It's been driving me nuts for a while that my FirstGear HT overpants, while awesome, didn't have any reflective bits on the backs of the legs.
Fortunately, a trip to Joann Fabrics made everything better.
Clicky clicky for the write-up
OK, OK, I know, I know -- I don't post forever and then I do and it's about topical pain cream. But hey, baby steps.
I stopped by the hippie grocery store by work on a whim today and found this:
Merry Hempsters Hot Hemp Muscle Rub
Why do I care?
Because for YEARS, I've been using Tiger Balm, BioFreeze, etc, which I love...but I hate getting my hands all stinky and goopy and menthol-y. Maybe I'm, like, lightyears behind what the kidz do these days, but I'd never seen a topical analgesic in stick form before.
So I bought it and put it in my tankbag. I look forward to many wonderful gas station applications of happy neck AND happy hands. Hooray!
Since I posted this yesterday on ADV, I figured I'd post it here, too.
Here's my review of my Sierra Designs Sirius 2 tent.
From Sierra Design's website:
Here are some photos of my tent:
As you can see, the tent perfectly holds my Aerostich High-Tech cot -- though a taller rider might find that their bag rubs up against the tent walls in the night. I'm only 5'1" and the very bottom of my bag is often damp from condensation when I use the cot (even with the vestibules staked out).
The vestibules are great for my boots and riding gear (I keep my helmet and tankbag inside the tent -- I don't like a wet or buggy helmet in the morning!).
It has a LOT of ventilation for summer camping, which is my preferred time to camp anyway. I don't have a photo of the tent with the fly off but I'll take one the next time I camp.
I also attached a Sierra Designs portable attic (manufacturer pic here) and leave it in the tent at all times. I put my Brunton Glorb LED lantern in the attic at night and can always see the tent from the outside (and can easily maneuver around or read in bed via the light).
The Sirius 2 is really easy to set up due to the clip system of the poles (no sleeves). It takes me about 5 minutes to set up, including lining up the footprint and clicking together the poles.
I pack the footprint and poles/stakes separately from the rest of the tent; the tent itself (including the fly and attic) fit in a Medium sized Granite Gear compressible stuff sack.
The coldest weather I've camped in with this tent so far had an overnight low of 35F. The warmest so far has been an overnight low of 47F.
This tent came highly recommended from Becca, moto-camper extraordinaire, and I have to agree with her assessment. Two thumbs up!
On our trip to and from Eureka, Dan told me that the reflective strip on my jacket was totally hidden behind my Givi bag and that I was close to invisible from the back. That's not good!!
Fortunately, I had ordered some reflective tape sheets from CycleGadgets.com.
The bike before adding tape:
I added a 8" x 5" rectangle to the back of each saddlebag. With the extra little strip left on the 8" x 11" sheet, I added some reflection to the back of the Givi bag, too:
As you can see here, without light, the reflective tape is plain black. Stylish in the daytime, productive at night!
Here's another shot of the bags without direct light. You can still see that there's tape on them, of course, but the effect really is nice and black.
I'm loving the tape. I still have one more 8" x 11" sheet (for $17, you get two sheets), so I have to think of other ways to light up my Givi for commuting. I think I'll also put some on the back of my helmet.
As a follow up to the blog entry on Personal Locator Beacons, I wanted to mention that we got a SPOT satellite messenger.
We bought ours at our local REI after seeing that the price there was comparable to other online stores.
So far, we're pretty happy with it. We successfully tracked ourselves to the hockey rink and back on Saturday, and to my hockey game yesterday.
The device sent email to me and Peter when we hit the "OK" button, and would upload tracks to the findmespot.com website every 20 minutes after we turned on continual tracking.
Here's one of the emails it sent, while we were at a Quiznos near the ice rink:
"noreply@findmespot.com"
Hi! This is Carolyn, checking in with my SPOT device. Click on the link to see where I am!
Unit Number: 0-xxxxxxx
Latitude: 37.4785
Longitude: -122.1861
Nearest Town from unit Location: Florence St, Redwood City, CA, US
Distance to the nearest town: 0 km(s)
Time in GMT the message was sent: 02/24/2008 03:00:10
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=37.4785,-122.1861&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1
The granularity is awesome; looking at Google maps via the link in the email, we could see which exact parking spot our truck was in.
