today I finally managed to find the courage to join a local group of riders for my first group ride with 25 other motorcycles. A random mix of Harley's, vulcans, gold-wings and the odd BMW or SuperSport (Like me).

5 hours later or 120 miles I was finally home again. Yes it was a pretty uncomfortable ride, since we were going backroads (which were fun!) at a pace which was frustrating(about 15-20mph mostly), since the cruiser were not able to take the corners faster...

Well tomorrow is another ride and I'm looking forward to it. Video uploads come later, but here is a picture!

surprise surprise a bug promptly killed itself on my camera lenses and smugdes 800 of the 900 pictures...

oh my, my definatly favorite webpage is right now

http://www.ram-mount.com/


I think the right term would be that I could go gaga about all these different mounting solutions. I wish I had known about this when I still had the pickup truck.

Now were can I find a store to play with all these things. I have no idea what I actually could use of this, but the self leveling cupholder is an act of genius.

cupholder

---

eine meiner beliebtesten Webseiten ist momentan

http://www.ram-mount.com/


da ich das Konzept einfach nur toll finde und wuenschte nur ich haette die Webseite gefunden als ich noch den Pickup hatte. Nun muss ich nur noch einen Laden finden, welcher die ganzen Module verfuegbar hat, so das ich damit herumspielen kann.

Besonderst den Selbstausrichtenen Becherhalter finde ich einfach nur toll.

Becherhalter

my pathetic shaky first attempt with a way to high compression ratio...


and what is possible with this little camera, once you figure out where to mount it, how to mount it and have quite a good idea how you have to edit movies

the picture quality is pretty impressive for such a small camera, mounted on the tank at 40 miles and hour and also 80 mph looks good. Sure it's a bit grainy and there is quite a lot of purple fringing. But it's a 300$ camera with a plastic lens which can be replaced when dropped (5$) and not a 1k+ dslr.

well tonight I finally managed to find the small camera I wanted somewhere in stock and got it.


Now I really need to figure out how to use it, but here are some first results....

the camera is basically a little 5MP camera, which is mainly a 1080p HD video camera. Now If I could figure out how to upload videos to this blog...
YouTube to the rescue...



Related to the amount of laughing and fun we had, well it was well worth it and one of the best buys.

I finally ordered my birthday gift which consist of

• touring windscreen in light gray for the bike
• power outlet for the bike
• iphone holder as GPS
• new helmet cheek pads to improve fit
• tail bag for the bike for my utah tour
• little video camera

I'm still not sure about ordering the hammock, I really have to see it in person first and sleep a round or two in it. And I do have a tent. We shall see.

About the wallet, ashley still has to take me to the store, so I can pick one up.

Guess there is going to be some wrenching going on next week :)

it all makes sense...

After riding the R6 for a bit over 4k miles, which translates into another 6k miles before i need to get the valves adjusted and most likely some parts replaced. Anyway I finally understand the tips I read in the book 'Sportriding techniques' and the bike becomes more stable in the curves and stops wobbling.

So time to reread the book and figure out what else I miss understood.

langsam verstehe ich die Zusammenhänge,


nachdem ich knappe 7000km mit der R6 durch die Gegend 'geeiert' bin verstehe ich langsam die Hinweise, welche ich in dem Buch 'Sportriding Techniques' gelesen habe und kann sie anwenden. Oder anders ausgedrückt das Motorrad wird langsam stabiler in den kurven und wackelt nicht mehr so stark. Leider bedeutet es auch das ich in 9000 km meine Ventile justieren oder austauschen muss, was relativ teuer oder eine Menge Arbeit wird. Vermutlich werde ich es selber machen und sehen was dabei rauskommt.

I also tried to buy a tail-bag last night at cycle gear and a video camera, but sadly there had nothing in stock. Well it makes the wallet happy. Or wait it turned out they had a v-star and v-strom standing around and my god they are so beautiful (v-star) and ugly (v-strom), I want one to play with.


