motorcycles, technology, music, business

I am a member of the Boston Sport Bike Meetup.com Group. I have only been able to go on two rides so far but they have both been fun.

I have been “planning” on doing a New Hampshire trip on my own this summer. I even have the route all mapped out and loaded in my GPS. But I wasn’t getting out the door. I was unsure of whether to do it in one day or two and I wasn’t sure how much money it would cost and so on. It would have also been my longest ride to date and I may have been intimidated by the miles in my route.

One day I see a scheduled meetup to do a slightly shorter version of my planned trip. I decided that since I wasn’t able to motivate myself to go on my own, I would make myself go on this ride.

We met in the morning, north of the city. It took a bit of getting used to for me to adjust my timing to allow for many riders, up to 15 at one point. I normally ride solo, and as we all know traveling in groups can be a bit of a hurry up and wait situation. There was a bit more futzing around than I would have liked and lunch was much longer than I would have liked but I enjoyed riding with the group and therefore the slight inconveniences were worth it.

I used my Garmin 60CSx to map my route. At Lincoln, NH several of us decided to head home while the rest continued on a bit more.

My Route:

View Larger Map

For a graphic showing the approximate speed and elevation of the ride go to me Garmin Connect activity page.

The Kancamagus is a lot of fun. It is almost as good as so many roads in Northern California. If it weren’t for the cars it would be a fantastic road. I put together a shorter video of some of the twisties. Recorded using a U-bolt camera mount and a Flip Mino. The bike you see most of is Tim’s Ducati 848. I, of course, am on my 2006 Yamaha FZ1.

I hope to get up there on another ride this summer. Hopefully following the route I have mapped out. I would be more than happy to do a smaller group ride of maybe 4 to 6 people. It seams that the best size for motorcycle trips is also the best size for project teams.

Thanks for reading and happy riding.

Last season, I was gifted a brand new helmet. A Shoei RF-1000. It is a great helmet with tremendous airflow over the top of the rider’s head. The sales people told me that the helmet would break in a 1/2 size. That is definitely true. This year, now that I have about 5000 miles on the helmet, the inner padding has compressed and the helmet sits too low to allow all that wonderful air in over my head. It also sort of wobbled around in the buffeting wind.

While riding this summer I found myself pushing the helmet up periodically to allow more air in to cool me off. That also revealed that it was also more comfortable on my forehead when up slightly.

I tried weather stripping in the top of the helmet but didn’t like the result. I then started the search for some more cushy foam pieces. While moving the window A/Cs from the basement I found just what I needed. Foam left over from the over-the-range microwave:

I cut three sections of the foam and placed them in a halo formation in the helmet, avoiding the forehead area. On the ride to work the airflow was much improved as was the position. However, the comfort was less than ideal. It is a significant proof of concept though and for the ride home I have removed the back portion leaving the side pieces in place. In the photo below you can see the head liner pushed in on the side.

I will update later on my final design implementation.

Thanks for reading and happy riding.