Motorcycle Thoughts

It isn’t that often that I have a weekend full of riding, but this was one of them. I am talking about Saturday and Sunday the 23^rd and 24^th of June.

Saturday’s event happened to be in Loudonville, Ohio the Thunder in Paradise. The event spanned the entire day from 8:00 am till Dusk, Motorcycles were celebrated in Loudonville.

Loudonville is a small town in Holmes County Ohio, where a lot of folks go to relax in the middle of Mohican country. Beautiful rolling hills give motorcyclists some perfect roads and fabulous vistas. The area has plenty to do with some of the best river related activities (Canoes, Kayaks and Tubes to start with) as well as plenty of camping throughout the area. We discovered the area soon after moving to Ohio, we quickly put our camper in a seasonal campsite in nearby Long Lake Campground. Having the camper at long lake turns out to be a very convenient thing, only minutes from home and Loudonville.

I did not arrive until around 10:00 am as I left the camper right after breakfast. Taking my Shadow-Aero into town I arrived about 15 minutes later. The event staff block off the main streets during events like this. The staff directed bikes onto the main street, overall the event was pretty well organized for a first year. Lots of bikes had already arrived and parked in the streets of the town by the time I arrived. Vendors were set up in the park, the food wagons ready to roll, and most importantly the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall for Ohio was being assembled in the center of town.

By the time noon rolled around the streets were really filling up with motorcycles most of the makes were represented including a Moto Guzi trike. As always every conceivable Harley was there including some very nice Pan heads and a few Knuckles. There were some particularly nice BMW’s (old and new) as well as some Indians present at the event.

There was even a group of Aero riders that came in (one from as far away as Indiana), I had talked with one of the members some time ago in Wooster. He flagged me over and we talked about the bike.

Had lunch at the broken rocks cafe, I am not a fan of the food that comes out of those wagons. Most of the time I walked around, admiring the bikes of all makes and years. Occasionally stop to chat with some of the onlookers or owners.

It was tough, I called at least three different repair shops in the area. The problem is I needed to feel good about who would apply a wrench to my Pride and Joy. This is, after all, My Bike. I know, I know, there are thousands and thousands of Honda Shadows on the road, probably thousands of Aeros, and 100’s of thousand bikes in general. My Shadow-Aero is nothing special in most peoples eyes, most say it isn’t a Harley. No it is not a Harley, too bad, it is a Honda, and I like my Honda, Respect My Bike. I do not care about the thousands and thousands of other bikes, well I do care, but they are not as important to me as my bike.

The chosen repair facility would have to meet some criteria. First, Respect my bike, show that respect. Second, Show the knowledge, the problem that I am having with the bike is obvious, I already know what is wrong with the thing. Third, respect me, I am not stupid, I make mistakes and say some stupid stuff from time to time, but I am the customer. I paid good coin for my scoot, I am paying the repair facility good coin to fix it, call me, IM me, email, etc, I DO want to know. Fourth, you need to have a shop that I am comfortable with, if you run a pit you will not treat my bike right. This extends to your personel as well, they better not look or act like the two grease monkeys on the great movie Vacation. My bike needs to be respected at your facility as well. I do not want to leave my pride and joy anywhere strange, but I accept that I will have to, make sure you put it inside if it must stay over night, if it starts to rain put it inside! Fifth, get the bike in as fast as possible, take your time fixing the thing but be timely.

I will sometimes consider the dealer in certain repair decisions. I have had a lot of bad (really bad) experiences with Honda Dealerships. That includes Motorcycles and Cars. I have utilized the local dealer (All-Seasons Wooster, Ohio) on one occasion for the Goldwing but that was only after having a long talk with the service manager, and it wasn’t that major of a job. Overall All Seasons gives me a bad feeling. They are expensive and seem to not care for Honda’s in general. They carry BMW motorcycles, fine motorcycles, no doubt.

The first company that I called I wanted to work with, they came recommended by a very reliable source. I tried very hard to explain in a tactful way, a way that would not make me sound like some type of Psycho about my bike. Unfortunately, I did not end up with a very good feel about the company. The person on the other end of the line did not sound like he had any respect for my bike, or me. He also was running about a week behind, what does that say about him, his shop, etc. It also tells me that you need to hurry up to catch up. My scoot will have to stay overnight at your facility for 5-7 nights, that is 4-6 too many. 4-6 additional times that you could screw up my bike, 4-6 additional days that I am without my scoot. Unacceptable, sorry.

The second place that I called was a place right down the road from me, called two wheeled pony. When I go by the shop it looks ok, they seem like a good facility. I called them, asked them if they work on metrics (non Harley’s), nope the guy said on the other end of the phone with a sarcastic almost condescending tone to his voice (probably just me though), only Harley’s and Harley based customs. Whatever, your loss.

