Father's Day Brunch in West Chester

For father's day my wife and I headed out on the Bullet to West Chester for brunch in a downtown restaurant.  We didn't have anyplace special picked out we just wanted to go and find something there.  The quickest way would have been to head up West Chester Pike but the more fun and twisty ride is up the Goshen/Strasburg to West Chester Pike route.  We both love that route because of the scenery, the hills, and the twists and turns of the road.  No geese on the road today but as we crossed 252 we picked up a New Yorker in front of us who must have been leaf peeping in the wrong season, the guy could go no faster than 30 mph.  All that road is double yellow and with many blind turns so it's hard to pass someone.  Luckily there was a spot along the horse farms before the Providence Rd. intersection where it was clear enough to make a break for it.  Once we cleared him the ride was definitely more enjoyable.

The downtown area of West Chester runs between Gay St. and Market Street from about Bolmar St. to New St.  As you head into town on the Pike it turns into Gay St. and continues up through downtown as a one way street.  At some point, if you bear left, the next street over is Market which runs the other way back to West Chester Pike and the Paoli Pike turnoff.  We followed Gay all the way to New and made the turn to come back on Market settling on a parking lot near the corner of Gay and Walnut.  Leaving the Bullet there, we walked along Gay to find a place for Brunch.

We settled on the Side Bar because they had seating outside and a good looking menu.  The food was great and the weather was perfect for an outside brunch. While we were waiting for our food, a nice older gentleman approached us and compliment me on the Bullet.  We chatted about it for a little while and he was surprised to learn that they are still being made.  He though it was a vintage bike not something with just a little over 600 miles on it.

After brunch we headed back on the reverse route.  No New Yorkers this time and the road was free an clear.  At a couples of places, where I had a tailwind and a downhill slide, the Bullet reached and maintained a little over 60 mph on less than half throttle.  It's nice to know that even with two people on board it is still game. Much fun was had by all.  By the end of the ride we had clocked  a little over 661 miles on the odo.

Looking forward to Ride to Work tomorrow.

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Tomorrow is Ride to Work Day!

Make plans to support Ride to Work Day and ride your motorcycle or scooter to work tomorrow.

Ride to Work History from the Ride to Work Day website:

"Ride to Work Day was inspired by "Work to Ride - Ride to Work'" marketing materials created between 1989 and 1991 by the Aero Design and Manufacturing Company, a Minnesota based manufacturer of motorcycle riders clothing. In 1992 these items inspired motorcycle magazine editor Fred Rau to write an editorial calling for a national ride to work day.

The first annual Ride to Work Day event was proposed in Road Rider magazine (now titled Motorcycle Consumer News) in the May 1992 issue. This is an excerpt from that "Ride to Work" editorial: "You may remember several months ago when Bob Carpenter, commenting in his 'Two Up' column, mentioned how neat he thought it would be if there was one day a year when everyone who owned a motorcycle used it to ride to work. That comment was prompted by a T-shirt produced by Aerostich RiderWear that simply said, 'Work To Ride, Ride To Work.' Everyone seemed to think that a national 'Ride To Work' day was one heck of a good idea."

The first Ride to Work Day event date was July 22nd, 1992. For several years various motorcycle businesses informally promoted every third Wednesday in July as Ride To Work Day. These early advocates included Road Rider Magazine, Dunlop Tires, and Aerostich/Riderwearhouse. The event continued to grow as an informal grass roots demonstration every year until 2000. That year a non-profit organization, Ride to Work was formed to help organize and promote Ride to Work Day. The first Ride to Work Day event led by this group was the third Wednesday in July of 2001. This day was the annual day until 2008, when it was changed to the Third Monday In June. This change was made to climatically better accommodate riders world-wide, and to give more riders an opportunity to participate.

Ride to Work is a 501 c4 nonprofit, all-volunteer effort. Organizers include Andy Goldfine, Lynn Wisneski and Christine Holt."

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Clocks 4 Bikes

Step 1 - In the package

As an early father's day present my wife gave me a Clocks 4 Bikes stem nut clock for the the Bullet this morning.  Fist of all, what a great company to do business with!  My wife called to ask about measurements and got a call back immediately from Linda Harjes, one of the co-owners.  They worked out the particulars and the clock was here from Flora, Mississippi in two days with free shipping.

Step 2 - Out on the package

As you can see from the pictures this is a beautiful product.  Ross and Linda Harjes run the whole thing the old fashioned way with customer satisfaction as their number one priority.  The thing that impressed me the most was that the clock arrived running and set to my local time.  Talk about minding the details!

