My friend Ghost Rider passed away a year ago today. I made good on my promise to him and have ridden to nearby Williamsburg several times on my motorcycles. I went down to Savannah, Georgia on Raptor and am in the early planning phases for a mid-distance trip this fall.

I still see him every time I get on board Cylon, my Yamaha FZ6. His picture is taped to the inside of my Givi top case. Sometimes I laugh with him, sometimes I sigh, sometimes I just comment on how fucking hot or cold it is and nod, like he’d grin and play along. I don’t want to tear up any more when I see him.

Ghost Rider’s family is doing a memorial ride today, but I am staying home. I already made other plans, and to be honest I don’t want to be on the road when most people will be hammered by the time I wake up. I hope there is another memorial ride in the fall.

I miss you buddy.

As I have mentioned several times before on Gibberish, motorcycle gear is a compromise between comfort and safety. In general, leather offers the most abrasion resistance compared to textile fabrics (Kevlar, Cordura, etc), which in turn is better than denim or cotton. The problem is that leather is often the least comfortable in the cold or in the rain. Leather gear is also the least “usable” from a day to day perspective. If you compare a typical leather street jacket to a textile “touring” jacket, the touring jacket has tons of pockets and nifty accessories. One of the things I like the most about my Tourmaster Transition 2 jacket is the tiny key pocket. It is a lot easier to grab my keys from there instead of fumbling about in a giant storage pouch.
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This is day one on my trip out to California. I spent some time on the highway and had the chance to watch Californian motorcyclists in action on “the Slab.” I noticed two major and fundamental differences in motorcycle culture between here and Virginia.

The first big difference is that because one is able to ride in California almost year round, people are more aware of motorcyclists out here. People expect to see a cyclopean headlight burning behind them, or a two-wheeled daredevil to their left or right. I’m not saying accidents don’t happen, but there seemed to be more a more “formal” agreement between cyclists and cagers out here.
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I rode home from work in a thunderstorm yesterday. It wasn’t nearly as bad as my return leg home from New York state in 2006, but it was rainy enough that I wanted to get home sooner than later. I was on Cylon, and although he is less prone to being pushed around by the wind, he doesn’t do as good a job at blocking the rain as Raptor does.

I am always baffled by peoples’ reaction to driving in the rain. Yes, I can understand slowing down to allow a greater stopping distance. This is important, especially on a motorcycle. I only have two wheels, and they can either brake or turn effectively at any given time. What boggles me is that people were bunched up just as closely as ever yesterday, but slowed down to about thirty miles an hour.

The rain wasn’t so heavy that I couldn’t see. At 30MPH there isn’t enough force to blow the rain off, so the rain really was pretty light. Honestly, I don’t know what the big deal was except that there was lightning off in the distance and thunder.

Then, just as inexplicably as it began, traffic loosened up and I was doing 80MPH again. I zipped past the storm and had dry pavement all the way home. Turns out the traffic cluster was going almost the exact speed of the storm, and by fucking around at half the speed limit we were exposing ourselves (in my case, literally) to more bad driving conditions.

The more I ride, the more I think people should sit on a bike for two years before they qualify to drive a car. At best, it would help people appreciate actually paying attention when they are operating a vehicle. At worst, they’ll smash into something and we won’t have to worry about them doing other stupid shit on the road.

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.

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 had a doubly-interesting commute on new motorcycle, Raptor. The first item of interest was the weather. I got rained for about twenty minutes. I was geared up, and my textile motorcycle jacket did a great job keeping me dry. Fully extended, the windshield protected my helmet visor from being obscured with rain. Unfortunately the aerodynamics of the bike are such that so much rain accumulated on the screen that I wound up lowering it so I could see … which put rain all over my visor. Six one way, half a dozen the other.

I was zipping down the highway when I approached two dump trucks, traveling single file (to hide their numbers) in the left-hand lane. I passed the first one on the right when I saw some pigeons flying about in the median. I didn’t pay any attention to them but two seconds later there was a shower of feathers in front of the lead dump truck. Apparently one of the birds was so overcome by Firefly’s cancellation it just couldn’t take it any more.

I instinctively ducked under the windshield (fully extended) and rode through a bunch of feathers. I heard a “flthlunk,” and there was a half-dollar sized piece of pigeon … stuff … on the dead center of my windshield. It wound up getting washed away later in the rain, but I can’t help but wonder how that would have felt if I was riding a naked bike.

Anyway, the bike’s doing great. It was just as stable in the downpour this morning as it is on dry land, and now I know it can take a pigeon strike and keep on ticking. ;)

The new job is going really well. I had my first wireframe review with my boss yesterday. I came armed with Visio wireframes and a sheet detailing what I changed and why. I comped three different approaches and gave her a quick run-down on the pros and cons of each. I probably talked a little bit faster than normal, and at the end told her everything was negotiable and asked her if she had any questions. After my experience at my last contract I expected an earful, with borderline accusations about whether or not I was qualified to even do my job.

“Questions? No. Looks great!” she said. “Pass this on to the other project members. Good job.”

Holy shit … maybe it wasn’t me at the last job after all. Crazy ex-boss-lady. ><

The commute is becoming manageable. I have taken some very good advice from Starbuck and take two different routes. The morning route is up the toll road, and the afternoon route is via a longer, but toll-free route. They wind up taking the same amount of time (30 - 45 minutes, depending on accidents). The biggest strength of the afternoon route is that I avoid toll plazas and other slowdowns that make riding a motorcycle less fun.

Speaking of bikes, Raptor has been great. I rode him in two days this week. Cylon looked sad and neglected, so I brought him along today instead. There is such a difference in performance and demeanor between the two bikes I wonder how anyone who hasn’t owned more than one motorcycle can ever say that one type is “better” than the other. What an amazing thing, this motorcycling.

Dogs have been adjusting well — probably too well as I almost want them to be as devastated by the hours apart as I have been. Luckily Starbuck has been taking care of them, as my niece has ducked her responsibilities for watching them during the day. She’s moving out in the next week or so, and I’m glad for many reasons.

The corporate culture over here is a huge shift for me. I wear a dress shirt and dress pants every day, and about half of the people here don’t smile or say hello. It’s as sterile as can be; I’m going to sneak some pics of the “motivational” posters in the stairwells. It feels so Orwellian. Unfortunately (I guess?), the people here are really excited that I’m on board and want me to help them. They have done the best they can, and are either out of their element or too busy to do much more. I almost wish the entire job sucked so that I would be totally happy about leaving when my contract is up, but I feel like professionally this could be a very rewarding experience.

Break time’s almost up. I have discovered that there is an unsecured wireless access point for contractors that doesn’t have the restrictions of the corporate network. I try to stay on for my lunch break and then reconnect to the real network after.

Thanks for reading, I’ve missed writing.