The third and final was a long shot. I looked into them at a recent Motorcycle swap meet at the Wooster Ohio fair grounds. The repair shop seemed like another Harley ONLY shop, so I did not have high hopes. Called the guy at Cleveland Road Cycle. “Do you work on metrics” I asked, “Oh yeah, Harley’, Honda’s, we work on em all”. Talked with the guy on the phone for a bit, still didn’t have that great of a feeling, but I decided to take it to him to see what he would say. After work I went home fired up my baby, and headed out. Hated the popping, all the way north of Wooster on route 3. This has got to end. Got there it took him a while to finish up with the customer ahead of me, but it was my turn. I explained to him what it was doing and what I suspected. He said that I would have to leave it for the night because his guy already went home for the day. Damn, oh well. He asked if the problem would show up right away, Oh yeah. To make a long story short, he diagnosed the problem, told me exactly what he planned to do, how long it would take, and how much it would cost. After he got done, shut the bike off, walked around the bike, said ” this is really a nice bike”. Respect the bike I thought to myself, finally, I felt ok.

I was on edge the rest of the night. Kept going into the basement where the bike generally sits, looking at the empty space. The next day at work was a bit tougher than usual, but I got through it. Must have missed the phone call, toward the end of the day looked at the cell phone; 1 missed call. Listened to the voice mail; “Bike is done, runs good, come get it” as a programmer I like it short, sweet and to the point, but a bit more detail wouldn’t be bad, oh well.

Couldn’t get out of work fast enough. Love my job, love my employer, had to go. Ran home and waited for my wife to pick me up to go over and get the scoot. Took forever. Finally got there, looked skeptically over the bike, few smudges, some finger prints, no problem. No scratches, fabulous. Clicked the key to the on position jabbed the easy go button. Oh babbbbbyyyy, she is right again, what a sound and nay a pop. Further inspection would reveal that the some plugs had not been replaced over the air screws (who cares). A very fair price of $175.00 for rebuild of two carburetors and NO Scratches such a deal, couldn’t be more ecstatic.

After some chit chatting, I got on the road and gingerly started playing with the throttle, winding her up and letting it coast at closed throttle, not even a cough, sweet. Took my joy into Wooster which is ripe with hills, rolled her all the way down buckeye street which is maybe three miles all downhill. This allowed the bike to coast at speed in gear at closed throttle. It coughed twice the entire way, not even a single spit or pop. Suh-weet.

I got it all, respect for my bike, for me, my bike fixed, fair price, timely, descent shop. I recommend Cleveland Road Cycle for any repairs that you do not want to do yourself. Good man there. Feel Free to tell him the Black Shadow Aero sent you.

My beloved Honda Shadow-aero is still having problem. Earlier I posted about the problems that the motorcycle was having. It is clearly experiencing a problem in the idle or low speed jet. When the throttle is closed the engine pops and spits from the exhaust pipe. When coasting the popping gets worse. Then when rolling down a hill (which are plentiful in the NorthEast Ohio area) the popping and spitting are much worse.

In an act of desperation I attempted to use a fairly strong treatment of Sea Foam. Unfortunately the results were not very good. It seems that matters got better, but the problem never went away.

I have no choice, I am going to have to have somebody take the carbs apart. Most would probably not be too concerned about this, but this is MY bike. My bike is My bike, I have had this bike since new, I have made the bike all my own. I have labored to take good care of the machine. It only has one seat, 98% of the miles on the bike are with my butt in the seat, so the bike is truly MY bike. This causes a problem for me regarding letting others touch MY bike, let alone place a wrench on it. Fear of scratches or general disrespect to the bike are always weighing on my mind. The search will be long and hard. The time frame is short, because I really need to have this bike available for use. The Gold wing is nice but the Aero is MY bike

Recently found out that Apple has developed a version of Safari for Windows. I cannot help to ask one simple question: “why?” this makes no sense. Look at the ads that Apple has, they clearly are not very happy dealing with Windows. The have iTunes for Windows for market share. Safari itself (despite their claim that The worlds best browser, Now on Windows too) is not very well liked by the Mac users that I know, most of them stick with Mozilla’s excellent Firefox browser.

As for the browser itself, I downloaded the beta 3 version to my work computer. I am a Webmaster by trade and feel the need to see what my work will look like on the browser. The browser has a nice Apple look and feel (ala iTunes), well laid out. What I am not impressed with is how the browser renders my work. For example fonts do not not look right it is not sharp and crisp. Seemed that their are still some general CSS issues plaguing the browser, as well as some W3C compliancy issues. I am trying to keep in mind that the browser is in beta and hopefully these type of things will be addressed in the final release.

Still cannot help but wonder why Apple would bother with this my iTunes is still not fixed and they are still not addressing that issue, would love to watch my iTunes movies on my computer without having to jump through stupid hoops.

