In the early days of my foray into the world of motorcycling, one book that I always saw recommended by more experienced riders is Proficient Motorcycling by David L. Hough. It is a collection of articles on riding strategy and technique that Mr. Hough wrote for a motorcycle periodical.
While sometimes repetitive, this book is chock full of very useful information for the new or experienced rider. So much information is presented that it really behooves the reader to read it more than once, or to use it as a reference after a cover-to-cover read. For example, the chapters on managing turns is very valuable because the information is so detailed and immediately usable. Before going out for a ride in the twisties, it pays to review Hough’s advice and guidance on managing sightlines, turn radius, entry points, and overall strategy. He goes into depth on countersteering, traction management, low-speed bike handling, and much, much more. I highly recommend this book to all riders. Buy it from Amazon.com here…
Proficient Motorcycling: The Ultimate Guide to Riding Well
Greetings, readers! This is my first official motorcycle gear review. I plan on writing about all the gear and accessories I purchase for my motorcycle; I will try to be honest in my assessments, and hopefully my experience with these products can be of value to other riders. *Note that I am not affiliated with any of the vendors or merchants listed.
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Product: P3 Lights - LED tail/brake lights and Photon Blaster LED front ’safety’ lights
Price: $149.95 per set (fronts only or rear only) + shipping
Source: www.p3lights.com and www.photonblaster.com (both operated by Skene Design)
Conspicuity is a term used a lot in motorcycling safety discussions, books, articles, and accident studies. The official definition of the word is ”the quality of being conspicuous; obviousness”. There is an increasing acceptance of the role conspicuity plays in rider safety; if other road users can see you, they might be able to avoid hitting you - at least that is the premise. As a new rider, I will take any advantage I can get on the streets, so I wear a motorcycle jacket with neon ‘hi-viz’ yellow accents and a white helmet to help me ’stick out’ to car drivers. Another popular technique to increase conspicuity is to add bright LED lighting to motorcycle itself; there are dozens of options of varying quality and price points for this common modification. The focus of this review is a set of LED lights from a company called Skene Design. I saw these lights on display at my local BMW dealership; they impressed me with the brightness and the user-programmability. At $150 per pair, these are probably the most expensive LED light kits available for motorcycles, but I am a firm believer in the adage that ‘the price is long forgotten when the quality remains’.
First up, the P3 rear LEDs. These lights are installed to the existing license plate frame of the bike, so they sit just to the left and right of the plate.
P3 Lights - rear LEDs
These lights provide triple functionality as tail / running lights, brake lights, and emergency flashers. The tail light function operates at a reduced intensity (but still very bright). Where they differ from other LED lights, however, is their very noticeable flicker that is only visible when viewed from an angle to the rear; drivers directly behind the motorcycle will not notice this faint blinking action. I personally like this feature, since it really gives nearby drivers a highly visible indication of my presence on the road.
read more…
My ‘daily-driver’, the car I use to commute back and forth to work, is a very sensible but also very boring 2005 Honda Civic. It provides me exactly what I need for the approx. 60 mile round trip…a stereo, air conditioning, and protection from the elements. What it does not provide me, is excitement in any form. Sure, it has a 5-speed manual so I get to ‘row my own gears’ as the car magazines like to say, but I went with the manual mostly because it was cheaper to buy and returns slightly better gas mileage that the auto.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been contemplating the addition of a motorcycle to my garage. Well…I found one - and it is perfect. That Suzuki I wrote about earlier? My local dealers were all out. So to Craigslist I went, and this one was calling my name…
My new favorite toy
It is a 1996 Honda CB750 Nighthawk - a terrific ‘do-it-all’ motorcycle. A couple of phone calls later it was mine. Since it was located about 170 miles from me, my brother in law, who lives about 15 miles away from the seller, trailered to my house. Thanks, Erik! It has just 6900 miles on it, and is in really great shape for its age. In the three weeks or so that I’ve owned it, I’ve done the following:
- new tires
- oil change
- chain cleaning and lube
- new fairing (the yellow one in the pic may look cool, but it offered no real wind protection)
- auxiliary LED lights front and rear (look for another post on these!)
- a homemade camera mount for recording my rides
I’ve purchased some quality protective gear, including of course a full-face helmet, armored and abrasion-resistant motorcycle jacket and pants, boots, and gloves.
read more…
Here I go again. Three years ago, I got the itch to learn to ride a motorcycle. I signed up for and completed the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s Basic Rider Course at the local community college. I had a great time and passed the skills test easily. Got the little ‘M’ endorsement on my license and my darling wife even gave me ‘permission’ to get a bike! Funny thing happened though…I decided not to buy one. I just felt like the time wasn’t quite right. I was still mulling over the risks, and whether I’d have time to ride. I concluded that a motorcycle would probably spend more time in the garage than on the road, so I punted.
