I use a kitchen timer.

An entire entry about Motorcycles and such (I know most of you will find this boring).

First, an impromptu poem:

The dewpoint here is now quite low,
and every night when I come home
I park my baby and in I go
and there she sits, she's so alone.

So she gets so cold and she gets so wet,
because when I park her, I forget:

That she needs to be wrapped up, cozy and tight,
with her own special blanket, every night.

[end poem]

Ok, the sad thing is that this is some of the best poetry I've ever written.

In any case, my lyrical dalliances aside, I do remind myself to cover my baby every night once she cools down, and I use a kitchen timer to do it. When I come in and put the helmet, jacket, and gloves away, I pull out a kitchen timer and set it for 30 minutes. 30 minutes from now when it goes off, I'll go out and cover her so she doesn't get soaked by the dew or rained on later. I'd cover her right after I parked her, but the pipes are still hot enough that they might melt the cover (nylon is funny like that) and I'd hate to do that.

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Second, about pets and safety and kindness to animals.

Dogs appearantly are drawn to motorcycles even more than they are to cars, or so I hear. I'm not sure why.

But tonight after a dog tried to chase me (heh, adding a little extra juice in 5th gear means they don't keep up for long) it got me thinking about the fact that if a dog, even a small one, ran out in front of me, I would do my damndest to avoid it, both because I love animals, and because I like my skin on my body.

Allow me to enumerate the solutions and results to the pet-in-the-street problem for a person driving a car, even a small one:

1) Swerve, miss pet, continue without accident.

2) Swerve, have accident, bust self up,

3) Don't swerve, hit petg, possibly do minor or even major damage to bumper, but likely have little to no risk of accident/injury (people with MGs or Miatas who meet Great Danes are the exceptions to this generalization).

And now, the enumeration for a motorcyclist.

1) Swerve, miss dog, continue without accident.

2) Swerve, miss dog, have accident, bust self up.

3) don't swerve, hit dog, which will more-than-likely (chihuahas and Valkyrie Runes might be the exception here) cause you to have an accident anyway, and bust self up.

So for the motorcyclist, the only potentially safe solution is to safely avoid the dog. Hitting the dog is very likely going to result in a fall anyway.

For this reason, I think that anybody who doesn't love animals should be forced to ride motorcycles, because then they would never be able to consider hitting someone's pet for spite, or sheer carelessness, because their own hide would be on the line.

I think that would be a great solution. Maybe get them thinking about how the plights of pets are no less valid than the plights of their owners.

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Countersteering
What the FUCK?!

Ok, so I'm out tonight, and I'm driving, and I'm thinking about this term I keep hearing in respect to motorcycles and navigating the streets. It's called countersteering. The most simple thing I've heard in reference to it is that you turn the wheel in one direction in order to travel in the other.

Of course, we all know that's crazy talk.

So tonight, for various reasons, I took a ride out to the lake, to relax, re-try a turn I had fallen in a couple weeks ago (see side note, below) and hang out at the dock and look at the stars and think about life. It was a great ride, and a great night for it.

But while I was in a particularly clear and straight section of country highway, I got to thinking about countersteering, and thought about that description, and decided (at 60MPH, in the dark): what the heck, why not try it?

So I pulled on the left handlebar, bringing the wheel to the left--and causing the bike to smoothly turn (except quicker, so it felt much more like a veer) to the RIGHT.

WHAT THE FUCK!?

So I straighten the aim of the bike, get headed down the road again without actually winding up in some old ladie's rose bushes. And I try again(slower this time), and the bike exhibits the same behaviour. So I've been playing all night with turning the wheel one way and having the bike smoothly and effectively execute precise, controlled turns in the opposite direction. It's an awesome level of control but I can't for the life of me figure out how it does that because it makes no sense to me, physically.

So I'm going searching for a physical explanation of it now, because damn if it isn't a really cool way to make my baby move, and I love it.

Update: So I went out and searched for information on the physics of countersteering and read a few articles on the subject. Very enlightening, but not very physically clear. Appearantly the result of the turning of the handlebars is a countertorque that forces the bikes' weight to shift faster than it does merely by leaning, and this causes the bike to make smoother and more controlled tight turns. The effect of countersteering is only really felt above 15 to 20 miles per hour. In any case, I'm planning to play with it a lot more, so that my swerving ability goes up, because I want to be able to handle all the hazards that may come my way. (If my life was an RPG, a dialogue box would have just appeared that says "Your character has earned a new skill and gained a level.")

Side note: I have had two accidents in my last two vehicles, and in both cases I have later gone back and saught out the scene of the accident and, with more caution and control repeated the manauver that caused me to have an accident the first time. I do this to conquer my fear of the manauver, environment, vehicle, and self, so that I can learn to do right what I have previously done wrong. In both cases so far I believe it's made me a better driver.

Ok, that's all. If you got this far, you must be bored to tears, even if you do ride a motorcycle. I apologize.