2Wheeltips

A situation that is not talked about much, but one you should be very aware of is when riding when the sun is low in the sky and at your back. This situation is, of course, only temporary as the sun will rise and or set and the hazard is eliminated, which is perhaps why it's not discussed much.

The hazard when the sun is low and at you back is that vehicles approaching you or looking to pull out in or across your direction of travel are looking directly into the sun. Where motorcycles are already difficult to see (at least that seems to be the excuse "cagers" often use after running into us) you now become virtually invisible. This condition becomes evident when you are casting a low long shadow directly infront of your bike and in the direction your traveling. When you are riding with the low sun at your back you need to become even more cautious of cars looking to pull out from side streets and or on coming traffic that might be looking to turn left across your path.

Being aware of the dangers of this temporary situation is important to allow you to adjust your awareness to a higher level and ride more defensively until the sun rises to a higher level in the sky or falls below the horizon. 

I got reaquanited with motorcycling in my mid 50's after my duties as a father had concluded and I felt as though the risk of riding was more justifiable. I have thouroughly enjoyed riding and want to continue riding as long as I possibly can. I still work for a living so my free time to ride is still rather limited and I look forward to when I can retire and take rides I simply don't have time for now with the limitations imposed by alotted vacation time.

That being said it is incumbent on me to stay healthy to enable me to do ride as long as I can, hopefully well into my 70's if not longer. Part of being healthy later in life is making good choices about your health when you are younger. Fortunately for me and my wife we gave up smoking in our early 20's, excercised regularly, ate healthy, limited use of alcohol and had regular physicals to insure blood pressure and cholesterol were within acceptable ranges. We contine to be in excellent health which we pray will continue for many, many more years.

I would like to make a correlation between safety and health that I think should be totally obvious but for whatever reason, many people don't get it. Here goes!

We spend a lot of time on this web site talking about ways to ride safely and avoid accidents and injuries. It goes without saying that, most, if not all of us would desperately like to avoid hospital time with potential injuries that could change the quality of our life or end it permanently. Yet I find that many people do not take the same precautions and care as it relates to their health. Ask your self why? What is the diffrence between dying on the highway due to unsafe behaviors or dying in a hospital bed from lung cancer, stroke or type II diabetes? Answer: No difference, your dead either way it just takes a little longer to do yourself in by choosing an unhealthy lifestyle.

To me, I would much rather die instantly in a fatal crash than a slow painful death over weeks and months due to failing health that was self inflicted.

The other issue at work here is that the results of poor health choices are not instantaneous. You know if you put your hand in the wrong place on a table saw the implications are both serious and immediate. Not so for choices about your health. You can make bad choices for years with no immediate repercussions, however, overtime those choices will have an impact. Will they kill you? maybe not. Just like riding too fast or while under the influence may not kill you the first time. Do it repeatedly and your chances for something bad happening increase dramatically.

As the New Year approaches and we look at things in our lives we would like to change and or do better I thought ir was the appropriate time to share these thoughts.

Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year to all of you!! 

 

The Insurance Institiute for Highway Safety issued a press release dated 11/10/2011 on the benefits of motorcycles equipped with ABS brakes.

In a "nut shell", their statistics show that motorcycles that have ABS brakes have 37% fewer fatal crashes than motorcycles without them. They, also, state that motorcycles with ABS brakes file 22% fewer collision claims than motorcycles without.

You can read the entire article by going to the below link.

These are rather impressive numbers and bear consideration. As with most everything that's motorcyclce related you have those that are willing to consider and evaluate safety gear and enhancements that will improve the riders safety. Then there is the other camp that looks at riding as an expression of their "freedom" and wants to minimize the use of anything that would compromise that expression. To each their own, I guess.
 
www.iihs.org/news/rss/pr111011.html

Reggie 

Being a First Responder I am required to take a certain amount of credit hours of training to keep my certification. This week I attended a course on trauma injuries that was particularly "colorful" in the variety of different ways people can find to shoot, stab and otherwise impail themselves. Many times these injuries are self inflicted but then again, many are not.

