I’ve been riding my motorcycles a lot lately — sometimes for fun, but mostly for the sixty miles round trip I do daily for work.

Every once in awhile, like today, I have a great ride in. I typically have more fun when I ride Cylon and whip around in lighter traffic. Most days, however, it’s just like commuting in a car, with some added twists. The stop-and-go is bad enough in the Mazda, but having to balance a 900 pound motorcycle at idle speeds is rough going. There’s the usual “oh I didn’t see you, Mr. Motorcyclist” phenomenon. And then there are these little gems:

1) I almost got run over by a chicken truck today. There are semi trailers jam packed with white chickens every now and then Route 288 and Highway 64. They’re not that big of a deal, aside from stinking, but today one ambled a little out of its lane. I got a really good look at one of the chickens trapped inside the open-air cagetrailer. I think it blinked at me, but I was too busy shitting my pants and thumbing my horn to be sure.

2) That stupid lady who cut me off in the fast lane and then started to brush her hair while looking into the passenger sun visor mirror. If I had a potato launcher on Raptor I would have spudded her into next week.

3) Another stupid lady who got in went directly from the on ramp to the fast lane without looking and eating yogurt with both hands. What the fuck? Was she using the Force to steer? I guess not, since I flipped her off and she didn’t Force choke me to death.

4) Flying Rat.

5) A ten-wheeled truck that spat rocks all over the road, including one that hit me in the head.

6) Lawn service truck and flatbed trailer that spewed yard clippings along an exit ramp. Gravel and yard trash around a corner are big no-nos for motorcycle stability. This was one of the few times I was glad that traffic was congested; otherwise I may have been going fast enough to tempt a wipe-out.

7) The usual suspects: tail-gating Nissan Altima; runaway SUV with soccer mom yelling at her daughter in the passenger seat; redneck truck with mud splattered on the side and rebel flag license plate. None of these are noteworthy by themselves, but together they are a goofy rogue’s gallery of the Anti-Motorcycle League.

I am going to start filming my commutes soon, that way we can all point and laugh at the yogurt eaters everywhere, albeit it with our middle fingers.

I am up against an interesting problem here at work. They don’t allow access to instant messaging services, Web email, social networking sites, or gaming sites. It makes hard for me to take a mental break every once in awhile, and I have felt very disconnected from my online friends and previous co-workers.

I’ve explored ways to get around the network limitations. I purchased a new phone, the Verizon xv6900 (known elsewhere as the HTC Touch) to handle email. I can also sign onto AIM for instant messaging, but the lack of a hardware keyboard makes IMing kind of a pain in the ass.

There is an “unauthorized” open 802.11 wireless access point here at work. There are a few problems with using this full-time, however. One is that it is, well open. I trust in SSL to encrypt my traffic, but not everywhere I visit is behind the HTTPS protocol. The other drawback is that if I am on the open network I can’t get my work-related email, or be logged into our work-specific instant messaging system. I want to multi-home, and this isn’t possible with my current hardware setup.

There was also the option of using the phone as a wireless modem via Verizon’s high speed EVDO network. After fucking around with the phone and my work laptop off and on for a week, I finally got it working today.

Here are my speed and latency results.
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My daily commute — about sixty miles — plus my entry about the Smart car yesterday led me to thinking about fuel prices and how they impact my bottom line. Gas going to four dollars a gallon doesn’t make a real difference in my commuting. certainly not to the point where I would move closer to work, change jobs, or change vehicles solely for the sake of saving money on gas. So I asked myself, “Self? How much of your daily earnings would you have to spend a day before money spent on commuting forced a lifestyle change?”

Here’s the math. All of my vehicles take premium gas, at $4 a gallon. I am spending less than $11 a day on gas if I drive my Mazda to work. This is my “worst-case” scenario, as the turbocharged four-cylinder battlewagon sucks gas down at 22MPG. If I ride my BMW to work I cut my daily fuel expenditure down to $4.80. A worst, I spend far less than 1% of my daily salary on fuel.

So at what point would I start giving a shit about my commuting fuel expenditures? I am guessing that gas would have to take up 5% of my daily salary to even make a realistic blip on my financial radar. I would complain about the cost of going to work, but the money I make would more than justifies the fuel expense. There just aren’t any equivalent jobs on this side of Richmond.

I think gas would have to equate at LEAST 25% of my daily earnings before I made a significant lifestyle change. I may move closer to work because I feel like I am wasting my time spending 90 to 120 minutes a day in transit. I may buy a more fuel efficient car because I feel like it’s the “right” thing to do. I may change jobs to something closer because I am fed up with my current one. But the cost of daily driving has nothing to do with that decision. And probably won’t unless we run out of gas and it skyrockets to $50 a gallon or more.

At what percentage would gas prices make you change your lifestyle?

I walked out of my building at work about two weeks ago. I noticed that there was a bright yellow Smart ForTwo car in the visitors parking lot. I decided not to buy one after being one of the first people in Virginia that was awarded a reservation over a year ago. The ForTwo was too slow and was too inefficient for the tradeoffs of such a small vehicle. If the car could have gone over 82MPH or got more than 35 – 40MPG around town my purchase plans may have turned out differently.

