Get Real Guys

eBikes ought to be a solution to a lot of the world's carbon transportation problems, but too many of the manufacturers are treating the market as if it is only occupied by 1%'ers. Yamaha, for example, is hustling its new Wabash Gravel model for $3500 plus $330 for a rack and fenders. Eric Buell's eBike, the Fuell Fluid, is going for $4,000 or $4,400 with a 2nd battery. Harley has some eBikes in the works and it's safe to assume they'll be asking prime prices. BMW's attempt at high tech eBikes will be in the $3000 to $4000+ price range. Ducati, as you should assume, will be offering eBikes at full motorcycle prices.

I think that is a huge mistake. Right now, Motorcycle dealers are ideally positioned to provide service for hundreds of thousands of eBikes of all brands, which would draw new customers to their showroom floors. Give the competition enough time and motivation and as motorcycle sales continue to tank that advantage will fade away. Bike dealers and mechanics are currently busy whining about having to cope with "complicated" eBike systems and hardware, but they too will either have to figure it out or vanish in the dust of business history. This, like all games, a zero-sum game; not everyone currently in the game will survive. eBike sales are cranking up all over the world and there will be big winners and lots of small losers.

Are Motorcycles History?

Scanning my old employer’s website, I noticed that Century College's Basic Rider Course schedule for 2019 includes fewer classes, in total, than I used to teach almost at that school in a single season: down from more than 100 courses on 3 ranges to 26 courses on one range. Dakota Tech is down by similar numbers: from more than 80 courses on 4 ranges to 41 on two ranges this season. According to friends who still teach, last year DCTC cancelled a lot of it's classes, often the day before the class was scheduled to run. St Paul College is scheduling 26 courses. I retired last year, after all of my classes in Red Wing and all but one at DCTC cancelled in 2017 and I had my first bout with double-vision. Staying certified was going to be more of a hassle and expense than it would be worth. (That turned out to be an understatement as my double-vision root-cause has been diagnosed as myasthenia gravis.)

At least in Euro-ville, 60% of all new bicycle sales are eBikes. I can't find a solid figure for the US, but based on the growth of a few name companies that can't keep up with the orders I suspect that's a shift here, too. The industry word is that ebike growth is exponential and motorcycle sales are in decline. If you do a Google search on "motorcycle dealers closing" limited to the last year only, you get a depressing number of hits; including insider stories about how motorcycle imports and exports are slowing up practically everywhere. These are interesting times. That “change” thing is proving itself to still be a constant.

Lots of dealers, like River Valley in Red Wing, didn't see much of a recovery in motorcycle sales after 2007-12 and moved on put more effort into boats and ATVs. A bunch of dealers (especially on the coasts) are adding eBikes to their sales floors. Yamaha, Ducati, and KTM either have eBikes to sell or are in serious development. Hardly just bought a kids' ebike company. Of course, HD could just be recognizing how lame their customers are and acting accordingly. Yamaha's eBikes are grossly overpriced: $4-6k, but they might figure it out before they totally lose their place in consumers' sights. KTM's offerings will probably need a mortgage refi, but their victims always seem to have spare cash or credit.

One of the funniest things I've read about this business and customer shift has been from traditional bicycle shops who imagine that repairing eBikes is "different" or more complicated than fixing a motorcycle. Current breed bike shops often charge as much as $50-80 to swap out an ebike tire, especially a back tire on rear-hub driven models. eBike repairs are different than motorcycle repairs, for sure; about 1Mx easier. Anyone who can troubleshoot fuel injection or electronic ignition could do anything necessary on an eBike without any training at all.