What I found especially enlightening was a couple of examples of motorcylce incidents where riders had fallen and impailed themselves on roadside hazards. One example was where a rider went over the handle bars of their bike and fell on a 4' high wrought iron fence that had spikes (like arrows) pointed upwards. Before seeing these pictures I would have thought, "gee what an attractive and historic looking fence"! After seeing these pictures showing a man with a 3 foot wide section of fence with the spikes going all the way through his torso I have a different opinion. There is nothing "cute" about the hazards this types of fences create, particularly if they are close to the road.  I would avoid riding anywhere near one as the damage they inflict if you would tragically happen to land on one is beyond description.

The other example was a rider who struck a STOP sign and somehow knocke the sign off and had the 4" diameter steel pole that held the sign all the way through his abdomen. I don't know if he lived or not but it was a sobering sight to be sure.

As we ride we see signs, fences, mail boxes and other roadside fixtures and take them for granted. My message is that these fixtures can be deadly. Obviously, we can do nothing to eliminate these hazards as they are a permanent part of the landscape. What we can do is realize them for the severe risk they pose to motorcyclist and be diligent in keeping our bikes on the road, rubber side down. 

In Berndt Spiegel's book "The upper half of motorcycle" he talks about a study where subjects are asked to walk a 4" painted black stripe on the floor. Of course the subjects think nothing of walking across a 4" painted black stripe and do so with no issue. Well the 4" stripe is really a beam so it was raised to 18" and the confidence deteroriated some  on how causally the beam could be crossed. Raise the beam to 10 stories off the ground and likely none of the particiapants would have even ventured out on it. Why? The percieved risk was raised to a bar no one was willing to accept.

Lets now talk about all the gear all the time.  Some riders  wear it others don't, why? Well, my guess is some riders percieve very little, if any risk, that they will be involved in an accident where those that do wear protective gear understandt the level of risk and dress appropriately. 

How do we get those that have little, if any, risk aversion when riding to understand they are at risk and the need to wear some protective gear? That is the $64,000 dollar question and how we move the "needle" forward will determine how accident statistics change for the better.

I try to log-in regularly into our 2Wheeltips website to see what new activity is taking place and am impressed by the number of new members that join. This website offers great information and training videos for new riders  and provides excellent support to those who have recently gotten their motorcycle license and face the learning curve of going from an MSF course to riding in real life traffic situations on America's highways and byways.

What I find disappointing is how few members actually contribute and or actively participate on the website. My expectation when becoming a member was that their would be far more interaction between members on important and sometime controversial topics that involve riding a motorcycle. Obviously, some of us are more "into" the sport than others which is understandable. We all have our passions in life and though motorcycling can be simply a casual diversion for some, their are those of us, including myself, that have made it a very important part of our life and spend a considerable amount of our discretionary time doing stuff that is motorcycle related. 

The point that I'm getting to is that no matter where motorcycling falls in our priorites we all have experiences, learnings, ideas that can bring insight to the members of our website. I would encourage all of our website members to contribute where you can. I think it's safe to say that if you have spent anytime at all utilizing the information available on 2Wheeltips, you have gained something from it. I think it makes sense that this can be viewed as a two way street where their is some obligation to give back something for what you have benefited from.

This is my personal opinion as I am a member of this website just like everybody else and have no stake in it's success or failure.  I have found the information and support very beneficial to me and felt the need to contribute something back for the value I got, free of charge by the way, by being a member of this website.

 If you have never participated with a blog or commented with your ideas I would encourage you to do so. The more diversity of ideas and experiences we share as riders can only serve to make us better and safer riders.

My wife and I took our longest ride ever doing 1900 miles in 7 days. Averaging about 270 miles a day. Pretty lazy by Iron Butt standards but just about right for us.

I m not going to hype this as the "trip of a life time" as many riders tend to do. For us it was a trip to visit family and determine if long distance touring was something we wanted to pursue, or not. We have done many 3 and 4 day long weekend rides but 7 days straight was a first for us. The wild card, which truly became the 'wild card', was the weather. It turned out to be less than ideal and I will touch on that in more detail below. 

I'm going to break our trip down into categories rather than ramble on about assorted topics and bore you to death!!

Planning:
We planned the trip day by day with a destination at the end of each day and a hotel booked. The days were planned for 250 to 300 miles per day leaving time for sight seeing and unforseen continginces. That worked well for us and it was comforting knowing we had a place guaranteed. On future trips we may get more adventurous, still pondering the pro's and con's.

I had my bike serviced and new tire put on before we left. I wanted the peace of mind that everything was in good shape and no basic maintenance items would cause us problems.