The only thing I have questions about is the feature by which other people can log in and see my tracks. I can't see a way to do that via the website without giving people my account log-in information, which clearly isn't happening. I have an email out to customer service and will update this blog post when I get a response.
Update from customer care:
"Hi Carolyn,
Right now the only way for your family & friends to track you down is by having access to your account, but soon by the end of March we will have a different password to be given to family & friends.
Thank you for your patience,
SPOT USA Customer Service"
So there we go. I'll let you guys know when this functionality is available!
Update 4/24:
Guest access is now available, yay! You can now manage guest access for the different messenger profiles and create a URL to give to others. The URL can be set public or password-protected. Looking good!
Yesterday I bought my second pair of Daytona Ladystar GTX boots.
Here was my first pair:
By my calculations (by which I mean looking back at old blog entries), these boots lasted from July 2002 until January 2008, with over 75,000 miles on them.
The only reason I gave up on them was that there was the teensiest of holes in a cracked leather part near my toe. 99% of the time it was fine, but during the flooding we've been having here this past week, my foot would be wet when I got to work.
So, I treated myself to these:
Same exact boots, but a brand new pair. Purr. The first thing I noticed on the ride home from Helimot is how much the tread must have worn down on the old pair. It was like getting an extra little bit of rise for free! ;)
Helmut and crew kept my old pair at the shop to show off to customers. If you're going to spend $400 on boots, people want to know how the boots are going to hold up; with 6 years of active wear, that's only $65/year for the best boots I've ever come across. Well worth every penny.
A recent thread on Sport-Touring.net described a member's accident while on a solo ride in remote Colorado.
After separating from his bike and tumbling down a small hillside, the forum member remained unseen with a severely broken leg for five hours. Finally, two German tourists saw some accident detritus and stopped to look over the hillside and the rider was transported to a hospital. He was finally seen by a doctor eight and a half hours after the accident.
The accident report got me thinking once again about Personal Locator Beacons (PLB).
The "Pros" of PLBs are pretty obvious:
However, there are also some cons to PLBs, which is where the risk/reward analysis comes in.
So that's my brain dump on PLBs for the day. Anyone have any thoughts or experience with them?
For years, I've been using custom-made earphones for listening to my iPod while riding. I really loved them but the wires had a nasty tendency to break off right at the earphone piece. After my third such breakage in four years, I decided to try something new.
On the advice of many Sport-Touring.net riders, I just bought a pair of Etymotic 6i Isolater earphones.
So far I'm very pleased with them.
They come with three sizes of ear tips: the standard "medium" 3-flanged pair as in the photo above, and a pair each of 2-flanged small and large tips. The small pair are perfect for my mutantly small head. They also come with a pair of foam ear tips if you find the flanged ones uncomfortable.
I listened to a podcast on my way in to work today and the Etymotics were great. I'm learning Spanish via podcast and so sound quality is important -- my brain can't pattern match on the unfamiliar sounds. There was a little more road noise than I'd like, but I might have just needed to increase the volume a little. At any rate, I was able to hear and understand the new Spanish words with no problem.
The only downside to the Etymotics so far is that the flanged ear tips tickle my ear canal a little bit. It's distracting to want to scratch the inside of your ear when you're wearing a helmet on the freeway! Hopefully the edges of the flanges will soften a little or my ears will get used to them.
Overall, I give the 6is a thumbs up!
Riding the XT from San Jose to Hollister on Saturday upped the priority for me to get more street-worthy tires for it. I want to keep the Kendas for muddy fun, but I'm wearing the knobbies down too quickly being uncomfortable on the roads.
So, this morning, I ordered a pair of Metzeler Sahara 3s:
Now that I'm pretty comfortable with changing the tires myself, I'll keep the Kendas warm and happy in the garage for trucking the bike to the "hard stuff" and will keep the Saharas on for weekend rides.
The Superhawk wasn't the only death over the weekend -- the water bladder of my tried-and-true Nalgene wannabe Camelbak knockoff finally ripped. :( I kept the backpack part and relegated the drinking tube to garage duty.
I happened to be at REI last night and found this awesome replacement for only $30:
I like the visibility/reflective bits since the Camelbak in general covers up the reflective bits on the back of my jacket. It's a good size -- 50 L -- and is comfortable. Win!
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