Taking It Lying Down

All Rights Reserved © 2017 Thomas W. Day

One of the less sane things I wanted to do with my retirement spare time is bicycle. And by that, I mean do some serious distance. I have considered myself a bicyclist since I was about five years old. There have been years when I've done more miles by pedal-power than on either a motorcycle or a cage, but not lately. I hoped to change that before I'm so decrepit that I can't do much more than bitch about the kids trespassing on my lawn, if I ever have a lawn. I have had a fascination with recumbent bicycles since I first saw them in California 40 years ago. I've always wanted to try one, but, like many cool things, they have mostly been priced out of my income bracket. This winter, I kept my eye on a Burley recumbent that seemed to hold it's place in Craig's List without any sign of movement other than a slowly deteriorating price. After I finished wrestling with, hopefully, my last ever complicated state and federal income tax submission, I took the remains of my tax "return" and hunted down the Burley recumbent owner. We came to a price agreement, as the last snow storm of the long 2014 winter started to bury the roads and the seller's hope of convincing me to buy his bike after a test ride. A week later, the snow finally left the streets for "good" and I started learning how to ride my new toy. 

By now, you're probably wondering what the hell this has to do with motorcycling. Hang in there, it's coming. 

After 500 miles of getting adjusted to a new riding position, I learned a few new things about a lot of two-wheeled stuff. First, the limitations of riding feet-forward have always put me off on motorcycles. The same position on a bicycle provides similar sorts of restrictions. In fact, the things I couldn't do on my first recumbent probably outnumbered what I got from this riding position by at least 10:1. Thirty years ago, I swapped my road bikes for mountain bikes and have never looked back, until now. Fat tires, a tough frame, and an upright riding position have let me go places I'd have had to walk on a normal bicycle. Many recumbent bikes are even more limited than road bikes. Curb-jumping? Nope. Dirt roads or single-track bike trails? 

Furgetaboutit. 

Quick turns, jumping curbs (in either direction), hill-climbing with anything resembling speed, fast starts, any sort of start on an uphill, or predictable transitions from one surface to another? Nope, on all counts. No more quick jumps on the bike, either. My Burley Limbo recumbent was a solid foot-and-a-half longer than my mountain bike and at least 20 pounds heavier. I didn't  just hop on that bike and go for a quick ride. Because of the length and awkwardness, getting a recumbent out of the garage takes some rearranging, strategic planning, and heavy lifting. A recumbent can be a very restrictive bicycle. Most of my friends were surprised I put up with it.   

If you have to give up all of that freedom and capability what do you get out of a recumbent? Speed on flat land, downhills, or mild uphill grades. That's it, but that is a lot. On relatively flat terrain, recumbent bikes are so superior to traditional bicycles that like all superior technology they have been banned from pretty much all forms of bicycle competition. Recumbents were first banned from UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) competition right after the first one was invented by Charles Mochet, in 1934. Oddly and symptomatically, the race organization's "reasoning" was that a recumbent wasn't a "bicycle." Bureaucrats have always had problems counting to two competently. In 2005, Tim Brummer won a US national championship on one of his own Lightening Cycles' recumbent bikes and the United States Cycling Federation outlawed them immediately afterwards. You have to love the regressive and conservative nature of racing organizations as they do everything they can to make sure race vehicles don't actually go particularly fast or progress into useful vehicles. Sort of reminds you of our own AMA Racing disorganization or the FIM, doesn't it? If racing bureaucrats don't like recumbents, there has to be something useful in the design. The useful part is lowered wind resistance and some improvement in the efficiency of the pedal stroke. 

The other advantage that finally pushed me over the edge of my normal buyer's resistance is comfort. Unlike a motorcycle cruiser, most recumbents have a lawn chair of a seat. No more tiny wedgie triangle cramming its way up my butt. Instead, I have a mesh sling seat that gives me full support from the seat to my upper back. The Burley's rear wheel is suspended, which removed any impact from road surface defects, but cost a lot in uphill pedal efficiency. I can ride my recumbent for hours without any discomfort other than getting tired. No more back or butt aches, no more numb hands. That is no small thing. 

