A Day at Kil-Kare

A buddy of mine that I’ve known for 30+ years is a die hard motorcycle drag racer. A privateer on a budget, runs what he’s got and gets the job done.

I hadn’t seen him race but one time before and something broke or it rained, I can’t remember but I didn’t get to see him make more than one pass. I talked to him earlier in the week and found out that he no longer races at Edgewater. In fact very few bikes do anymore because the owner is an asshat and doesn’t much care for his customers so they’ve moved to Kil-Kare in Xenia Ohio.

I rode up, on the FJR and planned to take some pics. I got there in time for his second practice run, around 2pm. I was able to snap pics of that run, and his dial-in run before the camera battery died. It would have lasted all day had I charged it the night before but I wasn’t sure I was going to go.

In any event, it was a long, blistering hot day and stupid me wore jeans so I was mostly uncomfortable all day. (I wouldn’t ride in shorts but was too dumb to wear shorts and toss some riding pants on over them just to get there. Man I wasn’t thinking straight today.)

If you haven’t been to Kil-Kare, it’s a good time. There is absolutely no way to get out of the sun though unless you bring an awning or something. Did I mention it was hot?

After his second test run he had to replace his clutch. 2 of the plates shattered into about 2 dozen pieces each. That took about 40 minutes.

Butch was on today, hitting his dial in numbers, making good lights and slaying folks left and right.

He took down quite a few high dollar bikes and made the finals before his clutch came apart again in the final run of the day.

He was hitting 9.69, 9.68, 967 all day long like clockwork. His luck or rather his clutch didn’t hold together in the final run, or I think he would have taken that too. He was spot-on all night.

Photos in the Gallery here.

 

From Kil-Kare_070707

Sciatic nerve, what a pain in the butt…

During my MD2020 ride, towards then end of our 1300 mile ride, I was in agony.

Now in the past, I’ve ridden more miles than we did. I’ve done a couple saddle sore rides, all of which took some riding to get to to get started and to get home. More miles in the same amount of time.

My past experience with longer rides normally goes like this:

About 300 miles or 6 hours in, my buns get tired and sore.
About 400 miles or 8 hours in, my buns kinda hurt.
At about 500 miles, my buns are just numb, but not painful, either that or I just don’t care anymore.

I’ve done a lot of miles on the ZX11 on the stock seat, then on a much better Corbin saddle. On the FJR, I’ve done a couple long trips, one to NH, and a bunch of miles to the EOM meet, riding during the meet, and back home, all of them on the stock seat. I have an Air Hawk to get a little comfort now and then but it was more for a change of pace, it’s not the end all – be all answer for me. But it made things a little tolerable.

Now back to the agony part.

During our last 200 miles, I was hating life. I have (3) leg positions on the bike. The standard pegs, the passenger pegs (which I use from time to time), and the newly installed highway pegs just for this trip cause I knew there’d be some time my legs would get tired.

During that last 200 miles I was constantly switching looking for some relief. I’d change pegs then in less than 5 minutes the agony and pain would be back. I could feel it down my leg, and in the end my feet were throbbing. This wasn’t good. I described it to Kyle and he said, my sciatic nerve(s) ware being irritated. He gets that sometimes from sitting in a car too long.

Man that sucked.

We made it back but I could not have ridden another 100 miles, no way, no how. All other aspects of my body were fine. I wasn’t that tired, and my back, neck and shoulders were good, which usually they cause me some pain.

The ride home was long, but we stopped about every 100 miles for either gas, or a bathroom break and that helped break it up. Even so, when I got home my rear was in bad bad shape. It’s hard to describe this pain, it wasn’t a saddle sore type of pain, no, it wasn’t plain soreness. This was agony from the inside out. I could feel it down the back of my legs, but at least my feet didn’t hurt.

After some digging on the net, and talking to a guy at work I decided to go for some massage therapy.

The lady worked on my gluts and thighs. She said I was unbelievably tight. But I think I got some relief. Actually, I was very sore the next day. But I felt like her poking, pushing and prodding did me some good, I think.

Sunday I went on the BMW ride, not a lot of miles about 250 round trip, but towards the end it was all I could do to ride home. I’m still aching as I write this.

Don’t know what the solution is, more than likely a new/better seat. Something that provides more support.

I even took some ibuprofen last night, which in the past has broke me out in hives, but I needed some relief.

I go back to the massage therapist tomorrow and I’ll have her work the area again. But I’m weary about riding for a while. The bike is calling me, but I’m scared 🙁

If you have any sure fire relief for sciatic pain, please post a comment cause at this point I’m willing to try just about anything. It’s not sciatica, because it doesn’t start at the base of my spine, it starts in the middle of my buttocks, and runs down the back of my legs. I have no back pain, none, only a burning stabbing pain in my gluts down my legs. Or maybe it is back related and I just don’t know it or can’t relate my pain to my back? In any event some time off the bike is in order until I get this figured out.

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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”

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:

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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.

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Getting someone’s attention

The stock horns on the JFR are a joke. FJRandy on the FJRForum makes a ready made wiring harness for the 138db Magnum Blasters.

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I’ve ordered up a set and will install them when the arrive. (although I didn’t opt for chrome, they’ll be black as all horns should be)

I need to redo all my electrical farkles. I have far too many things attached to the battery now:

– Battery Tender lead
– Lead for the gerbings heated gear (of which I need to add another for my passenger)
– Power for the Starcom1

The battery tender does dual duty, I power the GPS from that when it’s not tending to the battery.

I picked up a 6 outlet BlueSeas fuse box to redo all of this but don’t know if I’ll have time before the next ride.

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More details later when I get to hook all this stuff up.