Anyway, that’s not the point of my post. A week passed and I noticed a few people clustering around the ForTwo in the parking lot. They were all peering inside and gesturing, so I figured the owner was not among them. I was curious to talk to whomever bought the ForTwo to see if they shared the same reservations that I had about the vehicle’s performance on the highway. I reckoned that the owner traveled on surface streets between home and office. I never saw anyone get in or out of the ForTwo, and it never moved. I asked my manager what was up with the little yellow car in the parking lot.

“Oh, someone who was escorted out of the building last week bought it as a company car. He thought it would save fuel economy and speak to the company’s conservation image. I think it just sits there now.”

I didn’t have an immediate response other than “wow.” Those three sentences were really rich, and it’s taken me awhile to consider the implications. I found it interesting, and a little rebellious, to think that a company of 5000 people (on campus) would find merit in having even one Smart company car. It seemed more like a idyllic statement than a reality: surely it wasn’t cost effective to buy $15,000 cars for the cost savings of our motoring sales and executive force. Speaking of executives, I highly doubt the muckity-mucks upstairs would ditch their company-purchased Lexuses, Acuras, BMWs and Mercedes for a car that barely seats two. Lastly, I wondered who had the purchasing authority for a $15,000 car. It took me forever to get the latest version of Visio installed on my machine.

If you think none of this adds up to a sound business decision, you’re not alone. What is still an open question is if the person who bought the car was fired because of this car purchase, or because of other issues.

The car was gone in the parking lot today — I wonder if the company sold it or if someone is actually using it. It would be a hoot if my employer used it as a company car, especially after getting rid of the person who brought it onboard in the first place.

Around. On my trip, that is. After waffling on whether or not to take my motorcycle, and if I should wear my textile or leather gear, I wound up jumping on my bike in the rain and heading down to Savannah, Georgia for the weekend.

I’ve said this before: good gear, and the right gear, will make or break a motorcycle trip.

I had such a bad mismatch between gear and weather it’s made me rethink my cross-country trip in June of this year.
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I planned on riding Raptor down to Savannah, Georgia this weekend to spend some time with friends from Ars Technica. I’ve been planning this trip for awhile, and I hoped this would be the “shake-down” cruise for my cross-country trip in June.

The problem is that there’s a 30% chance of thunderstorms when I’m traveling from Richmond to Georgia. And it’s supposed to be bloody hot.

I have gear to handle one or the other. My textile waterproof jacket will be great if I get caught in a storm, but it won’t breathe as well as my perforated leather gear. However, leather soaks up water like a sponge if I do get caught in the rain. I think either way I am going to be uncomfortable.

There is the option on bailing on the motorcycle altogether and driving my Mazda down. Just seems like a waste of an opportunity to ride.

Would you rather be rain-soaked and cooler, or dry but burning up? It’s supposed to be 90°F over the weekend; the warmest I’ve been in textile is 84°F and it was unpleasant but tolerable. I think I may go with the leather and deal with the consequences.

I’ve owned my BMW KT 1200 LE motorcycle for about five weeks now. I knew I was in for a huge change from Cylon, my FZ6 sport standard. Cylon weighs just about half of what Raptor does. I was a mess when I got my BMW. It felt like I was learning to ride all over again. I almost dumped the bike at the first stoplight because it was so heavy and I couldn’t “cheat” on my technique by muscling the bike. Raptor felt big, oafish, and clumsy.

I suspected, but now firmly believe, that this has more to do with me than it does with the bike.
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I thought I’d post another one of these while I eat lunch, since we all seemed to like the other one so much.

This is one of the motivational posters in the stairwell at work:

I hate to bag on it, but here we go.

What the hell does this mean? I think it’s something about being collaborative, but it could also be about lending enthusiasm. Or expertise. Or maybe it’s a suggestion for people dropping nasty shits in the bathrooms: BRING A CANDLE.

I work for a very large company that has a ton of money. Why can’t we hire someone who knows the difference between “its” and “it’s?” At least they didn’t type “looses” instead of “loses.”

Gather ’round, and listen to ol’ DrFaulken talk about the biggest piece of crap he’s ever had the displeasure of buying.

A GPS should do the following things:

1. Get you from point A to point B according to your preferences.
2. Quickly receive a GPS signal.
3. Be accurate.
4. Contain current maps and points of interest (POI) relevant to time of manufacture. I don’t expect a GPS unit made in 2003 to ship with current maps, for example.

I really liked my Garmin i5 but there were a few extra features I was looking for that my trusty car-mounted GPS lacked:

• Handheld and portable. I wanted to have a GPS that I could take with me once I left my car (or motorcycle). I get lost easily, and as such don’t venture out on foot once I reach my destination. I hoped a handheld unit would change that a little.
• Touch screen. It’s 2008. I didn’t mind the i5 not having a touch screen, but if I am going to buy a current-gen GPS device I want it to have a few more bells and whistles.

The Navigon 2100 did a great job at being portable, but as far as all of my other criteria? Hand me a compass, please. And I don’t even know how to fucking use one of those.
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I thought you might like to see what my dogs do while I am slaving away to make enough money to buy them cookies.

Sorry for the quality, they came from a cameraphone but were just so cute I had to post them.
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