I am a leaf on the wind!

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Hanson
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Real Name: Richard Hanson
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Location: Garland, Texas

Re: I am a leaf on the wind!

#81 Unread post by Hanson »

Day 206 : Monday December 1, 2014 : Miles 16458

I was on holiday all of last week and did not get to ride near as much as I had planned. Instead, I spent a lot of time with the family despite the terrific weather. I did manage to get my seat packaged up and shipped off to KonTour for my seat build. On one of the days that I did get out I took the picture below. I have been trying to spend a bit of time on gravel roads as part of my ongoing efforts to expand my skills as a rider and I found a rather nice bit of dirt and gravel out in Montague country. How can any motorcyclist turn down a ride on a road with a name like Seldom Seen? When riding on the gravel I just go nice and slow, especially in the corners, and I have had no significant issues to date.

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>>>> Seldom Seen Rd - Montague Country Texas

Safe Travels,
Richard
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blues2cruise
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Re: I am a leaf on the wind!

#82 Unread post by blues2cruise »

How does the seat rebuild guy know how to make it fit for you?
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Hanson
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Re: I am a leaf on the wind!

#83 Unread post by Hanson »

Day 207 : Monday December 2, 2014 : Miles 16482
blues2cruise wrote:How does the seat rebuild guy know how to make it fit for you?
Blues,

I sat naked on the copy machine at work and sent him the pattern of my backside. :cowboy:

Seriously, I sent the builder my current seat along with some basic measurements like my weight and inseam. It is my understanding that he measures the seat and then makes changes as requested. I requested an additional 1" in height on top of the OEM tall seat. He can also adjust the seating position front to back. He takes the OEM seat and strips it down to the pan, discarding the original cover and padding, and then selects the densities of the foams he is going to use based on your weight. The idea is to sink into the seat a bit without bottoming out onto the pan in order to distribute the support for your weight. I am having the MAGNUM build with makes the seat wider by adding some "wings". This is recommended for large people and people who are into long distance endurance riding. The MAGNUM build will distribute my weight over a greater area which should decrease the pressure on my backside. My seat will also have a bit of depression right in the middle to give some relief to the tailbone. The foams he is using contours to the backside, but the seats are also built for typical summer temperatures and are a bit stiffer when the temperatures are cold.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that this is all going to work out as the seat was disgustingly expensive, so much so that I am experiencing a bit of remorse.

Since I shipped my tall OEM seat, I have been riding around on my spare regular OEM seat. As you are thinking about a DL650A, I can report that I don't notice much difference in the comfort between the two seats, but the difference in height was apparent. Also, I am experience more heat off the engine on the regular seat in comparison to the tall seat. I think the tall seat must have a bit more padding, but my longest ride on the regular seat was only about 250 miles which was not a sufficient distance for me to experience butt fatigue.

I will post detailed pictures when I get my seat back from KonTour, and I will take it for a hard ride, planned for December 21, so that I will have data from which to make a rational assessment.

I hope this helps.

Safe Travels,
Richard
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blues2cruise
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Re: I am a leaf on the wind!

#84 Unread post by blues2cruise »

Hanson wrote:Day 207 : Monday December 2, 2014 : Miles 16482
blues2cruise wrote:How does the seat rebuild guy know how to make it fit for you?
Blues,

I sat naked on the copy machine at work and sent him the pattern of my backside. :cowboy:

Safe Travels,
Richard
:laughing:
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Hanson
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Re: I am a leaf on the wind!

#85 Unread post by Hanson »

Day 209 : Wednesday December 3, 2014 : Miles 16515

Changing attitude:

When I first mentioned the idea of a motorcycle to Mrs. Hanson, she was rather upset and not at all happy with the idea. It took a lot of effort, determination, and perseverance for me to finally get a motorcycle.

Now, almost seven months after my moto purchase, Susi is a lot more comfortable with the idea of my riding. I think familiarity and my obvious commitment to safety have done quite a bit to eliminate her apprehensions. It is hard to remain in a state of fear when your husband rides every day. Does she like it? I don't think so, but she is a resilient woman and she has adapted to the circumstances of this moto reality. At times, I believe that she is even proud of my riding, although Mrs. Hanson is rather stubborn and would never admit to any such emotion. I did, however, witness a rather smug look on Susi's face when one of her friends was bragging about her husband's motorcycle riding and how he already had almost three thousand miles on his three year old Honda cruiser. Apparently he commutes to work on his metric, at least two or three times a year, and he even rides on the occasional weekend.

