BluepoofBikes Motorcycle Adventures

Moving!

As you can see by the lovely header up at the top of this page, I've finally gotten off my ass and installed WordPress.  

This means that after seven years of having two websites -- bluepoof.blogs.com for the blog and bluepoof.com for everything else -- I can finally consolidate everything back into one website.  There was much rejoicing.

All of my posts/content here has been imported onto bluepoof.com, so anything found here can now be found over there.

Please update your bookmarks and see you on bluepoof.com! 

Campsite review: Uvas Canyon County Park

Location:

8515 Croy Road

Morgan Hill, CA 95037

 

Date of visit:

September 3-4, 2010

 

Weather:

A bit warm but overall very nice.  It was in the mid-80s when we arrived at the park around 5pm, but the sites are quite shaded, so it was pretty comfortable.  The evening was perfect: in the 60s.  We were all wearing jeans and T-shirts with no trouble.  Overnight low inside our tent was 62F; it was probably a few degrees cooler outside.

 

Campground Condition:

* So far, all of the Santa Clara County Parks I've camped at have been clean, quiet, and not overcrowded.  Uvas definitely fits that description.  Everything was very well-maintained (the maintenance crew drove by three times in the morning, collecting trash, cleaning the restrooms, etc).

* The campsites are very close together. There is good canopy cover from the sun, but very little privacy between campsites.  

* Each site has a fire pit, concrete parking pad, food locker, and picnic table. There are garbage cans and recycling bins at the restrooms and spread around the camping areas, plus water spigots about every third campsite.   

* The bathrooms are clean well-stocked.  The bathroom building nearest our site had separate men's and women's stalls with flush toilets, sinks, and mirrors. No soap, but there was an air hand dryer (no paper towels).   The bathroom nearest our site did not have showers; I didn't look to see if there were some elsewhere.

* The campground has a wood fire ban during the summer (mid-May through late October): charcoal fires only.  Occasionally there are fire bans altogether and only camp stoves are permitted -- check before you go.  I didn't see anywhere to buy charcoal (or wood) at the campground.

 

What to do: (copied from the below website)

• Outdoor enthusiasts will find Uvas Canyon Park has much to offer. The park has six miles of hiking trails including a one mile Waterfall Loop that travels along Swanson Creek past many of the park's waterfalls.  
• A pamphlet, available at the trailhead and/or ranger's office, highlights the flora of Uvas Canyon along this self-guided interpretive trail.  (Note that we never found the pamphlet, despite actively looking for it.)
• Park visitors may also want to visit nearby Uvas and Chesbro Reservoirs. These reservoirs are open for non-power boating (electric motors permitted) and fishing. No swimming is permitted in any of the Santa Clara County Parks.

 

More info:  Uvas Canyon County Park website

My photos:

Our site (#10):

These little bugs were everywhere.  I think we brought a few hundred of them home, too.

Two of the many small waterfalls along the aptly-named Waterfall Loop Trail:

April along Waterfall Loop Trail:

 

Even in summer, it's green along Swanson Creek:

We managed to survive the wood ban and grill our Kalbi short ribs on charcoal.  It was rough, but we pulled through:

 

Who knew you could see this many stars within the Bay Area?

The canyon drops off pretty quickly at our campsite:

 

Your band of intrepid adventurers:

 

 

 

August progress report

Wow, in one week, it'll have been a year since my back injury.  It's weird how fast that year went by, given that it pretty much put my life on hold.

What's Going On?

Things are generally going really really well.  I'm having whole windows where I don't really have pain at all.  

I still have problems if I try to do too much (for annoyingly varying definitions of "too much") but other than that, I'm down to pretty much chronic stiffness.

What I Can Do:

I'm still doing the Couch to 5K program, though I ran into a bit of a problem when I went to Week 4 and decided to simultaneously up the intensity of the workout.  I forgot that my lungs are just as out of shape as the rest of me and wound up giving myself an asthma attack.  Oops.  But my back itself is doing fine with the workouts.

