An Unexpected Motorcycle

So Scooty-Puff Sr was making some transmission/clutch noise when pulling away from a stop. Luckily it was still under warranty, and with a few weeks to go before my Reno trip I figured it would be a good time to drop it off at the shop and get it fixed up. Apparently, though, BMW has different ideas about how quickly such repairs could take, and poor Scooty-Puff is still in the shop as I write this.

This left me with a bit of a conundrum. I needed a mighty steed to convey me to my destination, and yet my chosen mount was not available to carry out its duty. I had a few options, the most mundane of which would have been to take the Pedovan. A bit too far on the other end of the adventure scale would be to take ANGRY BEES. Somewhere in the middle would be to borrow a friend's touring bike. Way over in the "it would make a better story" section would be to buy a cheap bike off Craigslist just a few days before my trip and ride that, then sell it again when I get back.

I like good stories.

I set my budget at $2500 and gassed up the computer. The first candidate that came up was a Suzuki Bandit, which had apparently only been messed with a little. The Bandit is a bit notorious for people trying to mod it into a drag bike, so the idea of trusting a 600 mile round trip to such a "tinkered" ride didn't sit well with me.

The next candidate was a BMW K75 which was listed for only $1900. The K75 is a great bike, reasonably modern and so on, which made the price tag seem a bit suspicious. It could be that the bike is at its classic-vehicle-nadir, where it's too old to be a nice used bike but not old enough to be a nostalgic classic. But more likely there was some bad news hiding between the lines of the Craigslist post.

The next and eventually successful candidate was a BMW R65 from 1982. Old enough to be classic, but new enough to be reasonably reliable. It also had the bonus of being a bit of an odd duck model, generally hiding in the shadow of the more popular full-size airhead boxers of the day. So I packed up in the van and drove up to Napa to give it a quick test ride and bring it home. My initial impression of the bike is that the suspension was annoyingly soft, the throttle was annoyingly stiff, and the engine annoyingly stalled at idle. Other than that, and the fact that it was somewhat underpowered, it was pretty much perfect. It came with the original panniers too, which was a pretty sweet bonus.

The bike started life as an R65LS, but had been written off in the 90s some time in a low-side accident, then rebuilt into a half-faired frankenbike of sorts that, to be fair, looked quite good. That write off also gave me the opportunity to bargain the price down from the $2500 asking price to only $2000. I wrote a cheque and signed the title and the bike was mine. All that stood between me and Reno was 300 miles of twisty mountain roads.

It's like riding a chainsaw, basically

The same day I test rode the XDiavel, I also dropped by the BMW dealer to check out an S1000XR. It was a model that was on my contemplation list to serve as my commuter/tourer bike, but after the test ride I put it safely in the "not for me" bucket.

First off, the XR doesn't suffer from the motorboat style dive and squat that the Multistrada did, so that's a good start. The suspension felt solid in all of the various modes, to the point where I really couldn't feel much difference between the modes at all. At least they all felt pleasant.

The engine modes were much the same story: couldn't honestly tell the difference between them, and they all delivered a delightfully absurd amount of power. That said, I found the engine's snarly, raspy character to be completely unsuited for something I would want to tour on. I feel like the engine would have been better off left in the S1000RR and R.

The bars were of course far too wide for me, and the whole bike was pointlessly tall, both in the fine tradition of adventure bikes. In the end I wasn't particularly thrilled, it felt more like a BMW response to the Multistrada (and I feel like it edges out the Multi in a few ways, especially the suspension) than a winning formula in and of itself.

The Cruiser Life

So a few weeks ago I tried out a Ducati XDiavel at the demo day in La Honda, and figured it was about time to write up my thoughts.

First, to answer the most important question: it is not the bike for me. The cruiser seating position is an exercise in pointless absurdity, and does not lend itself to relaxed, comfortable riding.

I also found myself a bit disappointed with the attention to detail. The bike felt like it was about half way there, they did a decent first pass of cleaning up and hiding all the unsightly bits of mechanicalness, but it fell far short of being the rolling sculpture I was hoping for.