Gear:
We wore Sidi boots that worked great. Very comfortable to walk in, ride in, waterproof and we never had cold feet in rain and mid 40's temps.

We bought Olympia 4-season jackets and they were outstanding! We used every combination. The ability to turn them from a fully ventilated hot weather jacket to a cool weather rain jacket was amazing. We rode in mid 40's temps with light to heavy rain and were never wet or cold. This also minimized the amount of layering clothes we needed to take saving valuable space. Thank you, Olympia!

Gloves were a different story. I have a dozen pair of riding gloves and though I was able to ride comfortably in the 40's temps, the rain was a different story. Nothing in my glove collection was able to withstand the 3 days of rain. Every pair I brought eventually got soaked. I am now shopping for more rain resistant gloves. This is very important if you intend to do long distance riding. Get a good pair of waterproof gloves and try then out before your trip. We didn't and paid the price.

We used Fogg Togg overpants and they worked well to keep our pants try. They are inexpensive, they breathe and are light and packable. I doubt if they will last multiple trips but were fine for our 7 days.

Riding vs Diversions:
In hindsight, we would have preferred to do less riding and stop to see more stuff along the way. The days we rode in the rain were not particularly enjoyable and we would have been better off shortening the riding on those rain days. Our ride plan did not allow for that and we regret not having a better "plan B".

Length of trip:
For us, 7 days of riding was a bit too much. I never thought I'd say that but I was tired on day 7 and when we got home after riding 300 miles on our last day I was exhausted. We will limit future rides to 5 days max. We are both in our late 50's so you youngsters out there may scoff but age does take it's toll. We can do long distance rides but we will need to break them up so we are not riding continually for over 5 days.

Learnings:
We learned a lot about what we liked and what we didn't. We can't control the weather, and light rain was not a problem but heavy rain for extended periods of time is not something we choose to endure. We will need to plan better to have alternatives to avoid riding for hours in pouring down rain.

We packed to fit the available space on a Gold Wing. We could have done with less which was suprising to both of us. Washing half way into the trip provided us with more than enough clean clothes.

Good planning and knowing your routes makes for less stressful and straightforward navigating. Our GPS was invaluable as were our paper maps with highlighted routes and index cards with road by road directions clipped to my windshield.

We ate in local establishments and never stopped at a chain restaurants. The food was wonderful and the hospitality we received was amazing. This was one of the high points of our trip.

Summary:
That about sums it up. If you have any specific questions please send me a response and I'll be more than happy to respond. I know there are thousands of riders out there who do longer and more exotic trips than ours but wanted to share our experiences for what there worth. Hope you found some of the information useful.

My wife and I have been taking more and more weekend trips on our GoldWing. Living in the middle of Iowa you need to invest almost a day of riding to get some place worth seeing. The corn and soy bean fields get rather monotonous after a few years!! This year we're going to take the next step and do a week long ride, about 2,000 miles North into Minnesota then across Wisconsin, Michigan's UP then South to Muskegon and take the Lake Express ferry across Lake Michigan to Milwaukee then home to Des Moines, IA. The way I approached this trip is by taking a book I was given "The Most Scenic Drives in America, 120 Spectacular Road trips" and looked at what options I had that were in relative proximity to Des Moines. We had taken some of the closer rides over long weekends but to do the Wisconsin/Michigan scenic routes we would need a full week. After laying out the basic route I wanted to take that followed the majority of the recommended scenic routes in the book, I went into the online AAA trip planner and broke the trip into about 250 mile per day increments. The AAA planner is super easy to use and allows you to do multiple way points. Much faster and easier than Mapquest or Google maps and it's free. You don't have to be a AAA member to use it. After determining our daily routes and approximately where we would want to be stopping for the night I looked at hotel options. Finding an appropriate stopping point that had hotels and restaurants added a bit of complexity as I had to then go back and refigure our route and stopping point each day based on the hotels we booked. Once that was done I printed out the entire route which is segmented by each waypoint and gives you the mileage to that way point along with detailed directions. What is really cool about this is you can plan the exact route you want to take and not get some default route the the mapping software provides. Once I had all that info I just programmed the key way points into the GPS on the GoldWing and am now all set for the trip. Another thing I did was to layout some contingency routes. If we encountered bad weather or had a problem with the bike that would delay us I mapped out shortcuts we could take to keep the trip relatively on schedule without extending the riding day and taking the chance of getting overly tired. So, I've got the route all planned out, all my hotels and ferry ride booked, my 4,000 maintenace and new tires scheduled, all the gear ready to go and just waiting for the big start day to arrive. I'll write a blog when I get back and let you know how things turned out and how some of the new gear we bought for the trip worked out. Stay Tuned!!