I haven't done any public skating this month, more for scheduling reasons than anything else.  I can only do activities every third day (i.e. with two rest days in between) so I can't really get to everything I want to do. :(

As mentioned in earlier blog posts, I'm borrowing a friend's Ninja 250 and I rode it for about 5 miles last week. Unfortunately the bike still has some mechanical issues (I'll do a separate blog entry for that), but the relevant part here is that my back did just fine.  I coincidentally immediately got sick following my ride, so it may be that the forced rest from the illness rested my back as well, but I feel pretty good, physically, about the Ninja 250.

What I Can't Do:

I'm still trying not to carry much.  I can pick up a cat now (we have fat cats, so this is actually a bit of a milestone) so maybe I'm at about a 20 lb weight restriction.  I definitely try not to carry even that much very far though.

No hockey.

No Beemer at all.  

No weight lifting. 

What I'm Doing About It:

Couch to 5K for my lungs and back.

I still try to get massages, though I've been lax about that for a couple of weeks due to work schedules and then getting sick.  I have to get back to that.

I do a lot of self-massage with tennis balls, trying to break up the trigger points that have formed in my back. 

Still sitting a lot in the Relax The Back zero gravity recliner.  Especially now with this chest cold where I'm home sick from work, it's helping my back to sit in the recliner for a good part of the day.  In fact, I'm going to get up from my home desk chair, which hurts, and go sit in the recliner. ;)

Wrenching on the Ninja

Yesterday, my Sport-Touring.net buddy Andrew came over to help me work on the Ninja.  By "help me", of course, I mean "do all the actual work" since I still can't really pick anything up that's heavier than a torque wrench.

Andrew, let me tell you, is a god amongst men.  He's also a professional mechanic, which is what I remind myself when I get depressed that he managed to do about 15 times more work on the bike yesterday than I could do in a typical weekend.

In vague chronological order, Andrew:

• Removed, drained, somewhat cleaned, replaced, and refilled the tank
• Checked the float levels on the carbs
• Installed an inline fuel filter
• Disassembled, cleaned, replaced the petcock (my glorious contribution to the day's events was to remove two screws on the petcock, a task of which I am enormously proud)
• Replaced both tires
• Removed, cleaned, and replaced both sparkplugs
• Replaced the oil and filter
• Replaced the front and rear brake fluid
• Installed bar risers 

The above took Andrew about 7 hours, including a trip with us to Kragen to buy the inline fuel filter.  It normally takes me that long to find the service manual.

Anyway, thanks to Andrew's huge brain, the Ninja is now purring like a kitten.  It remains to be seen whether the sheer volume of crap that we removed from the tank is completely gone (hence the fuel filter) but so far it seems to be running well.

Here are a few visuals from the day:

This is the first thing that greeted us when we removed the tank.  A fuel filter should not look like this.  This looks like something from Deepwater Horizon.

 

Next up was the tank itself.  Those with weak constitutions should be glad that I couldn't photograph what we saw when looking into the tank.  Fainting, wailing, gnashing of teeth.

Instead, make do with what came out of the tank.  It was like panning for gold in Alaska, but gone horribly horribly wrong.

 

By some miracle, the carburetors seem OK.  We think this is because the massive clog of rust in the tank trapped the bad gas and none of it actually got to the carbs.  Fingers crossed.

Have I ever mentioned that I love my Harbor Freight lift?  Because I really do.  It is made of awesome and made the whole day much easier.

Though our ingenious front lift also worked pretty well, for a fraction the cost:

Kids, if your brake fluid looks like this, something has gone wrong in your life.  Repent!  It's not too late.

And finally, here's Squid Andrew proving to himself -- and now to the internet -- that the Ninja is running well and will likely not actively kill me when I try to ride it this week.

    

All in all, it was a fun day.  The other cool bit was that Brandon brought the XT over (the black one that I sold him a little while ago).  He was worried that an oil leak was a sign of Something Very Bad, but fortunately it was just a bolt on the valve cover that had worked its way loose.  Turns out you shouldn't be able to remove bolts with just your fingers.  So that was good and much less worrisome than he was fearing.

