MSF with the Geezer

So far, my whole 2011 MSF schedule is with Century College in White Bear. And here it is:

Basic Rider Courses (BRC)
Date	Day	Time	Location	Cost
4/20	Wed	5:30-10:00 PM	E2311	$160
4/23-24	Sat/Sun	8:00 AM-1:00 PM	Range #2
4/30	Thu	5:30-10:00PM	E2311	$160
4/30-5/1	Sat/Sun	2:00-7:00 PM	Range #3
5/23	Mon	9:00AM-1:30PM	E2311	$160
5/24-25	Tue/Wed	9:00AM-12:30PM	Range #3
5/26	Thu	9:00AM-12:00PM	Range #3
5/25	Wed	5:30-10:00PM	E2311	$160
5/28-29	Sat/Sun	8:00AM-1:00PM	Range #1
5/31	Tue	9:00AM-1:30PM	E2311	$160
6/1-2	Wed/Thu	9:00AM-12:30PM	Range #3
6/3	Fri	9:00AM-12:00PM	Range #3
6/1	Wed	5:30-10:00 PM	E2311	$160
6/4-5	Sat/Sun	2:00-7:00 PM	Range #1
6/15	Wed	5:30-10:00 PM	E2311	$160
6/18-19	Sat/Sun	2:00-7:00 PM	Range #1
6/22	Wed	5:30-10:00 PM	E2311	$160
6/25-26	Sat/Sun	2:00-7:00 PM	Range #1
7/13	Wed	5:30-10:00 PM	E2311	$160
7/16-17	Sat/Sun	2:00-7:00 PM	Range #1
Experienced Rider Courses (ERC)
Date	Day	Time	Location	Cost
5/15	Sun	8:00AM-1:00PM	Range #2	$55

College: Century Community College - White Bear Lake - 651-779-3341
Coordinator: Greg Pierce
College Website: www.century.mnscu.edu/cect
MMSC Website: http://www.motorcyclesafety.org/

Almost Normal

These guys make me feel almost normal about my "kid's bike" fetish:

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=658460

We're Back?

In 2008, fuel prices bumped against $4/gallon and suddenly motorcycles took on a practical value to a fair number of US citizens. As a motorcycle safety trainer, we were almost overwhelmed by the number of people who wanted to take the course and earn their motorcycle license and by the sudden change in student demographics. For the first 6 years of my MSF trainer career, the overwhelming majority of "students" had been old farts working on their late term bucket list. Most of these characters were Hardly stereotypes of either sex and I put the word "student" in parenthesis because many of those people demonstrated none of the characteristics of real students; mainly a willingness to work hard at learning something new.

Suddenly, in 2008, our student population turned young. I don't know if the state's data would support my observation, but I do know that the energy in the classes I taught that year was a lot higher than in the previous six. After the economy tanked, fuel prices collapsed and so did a lot of motorcycle safety training programs. The following year our class load was at least 10% down and the program I teach with started canceling classes as early as June, a full two months before previous years. Last year was a repeat of the previous with $2 gas convincing the marching SUV morons that "peak oil" was a liberal tree-hugging delusion.

The fact is, we past peak oil almost a half-decade ago (or you could argue that the little 2008 blip was the peak, but that doesn't explain the previous 3 years of flat production) and we're going to be teetering at the peak for a few years before the down side of that curve forces real changes in human behavior. Every time the world's economy shows signs of recovery, energy consumption will go up and prices will follow, high energy prices will force consumption down, the economy will collapse, and the cycle starts over.

If we're on the downside, that means that motorcycles, even in the US, are part of the alternative transportation solution. At $4-10/gallon, getting 70-150mpg becomes a lot more enticing. Folks like the shade-tree engineers at EcoModder.com are talking about modifying to a variety of motorcycles in the interest of squeezing more mileage out of production motorcycles. Scooter owners are already used to getting 100-or-more miles per gallon from their vehicle of choice. Motorcycles are more about performance than efficiency, but that could/should/will change. It has to, or we're going obsolete like the SUV, 3,000 square foot yuppie Texas Whorehouses, and the buggy whip. [Actually, the buggy whip could make a comeback.]