More differing characteristics than I've listed here are discussed in some detail are listed on this link: http://www.biketcba.org/TRICORR/compare.html. However, the stuff I have described all relate to the connection I've made to recumbents and cruisers. There is no real efficiency upside to cruisers, especially since their designers are inclined to build 700+ pound hippobikes with no real thought for fuel efficiency or lowered wind resistance. The only reason for picking a feet-forward, slouched-back cruiser riding position should be comfort. Since every handling quality is sacrificed for this riding position, you better need it. Like my recumbent bicycle, you are not going to turn quickly and confidently, potholes and other road defects are going to connect directly to your back since cruisers usually have laughable suspension designs, and the high bars pretty much eliminate confident braking. You'll be limited to riding on only the best roads (freeways), being a near-stationary target for every texting and coffee slurping distracted driver on the road, and being handicapped by poor visibility and a lousy sight-line thanks to the low seat height. To me, that all seemed like too many sacrifices for a marginal improvement in comfort. 

As for my recumbent bicycle experiment, in the summer of 2016 I gave up on my Burley Limbo thinking I was done with recumbents. In early April of 2017, a friend who is an experienced recumbent touring bicyclist let me ride his bike and I discovered that many of the complaints I had with the Burley were due to the suspension and the steering linkage. I'm about 500 miles into this new bike and, so far, I'm a big fan. It still sucks on uphills but way less and the improvement in steering stability, especially on gravel roads, is dramatic. However, it appears to be a given that this riding position is limited to ideal road conditions and like cruisers not that practical in mixed traffic situations.

Helmet Testing in the Bicycle World

I just started riding a fat tire eBike this past week, after spending a month or so rejuvenating my grandson’s first eBike. The bike had suffered a couple of winters commuting regardless of the weather and needed a lot of going-over to be a dependable ride. Quickly, I discovered my regular bike helmet was worthless in cold weather. On the recommendation of a friend, I ordered a Lazer helmet a couple of days ago and just before I took off for a ride today it arrived. So, I took the time to adjust it and headed off to the bike trail.

I tend toward overconfidence (ask my wife) and on the way back from my safe and sane ride into town, I decided to take on a couple of miles of the unmaintained fat tire, cross country ski, and winter hiking trail. The trail was covered with about 2” of slushy snow and an ice base. I made it about 30 feet before the front tire slid out from under me and I slammed face-first into the slushy snow and pavement at, maybe, 10mph. Look at the dent in the front of the helmet, without the helmet that would have been my skull and I'd probably be dead. As it was, I really got my bell rung and punched a tooth most of the way through my lip.

The dealer, Wheel and Sprocket, didn't have to get the helmet to me before the 29th, but it arrived on the 19th and most likely saved my life. If I hadn't have tested the snow today, I'd have probably done it before the 29th. That's the kind of genius risk-taker I am.

What can you say about a product that absolutely saved your life? The last thing I ever want to do is to write a product test review of a helmet. It would be nice to get to talk about the features (excellent), the comfort and warmth (terrific), and the visibility (again, terrific). However, I decided to do an impact test. At the least, I tested the Lazer Snow Helmet and it passed. However, I might need a full face helmet if I keep doing stupid stuff like this. The picture, at left, is a selfie taken a few minutes after I got back home. Now, my lip is about 4X that thick and I have developed a cute little lisp, if you can get me to talk at all.

Paradigm Shifts

Two years ago, my grandson got a job, moved into his own place, and bought a Rad Power e-bike for commuting to work; a daily 14 miles round trip. Tough kid. When he started this adventure, he bought the Rad Power Radrover; a fat tire full sized bike that is about as robust looking and riding as a small dirt bike. Two years in and a few dozen crashes on the ice and snow, he turned the Radrover over to me to repair and replaced it with the Radmini.

We spent the day hanging out with our grandson and just before we left the Cities for home, I took a test ride on his new e-bike. I am hooked. Everything about riding this not-even-a-little-bit-small-feeling electric bicycle was like the things I love the most about motorcycles. The fat tires are incredibly stable, resilient, and sticky even on a 28^oF day with a little ice and snow on the ground. The power is instant, quiet, and predictable; although e-bikes are almost universally limited to 20mph getting there was as fast as it needed to be to get me moving in rush hour residential street traffic.