In terms of riding experience, the wide rear tire makes for very curious handling. It tends to feel like the rear of the bike is the end steering you into the turns, though the rest of the bike seems to be well engineered to compensate for it.

The engine was quite well suited for the bike, though we were riding in the 100hp "urban" mode due to wet roads, down from the usual 160-something hp in full power mode. I feel like it's a much better match for this bike than it was for the Multistrada. That said, I did feel like the engine, and the bike itself, were just too big: you could easily shave 20% off the bike and engine size to make a midsize cruiser and end up with something that, for me, would be a much more appealing package.

In the end, I find myself still searching for my next-next bike.

An Uplifting Experience

So I'm riding home on ANGRY BEES today, because on Wednesdays we ride motorcycles.

I pull up to the NHRA simulator onramp meter from Shoreline onto 85. The traffic is reasonably light and the road is clear ahead of me. The light goes green, I let out the clutch, and pour on some throttle.

Everything is going smoothly as the revs start to climb, and I keep the throttle pinned as I wind things out. Then the front wheel also starts to climb. "Oh, hmm," I say to myself, "I should probably go ahead and set that back down."

I roll off the throttle a bit as I kick the gear up, and the front wheel delicately settles back onto the pavement, at which point I wring it out the throttle again because why waste a perfectly good onramp pull?

Prior to swapping sprocks, ANGRY BEES had just the right amount of torque to make the front end very, very light under hard acceleration in first gear, so I had a reasonable expectation of being able to power it up after doing the -1/+3 conversion. And, lo and behold, that's exactly what has come to pass.

This brings up something that's been bubbling beneath the surface for a while. Ever since I got into motorcycling, and certainly ever since I got ANGRY BEES, I've been contemplating taking a wheelie course. Not so much for the hooligan factor, but just so I have a reasonably safe environment to get used to controlling wheelies so that I would have some experience to fall back on should my front wheel suddenly decide to slip the surly bonds of earth and dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings. Of course the hooligan factor isn't exactly a negative...

I'm not honestly sure what direction today's experience has swayed me. On the one hand, it's brought the theoretical possibility of an unexpected wheelie entirely into reality. On the other hand, I didn't have any trouble with controlling it, so it hasn't left me riddled with fear and uncertainty.

I suppose I'll just have to ponder it a bit more.

To the Ocean! Or not.

So on Saturday I decided I'd make another attempt to escape to the ocean. I failed. This time I saddled up on ANGRY BEES and headed up over Page Mill, down Alpine, with a thought to take Pescadero to get to the sea.



When I got to the top of Page Mill I started to get a bit concerned about how much gas I had left in the tank. I rolled out with half a tank and the bike was being a bit thirsty on the way up. Thankfully there's a gas station in Pescadaro itself so I wasn't too concerned. Pictured above is ANGRY BEES at the bottom of Alpine where it meets up with Pescadaro road. If you look really hard you can probably see the low fuel light on.

So I continued along Pescadaro road, thinking I was home free, up until about a mile out of town when I came upon a tiny little speedbump in my plans...



The above should usually look more like this:



So you can see the issue. And sadly, there are no alternate routes around this rather unfortunate choke point. Like, none. Nada. Zip. Zero. Bupkis.

With no other reasonable option, I turn myself around and head up to La Honda, hoping to find a gas station there. Nope. Turns out I need to ride all the way up to Alice's to get gas, and luckily I had just enough fumes left in the tank to make it up there and pay Alice's somewhat premium prices for fuel. I mean it's only got a 4 gallon tank but it's the principle of it.

I had a nice ride back along Skyline and down 9, but I failed to reach the ocean once again. Que sera, I suppose.

A travel blog maybe?

I'm starting to think I should repurpose this blog as a travel blog of sorts, especially since I'm planning to ramp up my touring quite a bit once I get my new motorcycle this fall sometime. In that spirit, here's a short entry for today's travels...

I was feeling a bit of cabin fever on the way home from work today, riding Scooty-Puff Sr south on 85, so instead of taking a left on the Stevens Creek exit I decided to take a right with the thought of hopping over the hills to go see the ocean. You know, just look at it for a few minutes, then ride back home.

