So what have I been up to since my last post? I really haven’t done much riding outside of commuting – but it was commuting through temps from 60 to 100F and rain. I was lucky last night and escaped having to ride in the hail. Most of my wet riding was more a case of dealing with damp pavement and just enough precipitation to get my visor damp. And get my knees damp on the occasions when I wasn’t expecting a shower and didn’t have my rain pants on. The hardest part of it was stopping – my boots don’t have the best traction on wet pavement so I had to be much more precise about stopping with my brakes and not my feet.

The challenge of riding when the temperatures drop is figuring out how much clothing I have to have to keep from shivering off the bike without having to strip off most of my wardrobe when I get to work.

The other projects I’ve been up to are taking care of my bike. Regular maintenance is one of the keys to riding safely. I started reading the shop manual I bought for my bike, learning the methods and intervals to care for it. So far it seems like most of it is checking the control elements, making sure the tires are in safe condition to ride, and making sure all the fluids are clean and getting where they need to be in correct amounts.

First, it started because of a strange pattern of sound from my engines at certain speeds and temperatures and I was trying to troubleshoot it. I’ve since figured out that it was the angle i was hearing that was confusing me. I’m fairly sure it is just variations in the rumble of the pistons as the engine rpms slow. It’s not knocking – I’ve tried all three octanes of gasoline, and all that earned me was an engine that didn’t like to start. Apparently the point of the higher octanes is to prevent spontatneous firing – aka “dieseling.” I’d experienced that phenomena in my truck, when I would turn it off and it would keep turning over for a few rotations. So maybe in hot weather it would do me better to use higher octanes in the summer, when dieseling is more likely to happen, but use the lowest grade in the winter to make starting easier.

Another thing I did was change the oil. It’s really not that hard, especially on a small little engine like this. A trick I found was to use old 2-liter soda bottles to store old oil until I can get it to a recycling station – since I didn’t use all the new oil to free up that bottle.

Oiling the chain was remarkably easy. I also cleaned it since it was nearly black with dirt. The lube I got looks and acts basically like a super-duper version of WD-40. Worked great in my stubborn front door lock.

While I was down by the tires I looked them over – only to find a very odd screw stuck in my rear tire. Now to search for someone to fix my tire. It turns out that virtually all motorcycle places refuse to patch or plug a tire. I’ve heard that plugging a tire tends to make them come apart. I did manage to find a little place that specialized in ATVs and off-road bikes that would plug tires. So, that is fixed until I get new tires – since my current ones only have about 3/8ths inch of tread left on them. Though I will get the tools and patch kits to patch them myself – it is possible to patch even tubeless tires at home, it’s just a ROYAL pain, and you can get tubed tires still, which aren’t as hard to put on or take off at home, or in an emergency.

That pretty much sums up my mischief for now – off to watch more Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s the only thing that has a hope of keeping me on my computer instead of out on my motorcycle or my bicycle.

With the church my husband and I go to (a very Anglican church, St. Matthias it’s pretty nice), I’ve been seriously trying to work on improving my spirituality. I pretty much fell off that wagon this summer because I had too many plates to balance.

I think this epiphany of mine will give me an analogy that will make trying to walk the ‘straight and narrow’ easier. This concept of ‘straight and narrow,’ Christian ‘sainthood,’ etc. is basically the ideal Christian life – no sin, and being as much of a saint in this world as we can. This ideal concept is very much like riding the line – it is an invisible ideal path through life that we generally don’t manage to walk.

Daydreaming about chewing out my friend’s possibly controlling and abusive boyfriend that I have yet to meet is a spiritual pothole. Once I realized I was experiencing ‘target fixation’ over this pothole I was able to steer around it. It’s easier to just know some idea or decision is something you’re not supposed to run into makes it easier to not justify some idea that is basically a sin – in this case the sin of anger. Yes I’ve been hearing that the guy is kind of a jerk, but ‘love thy neighbor’ – even if I do wind up setting him straight I want to do it in the way he needs so that he learns his lesson. That doesn’t mean threatening to tear him apart.

