Not a Resource

Saturday was a busy day for putting stuff on the motorcycle. Finished mounting the new Coocase S48 topcase. Went to Walmart to hunt for wiring supplies and lucked into finding a Slime Power Sport Smart Spair kit. This is much smaller than the kit I had been carrying — the compressor will actually fit under my seat — and it came with a bunch of SAE adapters, an SAE cable, and an SAE terminal.

Installed the SAE terminal. Ran the SAE cable under the gas tank to the under-seat area. Then I sacrificed an SAE adapter to use its connector to power a Fuseblock, which I then wired up to the Coocase to power the alarm / keyless entry / brake light.

May not sound like much but that consumed most of the daylight hours.

Tonight I installed the electrification kit in my new Bags-Connection Daypack II tankbag. Bags-Connection has a really slick line of bags that use a quick-release system that mounts to the ring around the gas cap and keeps the bag off the tank itself, and provides power for electronics within the bag through the mount. I’d already had the mount on my bike from a previous bag that was too big for my bike so this was just installing the corresponding parts on the new bag.

Before I go for my Sunday morning ride I’ll add a 12v cigarette socket to the bag. This will only take a moment thanks to Posi-Lock connectors, which I now believe to be just about the best thing ever.

The bike is now about 75% prepped for my April road trip. I’ve got new 90-degree valve stems on the way so that checking / adjusting the tire pressure isn’t such a pain, I’ll be ordering new tires within the next couple of weeks, and I still have to figure out a better way of powering my GPS and radar detector…

The new jacket arrived just in time for the first cold front to hit us. I rode with it on all of the coldest days and it feels like it should be good down to around 40F or so. Snow in the northeast delayed the rest of my motorcycle parts but they finally arrived on Monday. Got the old topcase and rack removed, and the new rack installed. Tuesday night I’ll work on the new topcase and tankbag.

My Lenovo U150 shipped out on Monday. Can’t wait for it to get here! From the outside it looks like any other netbook, but with the SU7300 and 4GB of DDR3 it ought to be capable of doing some real work. I will probably end up using it at home and work to replace my Windows 7 virtual machines, which are damned slow under VMware Fusion.

I’ve got my hotel booked for the weekend in Helen. Have begun to firm up my plans for the following week. It’s all coming together, soon I will have nothing left to do but wait…

Spending a week riding in the mountains this past fall was probably the most fun I’ve had while fully clothed. Since the moment I arrived home I have been waiting for Spring to come so that I could do it again, and for the past month I’ve been scouring the Internets for a gathering to attend…

Last week I finally decided on a late-April meet-up in northern Georgia. Richard (Tom’s dad) will join me for the scheduled weekend activities and I’m going to take the following week off to roam on my own. On the last trip I barely got to experience what northern GA has to offer so I am hugely looking forward to that, and being at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains puts most of the great motorcycle roads of the East Coast within a few hours ride.

Most likely I will ride out of GA to the Tail of the Dragon, then return to eastern Tennessee to repeat the EOM-5 route — my favorite ride of the previous trip — in the vicinity of Big Stone Gap in the Jefferson National Forest, do at least one run through Shady Valley, and then turn south to hit as many fun roads as I can find on the way back home.

Of course, now begins the expensive process of getting my motorcycle ready for another long trip. For the most part the mechanicals and my electronic gizmos pretty well sorted at this point so I just need to make my wiring permanent and tweak some mounting bits. The lock on my cheap top case broke so I’ve ordered something more on the premium side to replace it, with brake light flashers and an alarm built-in. I’ve also got a much nicer jacket on the way that should be better suited to varied weather conditions. The jackets I have now are ok in the wet but are lousy when it is cold. I’ll probably replace the tires again before this trip — by late April the rear will be approaching the miles I put on the last one and I do not want to repeat the last trip’s experience of driving like a mad man on a corded tire to get to the only dealership within 100 miles open on a Saturday before they close.

There went a thousand bucks…

Also need to pick up a Verizon pre-paid as AT&T’s coverage in the mountains sucks. And I still need a new netbook. And I’m giving serious thought to getting a SPOT Satellite GPS tracker, tho I’m not entirely convinced of its usefulness in a solo emergency — if I’ve gone down and am seriously hurt, how will I activate the “Send Help” button?