I, believe it or not, have my new (to me) WR250X in the kitchen this weekend (since it is 6F in the garage) sorting out the suspension, fixing the silly things the previous owner did to the bike (chopping off the back end of the stock exhaust), and getting the bike ready for a season of commuting, exploring dirt roads, and a tour or two. I'm also hoping to have a stuffed motorcycle safety class schedule to pay for it all.

Multitasking Motorcycles

I have often been accused of being incapable of "really enjoying" a ride. I admit I'm not one of those folks who are primary making a trip for the sake of the trip. I go places on a motorcycle because I get to go more places by motorcycle than I would via other transportation systems. You can't get there from here if "there" is a ghost town in some isolated western state or if "there" is any place the average person might discount as "uninteresting." If I could get to the places I want to go by train or bus, I'd probably take a lot more trips by train or bus. Airports bore the crap out of me, so I'd probably pass on airplanes even if they weren't destination-bound to high traffic tourist and business locations. I really hate cars and freeways, so if that were my only option I'd probably travel a lot less.

However, when I do travel by motorcycle I tend to try to get from Point A to Point B fairly efficiently. I don't stop and smell flowers, hang out in bars or restaurants, shop, or wander around cities and towns not on my my itinerary. While I'm on the road, I pay attention to the road. I'm pretty focused about riding and paying attention to my motorcycle and all those other highway hazards. Yeah, I'm talking about you folks in your cages. I don't wear headphones and listen to music or recorded books while I ride. I have been known to mess with a camera while rolling, but I don't do that much. Now that I have a helmet-cam, I am pretty much hands-on-the-bars all the time.

Boring, right? Probably.

Since I canned my manufacturing engineering career, I don't multitask at anything. If I'm doing anything interesting or complicated, I don't answer the phone, look at my email, watch television, listen to music, or even talk when someone else is in the room. In fact, I've never believed in multitasking, but you can't be a manufacturing or quality engineer or manager without pretending to do seven things at once. It's just not possible to do two tasks at the same time and do either of them well.

A lot of people think they can multitask, but that's true only if you suck at everything you do. I'm no rocket scientist, great motorcycle rider, no brilliant writer, no amazing engineer, but I want to be the best I can be with the skills I have. Can't do that and do other stuff at the same time.

In manufacturing, we used to have a rule we presented to management, "Quality, Price, or Delivery. Pick two." The fact is, you have to pick one primary goal and one secondary goal. You can't even have two of the three without substantial compromise in both. The same applies to the human brain. The more distractions you allow, the worse your performance becomes.

The only way to keep that shiny side up is to concentrate on your riding. If you want to look at the flowers, stop and get off and look at the damn things till you're tired of them. Meditate on those posies until you're ready to think about riding again. If you want to wonder at the majesty of the mountains, take a hike. If the birds and the bees are your thing, rest a while and watch them fly about. If you want to ride a motorcycle, get real. Motorcycling isn't something for the attention deficit disordered. It isn't a casual activity; like golf or voting. This is life-threatening business and if you don't recognize that you're going to find out about it the hard way.

I realize there are people far more talented at anything than me. Maybe they can multitask safely. Maybe. I'm not them and I'm not interested in testing those kinds of limits. I'm old, fragile, slow to heal, and want to preserve whatever life I have left for activities I enjoy. Almost everything I enjoy requires me to be mobile and relatively pain-free.

The Great Fraud

Have you ever sat at a stop light cursing the morons who "timed" that appliance so that, no matter which direction traffic is coming from, traffic is impeded by the light? Have you ever wondered why a stop light was necessary at all at a particular intersection? Are you old enough to remember "yield" signs? Do you remember how well they worked? This British study proved that stop lights are, in fact, the gigantic waste of energy that many of suspect they are. In a world of vanishing resources, increasing fuel costs, and more sophisticated vehicle-driver communications systems, stop lights are as archaic as buggy whips.