When I lived in the Cities and commuted from Little Canada to downtown St. Paul (for 13 years) I probably would have rarely, if ever, rode a motorcycle or car to work if I’d owned a bicycle like this. I had a 5.5 mile one-way commute via freeway and a mile or so added to that by city streets and the Radmini has a 20 mile range at 20mph over the toughest terrain at 20mph. If you pedal or have a fair amount of relative flat and wind-free territory to travel over, that range approaches 40 miles. There were a few moments when I made it up to 30mph on the city street routes, either on the bike or in the cage, but the 20mph limit would have been more than offset by traveling on the rarely-used bicycle trail routes that were available to me. Downtown parking would have never been an issue and I could have taking my employer’s parking allowance and used that money somewhere else. Anywhere else.

The disc brakes are terrific, although the damn levers are bicycle-traditionally on the wrong side. The electronic controls are ergonomically laid-out and easy to see and use. The bike isn’t light, at about 64 pounds, and is almost exactly the same total length as my WR250X (67”) The “standover height is 28”, the max I can cope with without getting gelded on a quick getoff. The riding position is very dirtbike-like; comfortable, upright, relaxed, and well-balanced. The performance is just amazing. 0-20mph is about as quick as the tires can handle and you have to be slightly forward on the bars to keep from popping a wheelie on a full-throttle take-off. That surprised me, more than once. The frame geometry is excellent, at least as far as I could tell in a 2-3 mile test ride. U-turns are easily executed inside a single lane and high speed (remember, that means 20mph) handling is solid, predictable, and very stable feeling (probably thanks to the long wheelbase).

As far as security is concerned, I could have rolled the bike into my office, folded it up and stuffed it under my cube’s desk, charging the battery while I worked (5 hours from depleted to fully charged), and never once worried about theft or vandalism like I had to with both the cage and the motorcycle in the parking garage where both occurred fairly regularly.

Cost of operation is fairly well documented (with some noticeable miscalculations) on Rad Power’s website blog in the article EBike vs. Car: by the Numbers. I disagree with the exponential rise in cost the author applied to car maintenance expenses, but the bottom line is still going to be close to the same. I regularly encourage my grandson’s bike replacement expenses by showing him the spreadsheet I keep on my pickup; which is freakin’ terrifying and/’or depressing. I did a similar comparison with my cage vs. motorcycle costs a few years back, the numbers were a little surprising but nothing like EBike vs. cages; at least a factor of 10. You can get a bike, ride it, fix it, and beat it up for less than the cost of a year’s car insurance. The times are changing fast.

The Market Had Its Say?

This week, I made the once-every-couple-of-months Twin Cities tour with my wife. Mostly, she had chores and errands to do, but when she stopped at Har Mar Mall to buy art supplies, I snuck out to peruse Barnes and Noble. I got stopped at the magazine rack looking at electric bicycle magazines and articles. After a bit of that, I decided to see what is left of the motorcycle glossy press.

It took a while to find either motorcycle or car magazines. The “Transportation” rack is as far from the entrance and traffic as possible and appears to be barely maintained. Several of the magazines were May and June issues. That was true for the car rags, also. On top of that neglect, a good number of motorcycle “magazines” were actually retrospective “special issues” that could have been sitting on the shelf for months; or years. Along the same lines, a Rolling Stone “special issue” was about Mick Jagger, if that gives you a clue as to the currency of that magazine format.

On the other hand, the bicycle section was featured under “Sports” and there were a lot of magazines and articles about electric bicycles in both magazines dedicated to electric bikes and the more mainstream mostly-manual powered bike magazines. The big thing here was that there are a lot of bicycle magazines and there is a lot of interest in electric bicycles; for transportation and sport. A couple of the magazines were almost as fun to read as the old Dirt Bike magazine; when it was edited by Super Hunky Rick Sieman. None of the last twenty years of dirt bike magazines have even come close to that high bar. As I suspected, the traditional motorcycle guys are putting a foot into this water, too. Electric Bike Action magazine had a big feature about Yamaha’s new electric bicycle series. To be sure, in true bicycle and bicyclist fashion, there was a lot of incredibly stupid stuff inside those magazines.