 

Welcome, bike #8!

Say hi to the newest member of our garage, now the second bike that doesn't actually belong to us: Glen and Julie's 2000 Ninja 250!

They're loaning me the bike for a while in exchange for doing some light maintenance work on it (it's been sitting in their garage for some time).  

It came home in the pickup truck and has since been washed and has a new battery sitting on the charger.  I ordered a new set of tires, too -- Bridgestone BT45s -- as the tires on it are the originals and they're like hard little slippery rocks. 

Assuming the carbs aren't gunked up to eternity, the bike should be rideable within a week or so.  I'm already allotting my "rest days" for the week accordingly (if I only work out once next week, I can go to the gym on Wednesday and then rest Thursday and Friday, meaning I should be OK to ride either Saturday or Sunday).  

Someday I'll be able to do things with only one day of rest in between and then scheduling my life will be easier. ;) ;)

Sitting on a bike that I can stand up and that doesn't exacerbate lordosis means you get a big happy cheesy smile:

 

Campsite review: Anthony Chabot Regional Park

Location: 9999 Redwood Road
Castro Valley, CA  94546 Date of visit: July 16-17, 2010 Weather: Very pleasant. I was worried that it was going to be East Bay Hot, but the elevation and eucalyptus trees made it pretty comfortable. It was in the 70s in the late afternoon and overnight low inside my tent was 63F. It was a bit cooler than that outside; it got pretty warm and humid in my tent. Overnight low outside was probably high 50s.

Campground Condition: * This is not a quiet campground. The BART trains are very audible -- it's not jarring, but the whine is a constant background noise. Train horns go off once in a while, too, which was barely noticeable in the evening but woke me up a couple of times in the night. The freeway is also noticeable, particularly with sirens at night. Bring earplugs!!

* There are five little loops of campsite at Anthony Chabot; we were at the outermost loop in campsite #64. This particular site was on the inside of the car loop, so there were no views. Campsite #69, across the road from us, looked like it had the best view in our loop area.

* The campsites are very close together. There is tree cover, but eucalyptus doesn't make a very good privacy barrier. We happened to get noisy neighbors, which made for difficult sleep at first (quiet hours start at 10pm, but I never saw the ranger drive by; only a cop car once earlier in the evening).

* Each site has a fire pit, concrete parking pad, and picnic table. There are garbage cans and recycling bins at the restrooms and spread around the camping areas, plus water spigots about every third campsite. Animals must not be a problem, as there are no food lockers and the garbage cans are just big dumpsters (no special latching covers). * The bathrooms are clean but basic.  The bathroom building nearest our site had men's and women's stalls with flush toilets, sinks, and mirrors. No paper towels, but there was soap (and the water wasn't ice cold!). The building also contained four individual unisex showers that appeared to be free and in good condition.

* Firewood was available from the campsite host, but I don't know the cost as we brought our own wood.

What to do: (copied from the below website) * Visitors can explore miles of beautiful hiking, riding, and bicycling trails through grasslands, chaparral, and shady eucalyptus groves or along the shores of Lake Chabot.  

* The East Bay Skyline National Trail, which traverses 31 miles of East Bay hills from Richmond to Castro Valley, runs the length of the park.

* Chabot is connected to Cull Canyon Regional Recreation Area by a six-mile section of the Chabot-to-Garin Regional Trail.
More info: Anthony Chabot Regional Park website

My photos:

Our site (#64):

 

Facing the other side of the campsite (the firepit is on the far side of the picnic table).

 
 

Steph and I took a short hike along Honker Bay Trail, whose trailhead was right by our site. There were nice views of Lake Chabot.

 

Walking along Honker Bay Trail:
 
 
 

 

July progress report

Insert pithy opening comment here.  No, really, go ahead. I'm tired and too lazy to come up with one myself. :D

What's Going On?