For that matter, stop signs are a historic hang-over of when public employees had near-infinite power to make irrational decisions and nobody questioned their "expertise." Today, at least half of the country seems to believe that government officials are incapable of doing anything right. I wonder why that opinion hasn't spread to the gross oxymoron "traffic control?" Minnesota is even dumb enough to put stop lights at freeway entrances, creating gigantic lines of smog-spewing vehicles at every rush hour intersection, slowing freeway traffic to a crawl, training drivers to merge incompetently, and wasting fuel on an irresponsible scale. We experimented, a few years back, with shutting off the lights. Found that traffic was unaffected in any positive way by the existence of the lights, and . . . the lights were turned back on.

That's not entirely true. MnDOT's 8 week 2000 study actually concluded that ramp lights provided all sorts of traffic enhancement value. So, they turned them back on, sort of. After making gigantic claims about the state's light-controls, MnDOT reduced the operating time of the lights, sped up their operation, and effectively eliminated the lights' purpose during rush hour. Now, the only time the lights hold you up is when traffic is low and the lights are a complete waste of energy. 

A few months back, I had the pleasure of driving through a small Minnesota town that had not been hit with the moronic neighborhood stop sign bug and, instead, had a well-placed collection of yield signs in their place. Neighborhood traffic flowed smoothly. People were considerate and I felt like I'd stumbled on to civilization in the midst of a culture of ignorant savages. Letting regularly timed lights control irregular traffic flow is lazy, ignorant, and inefficient. It's time the damn things are torn down and the department that put them up is disbanded.

Product Review: Aerostich Kanetsu Electric Warmbib

I don't ever mix my blog with my Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly column. What goes to the magazine ends up in print and on their page. For 94 Geezer columns and more than 50 product reviews, I've hung to this separation of printed and blog content. This column I'm going to break that rule for what I think is a really good reason: I love this product and think everyone who rides in cold weather should know about it. I'm not talking "like." When I say "love," I mean love.

Aerostich Kanetsu Electric Warmbib

All Rights Reserved © 2010 Thomas W. Day

It took me 61 years to buy my first electric vest. Something about "new fangled contraptions" and "losing my macho" kept me from joining the 20th Century until we were into the 21st Century. Early in 2008, I bought an Aerostich Kanetsu Airvantage electric vest and wore it for several months, extending my fall comfort range right up until ice began to stick to the streets. In 2009, I discovered another warm electric product, the Kanetsu Electric Warmbib. At $67, even a cheapskate can justify mobile electric heat. Like all things Aerostich, the construction quality of the Warmbib is exceptional. Mr. Goldfine wants me to say that my test product was "1st generation" and that the current version is improved. I haven't seen the improvements, but my bib is terrific.

My only complaint about the Airvantage is that it's fairly bulky. I'm either committed to wearing it or it stays at home. I was too cheap to buy the sleeves for the Airvantage, so that's a problem, too. The biggest reason I wanted to test this product was because I hoped it would fit under my Darien liner and that the self-packing feature would allow me to stuff the bib into my tank bag. Both assumptions were accurate.

For example, on a moderately cool March weekend, I decided to make a run across town for some computer gear. I tossed my Darien over whatever I'd been wearing around the house and hit the road. About two miles from home, I realized 45^oF on the bike was a lot colder than 45^oF in the sun in my backyard. I stopped, pulled the Warmbib from my tankbag, strapped it on (without having to remove my jacket, helmet, or gloves), plugged in, and hit the road in near-instant comfort. With only the Warmbib and my liner-less Darien gear, I was polar bear toasty for the rest of the trip.