The point is not to make fun of other riders, but that Mrs. Hanson understands that I am serious about this activity, riding a motorcycle, even if she thinks I am a bit stupid, selfish, crazy, and obsessive.

I love that stubborn Irish redheaded woman that is my precious bride.

Safe Travels,
Richard

I mentioned getting a big touring bike down the road so that we can go moto camping together and she said there was no way she was ever going to consider ridding on the back of a motorcycle until the kids are all grown; that she was not going to orphan our children. This was the first glimmer of hope that she would ever get on a motorcycle, but I am a patience man. I am optimistic, persistent, determined; I am indefatigable. I will just keep going for rides and I will bring back great stories and pictures of beautiful places and amazing experiences.
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Hanson
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Re: I am a leaf on the wind!

#86 Unread post by Hanson »

Day 215 : Tuesday December 9, 2014 : Miles 16905

I did not ride much this last month, only a bit over 1300 miles which is only half my accustomed riding tempo. I have been thinking about why.

Part of the answer of it is just funding. I spent a small fortune on a seat from KonTour and so I have had less cash for gas. Another factor is that the rut is on and I have no desire at all to slam into a hormone induced sex crazed ruminant on some lonely Texas highway. Deer are a risk that truly scares me as there is just not much that I can do to mitigate the risk of hitting one of these unpredictable animals except to stay off the roads at those times when they are most likely to be out and about. I had two good rides in October and I did not do a long ride in November specifically because of the rut. I think weather has also been an issue. Without regard to the weather, if I get out and ride I always have a good time once I am in the ride, but when the weather is ugly it is just so easy to leave the bike in the garage. The final part of the equation is the increase of familial obligations at this time of year.

I am hopeful that I will ride more in December and I am planning a good hard ride for the winter solstice unless the weather just makes the ride stupid.

Safe Travels,
Richard
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blues2cruise
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Re: I am a leaf on the wind!

#87 Unread post by blues2cruise »

Face it....you won't have any free time until January now. :mrgreen:
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Hanson
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Re: I am a leaf on the wind!

#88 Unread post by Hanson »

Day 219 : Saturday December 13, 2014 : Miles 17110

I changed the front tire on my moto today. This was my second time to change a motorcycle tire and it was not nearly as bad as when I changed the rear tire at about 10.6k miles. I had purchased and installed a center stand for the purpose of making it possible to remove my front tire. This worked just fine along with a peace of 2x4 wedged under the engine to keep the front end up off the ground.

Next time I order rubber, I am getting two rears and a front. This will save a bit on shipping.

After I changed the tire I went for a short ride to scrub in the new rubber.

Safe Travels,
Richard
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Hanson
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Re: I am a leaf on the wind!

#89 Unread post by Hanson »

Day 228 : Monday December 22, 2014 : Miles 19241

KonTour review and Winter Solstice LD ride.

Last Tuesday I received my KonTour custom saddle and put it on the moto. When I get some good light, and the energy, I will take some photographs and post. The workmanship on the saddle was great, but there is a slight forward pitch to the seat when it is on the bike. When I went for my first ride I noticed immediately that I slide forward on the seat every time I use the breaks or even when I go over a bump and I attributed this to the pitch of the saddle. This meant that I was constantly pushing myself back on the seat or gripping the tank with my legs in an effort to stop sliding forward. It also meant that I was using my arms quite a bit to keep from sliding forward and I try very hard to ride without a lot of tension in my arms and upper body so that my control movements are fluid. I was very disappointed in the saddle and I spent some time reviewing KonTour's "Comfort" guarantee and had planned to send the saddle back to see if this problem could be corrected. On Thursday I took a day of vacation to attend the funeral of a rider, and I rode quite a bit that day. I noticed that after I had been on the bike for a while, perhaps twenty or thirty minutes, I did not have such a big problem with sliding forward on the saddle. Also, I had planned a good long ride for the Winter Solstice, December 21, as part of a serious of IBA rides called the four seasons ride, and this would give me a good test of the new seat before opening a discussion with KonTour about sending the seat back for corrective work. I wanted to have an experiential basis for asking KonTour to revise my saddle.