As it turned out, even though it was a balmy 20c down here in the valley, the air was quite a bit chillier as I rode up Stevens Canyon and Redwood Gulch, so I decided to make it a shorter ride and just go across Skyline to Page Mill to make a loop.

About part way up Highway 9 the traffic ground to a halt, and I split past the cars to the head of the line to see an accident had occurred, a perfectly aligned  head-on collision between a car and an SUV, with a sufficient impact force to origami-weld the two cars together. Thankfully the local authorities were quick to clean up the mess and I continued along my merry way. I considered snapping a photo, but I didn't know if that would be considered impolite?

Anyway, the ride across Skyline was delightful despite the somewhat wet and dirty roads. There were quite a few places where mudslides had encroached onto the pavement, though they'd been cleaned up sufficiently such that they weren't impeding traffic. I should mention that Stevens Creek was a whitewater torrent, and the Stevens Canyon Reservoir was nearly bursting its banks. Drought is over, everyone start wasting water again!

The ride did serve to remind me why I'm replacing Scooty-Puff Sr though, as my butt started to go numb for the last 15 minutes of the ~1hr ride.

That pesky Scaphoid

The story so far...

It all started on a sunny Easter Sunday afternoon. I had just got my bicycle, The Red Devil, tuned up and fitted with a new chain, and I decided there was no better time to give it a shakedown ride.

I headed out shortly before lunch time and made my way up Stevens Canyon road. It was a nice gentle uphill ride with the option to turn up Redwood Gulch road if things were looking good and I wanted a bit of pain. As luck would have it the bike was riding great and I was feeling good so I took the opportunity to hang a left and grind up Redwood Gulch.

As luck would have it, I arrived at the base of the climb just behind another rider who seemed to be climbing at roughly the same pace as me, so I used that as encouragement to keep my own climb going on pace rather than slowing right down as I might be tempted to do.

The climb was pretty tough going and about half way up I gave up on the idea of being a manly man of manliness and stopped at the side of the road to catch my breath. This was a mistake, as my blood pressure and pulse rate immediately crashed. I tried to control it with some careful breathing, but the world was starting to feel a bit fuzzy so I decided it might not be a bad idea to lay down for a moment.

When I regained consciousness I felt very relaxed and rejuvenated, the feelings only slightly tempered by my disappointment of discovering that I was, indeed, still laying in the dirt half way up a mountain and not taking a nice peaceful nap on my couch at home. It was also at this point that I first remember noticing a pain in my ribs, but after reluctantly dusting myself off and waving off a few concerned motorists I decided to continue the climb. This was also the point where I noticed that I was pedaling two gears higher than I thought I was, which explains why I had such a hard time of it and had to pull off.

I geared down properly this time and then set off up the hill again, adjusting my pedaling so as to not irritate my mysteriously sore rib. The rest of the climb up to highway 9 went uneventfully, and I chose to head back down rather than pushing my luck by continuing up the hill to Skyline.

Riding down highway 9 is always a spectacular rush, and this ride was no different, easily hitting 40+mph. I had the option at the bottom of the hill of either dealing with the reasonably flat route full of traffic by heading up Sunnyvale-Saratoga, or taking a left onto Pierce road for a mildly hilly back-road route.

I decided on the latter, and as the left turn onto Pierce approached I slowed to about 25 or so and geared down for the steep uphill at the start. Then shit went down.

I heard a loud grinding and my bicycle lurched backwards, and I could immediately tell that my rear wheel had somehow locked up. I did everything I could to keep myself upright as the rear wheel unpredictably alternated between sliding uncontrollably while locked up and grabbing the road as it managed to rotate for a fraction of a rotation at a time.

My valiant effort to save the situation was in vain as a particularly bad lurch dropped the bike out from under me, and I flew off and hit the pavement, landing heavily on my hands and left knee.

I immediately suspected I might be properly injured as I noticed a characteristic weakness in my left hand, but I didn't concern myself with it immediately. The visible damage to myself included a bit of a scuff on both palms, a bruise on my left elbow, and a nice scrape on my left knee.