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Rush: The Musicians Musicians

I have been a Rush fan since Moving Pictures was first released. A friend in High School who was a drummer by choice threw me the cassette and said listen to this and then talk to me, in response to an argument between him and I. I went home popped the cassette into my boom box and sat down. Tom Sawyer first song first side, just blew me away. I could not believe how awesome the song was, the power of the lyrics the strength of the musicians, despite the terrible sound emanating from the terrible speakers and limitations of the cassette itself. It was truly an experience to remember. The following song Red Barchetta I came to find out later that the drummer Niel Peart is a word smith, poet etc. adapted the song from a poem called A Nice Morning Drive, written by Richard S. Foster (thanks Song Facts) The song was a story that I could close my eyes and listen too. The rest of the songs just blew me away, but I will save the details for additional postings that I have.

Needless to say, I returned the cassette the next day to my friend at school and apologized profusely for my stupidity. My first Rush piece that I owned was a cassette of Signals which I wore out. My library now contains all of Rush’s works, including some printed material and most of the video material. Needless to say the iPod holds the complete collection.

I am a die hard Rush fan forever. I love the latest Snakes and Arrows and already sport my tickets to the concert in August at Blossom near Cleveland.

Well, it has been almost a week and other than the email from nVidia pointing to Apple, I am no closer to solving the problem than I was before. I did get on Apples site and put a topic in the discussion board. No response to anything, thanks Apple, thanks nVidia. Another example of poor customer service.

This is what I hate, this is the nightmare.
I like HP computers for the most part this is my second. Honestly, I do not know why I bought another. I fear/despise vista, and the other one worked well. I really liked the looks of the special edition HP DV6258 SE. So I bought it, darn thing came with the Vista pig. Looking back on things should have gotten the Apple that I had my eye on. The trouble started when I attempted to install iTunes.

Initially I installed itunes 7.0 installation went fine despite the warnings that iTunes is not Vista compatible. Played music fine iPod sync went off more or less without a hitch. The problem was when I attempted to play a video or movie on the computer. The movie would start out OK, then stop and start sound out of sync etc. Worse yet the friggin computer would crash, yes, Crash BSOD baby. I figured this was a Vista compatible issue, looked all over the web for information regarding this problem. Apples site has a page dedicated to the problem. Originally, the page did not have the additional information at the bottom of the page. I followed all the instruction, no dice, same problem.

I waited patiently for iTunes 7.1, anxiously downloaded it, installed it, tried it. Music -fine, iPod - no different, movie playback - same problem. Searched the Internet, same pages, same worn out information. Apparently others are having worse problems tho.

Finally, not long ago iTunes 7.2, downloaded, installed, tested. Same problem, this sucks. Searched the Internet again. A few days ago I noticed the Additional Information on that page finally, I light at the end of the tunnel… or so I thought.

The Nightmare

I posted a message on the customer support board at nVidia’s web site. I will post the question and the quote below.

My question:
according to apple.com you are investigating a problem with the controller that is causing a BSOD during video playback using iTunes. Could you tell me the progress of this investigation and when an fix is expected?

Their answer:
Hi Greg,
NVIDIA Engineering has found this to be a application problem and not an issue with nForce SATA drivers as Apple has reported to them. Moreover, the issue also happens on Intel chipset’s such as i975. These types of chipset are found in Apples own computers.
Best regards,
NVIDIA

I would be really happy to hear a resolution to this issue. I am going to email both of them and see if they will duke it out amongst themselves. I love my iPod and more or less like the computer.

My first day on Second Life was not too eventful. I spent a lot of time adjusting the appearance of my avatar I am hoping that I can do a better job. I wandered around a bit touching stuff, tried the “help island” I also spoke to a lot of people. I can tell you that if they continue

I am not going to tell anybody who I am in my Second Life.  I am getting on Second Life for the first time today.  Just signed up for the basic and downloaded the application. I am anxious to try it.

Why get on second Life? I am intrigued by the possiblility, I heard about it at the Internet Retailer conference. So some if it is professional curiosity and some of it is personal curiosity and some of it is personal reasons.

The Bike has been stuck in stasis for a couple of years. When I lived in Michigan I put it away for the winter one year according to the instructions. This included fuel stabilizer and draining the carbs.

Since then the bike has not run right. I believe strongly that the idle jet is plugged up because it is popping at closed or slightly cracked throttle when coasting, or going down hill.

I bought a can of sea-foam mixed it into the fuel tank. I started out conservatively at 1.6oz per Gallon. I shook the bike vigorously and ran it idling the best I could get it to idle for about 10 to 15 minutes. I then shut it off for the night. The next day fired it up and it seemed to be running better, but it is difficult to tell. I rode it for a while around the neighborhood. Again, seems to be getting better. Now it is good and warmed up, sure is good to ride it again. Rode it on and off for the next few days, short mostly. In the mean time emailed the sea-foam people to get some descent advice about their product. Didn’t necessarily like the tone of the email rather condescending, either way, they assured me that the product could be mixed at 2oz to 1 gallon very safely. Finally, went camping took it down to the camper despite the threat of rain, still nice to ride. Emptied the tank the best I dared, poured the rest of the can in and topped her off with the premium petrol from the local station. Seemed to be popping less, perhaps it is getting better. Got it home after the weekend (just beat the rain). Right now I am in California, so the Shadow-Aero is sitting at home in the basement hopefully getting better.