I’ve just received my Heated Grip Kit from Aerostich/Rider Wearhouse, plus some new foam grips from BikeBandit.com, and I am so excited to think I might soon not have to freeze my fingers off when I go for a ride. Winter or summer, if it’s chilly out, I get that frozen fingertip thing (Reynaud’s Syndrome). It’s not fun and in fact is often quite dangerous.
Watch my blog for a “how to install” post coming soon. Since I am incredibly “electrically challenged” (I really hate admitting that!), I’ll be taking my time, and I have asked my mechanically-gifted-at-the-genius-level boyfriend, Tony, to be on hand to help guide me. The instructions that Aerostich provided are quite straightforward and clear, so I’m looking forward to a relatively easy install.
Stay tuned!
Since the weather for the past month or more—gee, ever since I got my new bike—has been so incredibly crappy, I have been doing more physical fitness activities. I bought a year’s pass to our new aquatic center here in town, and I have been swimming, using the exercise equipment, and I’m even taking a springboard diving class with my ‘tween daughter.
Tonight, as I was peddling away on the exercise bike, increasing my endorphins and getting out some of the day’s energy, bottled up from sitting at the computer too long, I had an epiphany about the similarities for me between riding a bicycle, even a stationary one, and motorcycling.
My first bicycle
I have had a connection with bicycling since I was young. I got my first Schwinn with training wheels when I was about 5. The training wheels didn’t stay on long. During my elementary and high school years, I often rode my bike to and from school. When my mom went to work full time when I was 10 or 11, my bicycle and my feet became my main forms of transportation. I lived in a great, hilly, suburban neighborhood. I reveled in zooming down hills up to 40 mph (I actually had a speedometer on my bicycle—even then I loved seeing how fast I could go). In college, I was fortunate to live in a place that had many miles of bike lanes, and I would go out for 20-, 30-, or 40-mile bicycle rides several times a week, making different circuits around the Oregon countryside near my university town. I often didn’t see any cars on those rides, though I occasionally had to pile on the juice in order to miss a spray of herbicide floating down from a crop-duster
The discovery this evening was that my enjoyment for riding a bicycle shares some of the same things I love about riding a motorcycle: the focus, the intensity, the being in nature (except, of course, when I’m at the gym), and the release I feel in my emotional state. Even on a stationary bike, I have never needed anything to distract me from what for some is monotony. No iPod, no need to watch the tv, no need to read a book… nothing other than my own inner self, just being present in the moment and in my body. Doing the work. Being with myself, rather than distracted from myself. That’s exactly how I feel on my motorcycle.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m really really really REALLY looking forward to some dry weather and getting on my motorcycle again. Because that is my ultimate ride. A place I experience full connection with self. I don’t need an iPod on the motorcycle, either… nothing but the wind, the machine, the road.
In the meantime, though, I’m going to crank up my stationary spinning for some mental release from the rain, as well as getting physically fit for the upcoming motorcycling season.
Try it, and see what you think…
I admit it. I have succumbed.
Like the majority of the six-plus billion people on this planet, I have starting envisioning my life for the upcoming year. What is it about the turning of a calendar page that starts us thinking about how much weight we can lose, how much money we can make… or how many miles we’re going to ride in the coming year? In the practice of Buddhism, we have the opportunity every day to begin anew, yet most of us frequently only see that date of January 1 as an opportunity to get our lives together and make some changes.
I haven’t “made resolutions” per se for some time. I often think about how I would like the new year to flow, but my thoughts haven’t solidified to actually putting them on paper. I recently found online (through serendipity, rather than through searching) a couple of articles about resolutions and how to be more effective in keeping them.
The key, apparently, to staying focused on your year’s goals—and in attaining them—is to be specific. Rather than thinking: “I’m going to ride my motorcycle more this year,” I need to actually set a mileage goal. Otherwise, I’m only going to be grabbing the opportunity to ride back and forth to work and whatever else comes along. At a commute to my office of only eight miles round-trip, that will not get me anywhere near my goal of riding more.
Therefore, I resolve…
(Can you picture me grinning?)
Here is my odometer reading as of January 4, 2010. In case the picture is too small, that says 6,289 miles. Yep. That’s all.
I have not yet ridden in the four days of this year, although my bike has been ridden… Tony borrowed it. His Miata’s master clutch cylinder failed, and his own bike has ignition switch trouble (due to our coastal salt air, most likely…)
A good place for me to start making a realistic mileage goal for the year might be thinking about where I want to ride this year, typical weekend rides we take, and then look at how many more miles I might want to put on. In the past two years of solid riding, I have averaged 5,500 miles per year. That doesn’t seem like enough riding for this year.