A quick inspection of my bike revealed the cause of the disaster: the chain had fallen off the larger gear on the cassette and got itself wrapped up in the spokes of the rear wheel, ripping off both derailleurs and making as right mess of the chain itself. The frame was also dented on the seat stay where the rear derailleur struck it after it had been turned into a metal pretzel, which had bent the frame enough that the rear wheel was just noticably not sitting straight, and was in fact resting against the left brake pad.

A friendly couple with a station wagon had stopped to help, and I bummed a ride home with them. During the ride I inspected my wrist and couldn't find anything too wrong with it save for the weakness, so I didn't think an immediate trip to the ER was needed. I iced it once I got home, and decided to hit up the hospital the next morning, and then take the remains of my bike back to the shop to file an official complaint.

So Monday rolled around and I drove myself to the hospital. The visit was quite uneventful and I got a half dozen X-rays of my wrist done, followed by a diagnosis of a fractured scaphoid. They applied a splint and gave me some post care instructions and directed me to follow up with an orthopedist. I didn't examine the X-rays myself, and the post care instructions indicated that scaphoid fractures are often difficult enough to diagnose that they're sometimes treated as if they were broken even without a positive diagnosis, so it left me questioning whether I had actually successfully broken the bone or not.

The visit to the orthopedist on Wednesday cleared up any doubt, however, as I was able to examine the X-rays myself and see the fracture clear as day. I got a CT scan done to evaluate whether the fracture was displaced (it wasn't) and the orthopedist told me that, with the location of the fracture approximately half way through the bone I had the option to either treat it with casting alone for 8-12 weeks, or with surgery to install a screw followed by 4 weeks in a cast.

I opted for the surgery and had the screw installed on Friday morning. On Wednesday I go back in to have the post-surgery dressing and splint replaced by a proper cast, and then sometime around the end of May I'll get out of the cast and into a brace for a little while longer, and then I'll basically be done save for the usual physiotherapy for post-immobilization joint recovery.

The bike shop will be rebuilding my bike for free, so with any luck I should be back out on two wheels by August maybe? Hard to tell, we'll see how it goes.

Flexing my green thumb

(Post is backdated because I'm a lazy mofo)

Today I finally got around to doing something about my barren, desolate patio. (Pretend the pots in the corner aren't there yet)

I started pretty early in the day to avoid the heat, and set out to a garden center in search of bamboo. The first place I tried had some, but none of it was suitable for the planting I had planned. It was either too wide, too tall, or too invasive. The story was much the same at the second place, but they off hand mentioned that there's a bamboo specialty grower over the hills in Aptos, so after mulling it over a bit I decided to take the plunge and head on over.

I initially made my way over to 17 to get across the hills to Santa Cruz, but given it was the 4th of July weekend, the traffic was backed up all the way past 85, so I quickly ducked off again and took highway 9 instead. I have to say that 9 is a very, very pleasant road, and for future reference looks to be quite bikeable.

It didn't take me too long to get through Santa Cruz and over to Aptos, and just after lunch I arrived at Bamboo Giant. After discussing the various options with the staff there, I settled on getting 3 small pots of Alphonse Karr bamboo, and loaded up to head home.

On the way back, highway 1 was a bit clogged up heading towards Santa Cruz, but 17 was basically clear sailing all the way back into the valley, so that was nice.

Finally arriving home sometime mid-afternoon (around 3:30 according to the timestamp on the first picture), after a quick stop off at Home Despot for some appropriate tools, I set to work getting the bamboo into the ground. It would be a simple matter of turning the soil, dividing the 3 bamboo into 6, and then planting them.

Simple.

Turns out that the dirt along the fence where I was planning to plant the bamboo hadn't been dug up since sometime in the 60s or 70s when this apartment complex was first built, and was additionally used as a bit of a construction dump for the plasterers to dump their excess materials. Lovely. Digging up that 20 cubic feet of dirt took a solid 2 hours of work, but once it was done I was only left with the relatively simple task of dividing and planting the bamboo.