Improvement continues, which is both good and bad...let me explain.

It's good for obvious reasons.  The pain continues to be 99.99% muscular.  Even the cold/wet spot on my calf has pretty much gone (I can actually feel it right now for the first time in a while, but that's probably because I'm thinking about it as I'm typing this.  I couldn't feel it two minutes ago).

Because of the improvements, I'm able to add things back into my life.  I'm more active than I've been in almost a year, which sounds more impressive than it is as my previous level of activity was "getting up from the recliner to walk to the kitchen".  But the downside is that I'm having a hard time moderating activity.  I flared myself up a little bit this weekend by doing too much.  It's OK -- a "flare up" these days is similar to what daily life was like a couple of months ago. It just means I have to take painkillers and wear a heatpack during the day.  It was a good lesson.

What I Can Do:

Still working full-time.  No real change here from last month; if I don't take microbreaks at work, my back complains.  That'll probably be the case for quite some time, so I may leave this out of the updates moving forward.

I'm doing a lot of camping!  People who have never camped with me may be surprised that someone with a back injury can camp, but let me assure you that I am a Princess Camper.  I have a cot, a 3" Thermarest, and a fluffy sleeping bag.  Yes, it all fits on the motorcycle when I moto-camp. ;)  As long as I have a victi-, er, friend, along who can help me set up the tent and my cot, camping has been fine on my back and is a huge boost to my activity level and therefore my tenuous grasp on sanity.

 

Walking continues to work really well for me.  Because this whole thing has trashed my cardio system, I started the Couch to 5K program at the gym on the elliptical.  The program is ostensibly for people wanting to run a 5K, so it focuses on intervals of walking and then running; I'm doing "walking" and "walking slightly faster".  I'm doing these workouts twice a week: approximately 2 miles/30 minutes per workout. As long as I put two days of rest in between the workouts, it's going really well (neglecting this rest period was what triggered my flare up this weekend).  The first couple of times I did the workouts, my back was sore, but now it's actually very freeing.  The elliptical is no-impact and the easy movements feel really good to my whole body. When I remember the rest periods (*cough*), I'm pain free and am feeling great to be incorporating real activity back into my life.

I've done two more ~10 minute public skate sessions since my last update and they continue to go OK.  The last time I had some trouble because my skates need to be sharpened and my core wasn't really able to keep me balanced on the wobbly edges.  I'm a little afraid of sharpening them, though, since newly-sharpened skates are very difficult to stop on and stopping is hard on my back to begin with.  I'm going to bring the skates to Ice Oasis and talk to Terry -- Peter says he can probably do a "half sharpening" or something for me.  Just enough to give an edge back.

I rode the XT on Friday!  It was probably a poor idea in hindsight, since I had done the back to back C25K workouts on Wednesday and Thursday, but what's done is done.  Peter and I rode our bikes 2.2 miles to lunch and then 2.2 miles home.  Iron Butt, here I come!  It felt very good to ride, but the XT is a little tough for me.  Like I said last month, it's almost too upright.  My torso is upright but my butt/hips kind of angle out and it puts a weird pressure on my spine.  If I consciously tuck my pelvis under and keep a neutral spine, it's OK, but that's tough to do while riding. I'm trying to find a local Ninja 250 to test ride to see if the posture there would be more accommodating.

 

What I Can't Do:

I'm still trying not to carry much.  I've increased my weight limit for carrying things (still under 10 pounds or so for the most part) but I should probably back off a little.

No hockey, though I am doing small amount of public skates.

No Beemer at all.  

No weight lifting. I'm starting to incorporate light cardio; elliptical only.  No treadmill!

What I've Stopped Doing:

Nothing new since last month; still no physical therapy, though I continue to do the stretches nearly every day.

What I'm Doing About It:

I already mentioned the C25K program that I started at the gym.

I still try to get weekly massages with a physical therapist, which helps a lot with the muscular pain.

