Pacific Northwest Ballet

At times over the last few days I questioned just what in the world I was doing. Voluntarily getting baked mid-day, ending the days with the body enveloped with fatigue. I am sure to be spending at least one day getting soaked with the approaching rain front. I could have just hopped a plane midday and arrived in Seattle fresh as a daisy in time for dinner. The All Wheeldon Program by Pacific Northwest Ballet this evening put all such doubts to rest. The dancing was superb, the choreography was innovative and beautiful. Now that I've been a Ballet hobbyist for a few years the genius and freshness of Wheeldon's work is very clear to me. What treat to have a complete program devoted to his work.

The weather forecast speaks of rain AND wind coming tomorrow. Rain I can handle, but rain AND wind I will pass on. The combination of the two makes for some very un-carefree riding. Add to that the other drivers on the road, dome of whom demonstrate no awareness of the increased hazard posed by such conditions and it's just not worth the risk. To me the confluence of these 3 conditions are one of the few times that riding a motorcycle sucks.

Instead I'll have a nice relaxed day hanging in Seattle tomorrow :-)

Lazy San Francisco Sunday

It was a beautiful, sunny and warm Sunday in San Francisco.
The day started off with some time at a cafe doing a little bit of work that needed to get finished. At one point I looked out the window and noticed 2 cyclists taking a break outside the window. I used to be quite the avid road bicyclist myself but I'm apparently of the old school. When we took breaks back in the day, we'd stand around, drink water and talk to each other. I notice here that when the new cyclists take a break, rather than go for the water, out come the phones so that they can separately communicate with persons not physically present. How times have changed.

It's time to go to afternoon Ballet class downtown. As I'm packing up to go, I notice that someone has hung an inflatable blue octopus outside their window. Nice surprise.

Ballet class over, I'm to meet up with some dancers at a cafe to plan a rehearsal schedule for a group dance piece that I'll be performing in at a charity dance concert in November. As I pulled up to the cafe, I saw that the mural on the outside of the cafe wall looked like the perfect backdrop to absorb the bike.

Holiday Getaway and a Death Knell

I loaded up my trusty Triumph and got out of town for a holiday weekend overnight.
So that I would miss the heavy return traffic on the last day of the holiday weekend, I timed my return to take place on the day after.

I stopped for a snack at a gas station and noticed the local newspaper headline. It shouted loudly to me the death knell of the daily paper. The right hand panel read:

"Bridge won't reopen today"

referring to the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge work that closed down the bridge over the weekend. Of course this headline was completely WRONG. The Bridge DID indeed reopen that day. In all fairness to the paper editors, it probably was true that at the time that the paper was being composed, it looked like the bridge would not reopen, so they went ahead and printed that story. Once printed and distributed, you can't change or easily callback all the papers. This shortcoming will be the death of the daily newspaper. Situations can change too quickly for the 12 hour (or whatever it is) printed newspaper issuance cycle. Anyone that heard local news on broadcast television or read an on-line news source got the 'true' story: The Bridge DID reopen that day. The newspaper was wrong.

This isn't to say that the printed newspaper is dead though. I still have a subscription to the Sunday New York Times. I don't subscribe to it for the main news section, I subscribe for the Business, Arts and Books sections and for the weekly 'magazine'. The editors of those sections consistently choose topics that I both find interesting and might not go out of my way to look for. That's the true value of a paper to me, the editor's who are on the lookout where I usually don't explore (no 'wisdom of the crowd' concept applies here).
So despite the rising subscription rates for a paper that's getting thinner every month, I look forward to getting it on Sunday mornings. I hope the death of the daily newspaper doesn't sink the Sunday editions.. what would I do then ? sigh...

Brrrr.. No C-C-C-Coos Bay to-d-d-daaay

It was a cold, foggy and overcast day today along the California and Oregon coasts. A bit adverse to making it up to Coos Bay and having time to wander around at an appropriately leisurely pace. So I wandered around the coast not quite so north as I had originally planned. There were a lot of other people on motorcycles going up and down this beautiful coastline today, um, 99% of them with windshields so appropriate for the weather.. Speaking of the weather, I learned today that the weather conditions in the areas that I ranged over are uniquely suited to the cultivation of very good Easter Lily Bulbs. That thought made my day, actually...

