Rush Hour Rambling

Weather: Scattered showers

This is what that dotted line on the map looks like on the ground.

I knew this was going to happen. My commute is becoming routine.

In order to add thirty minutes to my sleep time, I have started taking the freeways to work. Frogwing handles this well, and we get there in half the usual time. Of course, that means thirty minutes fraught with danger and aggression, and not pleasant at all in the normal, peaceful sense. But the warrior in me likes the challenge. It is totally different from our relaxed after-work ramble along the sidestreets and parkways.

But the Rush Hour Ramble has been curtailed of late. Domestic obligations have largely prevented Frogwing and I from wandering on the way home. This will change pretty soon, however.

Next week, I am planning another cross-country expedition, on the audit trail of my company’s remote plants in northern Minnesota and South Dakota.

When not engaged in Official Business, Frogwing and I will set off across the vast open prairies, in search of small towns at the end of dotted lines on the map.

Call me a dual-sport dinosaur, but I still haven’t embraced the modern technology of the Global Positioning System. I have used them, and been impressed by their capabilities. But when I am heading out into the great unknown, I don’t want my navigation aids to depend on satellites, electronic circuits, and batteries.

No, when I am lost, I want to be able to pull that DeLorme’s Atlas out of it’s waterproof case, line it up with my compass, and turn the pages until I am found again.

That said, I have to admit to being a frequent user of Mapquest. It is such a user-friendly program, and it produces turn-by-turn directions that can be printed out on paper, and slid under the clear plastic top of my tank bag for ready reference.

My favorite notation on a Mapquest route sheet comes between the parenthesis, after a turn onto one of those dotted-lines that lead to some little town in the middle of nowhere.

“(Portions Unpaved)”, it says.

YES! Now we get to do some dual-sportin’ for REAL!

There are several of these notations on the route sheet I made up for the weekend after the audits.

During the week, between plants, we have to keep it on the “strait and narrow”, as it were. But come Friday afternoon, once I finish the audit in Huron, South Dakota, Frogwing and I will have the whole of the Missouri River Valley before us, and more dotted lines than you can shake a pencil at.

Lake Oahe is a wide spot in that river, and there are several interesting roads along it’s shores.

I will have the big tripod with me, for those Ansel Adams opportunities, and I plan to fill the memory stick on my camera with images that I can share with you here in this blog.

I’ve never been to Pierre, which is the capital of South Dakota. There are bound to be some historic buildings and landmarks around there, and I plan to spend some time tracking them down as well.

Frogwing’s new tires, the same Kenda K761 type that I used on “The Baron in Winter “, arrived in the mail yesterday. (Thank you, Laura Hunter!) I will be mounting them this weekend, along with the sponsor decals, and at the same time I will do all other necessary maintenance before the big road trip.

This is going to be big fun, and the fact that I will be taking you all with me, in a sense, makes it that much more exciting. There will be lots of photos. I will probably have to break the trip into several blog-sized bites in order to tell the whole story in a manner that will accomodate dial-up users.

I’m going to try to do a Postcard-style entry from the Ramkota Hotel in Aberdeen, South Dakota. They have a web-connected P.C. in the lobby. Other than that, you will probably have to wait until the following Monday for updates. I will try to make it worth the wait.

Weather: Rainy today. But it was gorgeous on Doohickey Day.

What every well-dressed KLR is wearing these days…

Okay, if you’re not a technical type, you may want to skip this entry. I’m going to try to describe, as briefly as possible, the yearly ritual that sees Kawasaki KLR riders gather together in large groups at the beginning of every riding season.

Gentle readers, when Springtime comes, and the riding season starts, the KLR-ist’s thoughts turn to his Doohickey. That is, if he has not done The Surgery yet.

Confused? So was I, the first time I heard of this. But let me `splain…

The doohickey is our nickname for the KLR’s counter-balancer adjuster lever. It is a piece of the engine which, if it fails, can cause catastrophic engine failure, usually far from home, and probably even far from the nearest major highway. For we KLR-ists do love to explore.

For the first time in public, I am exposing my doohickey… BOO!

Now, this was my doohickey after only 5,000 miles. It is in good shape, and probably would have never failed me. But the quality of this piece is notoriously inconsistent.

Out of seventeen KLR’s which showed up at last year’s Tech Day (some call it a Doohickey Party…), two newish KLR’s had broken doohickeys, and one of them had a broken doohickey spring.

You have to remove a large portion of the left side of the engine to get at this little critter. Special Tools must be obtained, and they are not cheap. That is why, oftentimes, many local KLR-ists will pool their resources to buy the tools, and then pass them around at their Doohickey Parties.