The other parallel is the exposure of riding a motorcycle v riding in a cage. You can’t just wrap yourself in your world and your safety zone because you will miss lots of experiences. And those might be experiences that God wants you to see. And he might find less than pleasant ways of making you live those experiences.

Yes, God generally will let bad things happen to good people to help strengthen them, and they are generally things we cannot see to avoid. This happens on a bike too – you can never know what will happen next because Murphy’s Law will have out. All you can do is prepare yourself as best you can, and live every day to the fullest.

This idea of comparing a life plan to riding the line is applicable to all life plans – I just choose to follow the Christian spiritual one. I challenge you to try and use this parallel in your life and see if it helps. Where is that ideal path through the road in front of you that you can’t see, but exists? It might not be that perfect delayed apex line through a curve, but straightening up in the curve and slowing down to help the stranded motorist on the side of the road. Lets face it, most motorcyclists are going to know more about engines than most cage drivers – they’ll need your help.

Assume that cages don’t know what they are doing. It makes dealing with their unpredictability much easier. They are an illogical species, but we’ve got to live with them.

Concrete slab roads are evil. I figured this out while trying to focus on night driving as I rode home from work last night. It’s hard to keep an eye on what’s in front of you when you’re getting kicked around by a rough road. It’s nearly impossible to get a smooth pour over that much surface area, so there are lots of relatively small ups and downs to the road. That’s ok in a car where there are generally really smooth shocks. Not so cool on my bike with the current shock settings. The solution? For now I ever so slightly put my weight on the footpegs – like a dirt biker, or riding horseback. This allows your legs to help absorb some of the shocks and makes things a mite bit smoother. In the long run the answer is to break into my shop manual and make the shocks softer.

Timing is everything. This becomes obvious when a few minutes delay makes it possible to ride through a gap in the rain with only a few drops crawling across my visor to mar my commute.I think Daniel Levitin put it well in his book “This is your brain on Music”- “Rhythm is a game of expectation. When we tap our feet we are predicting what is going to happen in the music next.” This is equally applicable to the rest of life, which is nothing but a giant game of trying to guess what will happen when and where so as to take the best advantage. It doesn’t matter if that ‘rhythm’ helps you predict exactly when to take a rue off the heat to get a perfect brick rue for Gumbo rather than charcoal, or guess where a gap in traffic will appear to move around a slow-poke it’s all a case of timing, predicting – rhythm.

On my bike I’ve calmly rolled through running out of gas on a major freeway, put it in neutral or false neutral several times while shifting in fairly heavy traffic, kill it at stop lights in fairly heavy traffic and getting my front tire caught by a peculiar seam in the concrete freeways. These are things that if they happened in a car would send me into a meltdown. And have. One of my concerns with getting a motorcycle was when I drove my husband’s manual truck a couple times I had a nervous breakdown. Not being able to keep to a decent line through a curve at night and going over overpasses still give me the willies, but only enough to make me want to practice and get it right.

At work I am the queen of my domain. I control the entry/exit of the store. I say what can and can’t go into the store. I make most of the employees, including the managers, jump to my tune when I need them. Yet I’m the lowest of the low – I work crummy shifts and certainly don’t make nearly as much as the rest of the people. Yet, through the pileups of customer gear, and phones screaming for attention I know where to bend, where to stand firm and manage to stay cooler than everybody else. Even when customers repeatedly try to fake me out (Hey, lets try and get the security lady to think we’re stealing! Yea, let’s see if she’ll chase us!) or leeringly offer to let me do a full body search (such is the lot of a woman working quasi-security at a music store) I just call their bluff and win.

At home I’m pulled in so many different ways I generally can’t think straight. The dishes need to be done. The apartment hasn’t been vacuumed in a month. I’m waaay behind on my Celtic Music Nations Web site if I’m ever going to try and make that profitable. I haven’t practiced my instruments in forever – what kind of musician am I? I have a pile of books I’d like to read and two huge cross-stitching projects I’d like to finish sometime this millennia. I generally have a rat list (errands) about a mile long that take up most of my days off. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing at home, because there is no outside force telling me. Am I a wife? a musician? a writer? a hobbyist? (I could make a very happy life going nothing but my art, cross-stitching and gardening). At some level I know I’m all of them, but how does it all work together?

