2019 Prefrontal Tour

What do "men working" and "rivers in the southwest" have in common?  Both require a sign to let you know they exist.  Yes, we're back in the dry zone, having passed through the remainder of Kansas and a good portion of Colorado.  And holy flat, Kansas is flat.  Fluh-HAT.  Like, Kansas puts the "eff" in "flat".  God must have made Kansas, and then made the Rockies by way of apology. At one point we just pulled over and looked around 360 degrees, the world falling away in all directions, and we both remarked about the curvature of the earth.  To the south, a long low (yes flat) line of white clouds marked the horizon, looming like a distant wall of ice just visible through the haze of several hundred miles. We'd left Colby just after 8 AM, and headed southwest toward La Junta.  We spent much of the morning being dive-bombed by swallows, intent on picking the bugs off our windshields, or maybe just showing off for their feathered friend...

There, on the right.  A brilliant arc of white violence flashed to the ground.  And on the left, another leapt into being.  Above in the gloom, muted flashes betrayed the presence of others, kept aloft. We sped westward from Williamsburg toward Des Moines, betting on catching a narrow break in the storm front where the rains would be heavy, but hopefully not biblical.  The rain fell harder, mixing with road spray and making the air a veritable sauce. More lightning, and raining harder still.  Jack in the lead, probably thinking nothing of it, and me as the rear guard, calculating the risk of abandoning Faraday at such a critical juncture, and building a small shithouse with newly laid bricks - but enjoying the hell out of it at the same time. The animals fell just short of pairing up, but cars and trucks were vying for position on the edge of the highway, hazards flashing, victims of their own windshields and futile wipers. We pressed on and broke free ...

I drove past the mud hole the first time, not wanting to believe the GPS was right.  It had failed me before. Circling back I came to the conclusion it was correct, and this was the only way to get to the dock and the Fast Ferry from Muskegon, Michigan to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  A two and a half hour journey that would cut about eight hours and a bunch of cities off my itinerary. But the hidden cost was a hundred yards of mud and water of unknown consistency, with deep ruts on the edges from trucks gone astray.  There was nothing to wait for, I slipped the clutch and dipped the front wheel into the mess that passes for road construction these days.  In the end I got lucky and it was two-inches of muck - a 1,200 pound bike and rider don't do well in the squishy stuff.  But it could have made for an epic photo montage.  Amirite?! Day 2 of the 2019 Prefrontal Tour was,... leisurely.  My schedule was predetermined and beyond my control so I departed ...

Launch day came early - too early by my estimation.  When I first stirred I could tell it was still dark through shuttered lids.  Prying one apart I directed my gaze to the clock.  Three twos in a row?  No matter what order you put them in, it spells "No." When next I awoke it was already 5:45 and past time to get up, although there was precious little else to prepare, having done it mostly the night before. Duly christened on the eve of the 2019 Prefrontal Tour by a sea captain's wife, Snoopy 2 departed at 7:15 AM 'neath a cloudless cerulean sky at a brisk 50 degrees. Angling west on Route 67, I headed for Amsterdam, avoiding the morning rush of cagers at the Twin Bridges trying to beat each other to the office.  It was mundane at first, farms and houses in the low-light of morning, until I crested the eastern lip of the Mohawk Valley and it felt like the Tour was on. I picked up the peremptory slab and headed due West for Niagara Falls, crossing the b...

Sometimes, a thing must be done.  As my friends in India would say, "I'll do the needful and revert".  That sometime was today, one day before the launch of the 2019 Prefrontal Tour, and the needful was getting Snoopy 2 back to Maine to be christened by the only woman on the planet who could. I departed at 7:15 AM, a bit later than planned, but still at a chilly 52 degrees.  I plotted a course through Whitehall, NY - the landlocked birthplace of the U.S. Navy - then through the stone totems of eastern NY and temperatures colder still.  Destination Sanford, ME - having finished forwarding my mail to Sanford, NC two days prior, and getting back from Sanford, FL yesterday, today would complete the Sanford triumvirate - three Sanfords, in three states, in three days. Killington, VT saw the temperature plummet by ten degrees in almost as many minutes, but it was no surprise, for a very scientific reason...  You see, a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a "useful...