Here’s how I am breaking down this year’s potential riding miles:
- Women’s Ride-In Weekend (in the planning stages): potentially Grover Hot Springs near Markleeville CA (doesn’t that sound nice, ladies?): 674 miles round-trip (does not include spectacular day trip or two through the Sierras, or up to and around Lake Tahoe, potentially more miles).
Trip to Washington, whether my parents are available for a visit or not (there are rumors they are relocating to Mexico!): a very approximate round trip of 1,937 miles, going up the coast and coming back via I-5.
MotoGP in Monterey, last weekend in July: 572 miles RT
The usual weekend rides, anywhere from 65 miles (Ukiah), to 130 (Leggett loop), to 210 (Santa Rosa), all round-trip figures: 1,620 miles (using an average of twelve available weekend days to ride and alternating the three distances. Why not more days available you might ask? One word: Custody. My daughter is with me every other weekend, and I don’t know that she’s going to be very comfortable riding passenger on my green machine. But maybe.)
I have vowed to ride more with my friend Cindi who lives in Novato, about 290 miles round-trip. This shouldn’t be difficult to achieve, considering we didn’t ride together once last year. So: Riding to Novato and back, at least twice: 580 miles
Daily commute: 8 miles RT, as often as possible…
Not counting the commute miles, I’m up to 5,383…hmmm, that just doesn’t sound like enough.
Okay, I’m adding on a two-day trip to Fortuna, over Hwy 36 to Red Bluff and then home: 500 miles. That puts me up to 5,883.
I need some more miles here… anyone want to make me an offer for some high mileage weekend riding???
(There’s that grin again…)
—————–
What other motorcycling goals do I have?
I would like to write more, increasing my blog’s readership and subscribership; take an MSF Experienced Rider Course; start filming portions of the video I’m scripting, of a series of stretches I have designed specifically for motorcyclists; and, take my daughter on a long weekend ride somewhere, just so she can get a taste of touring on a bike. Which reminds of another goal: To obtain a sport-touring style bike that might be more comfortable for passenger riding.
I cannot leave out another important goal I have: To meet in person some of the people I have met online, through Twitter, forums, or blogs. I’m looking very much forward to meeting many of you and riding with some.
Cheers to you all, in this new year of possibilities. May your road be wide open (with a few twisties thrown in for fun), smooth, and most of all, safe. Happy 2010 and happy right now.
I’m on my way out the door to start my bike…
Riding around the Abert Rim in Oregon
My dear friend, Susan, has made an interesting comment on my “About Me” page.
She wonders if somehow my blog is connected to the Robert Pirsig classic book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Honestly, the book never occurred to me when I was conceiving and designing this blog, so perhaps an explanation of the words in my banner’s subtitle are needed, especially for readers who do not also ride.
I have been a student and practitioner of Buddhism for nearly ten years, in spirit if not always in form. I am well versed in the precepts of Buddhism and have practiced a contemporized form of Zen as taught by Vietnamese monk and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. At some point, I slipped out of formal practice, which meant daily meditation and attending a weekly sangha (a meditation group that disbanded when our teacher moved away). When I started riding a motorcycle, I found that it became a different form of practice for me.
Riding a motorcycle is entirely a Zen experience, though perhaps not all riders understand that, or can put words to the experience. I have only read a few pages of Pirsig’s book, but in what I did read, I can say that he captured exactly what I feel when I ride, which is also the experience that some people have of Zen meditation.
If a motorcyclist is to survive in the wacky world of four-wheeled vehicles, piloted by people ensconced in their own comfort and sometimes doing the very things they do in their own homes (talk on the phone, read, do their nails, brush their hari) rather than paying attention to the world outside their two- or four doors, the rider must be fully present in each and every moment while riding—an essential element of Zen practice.
There is a quality of being in the moment, each moment, that riding on two wheels demands. I am more fully present and awake to myself and the world while riding my motorcycle than at all the other moments in my day. This “meditation on two wheels” brings me back to myself in a way that not even sitting or walking meditation, or practicing savasana at the end of a yoga class, can do. It is truly a practice of being present, and of contemplation. Riding grounds me, moves my spirit, and makes me feel more alive than at any other time.
My blog was conceived with the idea that I would share my experience of motorcycling, my “Zen practice”, while also writing about topics that would interest and inform other motorcyclists. If anyone else who happens to find my blog takes away wisdom or gains a new perspective, in order to find the Zen in their own lives, that is a very good thing.
Now, you may be thinking I’m “going green” in the conventional sense that we think of these days, either buying a hybrid car or installing solar panels on my house. Neither of these come remotely close to the kind of green I am talking about.
Saying goodbye to "Lil Red" in Santa Rosa.
Back in October, I said goodbye to the bike pictured at left and in my banner, which I had nicknamed “Lil Red” (and part of the reason for my onscreen name, Lilredridingliz ‘though there is more to that story which I may share another time). My Kawasaki 500R was a great bike to learn and improve my riding skills on, and she took me many miles during the two-and-a-half years that I owned her (more than 11,000 miles and through several Western states). However, the summer’s adventure riding to Montana and back (nearly 2,700 miles), made me aware that I was more than ready for a bike with more power.
