"There are two kinds of motorcycle riders..."

"...those who have wrecked their bikes, and those who are going to wreck their bikes.", some unattributable quote that Robby shared with me last night.

Thursday was a pretty good day to ride, and I had the opportunity for a fairly decent ride from Austin up to Lampasas via State Hwy 183. Clear weather, bone dry roads, but there was maybe a little challenge presented by the 20-30mph gusts that showed up as crosswinds going to Lampasas and as headwinds for the last stretch coming in toward Leander.

Was that a deer in the road? Standing on the stripe? I couldn't tell, but I knew I needed to get to the outside of the curve, rather than the inside which is typical. To do so, I had to loose speed, and quickly. Training said to straighten the bike and brake evenly. I did that. I had even more incentive because I could see the fine haze of limestone dust on the pavement. No hope of 'cheating' on the brakes a bit through the turn. I just had to use all the braking available, in a straight line, and hope for space to come to a controlled stop. Turns out, that wasn't going to happen.

I have three images in my mind: seeing the road curve away from me to the left and seeing a wide shoulder with large rocks and limestone dust all over everything, watching the bike slide out from underneath me and going down on its left side, and then me flying "Superman-style" over the right side of the bike. Then I felt my helmeted face land first and bounce, then my body sliding to a stop - face down. No stars, no blacking out; just thoughts of frustration that I'd surely dinged-up the bike pretty darn good.

I stood up, brushed off a bit, and then turned to my right and looked down at the bike. She was still running, and for some reason the engine was racing. That didn't make any sense to me because she was laying on her left side, and the throttle is way up in the air on the right handle. I couldn't tell if the rear wheel was still spinning, but instead of just killing the engine with the switch, I tried to 'clear' the throttle with a quick twist. No effect. Weird - so I killed the engine with the switch.

It was all really quiet. The headlamp continued to burn and I could see the limestone dust blowing in front of the bike. I lifted my visor to adjust my eyeglasses which had shifted a good bit due to the face-first impact. That's when I noticed the blood on my gloves. Not a lot, but not a little, either. No pain. Nothing felt broken or numb, either. It was from near my nose is all I could tell. Didn't seem serious. Now, about the bike. This is a heavy bike, but adrenaline and I picked her up and set her on her stand. A few cars had passed by, but none stopped. I guess the fact that I was up and moving around indicated that I wasn't toast.

The left side of the tank was hammered, handlebars not too bad, but mirror bent back pretty far. The left footpeg was jammed in the upright position, but I was able to wrestle it back down. The shifting rod/shaft sheared off flush with the crankcase. That means they will have to go inside the crank case to fix this. Not simple, I'm guessing. So, whatever gear I was in at the time (3rd or 4th, I can't recall) was what I was going to have to use to get the bike out of there. Fortunately, the clutch was perfectly fine.

So, after making sure that nothing serious was messed-up with ME, I got back on the bike, held in the clutch and started her up. She started just as if we'd stopped to get gas. Not a problem.
I rode the clutch and got her back on the road. I just moseyed along at about 35mph and decided to ride to the shop, rather than ride to the house. The bike was clearly going to need to go to the shop.

I pulled in to the shop, parked and started to take my gear off. I fully-expected to just park the bike, lock it, call a cab, and come back this morning to talk things over with the guys there. "Hey man, are you ok?" someone called out from behind me. It was Nick, one of the mechanics at the shop. Good grief, the place was dark. I had no clue anyone was there. Turns out that they were sitting in the shop shooting the breeze; Nick, his girlfriend, and several of the folks from the dealership. They took me in and looked me over like one of their brothers.

Nick's girlfriend is a nurse, and she sat me down and checked me out real good. No concussion, no lacerations other than a slight cut on the bridge of my nose from my eyeglass frame digging in a bit. They offered to take me home, but it was going to be a long drive for any of them, so we just called a cab.

After that, I cleaned up a bit, and headed back out - in my car, to finish an important errand last night. Then I drove back to get sleep, and I slept in a bit. Kinda melancholy about the bike. "We can rebuild her..." hehehe

The bike will take some work to get back in to shape, but she's in much better shape than she could have been. I'm perfectly fine, not even any bruises. Just a little sore in my neck and upper left arm. Nothing Advil isn't taking care of.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't thank all of my good buds on Twitter. Y'all are great, and thanks so much for checking in on me last night.

These things happen soooo quickly. We've see life end (@AshPEAmama), and take drastic turns (@laniAR) so suddenly. I surely didn't expect to dive over my bike last night. You've heard it before, so just do it. Hug those dear to you every chance you get.

-- Mike

oh, and one more thing

What a day. I've been using telecommuting to the max lately. There are plenty of reasons why, but it just amazes me how technology enables things that are just nuts. Like this morning, I'd managed to take a 90-minute conference call that was dialed-in to my office phone, which immediately forwards to my mobile. Yeah, that was me, on the floor in my room, with the laptop running and six e-mails in progress. USB-charging the Treo and mini-USB charging the bluetooth headset just prior to the call.

So there I am, checking up on one last Twitter before I head out the door for some lunch, and here's this from @newmediajim...

I'm streaming live right now, come chat! http://qik.com/video/23123
Sir Bob Geldoff on the way! standby for Qik!

Sure, why not? Jim's in Africa with the President of the United States, and I've got not much more to look forward to than a BBQ sandwich and a Diet Pepsi, so hey, I'll see what this Geldof chap has going on. Jim's always talking to interesting people.

Africa can't heal itself or sustain itself until the despots are gone. Rolling tanks? Naah, you have to convince the people that they can lead and protect themselves, but they've lived under the shadow of death for generations. They need know that someone will rescue them, and then hold their new leaders accountable. Geldoff gets this.

Check out his answer to my question during this interview.

That was just wild. I was blown away that Jim would snag my question out of the chat box, and even more blown away that Geldof spent about four minutes answering it!

Geldof was interesting, and I could have listened to him rap on that topic for an hour. He didn't sound like a typical naive Glamor Shot do-gooder with a Sir (although he's not officially a "Sir") title and your donation money to spend 'feeding the poor'. He seemed like he was indeed searching for a solid plan in the midst of a crazy world - ours. One where the culture of corruption and greed still rules over so many. No, not corporate corruption and greed, but Warlord corruption and greed.

New media, people. It happens quickly, it's real, and it's hard to keep up with. But dang, it's so cool.

Why I Ride

I have wanted to make a post on this topic for a long time. Problem is, I haven't figured out the right words to complete it. Mid-life crisis? Sure, that's an easy answer. You can tag me with that one if you want. I won't stop you. As if I could. No, it's more than that.

"Lady Thunder" as my friend Duane calls her, is a mechanical work of art. She should be under a cover, meticulously cared for and kept in pristine display condition. But she was built to cruise. Those 1507CCs really should do what they were built to do.

She's gentle on the acceleration, but doesn't flinch when taking on Tumbleweed Hill, nor FM 620 at Mansfield Dam. She gallops at idle, and hammers steady at cruise. With my earplugs in and SNELL-approved helmet on my head, her thunder is muffled, but still oh-so-solid. (Trust me, no ear plugs, and the ears ring - a lot).

I love feeling the curve of the earth under the wheels. The challenge of gauging the entry in to each and every turn. Noticing things that I'd never noticed before about pavement, road conditions, wind, humidity, temperature changes just crossing Austin, practicing constant speed while holding a line just off the tire tread of the four-or-more wheelers, and so much more. :) Oh, and then there's the view. More on that another time.

I can't help but say, to no one else but me, "I love this bike."

And no, she's not for sale.

Just checking in

Apparently, there is at least one person out there who reads this blog, besides me. I'm taking that as a very positive thing, because, well, I just think it's cool that someone would subscribe to this. Thank you. :)

But there are bigger things going on in the word, FAR bigger things that what Mike decides to write about in his blog. For one, our friend Ashley has been taken from us. The Twitter community is where a lot of us met Ashley and got to know her - 140 characters at a time. Some of the links off of the site above are wonderfully written. I'm new to social media. I'm a user, not a creator, and I'm not trying to make a living at it. It fascinates me. And at times like this it amazes me. The Twitter community rallied to raise over $7,000 in less than a week to help the family that Ashley left behind. Amazing. Encouraging.

But the ramble continues... Ok, my boss said he'd call in 20 minutes an hour and a half ago. I guess I'll hang another fifteen minutes or so. No pressure on my time tonight. Thought I'd do some personal e-mail at this hour, and well, with MacWorld in the background today (ok, foreground for some of you - just background noise for me), this topic came up, so I wrote it in my e-mail:

Just saw your tweets on/re: iTunes movie rentals. I'll be interested to see how that plays out. When NBC Universal pulled their material from iTunes and moved it over to Hulu, that really frustrated me. I was watching all of my TV series on iTunes last year. This year? Even before the strike, nearly nothing. Turns out that most of the shows I was interested in were on NBC. Studios have got to let go of exclusive deals, and push distribution channels (iTunes, Hulu, Walmart, Netflix, whatever) to compete on features/service and not just on exclusivity.

Call me a fan of the Writer's Strike (and I'm no fan of unions, believe you me). Big Media is languishing and like big government, can't figure out how to grow a good thing. They try to keep all of the money for themselves (or take it, in the case of the government).

Ok, that should suffice for thoughts on that. Maybe I will just go over to the Apple Store in The Domain and take a sip of Steve's Coolaide.

Cheers.

Oh the grief I'll catch for this one

Hi Kids,

So I woke up on Saturday thinking "I really need to get these eMailOurMilitary.com Holiday Love Christmas cards written for @dayngr and in to the mail ASAP." Trouble is, I hadn't started, never really got things going in the office, and I was seeing on Twitter where @MailOurMilitary was seeming to be needing cards, and badly.

Surely, my kids and I would be able to do a few cards and those are special in their own way, but c'mon, Mike, we're talking about red-blooded American Boys driving Humvees through neighborhoods where snipers and IMDs are lurking. Guys stuck in barracks working guard duty, ships at sea and planes flying high above. They would surely enjoy a nice wholesome pic of some girls next door enjoying a fine Austin afternoon!

They needed some Hooter girls love. What finer stocking stuffer than a Christmas card for their barracks or wherever they call home while serving our country.

A huge thanks to Jessica, Tatyana, Hannah, Sarah D., Bobbie, Annette, and the rest of the girls of Hooters Lakeline in Austin, TX. (And oh yeah, the manager, Danny. :) )

Although the "Holiday Love" campaign has closed for this year, you can still lend an Utter to the troops thanks to eMailOurMilitary and Utterz collaboration.

All for now. And yes, I seriously did this for The Troops. I know it's a nice bike and all, but sheesh I would never have the cajones to just walk in to Hooters and ask for these pics for my own nefarious purposes.

Hope you're enjoying this Holiday Season and have the opportunity to share time with your loved ones, near or far.

-- Mike

"You got lucky"

You know how you get a new toy, and you have all the best intentions in the world, and enough of the basic training that you really shouldn't screw things up, and you're deathly afraid of screwing something up, and well, experience has shown you that it's only a matter of time... Well, I did get lucky this morning. An I wasn't even on the bike.

I went in to the dealership this morning to get the Texas state motor vehicles inspection for the bike. The dealership has a new special parking area dedicated to motorcycles. I'm sure this isn't novel, but this is the first I've seen anywhere. Fresh paint; we'll get back to that in a minute. So I navigate my beast (beauty, too) of a bike between the concrete parking bumpers in to the bike zone, and pull in to one of the spaces. The space was on a _slight_ downhill.

Engine switch off, key off, stand down, wheel cranked to the left. Walking in to the dealership. All good, right? So walk in, taking gear off, set backpack down, girl comes out of back office, "Oh great, you're back! Here for the inspection? (* looks out window, puts hand over mouth. *) That bike just fell over!" "Surely not mine," I thought, but there was the sick sinking feeling of, "just might be your bike, Mike."

Sure enough, there she was, lying on her left side. The salesman and inventory manager were out front and were already together lifting her up.

Now when nearly 1,000 lbs of bicycle falls on itself, _somethings_ gotta give, right? I got lucky. No tank damage, just some grind on the clutch handle and the left foot peg. I noticed later that the handlebars were a bit askew, but fortunately, the risers are on rubber gaskets and they just needed a firm twist in the other direction.

Some lessons you just have to learn first-hand. Always leave her parked in gear, and be aware of the grade. Believe me, everywhere I parked the rest of the day (and hopefully the rest of my life), I'll remember this morning.

And it was a grand ride in to work. Thrilling. Looked down and oops, I was doing 70. Well so was everyone else, too. Duh, that's Hwy 183 at 9:00am (not at 8am, but that's another story).

It was a great day on the roads. And I think I have most of the fresh yellow parking lot paint picked out of the scuffs on the pegs.

Have a great one. :)

Not your average day

I did it today

I truly had no intention of buying a bike today, but I've been thinking about "The Bike" ever since I first saw her on Saturday morning, 27-October. With this bike, it was most certainly love at first sight. Every bike I saw since 27-October was run in comparison in my mind to that bike.

I awoke at 7:00am to rain falling steadily, and heavily. The wind was flipping the leaves and branches to and fro. That's about all the analysis I could muster as I lay in bed. Today was supposed to be cold, yes, and chance of rain, but wasn't expecting 100% chance of deluge. That's what we got; Deluge. "What to do today…" and "What can I possibly get done by 10:30am…" were running through my mind. Shower, Twitter, FB poking, and a little "What's up?" IM-ing, and I was out the door. Rudy's breakfast tacos, check. Pick up dry cleaning, no check (still closed at 8:45am on Sat.). Hmm… Helmet shop or overdue oil change on the Camry. Ok, oil change, in Round Rock, then fly back downtown to get to game…

The major agenda item for today was to join up with a few dozen other Hokies at "Third Base" in downtown Austin to watch the annual grudge match for the "Commonwealth Cup" between Virginia Tech (Hokies) and Virginia (Hoos). Kickoff was at 11am CST. This year, the game was for more than just bragging rights in the Old Dominion, it was for a spot in the ACC Championship next Saturday against Boston College in Jacksonville, FL. Met some new Hokies. One couple had just moved down from Dallas yesterday. Hokies find Hokies. It just happens. The game? Tech hung on for the victory, and I really did intend to check out flights to JAX to go to next week's championship game, but I decided to buy some essential bike gear first. Gotta have gear to test drive, after all.

So I hopped back on Mopac and headed on up to Woods Fun Center. I wanted to get a plain black helmet (full coverage, SNELL-approved) and a pair of warm gloves for winter riding. I also decided to look at a rain suit to pull over everything in a pinch. I bought all three then decided to walk next door to Central Texas Harley-Davidson (CTHD) to see what was on the floor. Met a really cool low-pressure salesman, and had a great chat with the Senior Instructor for the Introductory riding class I took three weeks ago at CTHD. "I'm in no rush to buy a bike", I said. I wasn't, really.

So it's about 4:00pm and I guess I ought to be heading home. The Victory dealership is right on the way home. I had already stopped by the dealership twice this Thanksgiving week, after hours, to peek in the window to see if "she" was still there. She was. Waiting. So this afternoon, I decided to drop by once more, in the rain, to see if I could sit on her before they closed at 5pm.

Pulling in to the parking lot, I saw her sitting in the middle under the overhang. Because of the rain, they didn't roll the bikes out near the road, but only in a single line under the front overhang of the store. Not a great display, but practical given the weather. Some dude and his friend were eyeballing my girl a little too seriously. I hung back to be certain, and sure enough, they were pointing and lusting after my lady. After they headed on to their car, I walked over to the bike. Crap! There were yellow tags on the handlebars. At first, I thought they said "SOLD", but they said "HOLD", instead. I still stared. Well, it had been a little over five weeks that the bike had been at the store and four weeks since I first laid eyes on her. And she IS gorgeous. Frankly, I was amazed that she hadn't been sold yet. But there it was, "HOLD". Nuts.

I still hung around, and decided to walk inside to look at what was on the floor anyway. I was indeed a bit crestfallen. A truly friendly, and not in the "used car salesman" way, salesman came up and asked me what I might be interested in. I told him something like, "There is one bike on this lot that has been calling my name for weeks." He said, "I saw you looking over the white custom out there." I said, "Yeah, but it looks like I was a few hours too late." He said, "Not really. That guy wanted to think about it until Monday, but hasn't put anything down or signed anything yet. Have you heard it run yet?" "Nope," I said. I kinda knew how this was going to end.

He grabbed the keys and I started her up. Wow. WOW. Those short pipes (custom) just sang. She sat just like I recalled. Low and easy. Handles in the perfect position. Seat holding me in good posture. Pedals and controls 'just fit'. I was sold. Heck I started, stopped, and re-started her three times. Test drive? No need. This was on faith, and yeah, a little bit of lust.

I got her for $1,000 less than "Blue Book" (for bikes, it's not Blue, it's something else), and that's not including the nearly $3,000 in customizations added by the previous owner. I was looking through the 2008 accessories catalog for rear seat and saddlebag options, probably for springtime, and happened to mentally add up some of the customizations I knew of already on the bike.

While the paperwork was finishing and they were replacing plugs, etc. for the checkover, it dawned on me that I was going to be riding this baby home. Fortunately, home is less than 2 miles away. Oddly enough, I had all the right gear to get me home in the heavy drizzle and very wet 40F weather that was hanging over things at that time. Oh, and at 5:20pm, it was truly dark.

So my first ride on my new bike was not only going to be driving her home, but driving her home in the rain, and in the dark. That's about three steps up the risk ladder, but I was confident enough to pucker up and ride her home. "Just don't stall out in front of the guys pulling away," is what really stuck in my head.

The road was indeed slick, and I was more concerned about spinning out, and being unfamiliar with the clutch, I stalled her at the first light. Then she wouldn't start. "Ok, don't panic," I muttered to myself as I duck-walked the big bike just off into the side road. She caught on the third try, and I idled a bit, before pulling back on to the main side-road. The good news in all of this is that I didn't have ANY main roads to deal with to get home.

The next scariest thing was that yes, Mike, you do have to LEAN into the turns. That feels really good on dry pavement, but not tonight. So I leaned anyway and steered as I'd been taught. All good. So much so that I decided to take a lap of the neighborhood before pulling in to my driveway.

I pretty much idled her up the short driveway, but let's just say there is no mistaking when this Lady cruises by. Those pipes sing. My daughter looked down from her room and let out a little smile. I managed to find the garage door opener in my rain suit that I had pulled out of my car, and got the door up. I pulled the bike straight in, and shut her down. No sooner had the last rumble left the pipes than my son popped out of the door with a, "Cool!!! Can I try on your helmet, Daddy?" I love my boy. hehehe

If it weren't for the dark and the rain, I would have kept on riding. I can't wait to practice some more. I have a lot of clutch practice to go before I take this beauty too far down the road, but I'm prepared to ride in the cold. I will be ready for Spring. Period.

More to follow, for sure.

Tags: "Just as I am" "Mike Neumann" "Victory Motorcycles" "Victory" "Victory Vegas" "My first ride", Mike Neumann, Just as I Am