Here it is, almost exactly three years from when I got my M license, and the itch has returned. Mostly because of this:
2009 Suzuki TU250X
This cool little bike is nothing less than the rebirth of what is known as the classic 70’s “UJM”, or Universal Japanese Motorcycle. With a 250cc engine, it is on the lowest end of the power scale - but that’s exactly what the novice rider needs to develop good skills - a forgiving bike that will tolerate some inadvertant hamfisted-ness. It also happens to be a thoroughly modern bike - it is even fuel injected! (Some purists will thumb their noses at that, I’m sure.) Now Honda has had their venerable Nighthawk standard available for ages - also a 250cc but it’s still carbed and uses drum brakes for both wheels. Sorry, no thanks. But this new-to-the U.S. Suzuki - this is a stylish standard motorcycle that I could really enjoy. Oh, and it costs just $3800 - a damn good price for a new bike. I should note that a lot of riders recommend that newbies buy a used Ninja 250, ride it for a year and then trade up. The rationale here is that a new rider will definitely drop their first bike, and why mess up a brand new motorcycle? That may be true, and it is probably good advice, but let’s face it - the decision to buy ANY motorcycle is emotional, not rational. In some countries, the motorbike is the primary means of transportation, but in the U.S., motorcycles are generally instruments of leisure. It is no different for me.
I have more thinking to do on this. I haven’t made the commitment to buy yet, but that itch…it really needs scratching! Look for more on this topic in future posts, and possibly a dedicated page if I take the two-wheeled plunge.
So h
Barack Obama Sworn In
I spent the inauguration with some neighbors, and we celebrated the return to sanity in our country’s leadership. I was a big Obama supporter during the campaign, and was very excited to watch his historic inauguration ceremony. There were applause, laughter, even some tears - one of my neighbors was a local Obama organizer, and had really put a lot of money and effort into the campaign and she was very emotional.
Most important to me, the Obama presidency signifies two major paradigm shifts. First, a return to aggressive diplomacy and a realization that the US should not act unilaterally unless absolutely necessary. This is essential to restore our standing and regain the respect of our allies. Second, a return to health care, environmental, and educational policy shaped by real science, not just by religious conviction.
Winter Blues - Part 1
OK, not the seasonal affective disorder / depression type of blues…I’m talking about about “frozen-pipes-that-burst-causing-a-huge-mess” blues. I forgot to winterize my front hose bib, and during our recent bout of sub-freezing weather, the water left in the line froze and split the pipe in my basement. Fortunately it was noticed very quickly, and I was able to keep the damage to a minimum. I still had to rip down some drywall and remove some framing studs to get to the pipe, but it should only cost me about $400 to get everything fixed up.
Winter Blues - Part 2
The dreaded “Wintry Mix” - that’s what we just got here in the mid-atlantic. Snow, to sleet, to freezing rain. Ugh. Why can’t we just have a good ol’ fashioned snow storm? Several weeks ago, the meteorologists over at The Capital Weather Gang wrote a lengthy essay on the changing climatology of this region - it’s very interesting stuff. Well, whatever the cause of the scarcity of snow around here, I believe we are due for a big one.
What an incredible situation, and so glad that no lives were lost in what certainly could have been a tragic scene. This picture was taken by Janis Krums and posted via Twitter. Krums was on one of the ferries that responded to the scene to assist. I know this is a big picture, but it’s worth way more than 1000 words.
Those passengers were very fortunate for several reasons:
- They were flying on plane commanded by an extremely talented and expert pilot (and first officer).
- The flight attendants appear to have done an exceptional job preparing the passengers and then evacuating the aircraft. Their training really paid off in this incident. When you fly, the flight attendants always tell you “they are here for your safety”, well…they mean it.
- The NY Waterway ferries that run back and forth across the Hudson River were very quick to respond to the scene. According to witness reports, many passengers just stepped off the wing right onto the ferry boat.
- Lastly, major kudos have to go to the Airbus airframe and flight control engineers for designing a plane so robustly that it can remain completely intact in a hard water ditching as occurred here. I read over on the Airliners.net forum that the flight control system actually has a program that the pilot can engage, that allows for control of the aircraft without any power. There is a myth that jet aircraft cannot really survive a ‘water landing’, but it has happened in the past and this is another example of the extreme engineering that goes into these planes.
Simply an amazing story, and again, I’m very happy that everyone was OK!