Now that we're configuring the load-out for the 2019 Prefrontal Tour, it's time for a few fun facts about "conveyance capacity". Fun fact #1: The Honda Goldwing GL1800 has a lot of liters.  More than 1.8 liters of displacement, a 7 liter air box, and a 25 liter fuel tank. Fun fact #2: My first car, an early-80's Ford Escort, only had 1.6 liters of displacement, and half as many horsepower (65 vs. 120). But the Escort by comparison had plenty of storage, while the Goldwing is split into a measly 61-liter trunk up top and two 40-liter saddlebags on the sides, for a total of 141 liters of factory-standard storage goodness.  Whatever else I need to carry will have to ride along strapped in dry bags, or be exposed to the elements. Now, subtract one of those saddlebags for tools, supplies, and a half-cover to discourage dew and curious lookers-on, and we're down to 101 liters... Subtract at least one more saddle bag for all of this camping equipment, and ...

The 2019 Prefrontal Tour is about a lot of things, from new beginnings to final destinations. One of the new beginnings for 2019 was the naming contest for the bike, and based on thousands of creative entries, and after careful consideration, we've selected the winner and it's time for the grand unveiling. The Internet being a "font of all things", I used it to dredge up old photos that rhymed with the winning entry, and through a little bit of photo manipulation magic and a printing company in the Netherlands, the new ship has been duly christened. Say hello to "Snoopy 2", emblazoned with the same likeness that bedecked Dad's lobster boat all those years ago, in memory of where we began, and to take a little piece of the past where we're going. The decals are a special vinyl applique that should stand up to the wind and waves between here and who-knows-where, but only time and miles will really tell. Thank you to everyone who vot...

These last few pre-tour days are critical for getting things back in shape, and one of the most important things to refurbish after a long winter break is... the rider.  Skills decay more quickly than the equipment, and it's critical to keep things in order up there on the shiny side.  Slow-speed maneuvering, street tactics, and red light vigilance need to be retrained, and new skills from video training over the winter months need to be practiced into muscle memory - slow, lean and roll, trail braking and late apexing come to mind. The weather isn't cooperating much, with rain coming in most days and temperatures struggling to get above the 50's, but the 2019 Prefrontal Tour isn't about comfort, it's about goals and destinations. The last two days have offered enough inter-squall stretches to get in about 3 hours and 100 miles of riding, and at one point yesterday, it actually got warm enough to take the thermal liners out of the riding suit - a welcome ach...

As with all adages, there's a remarkable kernel of truth to "feast or famine". So far 2019 has been an amazing year, full of opportunities and new experiences, and we're thankful for every one of them.  But is it too much to ask for some of the awesome stuff to just "spread the hell out" already?  Understanding of course just how much of a "first world problem" that really sounds like.  No, we'll go with thankful and leave it at that, lest we tempt the hand of fate. Susan has a gift for staging properties and selling them.  A couple years ago the house in town sold in about 3 hours, and we scrambled to get everything loaded into PackRat containers within 30 days.  Well, lightning strikes again (maybe I'll call Sue "Lightning" today and see how that goes), the lake house was under contract before the sign was in the ground, and we're scrambling to get everything packed by May 31st (at least according to the paperwork,...

Day -25 of the 2019 Prefrontal Tour dawned,... well, it hasn't yet.  At least I don't think so...  It's hard to tell with all the black clouds and torrential rain. The lake is so high it's spilling over the top of the dam, having risen 16 feet in recent weeks with no end in sight based on the 10-day forecast.  For a lake that's 29 miles long with a capacity of almost 38 billion cubic feet, my calculation indicates that's a "stupid amount" of water.  But hey, there's an entertaining assortment of barrels, docks, stairs, lumber and logs floating by the house on a minute-by-minute basis, and by the look of the raging streams flowing in from all directions, it's not going to subside appreciably anytime soon.  If animals start pairing off in the yard I'll let you know, but for now test rides will have to wait. Work continues on the trusty steed, which reminds me.  Part of the 2019 Prefrontal Tour is contests, and the first one simply has to...