3 day chopper getaway

I looked at my calendar and noticed that I hadn't taken any vacation time since last Sept. Well, we need to remedy that ! So I'm off for 3 days heading north to Oregon. I'd like to swing by Coos Bay, OR. I was last in Coos Bay in 1978 visiting my sister who lived there at the time. That visit was my first close contact with small town life. My sister's friends thought that I was a complete paranoid freak from the city constantly insisting on locking things (like vehicles) anytime we were leaving them. This was a town where no one bothered to lock the doors to their houses when no one was at home. It's a likely bet that things are a little different now, 30 years later.
On this trip I'm taking my Honda Fury, a bike not suited to making this kind of journey. There's no real luggage capacity, the seat is skimpy and hard and there's no wind protection. I've done many motorcycle miles on bikes with at least a minimal windscreen which makes it possible to do many miles at high speed per day. So this time it will be fewer miles at slower speeds. All the better notice more with not a chance of getting a speeding ticket. While on the open highway I caught up on a lot of my favorite podcasts: Culture, News, Technology and History from BBC, Deutsche Welle, PRI, Radio Australia, Radio Romania, Radio Austria, Radio Japan and NPR. It's a relaxing luxury to be able to listen to the queued up casts serially and completely.
One of the action shots shown was taken while passing a vineyard. It's sobering to think that 90 years ago or so, making wine would be illegal. Times change.

2 weeks of Fury

Well, I've had this Honda Fury for 2 weeks now and it has been a phenomenal experience. I don't think that the marketeers at Honda in their wildest dreams could have imagined the reception that this machine is getting with the casual public. At practically every location that I park this bike at people are drawn to look at it and more than a small percentage of them want to talk about it. The casual public that I'm referring to isn't restricted to 'motorcycle enthusiasts', the appearance of the bike has touched the psyche of the non-motorcycling public as well. Perhaps the recent spate of 'chopper builder reality shows' has seeded minds with this aesthetic, I don't know, but the effects aesthetic recognition are there.
I have been a long time custom bike chopper fan, but the cost of obtaining one was always beyond what I am willing to pay.. a price of $30 to $40,000 or more is just too much for me to even contemplate. The idea of fabricating one myself holds a lot of appeal, but I don't imagine having the time to engage in a project like that till after I retire (if that ever happens !)..

So, along comes Honda who have decided to produce one. They wisely hired a team of AMERICAN designers who understand the genre very well and let them call the shots when it came to specifying the bike's style. Honda have proceeded to manufacture a mass production 'chopper' at a mass production price that I was willing to pay.

They've hit the mark dead center and as a result people just aren't leaving me alone when I park the thing.

Harley-Davidson product of Globalization

It's a bit paradoxical. To a good percentage of motorcycle enthusiasts Harley-Davidson is the ultimate symbol of the American bike. To people who aren't into motorcycles (and to some people who are), the passion that some express towards Harley-Davidson motorcycles to the exclusion of other brands (and especially to the exclusion of Japanese brands) is puzzling, I mean, I might prefer Coke to Pepsi but I don't look down on Pepsi drinkers and I *surely* would not tattoo the Coke logo on my arm, but such are the extremes to which some people feel.
The paradox of the 'American-ness' of the Harley brand vs. what it is in 'cold steel (and aluminum and plastic) reality' shows itself most readily when one has to service the brakes of, say, the popular Softail model.

To remove the front brakes and brake pads for servicing requires that one use a metric (re: foreign) 10 mm wrench AND an American 1/4 inch wrench. The need for using 2 sets of tools working in 2 different measurement standards is because the brake body is from an American company whereas the fork leg that the brake body is mounted on is from a Japanese company (and for all we know the fork leg could have been manufactured in Thailand or something).


If that isn't symbolic of globalization, I don't know what is !

2 Wheels Good

Someone asked me about this recently, so here goes.

I like vehicles with 2 wheels. With a motor or human powered, doesn't matter. The sensation of getting around on 2 wheels is a gift to us from the laws of angular momentum (the spinning wheels wanting to keep us consistently oriented.. (that'd be rubber side down) ). The nice part of riding on 2 wheels (the exposure) is also the most risky part of riding on 2 wheels (the exposure). Because of the risks I no longer depend on them for getting around in all conditions, specifically I try to avoid riding at night in the rain. Motorcycle OR Bicycle the chance of being flattened by something on the road with 4 wheels is increased due to decreased visibility in the rain. (Riding in a city on a Friday or Saturday night is another time to be really cautious).
Sometimes when going out to a nice place on a nice day for a recreational bicycle ride, it seemed like a waste of a nice day to be sitting boxed up in a car.. So the obvious thing was to rig up a motorcycle to carry a bicycle and have a nice day out on both a bicycle and motorcycle ride. I've seen various solutions to this problem implemented by other like minded souls. This one is the final version 2.0 for me. Does the job and works fine. I've taken it to lots of places, up and down the western states, out to visit my sister in Minnesota (to do a bicycle club ride with her in Minneapolis, what else ?). This picture was taken on a highway heading towards Tucson during a Christmas Vacation trip out to Arizona (December temps were in the 70's mmmmmm.....)