well after I scraped the required money together to:

• buy shin guards for ashley
• buy a jacket for ashley
• buy a chest/back protector for me

I drove happily home and promptly got a flat tire. Which surprise surprise cost 300$ to replace. Luckily nothing happened and some other rider pulled over and helped me to get the bike of the highway and to his 'biker society meeting' where they patched the tired and inflated it, so that I could get home.

Now tomorrow we will move the bike to the shop and waiting to hear the bill. Since I have these wonderful absolutely ridiculous expensive tires, which are most likely have to be special ordered, will translate into me not taking the bike to twainheart and eating oatmeal and top ramen for the rest of the month.

I never felled so stranded in my life and reminded me to the conversation last weekend.


Gert: Tj, short question. I'm doing a 400 mile kit and thought a tire plug kit would be a good idea
Tj: it's so rare that a tire blows out or goes flat, you really can save these 165$ right now and invest them in some protection

today:


Gert: Tj guess waht,
Tj: what?
Gert: remember the conversation about tire plugs last weekend
Tj: yip what about it?
Gert: guess... I got a flat and I'm stranded...

The people standing around me just cracked up...

Well 3 days ago I got paid and this means I started to full fill my promise to ashley and start shopping with her for motorcycle gear. So she is nice and save in the back of the bike.

So far we only got a helmet for her and found one jacket which fit her. But we did not buy the jacket yet, Main reason is that it's a very new brand and I can't find much informations about there quality.

I one the other hand bought a mesh jacket for the summer, which was reduced by 60% and should keep me cool.

Now I'm really unhappy with my pants. Why?

Well my legs are too long and the knee protection is more in the thigh area, than over the knees And after riding home tonight, avoiding 2 animals and about 40 garbage bags randomly spread over the highway I started thinking.

Is what I have enough or maybe should I improve some things?

My main thinking was a dedicated Knee/Shin protector and a dedicated hard back/spine protector.

I'm quite sure that I invest the 70$ into the knee/shin protector for my 400 mile trip in 2 weeks. But 230$ for a back protector is to much right now.

Let's see if I can sell the following things on craigslist right now

• ebook reader - 150-200$ - it works, but books are so much nicer and people constantly asking me what it is, well I like to be left alone and read. I have my anti social moments...
• volkswagen tools - 50$ sold
• code reader - 80$ sold
• 2 speed sensors - 120$
• tele converter - 100$
• ramps - 20$
• head phones - 150$
• xbox 360 + Games 250$ sold

the more I think about it, the more I think that 400$ are nothing compared to being paralyzed/dead

currently we have wonderful thunderstorms in davis and I didn't know about it. Sure it was raining, but that was not unheard of before and I live in a little area which is quite wind sheltered.

So I drove to work this morning and as soon as I hit the open road I had to battle crosswinds of up to 50mph. Needless to say I was happy that nothing happens and check now the weather report before I leave the house in the morning, and if it's gusty/windy I'm going to work from home.

It also turns out that my leather gloves are not waterproof and the new jacket is not as waterproof as the old on. Basically the sleeves are soaked and the bike is parked in the delivery area, since I'm affraid the wind topples it over during the day, while I'm waiting for a moment when the storm settles to run home.

after we spend this weekend In yosomete I learned a couple of things.

• snow camping didn't work, since my sleeping bag was to cold and also ashley's spare sleeping bag. So we rented a cabin
  
• snowshoeing didn't work out, since there was not enough snow at our altitude. Guess we have to go to higher altitude. Instead we did a nice hike
• we had a wounderful time together and celebrated our return to davis with a tasty dinner and a bottle of cabernet. Once in a while I actually like dry cabernet.
• sleeping bag liner don't work for me
• my food planning worked well and I love my little camp stove
  

So what do we have to change for the next time?

• buy a new backpack, mine is more or less gone now and rips everywhere. After all it lasted 6 years and traveled over 100k miles on airplanes
• buy a -5 celsius rated sleeping bag for the next winter. It's gonna be pricey and will take a year to acquire
  

 

 

 

the last couple of days I was spending with writing parsers for chemical databases. Like

• Kegg
• BinBase
• Pubchem
• LipidMaps
• Chebi
• HMDB

to integrate them all together to a single database of compounds. During this process I decided to use the inchi key as main identifier over all these databases and just ignore the compounds which don't have an inchi key.

This inolved some rewriting of a couple of open source projects to include the newest inchi specifications and to make some work under osx 64bit snow leopard.

well my Logitech Triple FI arrived around the 22 of December and I put them away to sell them on craigslist. Well this was my honest attention I swear!
But this morning they just kept shouting my name, try us, try us, TRY US. You got us for 100$ instead of 400$. You can always sell us used, once the people sold all there triple fi's and the market recovers.

Well I caved in and listened to them. No pun intended... And have to say, they sound awesome, right out of the box. It's amazing for in ear headphones. They literally blow my RE0 away.

So now I got:

In Ear Headphones:

• Logitech Triple FI for listening to music on the go/at work
  
• Head Fi RE-0 + Foam Tips for riding the motorcycle, they are small enough to fit under the helmet and block the wind noise quite nicely. Still optimizing
  
• Sennheiser CX-400 for listening to audio books (I found them in the back of my closet!)

Full Size:

• AH-D5000 Denons
• Shure SRH-840 (for sale, can't justify keeping them and wanting grados. So they have togo)

after we arrived back from germany I started to research my christmas gift a big more and it turned out to be a combination of:

• tankbag for the bike
• saddle bags for the bike

and I also did exchange my black tourmaster jacket, against a hideous neon yellow Tourmaster jacket. Advantage you can see me much better, disadvantage the cool bike image is gone...

Well I don't have to see myself in the mirror. But the color is damn hideous...

before:

after:

 

now the color I really wanted was sadly not available