File this one under “where there is a need, there is usually a product to fill it”.
When my kids have to take a shower, it always seems like the water is running for five minutes before they ever get in. So not only are we wasting water, we are also wasting electricity as we have an all-electric house. Enter the Roadrunner Eco-Friendly Showerhead.
This little example of ingenuity solves all my water-wasting, energy-sapping troubles related to my kids’ shower times. First, it is a low-flow 1.59 gpm head that saves water when it’s in use, but the stream is so powerful, you would never know. But the real magic is the ‘ShowerStart’ feature, its ability to sense the temperature when you first start running the hot water. When it detects that the water has reached approximately 95 deg. Fahrenheit, it slows the water flow to a trickle, keeping the hot water in the pipe, but not letting gallons go down the drain. Once you are ready to get into the shower, you simply flip the little valve on the side of the head (a quick pull on the little cable does the trick) and the water resumes its normal flow! Very clever, and it works exactly as described. You already have a low-flow shower head that you love? No problem, for about $30, you can buy a ShowerStart adapter to get the great water saving benefits I described, without changing out your current shower head!
These products are available from several online retailers, but I purchased from Greenfeet, a long-time web purveyor of eco-friendly products. I highly recommend them!
I would like to work on the IBM product marketing team that decides how much to charge for upgrade components. I am convinced they are passing around a pipe of some sort, and munching on some fungi of dubious origin - it has to be quite the party! Why do I say such things? Read on.
A client of my employer, for whom we host and manage a large e-Commerce web site, has a couple of IBM p5 p560 servers running a clustered Oracle database. Each of these two servers has 32GB of RAM. When I had IBM help spec out these servers about 18 months ago, they configured the memory in a way that filled all the slots. Now, the client is asking to upgrade to 64GB of memory. Since all the slots are filled, it means removing everything and installing larger memory modules. OK, that’s a PITA, but not the worst of it. The quote I received back from IBM for 64GB of memory? $65,000!!! YES, THAT’S RIGHT…SIXTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS…or a little over $1000 per GB of RAM. Now remember, the client has TWO servers, we are talking about over $130,000 to upgrade the memory in their servers. That is CRAZY! I went back to the original server quote, and the memory was exactly half the price per GB. Why? Here’s the answer. IBM has come out with the new generation of servers in this class- the Power6. IBM really wants to sell more Power6 servers. By making the upgrade paths on the previous models so outrageously expensive, IBM is not-so-covertly trying to pursuade the owners of Power5 servers to just replace the entire server with the newer model. While IBM may consider that good business, I think it is devious.
Disclaimer: As with all posts on this blog, the above contains my opinions and mine only. For my complete disclaimer, please click ‘About Me’ at the top of this page.
In my last post about the new range for the kitchen, I mentioned that I was replacing a couple of appliances. Well, here is the other one:
This is the Maytag Bravos MVWB800VU high-efficiency top-loading washing machine.
For several reasons, a front loader (which is obviously all the rage these days) would not work in our laundry room. However, I still wanted the water- and energy-savings available from a high-efficiency washer. Like many families with young kids and both parents working, we do a lot of laundry - mostly on the weekend. It was a toss-up between this model, and a Fisher & Paykel ‘Aquasmart’. It came down to price and service availability. I was able to purchase the Maytag at a pretty significant discount thanks to a friends work-related discount program. I had heard that there were some quality issues with Maytag after they became part of the Whirlpool family of companies a few years ago, but I am hoping those issues have been addressed. To be safe, I am going to spend $115 on a 3-year extended service plan once the included 1-year warranty expires.
Check back in a couple of weeks for my review of this appliance, after we receive the machine and we get some experience with it.
OK, maybe I’m spoiling myself just a little. First, it’s a brand new latex mattress. Now, it’s a new range for our kitchen. No worries - I’ve been saving up for these purchases for a while; I’m not going into debt or taking out a second mortgage. We needed a couple of new appliances - first, our stove. It’s about eight years old, and is just about as basic as you get - a true ‘builder special’. Its time is up, soon to be replaced by this beauty:
This is a Jenn-Air 30″ Double Oven Freestanding Electric Range with Convection, model number JER8895BAS. This little cooking dynamo will be such a huge step up from our basic GE, four-coil, non-convection dinosaur.
I can’t wait to get roasting, baking, boiling, broiling, sauteeing, brazing, searing, toasting (yes, that top oven can be a toaster!)…well, you get the idea.
I’ll write more once I have it installed and I get a chance to put it through some culinary paces.
Can you tell that I take my cooking really seriously? Stay tuned!