I say relatively simple, since this bamboo grows a rather tightly bound wad of rhizomes that was a hell of a challenge to cut through. I did manage, though, and the results can be seen here below.

If the label on the side of the pots is to be believed, these will eventually grow into a lovely 10 foot wall of green, giving me a nice bit of screening that the low fence rather lacks. Hurray! Provided, of course, that it doesn't object to growing in a bunch of barely organic construction debris. Oh well, if it dies I'll go get some compost to turn into the now much looser dirt and try again.

To California again...

Flying down on Tuesday and back on Thursday. Interviewing with Overland Storage (digital storage, not the other kind).

I'm also trying out the new google blogger app for iOS. So far it's very orange.

No Google for me

Oh well.

The Google interview

Went very well last week. Had a splendid time chatting with the engineers there and enjoyed a delicious free lunch. I'm hoping I might hear back from them next week or so.

In the mean time Barnes and Noble has shown a bit of interest in dragging me in to work on the Nook products, so we'll see if that goes anywhere, and I'll be keeping my resume spread around just in case none of these current opportunities pan out.

On the less job-searchy side, the flights down and back were a huge pain in the ass. A broken plane and subsequently cancelled flight saw me arrive in San Jose very late, and a delay on the way back had me almost miss my connection in Denver. The flights themselves, once we were in the air, were quite nice though. I sat beside some lovely folk, including, by random chance, Chris Wiesehan, the receiver coach for the Blue Bombers, who was a very nice fellow and quite enjoyable to chat with.


The hotel was splendid, though slightly less scenic than the one in Saratoga that Apple had me in. Visits with friends went quite well, much sushi was eaten, and good times were had by all.


I'm really looking forward to getting this all taken care of so I can move down to California and get myself settled and comfortable.

Travel arrangements to the Opt-In Village

I'll be heading down to the Opt-In Village in April for an interview. I'll be flying down on the 21st at 1:30 and arriving at 7:30 in San Jose, and then flying back from San Jose on the 23rd from 11:45 to 7:30. Going through Minneapolis on the way down again, and Denver on the way up instead of Toronto.

Got a hotel room in Mountain View near El Camino and 85 this time, which is a very familiar area for me.

There and back again

The trip down to Apple went pretty well. The flight down was reasonably uneventful, the interviews went splendidly, and then on Saturday everything went to hell (sort of).

It started when I was packing up in the morning: I managed to chip my thumbnail. This was the first in a series of annoying events.

Next up, I managed to get a speeding ticket going to the airport. Got clocked at 88mph while the official speed is 65. Of course, none of the traffic goes anywhere near 65, so the actual speed differential between myself and the rest of the vehicles was fairly negligible. All the same, speeding is speeding. I just hope the fine isn't too huge.

Following this, I arrived at the airport to find that my flight to Toronto was delayed, but that they'd make up the time in the air. This wasn't too terrible. I also had to go through that idiotic porn scanner at the TSA checkpoint.

What was terrible was that my flight from Toronto to Winnipeg, which was already scheduled to arrive in the wee hours of the morning, was delayed by 4 hours due to a little flaky white stuff sprinkling ever so delicately from the sky.

Luckily Pearson has free wifi, so it wasn't a total loss, but rolling in at nearly 5am after a long day in the air wasn't exactly how I was expecting to end my californian visit.

But, all's well that ends well. At least I picked up (with employee discount) a shiny new iPod dock for my Touch while I was down there.

I haven't heard back from Apple yet, but I'll be sure to blog about it when I do.

I'm leaving on a jet plane

I keep promising myself I'll never fly again, but here I am, jetting off to California for 2 days. It's for a good cause, though: an on-site interview at Apple.

Google also dropped me an email and indicated they're interested in an on-site, but I won't have any time in my schedule until April, and if Apple comes back with a decent offer before then I'll probably just go with that. It's kind of a shame they didn't contact me a few weeks earlier or I could have doubled up. Such is life, I guess.

Onward and upward...

Dividing my attention

It occurred to me that with moving to California soon it'll be difficult for the people I leave behind to feel connected to me.