A line that particularly struck me as hilarious in the Electric Bike Action Yamaha article was, “At first we wondered if they were going to sell the bikes at their powersports dealerships. They only plan to incorporate those e-bikes into powersports dealers that already have a bike shop component, and those are few and far between. There’s a big difference between knowing how to work on a motorcycle and and knowing how to work on an electric bike.” That is true, kiddies. Anyone who can work on a fuel-injected, electronic ignition, fly-by-wire throttle-controlled, ABS’d, and state-of-the-art motorcycle will find electric bicycles to be too simple to be interesting. The customer base will lower that bar even further.

Times are changin’ and they are changin’ a lot faster than many expect. Powersports dealers are beginning to scramble for new revenue sources. It’s no stretch to imagine that a dealer who sells a few motorcycles, a few more ATVs, even more boats, and a buttload of golf carts will find a lot of reasons to become one of those “powersports dealers that already have a bike shop component.” A few bicycles on the showroom will cost a lot less than a few motorcycles that can’t be moved at any price. If that’s what it takes to get in on the electric bicycle boom, I suspect it won’t slow many dealers down.

Barbarians at the Gate

Paul Young sent me this link, "Will this electric bicycle disrupt the motorcycle industry?" from Revzilla. The Suru is made in Canada (Nova Scotia) and costs about $3k. The critical specs are listed in the website’s photo at right. The tires and wheels are more motorcycle than bicycle hardware, as is the suspension. Unlike a lot of electric bicycles, the bicycle part is single-speed and basic. The article quotes Suru designer, Michael Uhlarik, for a lot of its assumptions and the author, Clayton Christensen, is a Harvard prof and self-proclaimed manufacturing and techology historian. Some of their “manufacturing history” is not particularly well informed. Still their premise has been the same as my own for a while.

I’m not convinced the Suru is the right direction, but I’m no fortune teller. My grandson’s RadRover is more in line with both the features and price point I think will attract people to electric two-wheelers. Everything about Wolf’s bike is similar to the Suru, except it is $1,500 cheaper and more versitile as a bicycle: “Intelligent 5 Level Pedal Assist with 12 Magnet Cadence Sensor” and a 7-speed derailier opposed to single-speed peddling, key-removable battery pack, full-coverage fenders, and less weight. My grandson has had his RadRover for about three months and is using it to commute 7-miles, one-way, throughout the Minneapolis winter. So far, he’s more than happy with his bike.

The article’s constant reference is to the 1966 Honda Cub which the author claims was “the last real disruption in the moto industry.” I’d say there have been quite a few disruptions in the last two decades, but often when you are trying to prove a point it’s easy to put the blinders on. Regardless, the electric bicycle and scooter movement is about to kick into high gear with everyone from botique dealerships to Walmart and Target offering products and services. BMW, Honda, Yamaha, and a collection of new comers are all making a variety of products available. Amazon has a showroom floor full of electric bikes and scooters with 36V models as cheap as $400. I think the tipping point has been passed.

Nicky Is Gone

And another really nice guy dies young. Nicky Hayden died from complications on May 22. He was struck by a car while riding a bicycle in Itally on May 17. Hayden has often been called the “nicest MotoGP rider that had ever been.” The Kentucky Kid snatched the championship out of Valentino Rossi’s hands in 2006. Before that, the last time the red, white, and blue was on the podium was Kenny Robert Jr’s year, 2000. No American has been close since Hayden pulled off his winning season. The 80’s and early 90’s was prime time for the USA, with Roberts Sr, Lawson, Schwantz and Rainey swapping championships for a good part of two decades. Nicky Hayden was a surprise win on his Honda and it could be years before the world is surprised by an American again.

In the meantime, we’re going to miss the “nicest MotoGP rider that had ever been.”