I do a lot of self-massage with tennis balls, trying to break up the trigger points that have formed in my back. At work, I lean back against a tennis ball in my chair, which helps a little bit; at home, I lie on the floor with my feet up on the bed or couch and put the tennis ball under my back.  

Our chiropractor has shown Peter how to massage my psoas muscles, too, so we're going to start doing that to see how that helps.  Right now the biggest muscles that seem to be affected are the psoas and the quadratus lumborum.  Here's a good article that explains why unhappy psoas muscles make an unhappy back.  I do all of those stretches every day. :)

Sorry, Kin.

Forgive the foray into something incredibly off-topic for me, but there's nowhere else really to write it.

Today, Microsoft discontinued the Kin phone after 48 days on the market.  I have very mixed feelings about this.  

On the one hand, Microsoft really bungled that project.  I understand the schadenfreude that many fellow ex-Danger folks feel: Microsoft bought our company, screwed it up and abused the Palo Alto team to the point that many of us left, and then wound up with a product that failed in a truly spectacular way.  It's the ultimate "neener"; it's that awesome feeling you get when you see that jackhole on the freeway pulled over a half mile down the road.

But on the other hand, it seems to portend the final death of Danger.

I joined Danger as employee #17 on August 1, 2000.  I was 23 years old, I had a tiny studio apartment and a 1986 Honda Nighthawk that I was scared to ride around the block.  

Danger sent flowers to my mom after her surgeries in 2002.

Danger founders contributed significantly to the Alzheimers' Memory Walk that Peter and I did for my dad later in 2002.

When Peter and I were back in Wisconsin last year, cleaning out my mom's condo, we found a card that the Danger founders sent to my mom in 2005 after my dad died.

At least 10% of the guests at our wedding in 2007 were Danger employees and their families.

Our home is filled with Danger paraphernalia: T-shirts, glasses, mugs, little flashlight things that look like zippos, action figures, pens, notepads.

February 11, 2008 was a very confusing day for all of us, but we wanted to make it work.  

I wanted the Kin to succeed; I really did.  I don't give two shits for Microsoft, but there was Danger blood in that device -- for better or for worse, that's where Danger wound up, and discontinuing the Kin and moving the team into the WinMo hive is more than yet another reorg.

So, I'm sorry, Kin.  At least we'll always have Danger.

Campsite review: Half Moon Bay State Beach

Recommended: YES Location: 95 Kelly Avenue
Half Moon Bay, CA  94019 Date of visit: June 18-29, 2010 Weather: Typical late spring on the coast -- a bit foggy and chilly. The wind picked up overnight but it was pleasant around the campfire, around 55F. Overnight low inside my tent was 54F. Campground Condition: * There are 3 separate beaches at Half Moon Bay State Beach, but only Francis Beach has campsites. We stayed at site #15, which is a handicapped-accessible site but opens up to general use if it hasn't been reserved by 7pm.

* The campsites are very close together. The bluff/beach area means that there is very little tree cover ...which means no privacy from campsite to campsite. Surprisingly, though, it was quite quiet. Even the group of teens across the way from us were silent by 11pm.

* Each site has a fire pit, concrete parking pad, and picnic table. There are garbage cans and recycling bins at the restrooms, plus water spigots about every third campsite. * The bathrooms are clean but basic.  The bathroom building near our site had four individual unisex restrooms with toilet, sink, and mirror. No soap or paper towels. The building also contained four individual unisex showers (25 cents for 2 minutes), but I didn't go in to check the condition.

* Firewood is available from the campsite host for $8/bundle (June 2010 price).

* Please note that dogs are not permitted on the beach; you can bring them to the campsite, but they have to stay on the trails or at your site. The website below has more info. What to do: (copied from the below website) * The Half Moon Bay State Beach Visitor Center is open Saturdays and Sundays.  Entrance to the Visitor Center is free.   *Coastside Trail runs along the eastern boundary of the four beaches providing close to a three mile stretch to walk, jog or ride bikes. The trail continues north to Pillar Point Harbor. 

