June Musings

Unlike previous summers, no big trips are planned this year, "big" as in riding the Trans-Canada from Victoria, British Columbia to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (or PEI) - about 5,000 miles one way. We'll be doing some dirt riding and maintenance work on the house. I'd rather be on a long ride.

On the May ride up to Seattle, While trying to swap the clear visor for the dark one, the plastic bits that enable the removal of the visor disintegrated into my hands. And, it wasn't fitting as snugly as I like it to fit. Time for a new for a new helmet. I thought I was saving money by buying my last Arai on sale. I should have checked the chin strap when I bought it, I would have discovered that it really only had a couple of good years left, not the three I was expecting.
Dainese now has a Bluetooth helmet for the US market, but my hopes deflated when I pulled on the helmet - not the right helmet for my head. Same issue with the Arai XD, an off-road style helmet that looks good with enduro-style bikes. After trying on every size XS helmet in the store, I settled on a Shoei RF-1000 because it fits my head. My new royal blue crown is awaiting the reflective stickers to dress it up a bit, then I'll post pictures of it. Yeah, yeah, the clincher was that this model came in a blue color that matches the bike. If I were really safety conscious, I'd buy one in safety orange, but I'd have to keep it covered when it wasn't on my head or else the color would make me sick.

The new helmet went to Berkeley today to see the one-woman monologue "No Child written and performed by Nilaja Sun. I have three words for this monologue: "go see it". Even if you don't have an interest the down turn in the quality of education in American public grade schools and what is happening to our young people as a result, you will be impressed by how she plays 17 different characters, male and female, young and old. The title of the monologue is reference to the debacle created by the misguided "no child left behind" education program that people thought was going to provide funding for high-poverty student populations but has become more about punishment than improvement. Nilaja Sun was a teaching artist in New York's Malcolm X High School in the Bronx. Berkeley has their own Malcolm X Elementary School. California ranks in the bottom tenth in the country in per pupil spending. With the budget cuts, creating writing, the arts, music, physical education are all tossed out the window and replaced with prescription drugs to keep the kids medicated so that they can sit still for the standardized tests, but are we testing whether the kids can think and reason or just pass a test?

Education has always been a big issue for me. Maybe the royal blue helmet, unlike the white golf balls I've been wearing, absorbs the right wavelength of energy to allow me to stand on a soapbox for a moment.

On the ride home from Berkeley I saw a guy going in the opposite direction on on KTM standing on his pegs. I couldn't tell if he been riding that way for a while, or had just stood up to stretch, but now I'm convinced that standing up your pegs creates a very intimidating image. Even if Nilaja Sun didn't create the monologue as a call at arms I hope people who see her work take it that way, and stand up for change. We don't need another shopping mall; we do need more teacher training, more support for teachers in the critical first two years, and smaller class sizes. [flame off]

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The following is moto fluff, but heck is it summer. Create your own "Visited States" map, or Create your own "Visited Countries" map. If you some free time on your hands, check out these Google Hacks from a Google engineer, Douwe Osinga, originally from the Netherlands.



I'm still trying to figure out how to publish my states and countries visited maps here. The width of the images distorts the blog page layout. See the June 2008 entry of my original site: http://www.balsamfir.com/motorcycle.htm.

The Countries version of this mapping tool doesn't work as well as the one for the US states. Countries that are quite large, like China, India, Canada, and the United States have only a visited/not visited setting. Even though I've only been to the western region of Canada, then entire country from the Pacific to the Atlantic changes color, giving a misleading impression that I've completed the Trans Canada ride. When you look for yourself, you'll see that the choices don't go down to a regional level of granularity. Also, I spent six months on Taiwan, Republic of China. This map would not make the government of the People's Republic of China happy because they consider Taiwan to be a renegade province, not a sovereign entity. Still, the "hack" is fun to play with.

Finally, a video of a silly race between a moped and a TransAlp motorcycle.

For postings from December 2001 to 2008, go to http://www.balsamfir.com/motorcycle.htm.