I had a great last ride on “Lil Red”, riding twisty Highways 1 and 128 to Highway 101, 105 miles or so from our home in Fort Bragg to Santa Rosa. We met up with soon-to-be new owner Robert and his partner at our favorite coffee spot in Santa Rosa, A’Roma Roasters, and made the sale after some tire kicking and chit chat.
I must confess to being a bit bereft at now being a rider without a bike (I actually cried on the car ride home). I comforted myself with the thought that a bike was waiting for me in the mountains of California.
With the knowledge that I had a buyer for the 500, I had been searching for another motorcycle with displacement of 600cc or above. After several discouraging days searching the ads, my partner suggested I check the Reno Craigslist offerings. During previous searches of that region, I hadn’t come up with anything close to what I was interested in owning. Scanning down through the dates this time, there was an entry made several days previous for a Kawasaki ZX600e, with an incredibly sweet price tag. A-ha! I was definitely interested; although the bike was a little older than I wanted, a 1995, it only had 6,174 miles on it! And then I clicked on the listing and found…it was Kawasaki green! My first thought when I saw the photos was, “I’ll have to paint it!”
My "green" machine arriving home in the trailer.
The bike was too good to pass up (despite its color scheme). Following several email conversations with the owner, who was out of town, the weekend after “Lil Red” went away, I went “green” when Tony made the journey to Lake Tahoe to pick up my new ride.
For weeks afterward, I worried that I couldn’t be Lilredridingliz anymore (“…but I’ve just started my blog!”), nor could I now wear my favorite red leather jacket on this bike, for fear of looking like Christmas. (“Geez, what color jacket do I need to buy now?” and “Does my gear have to match my bike? Yikes!”)
I have come to peace with all those things. So what if I am extra bright wearing my red jacket on my green machine? That just means I’m more visible on the road! And, since my name was only partially inspired by having a red bike, I can surely keep that! (Besides, its how all my online and riding buddies know me.)
Welcome to the garage, Big Green! I’m having a lot of fun with you so far. I’m awaiting spring and the return of dry corners, with many adventures yet to come!
I will never—ever—ride without my Style Saver Scarf again. While I haven’t got much of a hairstyle, and, in fact, don’t often mind the “helmet hair” look on my wavy, sometimes frizzy locks, the epic, 2,700-mile road trip I took this summer made me a firm fan of the simple scarf modeled on the satin pillowcases of the 1950s.
I tried a cotton bandana under my helmet in July 2008. It absolutely did not fit, and I took it right off.
I have owned a scarf for several months, as well as helping sew them for my friend and fellow rider, business owner Cindi Servante. I had been reluctant to actually try the scarf out, as I have attempted wearing other types of scarves under my helmet in the past (notably, a good old cotton bandana on the previous summer’s vacation). My assumption was that the scarf would be uncomfortable as an extra layer between my head and helmet; sometimes even my ponytail holder drives me crazy. When I ride, I want complete comfort; otherwise, I find myself constantly fiddling with whatever is bothering me, rather than paying full attention to the bike and the road.
The Style Saver Scarf ended up being a dream come true on each day of my 2,700-mile ride. Not only did it help ease my helmet on and off my sometimes sweaty head, it decimated my biggest distraction when riding—the tiny little loose hairs that often fly into my eyes, across my nose, or tickle my cheek, causing me immeasurable discomfort inside my helmet.
Wearing my Style Saver Scarf in July 2009. I won't ride without one anymore!
I am so grateful for the revelation that caused Cindi to design this scarf. Maybe someday I will have stylish hair, and the scarf will help my hair look more attractive at the end of a long day of riding, but in the meantime, I will not be without my scarf, as it allows me to enjoy both my daily rides and my epic journeys with comfort, ease—and without distraction. Thank you, Cindi!
Check out the styles, fabrics, and ordering information here, stylesaverscarf.com .
And, if you’re in Sonoma County on Sunday, October 18, come check out our booth at the Chilly Billy Memorial Ride!
This is my first blog post. Ever.
My friend, Cindi Servante, aka stylesavergirl, aka moto-ette, said I needed to “just do it”, so here I am! The header is something my grandmother used to tell me all the time… that there are so many new worlds out there and we shouldn’t let anything stop us from living our passions. Cindi echoed that sentiment today when she said, “If a new door opens, just walk through it and see what’s on the other side.” Or something to that effect. I took it as good advice.
Being a designer, I will get busy with the design stuff… tomorrow.
Being a woman who is passionate about motorcycling, I will get to the writing and tell you a little more about myself within the next couple of days.
Until then, good night.
