oh the perfect toy for me, I'm resisting since 2 month...

ut I'm also resisting this, this, this and this

At the last weekend I've gone for my first longer ride with the R6 and slowly start reaching the conclusion that this might be not the ideal form of long distance transportation.

Don't get me wrong it's a lot of fun and I enjoy 2 hour rides, but that's pushing it. After 3 hours I felt miserable, after 4 I just wanted to toss it into a corner. (Happily I did not run into any corners) and after 5 hours I was seriously considering selling it and getting a cruiser like this (2009 V-Star 950, they are really comfortable). Luckily there are none for sale on craigslist right now, except for 650s which are to small for me...

Yes I'm considering selling the bike, since it's more a toy at the current point in time, but it makes no sense with the current visa issue and I really need to stop being so impulsive.

So I started reading up what I can do to make it more comfortable

• buy another seat - 300$
• buy a bigger windshield - 80$
• throttle lock - 100$

out of options. I do have a tire patch kit now...

Translates into one thing for sure, except for getting coffee or short rides ashley is not gonna be on the bike and for sure not comfortable. I might give it a try for a road trip in a couple of months and limiting my self to 200-300 miles a day. Once I figure out how to get corners right. The bike is just so unstable and the advice from a fellow rider is not really helping

if the corner says 20mph go at least 40-50mph otherwise the bike topples over to easily.

I'm not going faster than the recommended speed in such a corner. Sure to take a 50mph corner with 60-70mph is not the big problem. But I'm happy to get around a series of 25-30mph corners.

Otherwise our weekend was great, after me being lost for 3 hours in the mountains and having the battery die on me in on 'Big Hill Road' (yes it was a big hill)...

Well we enjoyed 4 days of reading, relaxing and wood chopping. Oh and don't forget, some tasty tasty cooking. Ashley and I both realized our relationship really evolves around food and traveling.

completely unrelated, I start to consider thinking that the R6 is maybe a bit much and belongs to a race track and not to the street...
Short I try to take the advanced riders course next month, if time and money permits.

Update:

after sleeping a night and reading up this morning on how to take curves and testing it I still love 'jasmine' she just needs to be treated right and a more comfortable seat...

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

all flights are canceled. Well this is the current state of my vacation this year.

Now time to find some new flights, rebook them and get reimbursed for my loss of time and planning.

I'm kinda glad I got travel insurance and flight insurance for this trip.

So yes right now my flight from tomorrow is canceled and I will be in berlin a bit later. New flight is supposed to be on sunday...

...We shall see...

I'm driving car's since years and never actually considered changing anything on them. As long as there running I'm happy.

Now with the motorcycle, well I got it since 2 weeks now and did already the first modification to it. I replaced the standard light bulbs with some fancy high lumen light bulbs. And boy what a difference these make, I'm finally able to see something on the highway at night and feel save driving on it.

So far defiantly the most rewarding 100$ I invested so far and cheaper than fixing a couple of broken bones, because I didn't see the pothole at 75mph.

I also know that I will install the same light bulbs in the next car I own, I'm just amazed at the difference. It's really light and day.

planned for 2010, taking the bike camping in yosomete and later yellowstone.

required setup?

Something to work on in the next 4 month while I get my riding skills up.

required

tankbag
saddle bags

Today I learned something new, how to push start a motorcycle and I have to admit it's a heck of a workout.

I got a call from a friend around 4pm that she is stranded and needs someone to deliver a can of gas to her car, sure not the big deal.
I was a bit frustrated since I just cleaned and lubed to chain, which was supposed to rest overnight. Reason being is that the lube can soak into the seals completely and 30 minutes are recommended, but a night was supposed to be better.

Anyway after riding to her house and picking up the gas, my bike didn't start anymore. Reason being, no electricity. At this point I remembered, wait I had the high beams running, while the engine was off. To keep the engine fan running, while lubing the chain. Seems that a motorcycle battery is drained much quicker than a car battery. In like 45 minutes or so...

