May 2007 – Dishers.com

May 30, 2007May 31, 2007

Everett Moore comes to visit.

Low and behold, out of the blue, our old neighbor Everett stopped by for a visit today.

He used to live across the street and his life long goal in life was to own an ecstacy trike. I remember years ago when I first met Everett, he had a photo of one in his barn. Now, this type of trike isn’t my pick, but there is some logic here.

After Everett’s wife died, he moved to Florida, got all set up and eventually picked up a Goldwing trike. It was the bee’s knees. The problem though as Everett would explain it is that it will nickel and dime you to death. The starter went out and it was $800 to get that fixed. You’re dependent on a Honda dealer (although they are just about everywhere). But the cost of anything repair wise for one of the big jap bikes is just too much.

With this trike, it’s a Chevy V6, gets better gas mileage than the wing trike, and if he needs a part, it’s off to the local auto parts store. A starter for this is $65 dollars and it’s not a major surgical procedure to put it on.

Ok, so some of that makes sense.

Anyway, he’s in great shape, looks good and is happy as can be. It was good to see him again. He took all of the kids (including me) for a ride. Then we went to dinner.

From Everett Visit…

More photos in the Google/Picasa Web Album.

May 29, 2007May 30, 2007

The MD2020 Recap

Whew, it’s over… I’m exhausted.

Heading to York, Friday the 25th at o’dark thirty.

500 miles to York, PA, 1300 miles in the rally, 500 miles home. We could have and should have done more but unfortunate circumstances kept us from executing our planned route. It was very doable and would have scored us in the top 15, which for being noobs at this, would have been very, very good.
Out of 50 riders we finished 30th, which for our first Rally isn’t too shabby, especially after you consider our down fall.

Continue reading “The MD2020 Recap”

May 21, 2007May 21, 2007

Garmin Zumo is the shizzle.

Wow,

As indicated, I’m participating in a rally this weekend. Because my right hand man at work will also be unavailable (out of town) this causes a small dilemma. We need to be reachable, because it seems that Murphy always shows up when we go somewhere together.

Previously I had the Scala-Rider Bluetooth headset that I used so that I could be reachable. I don’t like to ride and talk on the cell phone, there’s already enough going on that I just don’t like it, but it is hands free so that’s a plus.

Last fall I migrated/upgraded my onboard entertainment to a StarCom1 intercom with iPod music input, as well as Radar (when needed) and the GPS audio. This system just rocks. For the rally my GPS was getting a bit dated. The Garmin Quest 1 is fine, except that it’s internal storage for maps isn’t all that large. I couldn’t load enough maps to potentially cover the rally area. I lucked into a Quest2 which holds all the maps for the US, but man is it slow.

That brings me to the Zumo. This brilliant GPS is designed for bikers. It’s designed for gloved touch screen use, can interface with XM, and has bluetooth.

After reading a few reviews on the FJR board, and doing a little digging it became apparent that this was the way to go. This baby puts me back into a situation to be reachable on the bike as well as upgrades my GPS considerably.

The unit is mounted on a Tech Mount Stem Mount, audio and mic cables are plugged in to the StarCom1. Audio isn’t ‘perfect’ but similar to most of the bluetooth head sets I’ve used with the Treo 700p which has a crappy bluetooth implementation anyway.

With this I have crazy fast and accurate GPS, 2gb of mp3s for it to play (as well as my iPod pumped into the StarCom1), and now bluetooth connectivity for my phone. I mounted everything tonight (had to wait on cables for the StarCom1) and it works great!.

Photos:

One other thing, the Zumo motorcycle mount is brilliant. It’s water tight, and has this crazy magnetic cover to cover the contacts with the Zumo is out of the mount.

To keep your Zumo, there’s a ‘security’ screw that you screw in. The basically keeps the mount from releasing your Zumo from the bike. It’s just a funky screw with a funky screw driver. You’re supposed to mount this on your key ring, but the brilliant minds at Garmin didn’t realize that they put the hole on the wrong end. Basically the screw driver stayed attached to your keys which made it darn near impossible to use. (It’s a really tiny screw).

I fixed that by drilling an identical hole in the cap and attaching that to the key chain. We’re good now.