Maybe that’s the parrallel – I know my purpose at work and on a bike.

At work I have two purposes: do my job so that I stay employed and earn a pay check, and do my job well because I enjoy seeing customers leave happy and I enjoy helping out my co-workers.

On a bike I have two purposes: enjoy myself and keep my body parts as far away from the asphalt and the stupid cages as possible.

At home I have too many purposes and no cohesive thread.

Maybe if I get a better grip – or loosen my grip, and just exist it will make existing easier. Boy doesn’t that sound like some mind-warping Zensunni statement from Frank Herbert’s “Dune” books.

The next thing is probably to gain enough self discipline to set and stick to a purpose for certain times. If I’m in bed I should be asleep or spending quality time with my husband – not destroying my sanity.

Here’s hoping that learning to just exist on a bike – focusing on the here and now – will transfer over to living the rest of my life.

To be is to do- Socrates
To do is to be- Sartre
Do be do be do- Sinatra

Alton Brown is well known for his love of motorcycles through his TV shows “Feasting on Asphalt,” and “Feasting on Asphalt: The River Run.” I will be the first to admit he’s also one of my heros for his business skills in successfully developing “Good Eats,” the cooking show that is what you’d get it Bill Nye the Science Guy and Julia Child created a show together.

I finished my week by finally getting the right combination of ramps and first gear to get my beast up on my apartment porch, getting it up on it’s center stand and checking the oil. I spent an hour sawing on the board we used to load it into the truck, breaking it into 4 pieces and needing 1 more. But I was sick and tired of sawing, and after a fair amount of cussing, I just laid the two long pieces over the curb and the porch edge, respectively, and simply powered over them in first gear. Not too bad. Next project? the dreaded center stand! From what I’ve heard the center stand is one of the most useful, yet obnoxious gadgets on a motorcycle, and involves lifting it so I approached this with some trepidation.

A quick look through youtube gave a visual to the instructions ” step on the tang of the stand and lift.” With that short instruction I tried it. No problems! Once I got the bike truly straight – allowing both feet of the center stand to touch the ground – it was pretty easy. All it took was putting my full weight on the ‘handle’ of the stand, lifting a little on the passenger/cargo handles, and not balking on the fact that the motorcycle rocked back a fair amount. It really didn’t take much to hoss that 500lb bike up, with the proper application of leverage. Will I put it up on the center stand every time? probably not, but I probably will on the porch because then it doesn’t take up half the porch – just a third.

Now why does anyone want to get their bike up on the center stand? It makes working on the bike much easier, and is used as the ‘standard’ position for checking the oil. On a car, ‘standard’ is all four wheels on the same piece of pavement. Motorcycles are a little harder, depending on the angle of the front fork and the side stand. The next problem was finding the dipstick without making a fool of myself on the internet. My bike didn’t come with an owners manual, and while aftermarket shop manuals are very common mine isn’t supposed to get here until late this week and I didn’t want it to go that long without checking the oil. I’ve heard enough about how you pretty much should check the oil once a week at the worst that I was getting anxious about not knowing where the dipstick was.
I looked all over that bike, and nothing stood out. I was used to the bright yellow dipstick handle in my truck. I saw something promising on the right side of the transmission, but on the other side it was matched with a big bolt that said “Don’t remove,” so I didn’t want to muck with it. So I went to the internet – solver of all the world’s problems. Google + honda + nightwing + dipstick = nothing useful. I checked site after site admonishing me to check my oil, but they all assumed you knew where the dipstick was. I finally stumbled on to some random question that boiled down to “See if your bike is a wet sump or a dry sump.” Ok, I’d read enough to know that a dry sump motorcycle will have a separate tank for the oil, generally above the engine. After some poking around it was obvious that my bike lacked the obvious oil reservoir of a dry sump, so it must be a wet sump. Meaning? That the oil reservoir was built into the transmission case. And thus, that little, anonymous black thing on the right was my best bet for a dipstick. With heart aflutter and a roll of paper towel at hand, I used a pair of pliers to unscrew the knob and lo! it was the dipstick! No, I’m not referring to some existential moment of self-awareness (though I can be a dipstick) it was the critical element of maintaining my motorcycle. And yes, the oil was fine.