The Warmbib is held in place only with a hook-and-loop patch that is the end of the stretch fleece collar. You just pull it around your neck and push the collar on to the hook patch and you're set. The Warmbib uses the usual Aerostich wiring gear, including a lighted switch or not, and I simply plugged mine into the wiring I installed for the Airvantage. The the slick Gore-tex® Windstopper® material on the front allows the bib to slip under your jacket while the fleece at the back of the bib does a fine job of holding the bib in place. Compared to typical heated vests, the Warmbib's 2.5A, 30W consumption is 66-250% less demanding on your bike's electrical system. That's worth considering for dual purpose or scooter applications. In fact, I installed wiring for the Warmbib on my Kawasaki KL250; a bike that has a limited electrical system capacity.

I was worried that I'd really miss the heat my Airvantage applies to my back, especially on below freezing days, but that hasn't been much of a sacrifice. In use, the Warmbib might even be a diet device. I'm not kidding. The bib heats your chest and stomach, but the heat on my gut isn't much different from the warm afterglow of a big meal. As a daily commuter accessory, the Warmbib does the job effectively. I include mine on any spring or fall ride that has the slightest chance of turning cold. Now that cold weather is upon us, it's back in my luggage and I'm ready for winter.  

[NOTE: If you are interested in my past product reviews, you can see them on this site, the Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly archive site,  or my own archive site.]

Missing the Point, Harley Style

Hardly's newest ad, "No Cages, Free Yourself," demonstrates the Company's legendary ability to completely miss the point and piss off much of the public at the same time. Hell, lots of motorcyclists call Hardly's hippobike "cages" because of their legendary inability to travel anywhere the road isn't cut and planed perfectly flat and straight. So, the following is funny and clueless:


I'm all for convincing cagers to abandon their gas-guzzling, road-hogging, resource-abusing single-occupant rolling houses (or cages, if you like). However, depicting peds (a means of transportation that we all use) and the 1.7-4.5 million commuting cyclists in cages is silly, even by Hardly's deranged standards.

When I'm touring the country's backroads, the only people I'm even a little bit jealous of are the bicyclists. As much as my motorcycle makes me feel like I'm "out in it," I know the bicyclists are that much more in the world around them. Hikers are even more free of society's restrictions and technology's crutches.

The fact that Hardly's uncaged motorcyclist is the noisiest vehicle in an already noisy environment didn't seem to register in the Hardly marketing department's little mind. Obviously, the Hardly rider should be in an acoustically isolated box, which wouldn't be a huge improvement from the screeching of the cages. An electric bike company ought to reshoot this video, including the Hardly, all wrapped in soundproof plexi boxes showing how the would would be improved with noiseless vehicles. 

Bigger is Better?

All Rights Reserved © 2010 Thomas W. Day

Often, when I'm hanging out with a collection of motorcyclists the conversation gets around to "What bike would you buy if money was no object?" The answers are predictable, most guys go for the biggest, most expensive model they know of. BMW and Motoguzzi1200's, Aprilla and Ducati liter bikes, HD and Victory hippo bikes, Goldwings, Concours, and Hayabusas often top the lists. 600 pounds seems to be near the low end of the average dream bike mass. I, clearly, don't dream big (or heavy) enough. My dream bike would weigh no more than 250 wet pounds (wet), be fuel injected, be road and off-road worthy, and would reliably tolerate long highway hauls loaded with gear.

Right now, the only bike imported into the US that gets close to that set of specifications is the Yamaha WR250R. I don't know about the WR's reliability, but almost everything else about the bike is aimed right at me. The $6100 price tag is out of my range, but I can wait for a reasonably priced used one to drop into my lap. I always do. The WR is a little tall for me, but I can deal with that, too.  The 2-gallon tank is a problem, but there will be aftermarket solutions. Owning a WR would be an excuse to exercise more, lose weight, and maintain what flexibility I still possess. An advantage of dreaming small is that my dream bike is a lot more likely to fall into my lap than is a $20k+ pipedream that I'd be afraid to ride where I am likely to want to go. At my age, practical dreams are more interesting than impossible dreams.

