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elizillaSo at the V-Strom rally in Reno, I came out to my bike on Saturday morning and was fishing in my top case when someone came up to me and said "How do you like the Olympus?" I said "What Olympus?" He pointed at the camera on the seat of my bike. I'd never seen it before. There was also a cell phone. Not mine. We opened the phone and determined that it belonged to the event organizer, "Renojohn". So we started sending text messages to other people who were at the event. "Barry, I really respect you, and not just as a rider. Would you like to get together this evening?" Etc.
The phone ran out of power way too soon. :-( The last thing we did is call Renojohn's wife to let her know we had John's phone. Then I put the phone and camera away safe so I could give them back to him when next I saw him.
On the way home, I was riding through western South Dakota when my bike lost power going up a hill. I pinned the throttle but it would only go about 60mph. There was a rest area just over the crest of the hill, so I stopped to check out the problem, visions of horrible bike meltdowns in my head.
Fortunately the problem was very simple and easy. My bike has Kimpex grip heaters installed under the stock grips. The Kimpex heaters are basically a clear plastic sticker with metal heater elements embedded in them. You peel off the backing, stick them around the bar like wrapping it in a sticker, and reinstall the rubber handgrips over the top of the stickers. You route the wires to power them, install the controller in an inconspicuous place, and you're good to go. Cheap, simple, invisible, but blessedly warm. But it turns out that the sticker adhesive on the underside of the throttle side heater, had given up the ghost. It was balled up and crumbling out from under the edges. This allowed the heating element to slide around on the grip, and it had rotated until it ran out of slack in the wires, at which point it stopped the throttle from being rolled on any farther. So when I needed just a little more throttle to maintain speed going up the hill, I couldn't roll it on.
I needed some kind of grip glue. Looked at the time. It was about 3pm mountain time. Looked at the map. I could double back to Rapid City or push on another couple hours to Mitchell. No towns large enough to have anything useful in between. Crossing into central time before I got to Mitchell, I would lose an hour, and I didn't expect to get there before things closed even without losing an hour. Didn't really want to double back to Rapid City. Decided I would spend the night in Mitchell and fix it there in the morning. In the meantime, I slid the grip heater back around to regain slack in the wire. If I didn't use my throttle rocker and I gripped the throttle just a little tighter, it worked fine.
Which is why I was fixing my bike in the parking lot of a motorcycle shop in Mitchell, the next morning, when a guy pulled in on a Kawasaki Voyager. He started checking out my bike and asking questions about it, what kind of luggage was that, etc. Then he said something funny. "Y'know, your bike is set up like those guys, you know the ones who ride ST1100s and pull into the campground late at night and just sleep on the ground. Then when you wake up in the morning they're already gone. Sometimes they pass you in the twisties and you never see them again, and when you check out their license plates they're always from far away. They always ride STs or Concourses or BMWs and they wear those cordura jumpsuits." I said "Yeah, I know those guys." :-)
I stopped for lunch in Yellowstone. There was a family at a table near the door, mom and dad, two little boys maybe three and five years old. As I walked by on my way out, the smaller boy called to me, "Hello! You are a motorcycle rider!" I stopped and admitted that yes I was. He looked me over and said "RED helmet. YELLOW jacket." Very Sesame Street, making a big point of identifying colors, and his mom praised him appropriately. Then he asked what color was my motorcycle? I told him it was yellow. He looked at his mother and explained, "Her motorcycle is YELLOW. Girls like yellow."
The phone ran out of power way too soon. :-( The last thing we did is call Renojohn's wife to let her know we had John's phone. Then I put the phone and camera away safe so I could give them back to him when next I saw him.
On the way home, I was riding through western South Dakota when my bike lost power going up a hill. I pinned the throttle but it would only go about 60mph. There was a rest area just over the crest of the hill, so I stopped to check out the problem, visions of horrible bike meltdowns in my head.
Fortunately the problem was very simple and easy. My bike has Kimpex grip heaters installed under the stock grips. The Kimpex heaters are basically a clear plastic sticker with metal heater elements embedded in them. You peel off the backing, stick them around the bar like wrapping it in a sticker, and reinstall the rubber handgrips over the top of the stickers. You route the wires to power them, install the controller in an inconspicuous place, and you're good to go. Cheap, simple, invisible, but blessedly warm. But it turns out that the sticker adhesive on the underside of the throttle side heater, had given up the ghost. It was balled up and crumbling out from under the edges. This allowed the heating element to slide around on the grip, and it had rotated until it ran out of slack in the wires, at which point it stopped the throttle from being rolled on any farther. So when I needed just a little more throttle to maintain speed going up the hill, I couldn't roll it on.
I needed some kind of grip glue. Looked at the time. It was about 3pm mountain time. Looked at the map. I could double back to Rapid City or push on another couple hours to Mitchell. No towns large enough to have anything useful in between. Crossing into central time before I got to Mitchell, I would lose an hour, and I didn't expect to get there before things closed even without losing an hour. Didn't really want to double back to Rapid City. Decided I would spend the night in Mitchell and fix it there in the morning. In the meantime, I slid the grip heater back around to regain slack in the wire. If I didn't use my throttle rocker and I gripped the throttle just a little tighter, it worked fine.
Which is why I was fixing my bike in the parking lot of a motorcycle shop in Mitchell, the next morning, when a guy pulled in on a Kawasaki Voyager. He started checking out my bike and asking questions about it, what kind of luggage was that, etc. Then he said something funny. "Y'know, your bike is set up like those guys, you know the ones who ride ST1100s and pull into the campground late at night and just sleep on the ground. Then when you wake up in the morning they're already gone. Sometimes they pass you in the twisties and you never see them again, and when you check out their license plates they're always from far away. They always ride STs or Concourses or BMWs and they wear those cordura jumpsuits." I said "Yeah, I know those guys." :-)
I stopped for lunch in Yellowstone. There was a family at a table near the door, mom and dad, two little boys maybe three and five years old. As I walked by on my way out, the smaller boy called to me, "Hello! You are a motorcycle rider!" I stopped and admitted that yes I was. He looked me over and said "RED helmet. YELLOW jacket." Very Sesame Street, making a big point of identifying colors, and his mom praised him appropriately. Then he asked what color was my motorcycle? I told him it was yellow. He looked at his mother and explained, "Her motorcycle is YELLOW. Girls like yellow."
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 04:33 pm (UTC)Girls like yellow.
Damn straight. ;-D
no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 04:35 pm (UTC)*chuckle* Gee... who could he have been talking about? *grin*
Sounds like you had an AWESOME adventure...
no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 04:37 pm (UTC)heh. :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 08:52 pm (UTC)What...
Date: 2007-06-12 12:46 am (UTC)Who were you thinking of exactly?