Step 3 - Installation complete

The clock is beautifully made and it fits the Bullet as if it was an original part.  They also have a handle bar mounted model but for the stem nut you will need to ask for the 30mm.  It is just positioned on the stem nut and all you need to do is tighten the securing bolt with the included hex wrench.  If you notice the time on the clock you will see that time from taking out of the package to complete installation is less than 3 minutes.  That includes the time to take pictures, without that it probably would have taken less than a minute.

Step 4 - Ready to go

Clocks for bikes offers several models for different kinds of bikes and they would be a great addition to any bike.  As you can tell, I am highly impressed with the product and the service.

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Saturday's Ride

The intention this morning was to head out Goshen/Strasburg to 352 heading towards Brookhaven but turning around at Granite Run Mall and following the reverse route back home.  Soon after crossing 252 on Goshen there was a flock of Canada geese gently strolling across the road.  They did not seem to mind the oncoming traffic and were not deterred or hurried by the Bullet's horn.  I slowed down to pass amidships of the flock and got a lot of honking and flapping of wings for my efforts.

After that the ride up Goshen was clear and fun.  The Bullet appears to be running smoother than I remember but that may all be in my head.

Shortly after crossing West Chester Pike on 352 there was a crew working on the road.  I got stopped at the top of the key and as soon as I pulled up, the lady in charge of the stop signed wandered over to ask about the Bullet.  We chatted for a couple of minutes about motorcycles while oncoming cleared and then I was on my way.  The opposite line of traffic was getting pretty backed-up by the time I cleared the crew and I decided not to reverse the route.  Crossing over Route 1, I took the on-ramp to Rt. 1 and from there to 252.

In my new Fox Tactical Fork Bag I was carrying by Nikon SB400 which I had dropped and broken and intended to take to the camera shop to see about getting fixed.  Keeping that in mind, I headed down 252 all the way to the Paoli Shopping Center at Rt. 30 where there used to be a Cardinal Camera.  Cardinal is now gone but there is a Ritz Camera there now.  They couldn't fix it so I headed home via Sugartown and Church.  (I took the SB 400 apart when I got home and fixed it myself.)

Great ride with no hold-ups other than the brief stop at 352 for road work.  That road has some nice twists and traffic is light enough that they can be run well.  Did push the Bullet up to 70 mph on Sugartown for just a brief period, probably no more than 100 yards.  It handled it well.  Can't wait to see if it can sustain it.

At the end of the ride the Bullet clocked 631 miles on the odo.

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Fox Tactical Fork Bag

Yesterday, while waiting for the Bullet to be serviced I wandered in to the Army Navy Store in downtown Pottstown.  Not looking for anything in particular, just looking to kill time.  There I found a Fox Tactical Modular Deployment Bag that would do the perfect job for a fork bag tool kit.  The bag cost $25.95, plus tax, and measures 11.5"x6"x5.5".  The outside is Cordura nylon and the inside is rubberized for waterproofing.

After a few minor alterations it fit fairly well on the fork and should serve well as a tool kit holder or small catchall.  I altered the bag by cutting the retaining fold on the front buckle straps so that they could be folded around the back of the bag and used as attachment points to the fork cross beam.  The attachment straps on the back of the bag are not long enough to wrap around the fork crossbeam as they are designed to attached to a belt or to modular tactical equipment.  At first I thought about buying or constructing extensions, and this is a possibility, but the original idea was to have a low cost fork bag and I didn't feel the extra hassle and cost could be justified.

A pretty neat solution, now let's see how it holds up in use.

Fox Tactical Fork Bag

Close-up Fox Tactical Fork Bag

Close-up Fox Tactical Fork Bag

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Mystery Solved

This morning there was a message from the towing service (Flatt's Roadside Assistance, if that's not an unfortunate name for a roadside assistance service I don't know what is) that they would be here by 10:05 to pick up the Bullet.  That was an hour after I requested but a little flexibility goes a long way.  Having been left on the side of the road by AAA once for over three hours, I called the number they left in the message by 10:20.  The voice mailbox for that number had to been set up and Flatt's wasn't answering.  Not wanting a recurrence of my AAA experience I immediately called Progressive to figure out the deal.  They were able to raise Flatt's who said they could not be here for another two hours.  Accident this morning, blah, blah, blah, excuses.   I asked Progressive to get another service and by 11:00 I got a call from them saying that Infiniti of West Chester was on its way and that they would be here in 60 minutes.  This would put them at about the same time frame that Flatt's would have been but after my bad experience I feel better with someone who says 60 minutes rather than two hours.