We all know that some bikers gather to drink beer, listen to loud music, and leer at half-nekkid wimmen.

Paul Streeter hosts Doohickey Day at Casa del Torquewrench.

Very few know that KLR-ist’s gather to perform Doohickey transplants. It is a harmless perversion which sets us apart from the “normal” motorcycle community.

You see, Kawasaki has built the KLR for some nineteen years now. And for many of those years, the doohickey has been recognized as a weak component in an otherwise very robust motorbike. Warrantee claims have been filed, and letter-writing campaigns have failed to convince Kawasaki that this part needs to be redesigned.

That’s why a few machinists around the country have stepped forward to offer beefed-up versions, machined from billet steel, to solve the problem. Some even offer upgraded springs, just to make sure that your doohickey will never go limp and let you down.

For when your doohickey lets you down, the counter-balancer chain is set free to run amok inside your engine. The hardened steel plates and rollers chew up aluminum castings faster than a frat-boy goes after free pizza. That’s not good.

I will probably get whacked by minions of Kawasaki Heavy Industries for exposing this whole affair to the motorcycling public. Why? Because Kawasaki doesn’t want this to be widely known. There is Liability in that, and we all know how giant corporations loathe Liability.

In my nightmares, I have seen a muscular Yakuza type, in a black leather trench-coat with a bright green ‘K’ on the back, waylaying me as I am about to mount Frogwing after work some evening.

Without a word, he draws his priceless, centuries-old katana, and decapitates me with an elegant backhand swoosh! Rush Hour Rambling will suddenly just… end.

Oh wait… Suzuki did the Katana, right? Never mind. I’ve been reading too much Hunter Thompson lately.

Weather: Gorgeous, 70°F (21°C)

“In the jungle, the mighty jungle, Frogwing sleeps tonight…”

Cue my backup singers…

“Oh-weem oh-whip. Oh-weem oh-whip. Oh-weem oh-whip. Oh-weem oh-whip…”

It’s early morning on Ton-Up Hill, and the manor grounds are in a sorry state. My old gardener has recently retired, I am told, to the confines of the local penitentiary. Our economic outlook is dire. My domestic accountant tells me that we can’t even afford the going rate for illegal aliens, since they have gotten so uppity of late. So I’m afraid this wretched landscaping duty falls to me. What has become of my American Dream?

Well, I’ll tell you… My neighbors are some of the nicest people you ever want to meet. Surrounding my home, which I call Ton-Up Manor, are the houses of hard-working middle-class folks. Classic American petit-bourgeousie. They all have immaculate lawns, because when they are not slaving away for some soulless corporation, they are at home tending to their grass and gardens.

Yes, my neighbors are all very nice people; but when it comes to landscaping, they are raving fascists, every one. (Well, except for Coleman and Josie, who live right behind us. There is an exception to every rule, after all. Besides, they actually read this stuff sometimes.)

So my neighbors take their evening walks, notebooks in hand. When they walk past my house, they invariably stop, and begin scribbling. Soon, an official warning arrives in my mailbox, from the City of West Saint Paul, PACE (Pro-Active Code Enforcement) program. They have an anonymous 1-800-SNITCH line for reporting municipal code violations, aka revenue enhancement opportunities, to the city council.

The warning will usually say something like, “Your grass has exceeded six inches in length, and/or you have Noxious Weeds growing in your yard.” – Both of which are Heinous Crimes indeed. These are punishable by Serious Fines, and if left uncorrected, will result in the Municipal Landscape S.W.A.T. team descending on your lawn, rapelling from helicopters in full battle dress, to correct the situation.

It is an outrageously expensive operation, I am told, and it results in an equally outrageous lein against your property. Not to mention the continued harrassment from The Authorities, until you finally surrender and Comply to the Will of your Community.

If you have seen the movie, “The World’s Fastest Indian”, you will understand me when I say that I subscribe to the Burt Munro school of landscaping. In the movie, his neighbors kept nagging him to cut his lawn. Before he left for Bonneville, Burt doused his waist-high grass with gasoline, and set the whole lot on fire. Were I to practice this in my neighborhood, however, I would be hunted down like a rabid hyena and end up joining my former gardener in the gulag.

So, what is a poor, rebellious land-owner to do? At seven thirty in the a.m. on this fine Saturday morning, I fired up the motorized machete, and proceded to massacre the grasses, and decapitate the dandelions. I wanted my treacherous neighbors to feel my pain, if only for a moment. This had to be done quickly, however, because Frogwing and I have a date with the Doohickeys. I will tell you about that later.