It's truly miraculous how reliable and predictable things have become. We turn the key and our car starts, push a button and the radio plays, flip a switch and the lights go on. More and more we take for granted the "plug and play" simplicty technology has provided us. The problem with this, particularly as it relates to riding motorcycles, is it lulls us into a false sense of security and when unexpected things happen we are not prepared and can be caught off guard. Not a good thing to have happen when riding! Our bikes, like our cars, require less and less maintenace but stuff still wears; batteries corrode, bulbs burn out, wires fray and tires leak. We need to pay attention and regularly inspect our bikes condition to prevent those unexpected surprises from happening when we're out riding. We had a few decent weather days this week so I rode my bike to work one day. God know we haven't had any decent weekend weather and this weekend is no exception. I was amazed at how many changes I encountered in my ride over the same 34 miles of road which I ride every day of the week just from Tuesday to Wednesday. Some examples included: A dead cow on the berm with all of the realted gory stuff all over the road. Deer strikes are common, cows are not!! It was a mess to ride thru and it wasn't there the day before.(More about deer later) Grass clippings and small branches had probably been blown out of a lawn/landscaping truck and were scattered for about a quarter mile all over the slow lane of the interstate. Not there yesterday. An 8 ft. 2X4 board was laying across the passing lane. Traffic was light and I noticed it far enough ahead and easily avoided it. If I was in heavier traffic and following a car or truck closely in that lane I would have had to run over it. Wasn't there the day before. I have been seeing more and more dead deer on the roadside, averaging a couple three almost every day over the last 3 to 4 weeks. I have been paying much closer attention watching out for them while driving. This morning one darted out about 25 yards ahead of me and stopped on the far edge of the passing lane. I was riding in the slow lane. I braked hard and crawled past him not knowing if he might turn around and run back across the highway. He didn't. Lastly, I got off on my usual exit making a left turn on the 2 lane County road and found a construction truck had dropped a large amount of sand and gravel on the access road where the interstate exit and entrance ramps are. Definitely not there yesterday and another unexpected change to take note of. I think I've made my point. As predictable and boring as life sometimes can be it's not always that way. Be alert and be aware. Those unexpected changes can be "game changers"!!

We had very hot day in Iowa last week, got up to 99 degrees, quite unusual this early. I was driving home from work down I-35 going my usual 5 to 10 MPH over the speed limit (in my car!!) when I see a bike in my rearview mirror coming up fast behind me. I pull over into the slow lane and this couple on a HD crusier blow past me doing at least 90 MPH. I glanced over at them as they went by and this is what I saw: The bike had no windshield or sissy bar. The driver, a male, had jeans, boots and a sleeveless t-shirt, no helmet, no eyewear, no golves. His female passenger had on a tank top, capri pants and sneakers. No helmet, no eyewear, no gloves. Her face was buried in his back to block the wind. His face looked like what you see when the astronauts and fighter pilots would get into those centrifugal force accelerators so they could experience the "G" forces they would be subjected to on take-offs and high speed turns. All of his facial skin was flapping and his mouth was open and lips blown back. Not a terribly attractive sight to behold!! I needed gas so I pulled off behind them at the next exit and coincidentally followed them into the same gas station. I pulled up behind them at the pump. I was seriously wanting to mention to them it would be a good idea if they would at least wear eye protection when riding those speeds but thought I would start with some casual conversation just to "test the water". My concern is that I was coming from work in a 4 door sedan dressed in business attire and they had very much the hardcore biker look. I'm not making a statement that their look was any better or worse than mine, only that we were at opposite ends of the spectrum!! I commented on his bike and mentioned he was really getting some impressive speed. I asked him what he thought the top end was for his Harley. His reply, was and I quote: " it can do about 110MPH when the "bitch" ain't on the back". The "bitch" happened to be standing right next to him and didn't bat an eye. With that I wished them all the best and drove off not thinking it would be wise and or useful to provide any safety commentary. After getting home I debated whether I did the right thing or not. Well, I'm still debating but stongly leaning towards keeping my advice to myself was probably a good decision. What would you have done?