With this in mind, I decided to start up a microblog on tumblr. The plan is that when I get my iPod Touch (eventually) I'll use the camera to post a quick snapshot now and then when I run into something I feel like sharing.

Moreover, I plan to post these pictures without any title or caption because I like the idea of communicating through a restricted medium, and I also want people reading it to use their imagination a bit. Of course, if you see something on there that really intrigues you, you can always email or IM me to ask about it or just remember to bring it up the next time we speak.

If this intrigues you, feel free to drop the RSS feed into your reader. I'm not planning to abandon this blog, I'll still post here when I have something to say with, you know, actual words.

Day 2,3: Twin Falls to Glendive to Winnipeg

(Backdating this post so it lines up to when I originally intended to post it)

The drive from Twin Falls to Glendive was annoying but tolerable. It rained a lot, though there were periods of sun. Sadly it was cloudy when I went through Butte, so I couldn't see the giant Butte'er Jesus on the hill (the internets tell me it's actually a statue of Mary, but it's not easy to tell from the interstate).

The drive from Glendive to Winnipeg was a lot rainier. I think I passed a tornado or two after Grand Forks, and had lightning strike objects within 200ft of the car at least 3 times. I also just barely made it through Morris, as the road through town had started flooding, and was at least 8 inches deep by the time I waded my car through it.

And, to cap it all off, the rain was bad enough that it even stripped some of the paint off my hubcaps.

Day 1: Sunnyvale to Twin Falls

Not much to say, same 'ol drive. My hatred for US93 burns with the fire of a thousand suns.

As with every year, I passed a bunch of freaks headed for Burning Man, including one guy who was driving an old 80s Honda Civic with the roof cut off. Not a convertible, just no roof. As would be expected, a few of the remaining body panels weren't all that well attached either. I'm going to miss California.

Third time's a charm

As I posted previously, I finally got my bike home from the bike shop and have since been riding it to work most every day. I've also taken it up in the hills a few times, and this past weekend on my third attempt I managed to make it to the top of my favourite route, up Moody and Page Mill road. Yay me!

The bike was delightful to ride and handled the hills splendidly. I was originally worried that the gearing might not be low enough, but it turned out to not be a problem.

I probably would have been successful the first two attempts, but it was much hotter on those two days so I ran out of water both times.

And it's about time

I finally brought my bike home from the bike shop today. Riding it with my recovering shoulder isn't 100% comfortable yet, but if I go easy on it it's ok. I'm planning to do a few test rides this weekend, and then hopefully start riding to work next week. Hopefully.

I took a picture of it, as well as some pictures of some other stuff I've picked up over the summer. I'll probably move those pictures around later when I get my gallery set back up properly, but so long as you're not reading this blog post 6 months from now the links should be good.

I still need to mount up my GPS on my bike, so I think I'll go do that, and then take a swim to stretch out my shoulder a bit.

Walk a mile in my shoes, or maybe 7.5 miles

Yesterday (Saturday) I was contemplating taking a quick train ride up to SF to wander around a bit. The purpose of this journey would be twofold: Firstly, it would get me out and about and doing some physical activity, which has been in short supply ever since that little incident with the longboard. Secondly, it would provide an opportunity to drop by an American Apparel store to spend a $5 coupon I have.

Unfortunately two things conspired against me: The item I was hoping to purchase was only available through their online store, and I was feeling a bit off on Saturday morning, and didn't want to be stuck in SF if I should happen to get properly sick.

Thankfully I am undeterred by such minor setbacks, and went about formulating a Plan-B. This plan, as it would turn out, was to take a walk from my apartment over to Stevens Creek Trail. I wasn't sure how much walking I'd be in shape for, so I left open the option to perhaps walk a section of the trail as well, though that didn't turn out to be the case.

I managed to keep up a good pace and walked the 7.5 mile round trip in about 2 hours. I took my GPS along with me (though I haven't downloaded the log yet) and the heart rate monitor showed me keeping me ticker ticking at a good 125-130bpm, which is a nice moderate aerobic level for me.

In case you're dying of curiosity, the exact map of my journey is as thus:


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