So what’s the final score after my first week of riding? I like it. Yes it is harder. Yes, it’s going to make doing things that require cargo room, like hauling my big instruments or picking up the glass to fix my old camper, a bitch. Yes, I have the feeling I will consider signing myself into a mental ward the first time I ride in a cold rain. Yes, everybody and their brother reminds me that I need to be either really careful, or find another method of transportation. Despite that, it’s a lot of fun. Lets hope my up-beat perspective continues through the next week. Tomorrow’s project? I might try getting all the stuff to clean and lube my chain. At least I’ll get all the bugs off the windshield and tank from last friday’s ride.

First week’s score:
370 miles.
2 x dropped (once by my hubby, once by me while moving it).
1 clutch handle replaced.
2 fill ups (total: about $10)
A whole new world of experience.
Entry to the crazy brotherhood of motorcyclists.
A lot of new knowledge.

Motorcycles are a lot of work. While I might enjoy it now, in the summer sun when I’ve got more time but what about when the weather isn’t so fair? I’m beginning to second guess myself on this motorcycle choice. I haven’t even had it a week and some of the fun of my new toy is beginning to be tempered by the physical and mental demands of the Beast. What will happen when riding isn’t a nice, shiny new hobby? What about when it’s my only way to get to work in the pouring winter rains? What about all the maintenance I’ve got to do on it? Granted the Nighthawk is pretty maintenance free – no adjusting valves or chains – but it’s a lot more dangerous to ignore routine work like lubing the chain, checking the oil and probably other things that will come to mind with more time to stew on it.

As I’m sitting here looking at the laundry list of fears that haunt me it occurs to me how much of human existence is spent over coming fear-
“Go big or go home,”
“Better to try and fail than never have tried at all,”
“The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed, “
The phrases and their sentiment have been around for centuries. (lol, as I search for these cliques I found the first entry from this blog. Wild.) Even movies, like Lions for Lambs appear in the social discussion of how we cope with fear.
A quick Web search of Theodore Roosevelt’s quotes leads to a plethora of appropriate phrases:
-”Believe you can and you’re halfway there”
-”Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. “
-”Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. “
-”Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorius triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” (I think I like the paraphrase ‘Better to try and fail than be one of the grey men watching’ better)
-”It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
-”The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.”
-”The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything. “
-”Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.”

Well I certainly have no intention of becoming an oyster – no matter how much I love swimming. With all the respect I have for Teddy Roosevelt gained from American History II in college I can’t help but think maybe I aught to take some of his advice. Yes a motorcycle is a huge change in my life. In Shawshank Redemption it was put rather well – “Get busy livin’—or get busy dyin’.” No one can live without changing things. Maybe I can hope that the challenges of living with a motorcycle will force me to grow in ways I can’t even imagine right now.

I’m not entirely sure what the point of this blog was, except to show others who ride or want to that motorcycles are not easy companions. They are friends in the wilderness, partners through the traffic war, and like any friendship will force you to face things you could very well be terrified of.
And maybe if I can learn to face the problems a motorcycle brings I’ll learn to handle the other problems in my life without dosing myself into oblivion for my anxiety and depression problems. Humanity survived for decades without psychiatric medications, we just have to rediscover how they did it. And ride the Beast through the challenges, and be the better for it in the end.

Friday started with the intention to go to the DPS office and change the address on my drivers license and then go home and work on my rat list. As I left the office the riding bug bit. Hard.

The night before I had so much fun riding my beast to work that I’d plotted out a nice route around one of the local lakes, stopping by a hole-in-the wall barbecue joint with a reputation for good food. It mapped out at about 110 miles. The problem was when to go – I had stuff to do every day until Tuesday, so I’d planned to go then. But this Friday morning was so clear, and relatively cool that I figured I’d give this ride a shot – at my normal road-trip pace of about 50 miles an hour I should have plenty of time to ride and then rest at my apartment before heading to work at 3PM.