Glad We Aren’t Them

A few years ago, I wrote a rant about the dumbasses who spend thousands on bicycles (“My Kind of Market”). I was clearly reminded of that this week when I went shopping with the idea of replacing my 25+ year-old bicycle with something “more modern.” In that old (2009) article, I de   scribed “‘the secret of a successful retirement’ . . . is to find a product or business that had past its prime, but still had customers with money to spend.” went further in insulting the lame state of “bicycle technology” with “If you don't believe me, check out a high end bicycle shop. Look at the $2,000-10,000 bicycles and explain to me how a 22 pound bicycle can cost as much as a liter sportsbike. Better yet, look at bicycle helmets. Those things are as low-tech as a motorcycle faceshield and, yet, a ‘decent’ bicycle helmet can easily set you back $100-250. There is no way a bicycle helmet has even a fraction of the manufacturing/liability costs of a motorcycle helmet, but even with a much larger customer base bicycle helmets' retail price is in the same ballpark. Bicyclists are clearly a total sucker market, but that is so obvious that everybody wants a piece of it and bicycles are unlikely to ‘approach obsolescence.’”
So, here I am with a pretty rashed up almost-30-year-old bicycle, some cash to burn, and a lot of time to shop. What I found was that bicycle technology, in general, has gone absolutely nowhere in 30 years. Other than the super-high-end where you find frames with exactly the same geometry made from exactly the same materials as that same price bracket from 30 years ago--but with the minimal “improvement” of disc brakes—nothing noticable has changed for the better. Prices are higher, the rest is the same. So, why would anyone buy new, if ancient would suffice? The answer, for me, was “I can’t do it.”
As beat up and bashed around as my “obsolete” old Supergo bike is, it’s as good or better than state-of-the-bicycle-art, because that art hasn’t moved in decades. So, I went to my local bike shop, bought a cheap Shimano rear derailleur, disassembled a bunch of bits that should have been disassembled and lubed years ago, slapped it all back together and went riding.
A kid took a look at my rashed up bike while I was stopped at the NAPA store getting oil for my motorhome generator and said, “Man, that must have been one hell of a crash!”
I didn’t look at him when I said, “About 45mph and it slid for two blocks before it was all over.”
He looked at me like I was Red Bull’s Robbie Maddison and said, “Damn! What about you?”
“No problem, kid. I’m good.” And I actually managed a whimpy little wheelie when I hopped the curb  and rode off. Fuck a new bike. This one has character. (In fact, I’ve busted more bones, torn up more muscle and tendon on this bike than all of the motorcycles I’ve owned in my life.)
I am, however, that motorcycle engineers are far more creative, inventive, harder working, and every other good thing that bicycle “engineers” are not. Otherwise, we’d all be riding Harleys and I’d be bored to death.

Puttin' Off Order

Last winter, too many things happened at once and I missed the moment; the garage cleaning moment. Since then, nothing has gone right in my favorite room of the house. Work stuff, personal stuff, family stuff, hoarding tendencies, and general laziness kept me from performing a ritual that has kept my life semi-ordered for decades; scrubbing the garage before winter. Once I missed that window, everything has gone downhill. Finally, this weekend, I have no MSF classes to teach (looks like the rest of the summer's schedule might cancel out on me) and no freelance deadlines to meet. So, I'm out of excuses.

The problem is I've lived here too long. My natural hoarding instincts are overwhelming my disciplined mid-tech transient practicality. All of my life, I've moved every 2-5 years. Before moving into my current home, the longest I'd ever lived anywhere was the 7 years my family lived in a dinky Huntington Beach apartment. Since I was working 80-90 hour weeks, going to school nights and weekends, and managing two small businesses during that period, it's hard for me to consider the actual time spent in that California beach apartment as being more than a blip in my life. But I've lived in my current home for 14 years and the collected crap is starting to become overwhelming. My wife collects girl-stuff and most of the house is crammed with that crap. I collect guy stuff and the garage and my basement shop and the attic studio are stuffed with that crap. In the garage, I have squirreled away parts for all of the cars and motorcycles I've owned in the last decade, service manuals for the same vehicles, tools for a wood shop, toys and kid-projects that my grandson started and gave up on, acetylene welding stuff, bicycles and assorted maintenance bits for bikes, an idiotic collection of electronic components for audio products I will probably never design, mountains of acoustic treatment materials for recording studios I will probably never build, construction materials that may (or may not) end up being used on the house, and dozens of yard and gardening tools for a yard that could suck up my whole life.