* A horse trail parallels Coastside Trail from Roosevelt Beach to Francis Beach. While in the state parks, horses are restricted to the designated horse trail and are not permitted on State Beaches.  More info: Half Moon Bay State Beach website

My photos:

Our site (#15):

 

That's the restroom building in the background; it was well-lit but the tree kept the light from being a problem at night.

 

The beach is easy walking distance from the campsites:

 
Horseback riding groups go right past the campground in the morning:

 

Lots of nice views from the hiking trails:

 

June progress report

Woah, it's June!  How'd that happen?

What's Going On?

At the risk of jinxing myself, I've had Holy Crap Improvement since May.  I wouldn't go so far as to say "night and day" but I can definitely go with "night and late afternoon".  

The pain is definitely muscular at this point, with very occasional nerve flare-ups.  I have one spot on the outside of my left calf that almost always feels cold/wet, which is more odd than worrisome, but other than that the nerve symptoms are now few and far between.

We went on a 10-day vacation to the East Coast and I had almost no symptoms at all.  No heat packs, no physical therapy, nothing.  I did use my tennis ball quite a bit (more on that later) but even with the plane ride and car rides and walking, my back did awesome. WOO!

What I Can Do:

Still working full-time.  Sitting at my desk is still the single worst thing for my pain levels, which is a bit of a bummer since, y'know, that's what I do all day.  Forcing myself to take "micro breaks" helps, as does the most recent conference room chair that I stole, er, borrowed.

No real change on the sitting and standing thresholds from last month -- still holding at about an hour for standing (provided I can sit occasionally and fidget) and about 90 minutes for sitting.

I had a HUGE breakthrough in walking this month.  Huge!  While visiting Dan and Colleen in New Jersey, we took a day trip into New York City.

Look, here's us at Times Square:

Now here's us in Central Park:

Now here's us in the Upper West Side:

That was all walking! That's like 5 miles at least.   Five miles!  My shins didn't speak to me for a day afterwards, but my back was mostly just fine with the exercise.

I'm also back to doing public skates once in a while.  Only ~10 minutes at a time, but I'll take what I can get!  My cardio system is totally trashed, which is a little discouraging, but to be expected after taking 10 months off.

No real motorcycle news -- I've sat on the XT a couple of times, but it's almost TOO upright; I have some bad lordosis going on and the XT posture exacerbates it.     

Sleeping/lying down continue to be no trouble at all.

What I Can't Do:

I'm still trying not to carry much.  I can do small things for short distances, but I'm really not pushing myself with this.

No hockey, though I am doing small amount of public skates.

No Beemer at all.  I can sit on the XT but haven't tried moving it or riding it.

No weight lifting. I'm starting to incorporate light cardio; elliptical only.  No treadmill!

What I've Stopped Doing:

I've weaned off the Thermacare back wraps and only use them when I'm having a lot of spasms.

I've stopped doing physical therapy for the time being.  Between my vacation and my physical therapist's vacation, I haven't been in for 3 weeks and I'm actually doing quite well.  I'm giving my wallet a break and will start up again if I need to.

I still use my Relax the Back "zero gravity" recliner but I can sit on other chairs and couches now, too.  

What I'm Doing About It:

Still doing my daily home PT, which is now seven stretches and two exercises.  Twice a week I add two Swiss ball exercises.  I try to do PT at the Apple gym a couple of times per week so that I can also warm up on the elliptical (5 minutes at 0 resistance) and use the Swiss ball there. 

I need to get my cardio back in shape, so I'm starting the Couch to 5K program on the elliptical machine at the gym.  Instead of "walking/running", I'm doing "walking/walking slightly faster", but my lungs are so shot right now that anything will be an improvement.

I try to get weekly massages with a physical therapist, which helps a lot with the muscular pain.

I went to the Stanford Spinal Jedi last week and was very encouraged.  He struck a good balance between taking my complaints seriously but also emphasizing that my injury isn't *that* bad in the grand scheme of things and it will get better.  So, yay.

I have a follow up next week with my regular back doc.