So it’s 11:15AM and I take off, with my map of the route sitting on my desk at home. Who needs a map anyway, I’ve got a near photographic memory for maps anyway. I meandered through Lewisville and Flower Mound, through Argyle and Denton. I took I-35 up through Sanger to where the first turn I wasn’t familiar with was. All I remembered from the map was that it was a decent sized road just north of Lake Ray Roberts. That’s the problem with near photographic memory – I remember where the roads are, just not what they’re called. Lone Oaks road looks about right  and when I hit the first lovely, cooling bridge over a lake finger I knew I’d gotten it right enough for a fun ride.

One of the amazing things about riding a motorcycle is how much I really feel the world I’m riding through. In a paradox it feels like I’m sitting still, watching the world unfold around me while simultaneously Nature pounds on my senses with input that I’m moving at high speeds through the area. The full body-buffeting from the wind is something you can’t experience in a car. The dramatic changes in temperature is another – only on a motorcycle can you feel the difference between riding over concrete rather than black asphalt, or revel in the 15 degree drop in air temperature from going over a small lake bridge.

So after enjoying the small bridges on Lone Oaks I missed, and then turned around to find the farm-to-market road leading to my half-way point, Tioga. Riding through town I wonder if there are only three reasons it exists: horse breeding/training – I rolled through a mile or two of posh stables; and the railroad, the lifeblood of many smaller towns many years ago. The third reason, judging by the motorcycle forum buzz is Clark’s Outpost – a well reviewed restaurant featuring Texas barbecue. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the barbecue (I’m spoiled by my homeade versions) nor the prices on their dinner menu at $15 to $20 a plate, but I might go back to see if their more unusual offerings warrant the reputation.

So it was 1:10PM. So much for my original time estimate for this trip, but I thought I would still have time to ride this twisty little road along a canal from Lake Ray Roberts. Mistake #1 – Never trust Google maps,
View Larger Map 
or any online maps for that matter. After a good hour of roaming around the bridge I discovered the road I was looking for was a pedestrian/equestrian/bicycle only path from a state park that wasn’t well flagged on Google. Now it was 2 PM and I was still 10 miles North of Denton so I high-tailed it home in hopes of picking up some stuff from the house before going in to work.

Mistake #2 – Never drive more miles than you know you have the gas for. And know where your reserve switch is. I had filled up just after I left the house with 2 gallons, after driving 150 miles on the previous tank that I got with the bike and quess-timated I was getting about 60 miles to the gallon. Logic dictates that I was starting to run out of gas around mile 121. I had a few more miles than that before my engine died on me while driving down I35E’s Lake Lewisville bridge. I bullied my way over to the shoulder and my brain flywheeled for a second, remarkably calm, and stopped on the idea that I was out of gas. A quick glance at the fumes wafting out of my gas tank confirmed that idea. A quick flip of the fuel switch to reserve got me enough gas to hit the nearest gas stop with ease.

3PM. Crap. I rode straight to work, with my earplugs making every mile excruciating. I managed to get in with 10 minutes to spare. 5 hours of people watching working let me relax some before driving home in the dark. It wasn’t too bad for my first time night riding – but my glowing white riding jacket was supposed to help with my visibility. I got home around 10 PM, almost 12 hours and a lot of adventure later.

I spent yesterday morning riding my bicycle around to the two local shops to find a replacement clutch. After a nap and some time to try and not panic over riding I decided to get some serious training in. I rode around the apartment complex two or three times – it’s only a 1/2 mile loop – and got used to where the breakover on the clutch was and shifting in and out of 2nd. That went smoothly enough that I got bored quick and decided to brave the two miles to the local mall, which normally has lots of open parking.

It didn’t take many laps around the larger mall for me to start feeling real confident. I was able to practice shifting up and down, starting and stopping from decent speeds (despite the 15 mph speed limit of the parking lot) and do some loops to practice turns.