In the meantime, I continued fooling around with the bike to see if I could get it to run.  At one point I noticed the amp meter light flicker and that gave me a little hope.  Right after I hung up with Progressive at 11:00 I gave the Bullet on more try.  This time, magically, the light came on and the bike kicked over.  Mirabile visu!  Not wishing to risk anything, I ran upstairs, put on my riding gear, and asked my wife to cancel the tow.

Despite a forecast of heavy rain the sky was clear and blue so I headed down the road with high hopes of getting to Pottstown dry.  I took Church to Waterloo and headed to 252 to cut across Valley Forge National Park to link up with 23 to Pottstown.  When I left the house I had 539 miles on the odo.  I knew that it would be a tight squeeze to get to Kiss Honda before I ran out of gas.  I figured a little over twenty miles to get there and I had calculated that the odo would read 561 when I ran into the reserves.  I didn't want to stop at the Liberty station on 30 and Waterloo for fear of not being able to start the bike again.

When I got to Phoenixville, I decided to stop at the Citgo on 23 and White Horse because I was afraid that I wouldn't make it to High Street and if I had then how would I get back, the nearest gas station I knew at the time was just out of town.  I realize now that there is a gas station about a block away from Kiss Honda on High Street.  I pulled into the Citgo with 549.3 miles on the odo.  The tank took 2.772 gallons to fill up so I was running fairly close.  The average mileage the Bullet is running now is 67 miles per gallon.

I got to Kiss Honda a little after noon and the service technician was outside waiting for me.  We talked about the problem the Bullet had and he asked me if the kickstand was down.  I realized then that when my grandson was crawling over the bike he must have pushed on the kickstand enough to engage the safety but to make it appear as if it was still up.  I figured that as I messed with the bike this morning I must have re-seated the kickstand and that is what caused the miraculous recovery.

I also asked Randy Kiss to install a maintenance free battery to replace the one that came with the Bullet.  I don't like having to mess with wet cells and Randy sold me a battery for $85.95 which is quite a bit cheaper than I have seen on line or from nfieldgear.  He also threw in and installed a set of battery tender leads so I don't have to unhook the battery again and I can keep it hooked up to the tender when not in use.

They did the work in less than an hour an a half and I was on the road again by a little after 14:00 (that's 2:00 pm. to you civilian types).    The trip back was the outbound route in reverse, didn't have to go down 29 to 30 since the work on 23 appears to be over.  All the way from Pottstown to the outskirts of Phoenixville the Devil was beating his wife.*  He wasn't beating her hard but hard enough to be worrisome.  The sky was heavy and dark behind me and clear and blue in front so I hoped to be running away from the rain.  The beatings stopped in Phoenixville and it was clear sailing until I got to Devon.  As I crossed 30, I figured I would take Sugartown and stop by my wife's work to let her know I was back since she doesn't answer her cell at work.  No sooner had I made that decision that the Devil heard me and began to beat his wife again.  I passed on Sugartown to head home but by the time I got to Church the beatings had stopped again so I headed up Church to my wife's work in Eastown.  I got there and started back home.  No beatings but the sky kept getting darker.  As I pulled into the garage the heavens opened up and it came down in buckets.  The mileage on the odo read 595.5 when I stopped.  All's well that ends well.

*"The Devil is beating his wife" is a southernism for a sunshower, a meteorological phenomenon that occurs when rain falls while the sun is shinning.

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Dead in the Water

So I got home from work and started getting the Bullet ready to take to Kiss Honda in the morning.  You might remember from last Sunday's (08 June) post that last week I thought the battery had drained from my grandson leaving the kill switch open so I had the battery recharging on the bench since then.  I hooked up the battery, not an easy feat until you figure out that if you hold the nut in place with a screwdriver while rotating the screw it will eventually fall in place by itself, and got ready to crank it over.  The headlights came on, the neutral light came on, but the amp meter light did not and there was no whirling noise like there usually is.  I tried kick-starting, something I've never been successful at, but I got nothing.  No surprise there.  Well, I'm dead in the water.

Luckily, I have roadside assistance through Progressive Insurance.  So I called and set up an appointment to come have the bike picked up tomorrow morning to deliver to Kiss Honda.  I will bet that it's nothing major, but if you read this tonight (12 June 2014) and have an idea of how I might get this thing rolling again, I would appreciate a note in the comments.  I would like to be able to get there under my own power.

Thanks in advance!

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