I could feel the road, there was lots of road and wind noise. In this Jeep, you can't really tell. I was driving on the highway at (what I thought) was a reasonable speed, until I noticed that I was passing everyone, and glanced down on the speedometer just to say "oh crap" after realizing how fast I was going.





Why did I get it? After all, I've never had an American car or truck before, and have never had anything with an automatic transmission, either. There are several reasons. My MR2 is a very fun car on mountain roads, or just driving around town with the convertible top open. It really sucks on the freeway though. It's very noisy. It's twitchy and feels unstable at high speeds over rough surfaces (like most freeways). It also has no luggage space whatsoever (no trunk, no back seat). The requirements for replacing it were: has a back seat, has lockable luggage space, can tow an enclosed trailer with 2 motorcycles in it and has a manual transmission. You'll note that the Jeep doesn't meet the manual transmission requirement - I had to drop that, since it reduced my choices to either a station wagon (like a Subaru Outback, or A4 Avant) or a Jeep Liberty with a 3.7L V6. I certainly didn't want a station wagon, and that 3.7 motor in the Liberty is way underpowered.

My choices were pretty much restricted to SUV's. Out of all SUV's, I think BMW X5 looks the best, and has some of the best features. It's too expensive though. The next best looking SUV is a Grand Cherokee. I spent hours on http://www.jeep.com/, building Grand Cherokees in various configurations and searching dealers' inventory. It was still coming out quite expensive, but I was willing to pay that much. Then, on a whim, I decided to search through Jeep Certified Used cars to see what's available. I found my GC (Grand Cherokee) at Michael Stead's Jeep Chrysler in Walnut Creek, CA (50 miles from here). It was only a year old and had less than 7,500 miles on it. Practically brand new, except already broken in. It had all the features I wanted and much more - for about $10,000 less than a new one with the same features. It had one thing I didn't want (and really hate about it) - chrome rims. Those are easy to change though - I'll be looking for non-chrome rims from 2005-2006 GC - I'm sure someone will sell their stock rims on eBay so they can put 20" chrome rims with spinners on their Jeep to "pimp the ride". I'll take their stock rims, thank you very much.

So it's a 5.7L V8 Hemi, that can turn off 4 of its cylinders while cruising to save gas. I have no idea how much it saves, but so far I've gotten about 10 mpg in town (EPA claims 14). I think I've seen as high as 18 indicated on the freeway. It probably has something to do with the way I drive - for the people who know me, you'd know that I'm not easy on the accelerator pedal :) . It sounds great - you get this nice low rumble when accelerating. I love the sound of a V8. On the freeway, with windows closed, it's very quiet. I've noticed a little bit of wind noise, but it's orders of magnitude quieter than my MR2. The interior is pretty nicely done, and you don't have to slam the doors to close them. It seems that American car manufacturers have come a long way in terms of quality. In addition, there are all the features I could ever need and some that I don't. It has a built-in navigation system with voice prompts, 6 CD changer that can play MP3's from CD's, power everything (including adjusting the pedals - you can move them closer or further away from the seat). It also has a DVD entertainment system, which I really don't need - but I guess it might come in handy one day on some long trip.







The thingy in the middle of the ceiling is the rear DVD screen:





The rear control unit for the entertainment system:



Climate control includes separate temperature settings for driver and front passenger:



The mirror is auto-dimming and has the controls for U-Connect, which allows you to connect any bluetooth phone to the car - the microphone is in the mirror. The side mirrors are heated and auto-dimming as well.



Jeep by the Pacific ocean:





My not-so-successful attempt at taking a picture of the nav system without the flash (driving North on Hwy 1 along the ocean):



You can easily get a lot less than 10 mpg in the city if you have a heavy foot: