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| Christmas Ride 2007 "A sunny 33°degrees, all the presents are open and the road is calling." |
December, 25th Dec 2007 |
Wake up call at 6:58 a.m.We have a single Christmas rule,"For every five minutes they wake me up before 7:00 a.m. they lose one present." We used this trick when they were little to limit their Television to one hour a day but I told them the clock does not start until I get woken up so if they let me sleep in until 10:00 am they could get an extra 4 hours or so of Television. That worked so well that I expanded it to Christmas and Easter. I'd use it for Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, President's Day, St. Patricks Day and even Arbor Day if it would work but it only seems to work on Easter and Christmas. They decide that it will take me a least two minutes to clear the sleep from my eyes so I'm awaken at 6:58 in the morning. Katie made out with the most presents since she likes small presents but lots of them. Cheryl and I bought our own gifts and to complete the surprise we had the other person open them. I spent a lot more on me than she spent on herself, of course she loves me more so I'm worth it. Matthew
normally just wants money
but since the stores are closed on Christmas he has come to realize
that playing with money is not that fun, so this year he
wanted video games. I told him that he couldn't get any "M"
for
Mature games until he was 16 so now that he is 16 he wants nothing but
Mature games. He surprises me when he is disappointed with one of the games. He hands it over to me and says, "This game is inappropriate.  You
guys got me the wrong game. " I look over all of the Zombie
filled, Gun toting, mass murder and mayhem games that
are
Christmas
Video Gaming for a teenager and wonder which of these is
the offensive game. I finally find the game that is
too offensive
for my 16 year old
son. It is not the one with the Zombie's from Hell
but the one with the nubile volleyball players. He doesn't
feel
it is
appropriate for two reasons. The first is because this
game's only real
claim to fame is the realistic "bouncing" of the female
form that the high
performance graphic engine does. It is kind of like watching "Baywatch"
except you get to control Pamela Anderson as she jogs down the
beach. The second and more important reason that this game is
"inappropriate" is
that the game play is pretty boring unless you like to watch young
nubile
teenage volleyball players bounce. I am very temped to put
the
CD in to see how realistic it really is but I'm not $59.99 tempted. We finish opening presents before 7:30. The weather looks good for today but calls for a low of 32° tomorrow and rain.  That
does not sound like good motorcycle weather to me, but
today is
33°, fair with no chance of rain. I will
ride in the cold
and I'll ride in the rain but I don't like to ride in the freezing
rain. I got the bike for Father's Day
and it has just over seven thousand miles on it when
I start it
up this fine Christmas morning. That isn't a lot of
miles but it helps
that I can start it up on Christmas day. My family who almost all
ride bikes back in Rochester, New York would have to shovel 18 inches
of snow to get their bikes out of their garages this
Christmas. There is an old Norwegian saying, "There is no bad weather, only bad clothing." As long as there is no ice on the road it holds true for motorcycles. I put on a lot of layers; long bicycle pants, warm socks, thermal undershirt, turtle neck, wind breaker, blue jeans, gloves and of course my insane asylum yellow motorcycle jacket. Many of you have complained to me that while I have shared many photos of the motorcycle I have not shared any of the insane asylum yellow jacket. There are a couple of reasons for that, the first is because the bike is pretty. The second is if you want a photo of the jacket you need a photo of someone wearing it and Matthew refuses to pose for it. I am convinced that the few times I don't get a friendly two finger wave back from another motorcyclist it's because I'm wearing my insane asylum yellow jacket. I do sometimes get a one finger wave but I'm not sure  I'll
blame that on the jacket. It might be that I have a tendency
to
drive very near the speed limit which doesn't endear one to the the
rocket bike, freeway wheelie young studs that are hoping to beat the
radio signal of a too slow state trooper. I always ride a
little
nervous. I'm afraid of gravel in the turns, cars turning left
in
front of me, cars backing out in front of me, little old ladies
signaling right then turning the other way in front of me.
I guess I'm
afraid of just about everything in front of me. I keep my eyes pealed for just about anything that might move me from the vertical to the horizontal so I don't like to also have to keep watching out for police cars. I love Texas because they believe if there isn't a really strong reason not to do 70 miles an hour you should do 70 miles an hour. That is plenty fast enough for me and to repay the fine people of Texas I drop the speed down whatever they tell me 
. Like while
I cruise through their little towns where the museum, post office, town
jail and general store are all the same single building that
makes
up downtown. I like to put 250 to
300 miles on my bike whenever I pull it out of the garage, so I can
afford to drop it down to fourth gear while riding through Agnes,
Texas. I've found a great site to help me find fun rides. It's MotorcycleRoads.US I love this site. If you ride, you need to visit it. I added a road from my last ride, FM 407. It's not a great ride like FM 4 between Palo Pinto and Santo but it is a nice road a lot closer to my house. I wanted to ride it again today to make sure it was still fun and then take a combination of roads heading mostly west toward Granford,  Texas and my favorite Farm to Market
Road, FM4. I'm
always looking for something twisty
to ride since
I'd rather lean it over than yank the front tire off the
ground
while waving at a state trooper.I like back roads because people are rare and because of that, they are friendlier. Most motorcyclist will give you a friendly wave no matter what kind of bike you ride but on these back roads even the locals will wave at you from the front of their pickup trucks. Crazy drivers There are also a lot less crazy drivers on the back roads than there are in the city or on the freeway. Drivers on back roads don't "Flock". People on freeways have a tendency to stop driving and do all of their steering towards the average position of their neighbors. That means that they group together tailgating you or worse they pass you, then move back into your lane and slow down. They do this because they knew they should be in front of you but after passing you they realize that they are now speeding so they slow down. If you slow down they also slow down since they don't want to speed, if you speed up they speed up. If you try to pass them they'll speed up and if you finally do get pass them they'll just have to pass you again and then slow down starting the whole silly process over again. My advice is to exit and find a nice back road were people wave at you and if you want to drive faster than they do they move over to the right and wave you on using all of the the fingers of their hand. It you wave back as you pass by they might even tip their hat to you, at least in Texas. It you are turning off the freeway into the city your better off staying on. Freeway drivers annoy me but City drives seem to want to kill me. If a driver hits a motorcycle they always say, "I didn't see him." It is not really that they didn't see the motorcycle, just that they didn't see a car or a truck and thats what they were looking for. They see the motorcycle then they proceed to pull out in front of it. Anyone that rides has had some guy pull away from the stop sign straight into his path. I assume that is why there are motorcycle cops. It is better than being invisible. People don't stop for Stop signs especially ones that are near their own home. The same thing is true for left hand turns. People see the motorcycle but they don't know that motorcycles are just as fast as cars. They seem so far away because they are so narrow so people look you in the eyes then turn right in front of your bike. If you can look someone in the eye who is drive 45 miles an hour you really don't have time to make a left hand turn in front of them. It is the reason my wife made me buy the insane asylum yellow jacket but it doesn't seem to help that much. I think it has worked a couple of times since the person in the car must have been thinking "Man that is a really stupid looking jacket which gave me just enough time to sneak pass him as he started his turn. I'm also trying my best to become less narrow. I must have eaten 100 pounds of Christmas cookies and most of my presents this Christmas were food based. My daughter gave me chocolate covered pretzels and my son gave me chocolate covered cherries, now that I think about it most of my presents were chocolate based. North Texas is kind of a boring place to ride since it is a whole lot of the same thing and it is flat. My friends from Germany tell me that if you stand out in a field in Texas and long hard enough you can see the back of your own head. Of course if your going to look at the scenery it is best to look at it from the back of a motorcycle. There is not much to see here but I do like the look of an old barn or the wind powered pumps. I also like to just ride along and listen to the purr of my air cooled twin cylinders. Don't get me wrong I like the thunder of a big Harley, but just not for 600 miles. T  he shining sun is putting out
about 33° of warmth but
since I'm dressed like a Norwegian it
is still a very nice day to ride. I can't stop and take too
many photos since people have a tendency to hit whatever it is
that they are looking
at. My bike parked on the side of a small Farm to
Market road
is a
very inviting target. I do grab a photo of a
Texas barn
on FM 407 to add
to my collection and a shot of some Christmas
mistletoe. You
can see why it's a Christmas plant since it puts a little green back in
to the gray of the dormant
trees. Of course there is always the rows of evergreens and the blacktop stretching out under the bright blue western sky. I have gotten Cheryl on the back of the bike a couple of times. We rode down to San Antonio for a weekend. The ride totaled out at 675 miles with the return coming in at 360 that was partly because we stopped by a closed Beckers Farm Vineyard which has some of the best wine in Texas and partly because at one point we were only 12 miles from Santo, TX .  Since I'm normally almost 200 miles
from one of my favorite
places to ride is seemed like a short jog. She didn't mind
the
leaning but the extra 46 miles was probably not a smart move on my
part. In my defense it was pretty late in the season and I'm
not
stupid enough to think that I'll get her back on the motorcycle until
the temperature climbs back into the seventy's again. That is a problem with Texas riding. It takes so long to get there that you're still there when you're done riding for the day. I'm normally two or more hours away when I finally want to call it a day and hit the "take me home" button on my GPS. I was out a couple of weeks ago when the temperature in Fort Worth was in the sixties. I wanted to head north and ride up to the Oklahoma side of Lake Texoma. It is only a couple of hours north but the temperature plunged 30 degrees. I started out wearing just my insane asylum yellow jacket, the same jacket I wear when the temperature is 110°. Now though the wind was cutting through me like a frozen chainsaw. By the time I got to Oklahoma I was looking for ice on the road. I have heated grips that didn't make a lot of sense in the heat of Texas but lately I have them running hot and wished I had sprung for the heated seats as well. You can get a lot of extra riding in Texas, of course most of it is when the mercury is steaming away at 105° or on a day like this one in December with the temperature solidified down at 33°. It was not a great day to ride two up but it was a great day to ride. Merry Christmas |
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