So I googled on my trusty IPhone and found out that I can push start the bike, I just have to move it in first or second gear and it should fire up. 20 Minutes later I realized that the success is higher, if you turn the kill button off... Once this was done the bike stuttered and fired right up.

Guess I put in a new battery after my Christmas vacation, since I'm quite sure that the battery will be drained after being in the garage for 3 weeks, without running. And my car battery charger can't be used on the bike.

Also to take off the seat to reach the battery is kinda sad...

Since we had some sunshine today, the weather was nice and warm. So I decided to visit my girlfriend in sacramento on the bike and drive down the old river road.


View Larger Map


Well the idea was good, but turned sour wet after I hit a mild rain in woodland. But motivated as I was I still kep going and the tunes of pink floid - pusle joined me at the ride. I was successfully avoiding the squirrel of doom and this time there was no stray dog on the road (last time I went this way I ended up in the dirt with the truck, to avoid hitting a stray dog)

65 Minutes later I arrive happy and toasty warm in sacramento. Sure my clothes were dripping wet. But my outfit kept me warm and dry more less. Even the glove liner worked well enough at this 50F day (10 degree celsius) and we went to the store to look at some warmer gloves for me. I was kinda scared about driving back and not finding the road again. (No GPS on the bike and ihpone/TomTom are not cooperating)

Sadly it turned out they had no decent gloves at the store. I mean they have at least 500 pair of gloves, but not the ones I was looking for and there 'winter' gloves were a joke in the first place. The only gloves I liked and which were warm and toasty (and heated with an additional plugin!) were way to expensive. At least I got a 10$ neck warmer, which makes live much nicer. Than we stopped at REI so that Ashley can get some warm clothes for Germany.
It's great that she plans ahead instead of freezing her toes off, that's going to be my job anyway. Since we all know that I'm always freezing.

after I left work today I got surprised by the rain and it was so slippery that I decided to work the rest of the day from home.

Well I guess rest of the day is meant literally, since it's now 9.45pm and I'm still working. It looks like I fall into old habits and working on friday nights. Which turned out to be not the smartest thing todo, judged by past expiriences.

Anyway I decided to stop at the store and reward my self with some good chocolate, apple sauce and a 20 year old port. It's been a while since I had nice wine.

Since it was raining I finally had a bit time to take some pictures of jasmine instead of always riding her or trying to learn to control her.

So just some quick shot's from the garage and I will try to provide some better shot's once the weather is nice and I take her outside for a long ride.

Isn't she beautiful? She even has character. Today the horn and rear signal stopped working.

I already got the signal fixed, loose connection and I guess the horn is the same issue.

the biggest scam in the states seems to be the sales tax.

let's see you buy an item and you pay a tax for it? Ok I kinda agree with this so far. Than you take this item and sell it again. What happens to the buyer? He has to pay sales tax.

This translates into the following (fictive) example.

 person A buys a motorcycle and pays 10k dollar for it. The sales tax is 10%, so 1000$
 person A sells this bike to person B for 8k dollar, the sales tax is 800$
person B sells this bike to person C for 4.5k dollar, the sales tax is 450$
person C sells....

so for one item you the state got a total of 2250$ in taxes so far. Does this seem fair?

yes I had to pay sales taxes today for 'jasmine' And no I'm not happy about it. I just paid sales tax for my Passat 7 month ago...

I was kidding since weeks, as soon as I get the bike it's going to be cold and rainning.

forecast for tomorrow:

-4 degree celsius
and rain...

i don't believe my luck...

look what saint nikulaus dropped off at my door last night

here name is 'jasmine' and she is a 2005 yamaha R6

I also got some wonderful truffels from my beautiful girlfriend

this mornign I stumbled over a deal for some logitech IEM's which were reduced from 400$ to 99$, one day only.

What did I do? Order 2 pairs like several other thousand people in the hope to sell it on craigslist for a quick 400-500$ profit. Let's see if it works out.... At least I got an order conformation before the logitech server collapsed.