From there I parked it and got something to drink. You don’t spend hours in the sun in 100 degrees (F) without spending about half your time cooling off and drinking lots of water. It turns out I caught my husband just as he was about to leave work, and he was brave enough to ride pillion the 200 yards or so from where my bike was parked to where his truck was parked. And then we went home in our respective vehicles with no problems.

Today, after a night to worry I was a little scared of my plan, but I decided to soldier on. Especially since I’d gotten one of my co-workers to cover my shift so I had an extra day to play with my Honda. So I set out with my improvised tank bag (a gallon ziplock and some fridge magnets) and my backpack with water and my chain/lock rig to ride around some of the back roads near my apartment. I lost the ‘map bag’ before I’d gone a mile. So much for that idea. Other than that it was great just wandering around on the back roads. I even stopped at a farmer’s market stand at an oddball little intersection to enjoy a snow-cone and figure out where I was since I’d lost my map (note to self: put Mapsco in my backpack next time I go wandering). I didn’t have any problems shifting, accelerating or braking. I did have some problems turning, just because I haven’t gotten comfortable with the look ‘n lean trick, but nothing to be scared about. The wind was the only element I wasn’t really prepared for. Riding on a bicycle doesn’t give you any idea what the wind will do to you at 70 mph – I felt like I was on the wrong end of a punching bag. So I spent almost three hours riding my bike all over the north dallas area, including a trial run to work (flyover interchanges aren’t nearly as fun on a bike) so I’m feeling confident I can ride this thing well, and that my skills and confidence will only get better with time.

Last night we sold the truck. I had to have a vehicle to drive to work by wednesday morning (that is still in debate). so we went to see the last bike on my list, an old ’91 nighthawk 750. It was in awesome condition and responded like a well trained steed to my shakey throttle hand. So we bought it. And then my husband wanted to ride it. And broke it.

He thought riding a motorcycle wouldn’t be that different from driving a car, and hasn’t taken the Motorcycle Safety Foundation class. Except he’s not much of a bicycle rider and didn’t realize how much balance factored into things. He was fine starting out, and then he tried to do some turns. And then he was going down hill into some concrete stops in the middle of the parking lot. And then he grabbed the brake high and revved it while braking and bringing in the clutch, and leaned too far over to compensate for his speed and went past the point of no return. And now he’s scared stiff. I tried to make him promise to at least see how things worked out over the next week with the bike. And if all else fails we can buy the blue one in the interim and sell the Nighthawk and still have something rideable.

Thankfully all he broke was the clutch handle – a 10 dollar fix. But how in the hell was I going to get this part? At that time of night all the stores were closed, and I wouldn’t have a vehicle (that I could confidently ride through traffic) to go anywhere far. Fortunately where we are in Lewisville is shopping mecca, I have a parts shop and a repair place within easy bicycling distance. So I spent two hours riding and resting and shopping this morning trying to find a clutch. I lucked out, when the part’s shop guy went to look at his wall of handles he happened upon one that matched almost exactly, a replacement CBR handle. And I promptly ordered replacements for the clutch and front brake levers for the next time this happens.

Now will come the hard part. I’ve been getting almost no sleep. I’m already worried about this decision. My husband is now completely freaked out about riding these things, and all my family is scared about what could happen to me. And I think I’m coming down with a stomach ulcer from the nerves. And I theoretically have to be at work tomorrow morning at 11 after riding the Nighthawk over 20 miles of highway when I’ve never gotten a bike out of third gear, or onto real streets. The salve to my soul is the grin I get when I look at the bike. The confidence with which I rode over miles this morning in and around traffic makes me feel confident that I won’t have a lot of problems handling it. The guys at the bike shop felt sure I’d be up to going to their two year anniversary party for the shop in two weeks. I hope to hell this works.

I’ve taken nyquil to help me sleep, and will take a nap once I finish lunch. whenever I wake up I’ll start doing circles around the apartment complex, and then hopefully feel up to riding the two miles to the mall where I will proceed to confuse the mall security guys by riding in circles around the mall (a lot faster than the speed limit I might add), doing random maneuvers in the parking lot, and in general trying to make sure I feel like I know what I’m doing. If time allows I might even try riding over to work and back when traffic is lighter in the late evening.

Here’s hoping!