Des weiteren wollte ich letzte Nacht eine kleine Videokamera kaufen und eine Tasche, aber wie immer war nichts im Laden verfügbar und ich mache keine Vorbestellungen. Dann kann ich gleich zu amazon gehen. Ich probiere nur langsam alles fuer den utah trip zusammen zukriegen, was eine menge Zeugs ist. Es stellte sich auch heraus das der Laden eine V-Star und eine V-Strom ausgestellt hatte und ich finde die beiden Maschinen ja einfach nur schick und hätte ja gerne eine um damit etwas herumzuspielen.

v-star 2010 - cruiser

2010 Suzuki V-Strom - Enduro/Tourer bike, which ashley really likes and is one of the most

practical bikes around

They even offered me to trade my R6 for a V-Star 650 1:1 and I was tempted, except I want the 950 or 1100 V-Star and I'm really happy with the R6 (ok a bit much power and not enough space)

Der Laden bot mir sogar an meine R6 gegen eine neue V-Star 650 umzutauschen und es war verlockend, aber ich bin eigentlich glücklich mit der R6 (ausser das sie viel zuviel PS hat und etwas klein ist)

Completely unrelated (mostly) last weekend we went wine tasting in Eldorado country and the foothills and I promptly ended up buying a wine club membership for port-wines. Which gives me 4 bottles of port wine all 3 month for 90$ each time. Which averages out to the amount I spend on port wine anyway.

Dann sind wir am Wochenende erstmal Wein verkosten gewesen, was bedeutet das ich erstmal eine Weinklub Mitgliedschafft abgeschlossen habe. Naja mal sehen ob das eine gute Idee war...

I even managed to see my all time favorite car again, which I am going to own one day.

Und wie immer habe ich mein Lieblings (unpraktisch) Auto gesehen, eines Tages...

I just love the look of the classic mustangs, but I need a much higher income before I can ever consider buying on. I mean it's a 50 year old car...

This weekend I'm most likely todo some trips down to napa valley or so and next weekend we are going back to twain harte and start with some little projects on the cabin

recently I spend a lot of time traveling the country side of davis and the Eldorado hills, trying to practice and build some muscles for the trip to utah and death valley.

and I'm not sure. but I start to get the feeling the R6 was not designed for more than 200-300 miles and other than perfect roads. Which I don't really seem to find in california.

Maybe I should had done more research before I bought the bike? There are actually a lot of motorcylces out there which all fit me...

For example I still like the idea of the V-Stars, but the more I read about them the more annoying I consider that you have to adjust the valves all 4k miles, which is just to much maintenance. I do like more and more what I read about the V-Stroms, which are basically designed to go around the world a couple of time and compete directly with the BMW-GS800/1250 models.

I think I should had made an education as a mechanic after all.

After noticing some oil on the oilfilter I thought, yay another project. Finally an oil leak.

but after removing some parts

ok some more parts and even more I ended up here and think this was the issue

so I used up my WD-40 and cleaned it all to make it look pretty again.

sorry no pictures of this. But let's see how the bike behaves for the next couple of thousand miles till we get it a companion for the cold winter months and to have the girl more comfortable.

This weekend was slightly surprising.

It started all with a sunny saturday afternoon and I'm riding home, taking my favorite freeway excit, leaving a curve and guess what? A gigantic puddle of oil is in front of me, cars to the left, cars to the right and so throw I went and nothing happened, except a skid. (Glad to was already out of the lean, otherwise...)

Oh wait a second there is this other car behind me skidding up to me and not being able to brake, so I accelerate into the intersection, which is empty bad red. See a white flash and a sign: Red Light violation 370$.

So home I got and spend the next day on a nice ride with ashley. She is starting to enjoy riding on the bike and afterward I was cleaning the chain and the oil off the bike from the day prior. And while doing this I happend to drop the bike onto the concrete and into some stuff in the garage.

The second it fell I knew this sounded expensive...

• banged up and scratched exhaust
• scratch front top fairing, arg
• broken peg, annoying but not the big deal
• dent in the tank
• scratched frame saver, protecting the upper and lower fairing from breaking, yay :)

After all the only frustrating thing is the upper top fairing and the tank, cause these are pricey to replace. Which I'm not gonna do...

Pictures you want? Here they are!

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...