May 21, 2007May 21, 2007

The MD20-20 Rally

So this year I’m finally getting to play in the Mason-Dixon 20-20 Rally.

This was supposed to happen the last two years but things have tended to get in the way.

This will be my first (and hopefully not last) long distance/endurance rally.

If you’re not familiar with what that is, let me share with you what I know up to this point. First, we ride motorcycles. No we’re not you’re stereotypical leather clad Harley riders (though there are some Harley riders that do compete in some of these events and I’m not bashing them in any way). The difference though is, well, we actually ride. I think it would be fair to say that a typical weekend ride for what’s considered ‘normal’ folks is under a 100 miles on any given weekend. (Sure some ride further but that’s probably the average). Just look at all the low mileage used bikes for sale. The 98 ZX-11 that bought used in 2005 with 4500 miles on it comes to mind. I put 24k on that in 18 months, and even that pales in comparison to some of the miles people ride.

The MD 20-20 rally is a rally that benefits John Hopkins Childrens center, but unlike your ‘standard’ rallies or poker runs which are usually pretty short and often parade like. The 50 riders in this pack will turn in approx 60,000 ride miles in the weekend, about an average of about 1200 miles per rider. Some will do more, a lot more, others less.

The Rally starts in York, PA and runs through the Memorial Day weekend. The official rally start time is after the 4:30 am riders meeting on Saturday. You must return to York, PA no later than 2pm on Sunday or penalties start to get assessed. Certainly no later than 3pm in which case you’ll be time barred. (Roughly 32 hours of ride time).

At the start, we’ll be given a rally pack with 50+ bonus locations, each worth some amount of points, plus some new locations and a few twists will be thrown in. Each year the MD20-20 has a theme, this year it’s “A Quarter for your thoughts???. What this means is there are four bonus locations that are Quarters. They are not worth any points. But what they do get you is the ability to keep 25% of the points you collected for visiting other bonus locations.

Visit enough locations to collect 2000 points but only one quarter location and you only get to claim 500 points. Simple enough right?

Well not so fast. There is a mileage cap for the rally. 1776 miles to be exact.

There is also one mandatory bonus location, again not worth anything but if you don’t visit this site you are disqualified.

Last week we were given the coordinates for all of the bonus locations as well as their point values. What we don’t have are the details for each location, or what we have to do to claim it.

If one simply maps out the 4 quarters plus the mandatory location, we find the shortest route to be 1630 Miles, which is only 146 miles under the mileage cap. You lose 25 points for each mile over the cap, so that’s not so good.

This rally is full of Iron Butt Rally vets, and those tuning up to compete in the 11 day Iron Butt Rally for 07. I don’t expect to win anything. In fact it’s my goal just to finish and finish respectably as opposed to the DNF’s my buds turned in a couple years ago.

I can’t divulge my route or strategy at this time (as if it would really matter) but I expect to have a blast.

I’ll post again later with my results.

May 14, 2007May 15, 2007

Chase Harper Millennium Leather Tank Bag For Sale Sold

Allrighty,

What we have here is a very nice ‘leather’ Chase Harper Millennium tank bag. Retails for $229.95 on the Chase Harper site, which means street price is somewhere around $179 or so.

I purchased this a couple years ago for the ZX11 but didn’t like how it fit. It’s a magnetic tank bag with sheep goodness to protect your tank. It can be strapped on too with it’s 87 way strapping system and hookups (most are included I do believe).

It is leather, has a aux leather case thingy for sunglasses, change, wallet or what not. The map compartment is two sided and reversible. It’s expandable and has two compartments. (I don’t know if I can find the rain cover).

Why aren’t you keeping it? I’m a very active person on the bike, I like to be able to get into my tank bag while riding to get some candy or what not. This thing is sealed up tight, and not easy to get into while riding. I have never used it, I bought it used, didn’t like the way it sat on the ZX11 and it’s sat in my barn. I cleaned it up a little, it’s dirty and dusty.

I have the original purchasers receipt, he paid $175 for it in 01, I don’t think he used it much if at all. I paid $100 if I recall correctly.

I’m thinking $80 US shipped to somewhere in the contiguous 48 states in the cheapest possible way I can ship it (probably UPS, maybe USPS).

If interested email matt(at)dishers.com

Update: Sold