I am sick, I think it is just a bad cold. I have had some fever, a sore throat, and some head and chest congestion, but I went riding on Sunday.

I got up at 0230 and was on the road heading west by 0300. The plan was to ride all day, highway riding. I had a number of goals for this ride including completing the first ride in the four seasons serious of rides. I also wanted to test out how far I could ride in a day and had planned a couple of options for my turn around point which would be exercised on the ride when my progress could be ascertained. I wanted to work on ride efficiency, and I wanted to explore various routing option for some more difficult rides I would like to accomplish in the future. Finally, I wanted to give the KonTour saddle a good honest test, which simply required me to ride all day.

To a great extent, I got lucky on the weather and I experienced temperatures from the high thirties to mid sixties, some fog in the morning, and typical west Texas winds.

Some firsts:

1) The head winds in west Texas destroyed my mileage when traveling west. I ran out of gas twice when I failed to reach pre-planned refueling stops. The first time I ran out of gas about 4 miles short of my stop, and the second time I made it to the station I had planned to use, but there where lines at all the pumps so I foolishly decided to go down to the next exit to get gas. I record all my fuel usage and my worst tank mileage for the day was 26.41 mpg and my best was 47.25 mpg.

2) For the first time I was wide open throttle and wanting more horse power. This happened a couple of time when heading into a strong headwind at a little more than 80 miles per hour. The speed limit in west Texas is 80 and I often ride about at about+3 miles per hour over the limit or a bit faster if required by the flow of traffic. I found that my DL650A just did not have the power to accelerate at this speed into the headwinds I was experiencing, at least not when just rolling on in 6th gear, and I had to downshift to 5th.

3) This was my first LD ride on the KonTour and the saddle performed flawlessly except at the start when I was sliding forward all the time as I had experienced previously. After a riding a while, the seat seamed to mold a bit, or soften up a bit, it is hard to describe, and for the rest of the day I had no problems with the saddle. Instead, when I finished my ride at about 0230 on Monday morning, I had no butt discomfort. Normally it takes me a couple of days for my backside to recover from a LD ride, but if I was not sick I would have had no problem at all doing another long day today. The KonTour is going to remove "O Ring" fatigue as the limiting factor for multi-day long distance rides.

4) It absolutely stinks to ride when you are sick. There is just no good way to deal with coughing up gunk while in a full faced helmet. Moreover, I was grumpy. I get rather irritated if a gas pump doesn't spit out a good receipt and I have to go inside for a duplicate receipt. I resent the time impact on my ride plan and I am afraid I was not the friendliest customer. It did not help that I had a sore throat and a lot of gravel in my voice. I apologize for my bad behavior.

5) This was my first long ride where my electric gear was heavily used and it works wonderfully.

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>>>> Sunset in West Texas, Sunday December 21, 2014 on I-10

This was my longest day ride to date. I rode 1705.9 miles in 23 hours 34 minutes and I learned a lot about my riding envelope and the performance of my motorcycle.

Safe Travels,
Richard
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Hanson
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Re: I am a leaf on the wind!

#90 Unread post by Hanson »

Day 246 : Friday January 9, 2015 : Miles 19368

As expected, I did not ride much over the holidays, nor have I been on the bike that much this week other than from my commute back and forth to work. The weather has been rather cold, at least for North Texas, with temperatures down into the twenties and lower thirties every morning. Luckily, the pavement has been clean and dry. The only issue is to look for patches of ice on the road where people have left their sprinkler systems turned on and the runoff has turned the road into an ice skating rink. There are a couple of places like this on my way to work and I try to spend most of my time in the left lane as far from the edge of the road as possible.

I was looking forward to a lot of riding in 2015, but the company I work for has had a reduction in force and pay cuts. My income was cut 12%, and that is going to have a big impact on how much I can ride and on purchases for my bike. I had actually taken the time to write down a list of rides, at least one for each month, that I had going to take in 2015, but I have drawn a line through most of those rides. I had wanted to get some panniers, and then to do some longer rides. Latter this winter I had wanted to do a round trip to Key West, about 3000 miles, as a first multi-day ride with camping equipment, but that is simply out of the question with the pay cut.

At first, I was somewhat depressed by the situation, but I have accepted my new reality and have modified my expectations.

I still have a job. I have my family. I have a motorcycle. Life is good and I am grateful for my blessings.

Safe Travels,
Richard
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