It's a really big garage, but it can shrink up dramatically if I can't find the guts to toss out the stuff I will never get around to using. When I bought the house, the previous owner had stuffed the garage front-to-back and eight feet high with all sorts of crap. He had a tunnel carved in the junk to allow access to his huge television dish antenna. Most of the residue of his existence is gone from the garage now.

I used to love moving because moving forced me to make those kinds of decisions. I don't mess around when I move, either. In the last four decades, I've moved from Kansas to south Texas to Kansas to west Texas (again) to Nebraska to California to Indiana to Colorado to Minnesota. My moving motto is "when in doubt, throw it out." I don't, however, apply that philosophy to cleaning up my crap-filled garage. I use more of a "when in doubt, stuff it in the rafters" policy. The rafters are about to collapse and crush me flat. Some decisions will have to be made.

The first things to go are the kid stuff. My grandson has progressed from a sweet, energetic, fun little guy who used to direct me in building everything from robots to rockets to the usual sort of sullen teenager who is pissed off at everything I do. That makes emptying out the unfinished kid projects an easy assignment. I set the kid stuff on the curb with a "FREE!" sign and it all vanished in a few hours. It's not like I'd ever mess with model rockets or stop-motion animation on my own time and having that rocket stuff in the garage is a fire hazard.

Next goes the unfinished construction project materials. I will probably never roof a house, so all the scrap roofing materials hits the curb and instantly vanishes. I'm not adding a door to another room in this house, so the interior door that's been sitting in the rafters since we bought this house hits the curb and disappears. Likewise, the louvered closet doors, the baseboard electric heating elements, and the unused wall-to-wall carpeting left by the previous owner. All set out on the curb and all claimed in less than an hour. I'm on a roll.

Electronic parts and project cases hit the trash. I disassembled my wooden saw horses and chopped them up for materials. I have cool folding metal ones and don't ever use the old style horsies. Flammable construction materials practically fling themselves into the burn box for the wood stove. I can almost see my metal work bench and the wooden bench has been cleared since morning.

As I toss crap, I inventory the non-crap possessions and put them up on Craig's List and eBay while I organize. By 5PM Saturday, I've sold almost $200 worth of idle crap. I also have the Kawasaki Sherpa up on the jack ready to strip down to the frame and rebuild with the original stock parts. By Sunday night, the KL250 will also be on Craig's List. Once, I'd thought Wolfe and I would be doing some off-road riding together this summer, but he's made it clear that isn't in the works so I'm clearing the garage space for something useful (or just for the luxury of free space). I can always find another dirt bike if it turns out I need one. That's another transient motto of mine, "if I ever need it again, I can buy it again." Two spare helmets are on Craig's List and so is the cruise control I never installed on the V-Strom because I couldn't convince myself I could tolerate the control's added clutter under the tank.

While I'm tossing stuff and selling stuff, I'm fixing stuff, too. That's why cleaning the garage takes so long. If I find a repair part I've been looking for, I stop cleaning and do the repair so I won't lose the part again. Tomorrow, I'm installing the throttle for the electric scooter and, if it works, that damn thing hits Craig's List, too. Another dumb idea that got a lot of playtime, initially, and ended up taking up space afterwards.

Ten hours later, the garage is clean and civilized. Both work tables are clear, the work area is wide open, the kid stuff gone, a giant curb-load of stuff has been claimed by the neighborhood collectors, and a bunch of boxes are going to be part of our Fourth of July celebration as starter material in the fire pit.  Mission accomplished. Now I'm afraid to start anything in the garage because I'll mess up my new order.

An Amazing Bicycle Race

This is pretty amazing:

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

And this is a little more professionally recorded:

It's Two Wheels