#barcrealty

I decided to call this blog, RideThink since I do some of my best thinking (according to me) when I’m riding my harley or my snowboard! I just wish I had a way to remember it all so I could write it down, but instead, you’ll get what eventually sifts through my brain filter.

As many of you know (both of you), I am officially unemployed, a first for me since I started working full-time for a company other than my own almost 30 years ago. As a musician, I was always employed, but never quite sure where the next check was going to come from. Now, having worked for one company for 20 years and another for 5, it was scary when I knew it was coming, but I felt better after I was let go. The new ownership (SAE) needs to make a big difference quickly and they let go 4 of my executive team and 7 others including some key managers. Time will tell if it’s the right thing for the students and the college, but for me,  I am actually relieved by this, and decided to make the most of it.  I need to ride my ‘03 Heritage (my first bike) back to Phoenix where I will be living in the house Becky and I bought 2 years ago together, so I decided to take a ride from Emeryville to Denver to attend the ACCSC Professional Development Conference, except, I’m taking unfamiliar roads. Something needs to be said about traveling new roads, at least for me. I find it very exciting and wish I could stop at all the roadside attractions, historical markers, points of interest, national parks, etc… But as it was, I had enough to waylay my trip.

First, the other day, Rachel said I must be a cool dad if I am so worried about wearing black dress socks with my sneakers when we were packing up my apartment. Well, when it comes to dressing and preparing for riding the motorcycle, I must be the most UNcool dad/rider there is. I must look like a goodadoof! I made a decision years ago, that function is always more important when riding than form.  Once you’re on the bike, you want to have everything you need to minimize the weather effects and the uncomfortableness of the long ride. 

Because I needed to get my t-bag suitcase on the back of my bike, and I have the tourpack attachment, I had to put the suitcase on the passenger seat, right behind me which means I can’t wear my camelback like it was meant to be worn; on the back. Instead, I have a camel front!  It works and it keeps me hydrated, so what do I care? Add to that look, a balaklava around my neck that I pull up over my nose, a doo rag, a small digital camera, and some headphones connected to my gps, and I am sure you have a great looking rider there!

Well, to get my t-bag on the bike, I thought I had to remove the headrest from the tourpack so i took the 10 minutes to do that, along with repacking all saddlebags, tourpack, camelfront, and suitcase. With the whole bike ready to go (after doing little things in the apartment to get ready to move), I realized one thing was missing; my GPS!

Don’t get me started on the whole Garmin GPS syncing with everything. I finally figured it out, but it was a long arduous task, oh well, I’m unemployed so I can do that now. First off, go to Harley site and create a profile on their Ride Planner page. It has a google map engine and works almost like their own trip planner (why didn’t they make it exactly like?) but it is very easy to use. Input your starting location and final destination and you can click and drag the route to wherever you would like to go. It really is very simple to use and gives you mileage from point to point and overall trip info as well. Once that is done, you can save it directly to your GPS if you have the time to figure it out. For me, it was switching between 3 different browsers just to have it finally recognize that my GPS was hooked up even though my computer saw it the whole time. Once it recognizes it, you just click save and two modes come up, right to your gps or export as a file. I saved it directly to the gps, and here is where it gets a bit tricky, if you don’t go into your GPS and load in the files that were saved, you might as well not have done any of the steps above! In addition, it saved the trip in 3 separate “trips” which is great, but I didn’t know it would do that. Also, on the GPS, you have to go to tools and then custom routes instead of “where to” which kind of counter-intuitive. Anyway, it worked and I now had my custom route already to go. Click Here for my Trip Map

Oh yeah, my GPS was missing! Here I am in the garage of the condo, all dressed and ready to go, and I can’t find the GPS. I checked through everything I had just repacked (20 minutes), ran up to my apartment, check through the entire packing mess and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I ran back down to the bike, checked a few more places AGAIN, still no luck. After all that hard work to get it programmed, how could I NOT have it for this trip? I get on my bike, and as I am leaving the garage, a thought occurred to me, boy am I glad I decided to wear my leather jacket instead of the light H-D jacket, wait! That’s where the GPS is, in my light jacket! I didn’t want to forget it, so I put it in the pocket of the jacket I was going to wear until I realized I might want to wear my leather since I was heading into the Rockies. Sure enough, after running back up two flights of stairs, there was the GPS. Now, ready to go; 9am on Monday Sept 16.