One of the few MC industry rags I read is Motorcycle Consumer News. Every year MCN does a "performance index" rating of every recent motorcycle they have tested, and is sold in the US. Every year, the performance index produces the same winners and losers in their five-ball "MCN Rating system." The only under-1000cc bike to receive an "excellent" rating was the Yamaha FZ6R. Every other top rated bike was 1000-1200cc and all but one of their winners gets the kind of fuel mileage you could expect from a mid-sized sedan. "Performance" is obviously a tricky word. Like beauty, it's all in the eye of the beholder, but since we've all experienced $4.50/gallon fuel--and we know we're going to see it again--it seems to me that economy ought to be rising to the top of the priority list of performance specs. When that doesn't happen, I suspect that some reality-disconnect is going on in the evaluation system.

Since I commute on my motorcycles, I care about mileage as much as any other performance measurement. The 2006 Ninja 650R got the decade's all-over best full-size bike mileage at 65.4mpg and that model came close to an "excellent" rating (four and one-half balls) for the year. The same model dropped 10mpg the next year and its Versys cousin is 20mpg less efficient. The Yamaha XT250 knocked down 67.8mpg in their testing and the WR's are 10mpg under that with substantially improved performance. So, one big thing I care about is sort of covered with the WR250X.

The fun-factor is really going on with the WR. Supermotos are the most amazing motorcycles to put on a track, practically all kinds of tracks. They turn like bobcats, stop on fractions of a dime, go fast, go anywhere, and look cool. Yamaha says the WR is, "The cure for the common commute."

The only thing the WR doesn't have is bigness. In our crazy country, big is better. The WR is small. Tiny, almost. I don't know how well Yamaha is doing with the WR250's, but if history repeats itself I'd be amazed if they are selling well enough to justify importing them for more than a few years. That means new prices will fall, used prices will fall farther, and you could have bet your birthday dollar that I'd own one before too long.

All this internal rationalizing went on while the other guys were discussing their dream bikes. When I was asked about my choice, I coughed up the WR250X and almost nobody knew what it was. Everybody knew it was a "wimpy" 250, though. That was enough to get the jokes flowing. "Why not just get a bicycle?" "Two-fifties are girls' bikes." "Beginners' bike." And so on.

If bigger is better, we have an explanation for our fascination with obesity. The bigger we get, the bigger our bikes need to be. I suspect that logic is unhealthy. I'd rather look oversized on a small bike than right on a hippobike. Even more important, I'd rather be able to take my little bike places where I'm disinclined to walk or drive a cage. So, I'll put my WR250X "girl's bike" against your liter sportbike or your hippo-bagger any time, as long as I get to pick the course. I'll choose a few hundred miles of dirt road with a few sand and mud sections thrown in for entertainment. If you make it to the end of the route, I'll be waiting for you with the next section all picked out.

This week, I snagged a used WR250X for the kind of price I wanted to pay and in reasonably wonderful condition. The view outside my garage is still depressing and will probably remain so for a few weeks. So far, this is the 2nd snowiest winter in recorded Minnesota history and we have 7 days left to "enjoy."  That's ok. I need to install a lowering link on the rear suspension, take advantage of Yamaha's 1" suspension drop, and sort out the tires (apparently, Avon Distanzia DP tires are the deal for me). The previous owner was one of those vile people who actually has legs and working body parts, so he'd set up the bike for his 36" inseam. I need a ladder to get on the bike and I dismount like a pony express rider. By the time the snow melts and the roads thaw, I'll be ready to ride.

One of the Rarest Things on Earth

The title refers to a few things, but my original thought was that this ad actually inspired me to find out something about TC Bank.Obviously, this is not a US Bank or a bank that has any US branches. Our banks wouldn't recognize inspiration, courage, or any positive emotion if somebody stuffed it up their asses with a shovel handle. The other "rarest" thing this video reminded me of is my incredible good fortune in having so many motorcycling friends. Particularly, thanks Andy.