Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Three Day British Columbia Ride

It started as an idea to ride up my motorcycle to Whistler for lunch. Then it expanded to an overnight trip. And eventually it meant that FrankL, DougW and I headed on a three day ride through British Columbia.

We left Woodinville around 9:30 on Saturday morning and headed north on I-5. We crossed the border on Hwy 15, or rather, we tried. It took about 45 minutes of sitting in stop and go traffic to get across. We stopped for lunch right across the border at the Derby Bar and Grill which turned out to be an off track betting restaurant. We skipped the horse stuff and stuck to the food, which hopefully didn’t involve horses.

The ride through Vancouver was quite unpleasant. Most of 1 was torn up for construction and it was pretty clear that most of the construction crew didn’t ride motorcycles because it was ROUGH.

That stretch wasn’t too long though and eventually we popped out on the Sea to Sky Highway heading up to Whistler. That gorgeous rode was a real treat on the motorcycle and all too quickly we were in Whistler.

We walked around the village for a while, had a few beers at the Irish pub and then ate dinner at the brew house. We stayed at the Adara Hotel right in the village. It was nice to try a new hotel there, but I’m not itching to go back. It was VERY loud until late in the night. All the hotels in the village are loud, but this one seemed a bit excessive.

On Saturday morning on the way out of town, we parked on the side of the road to take a picture next to the big Inuksuk (one of the statues you probably saw during the Olympics.) Doug’s daughters (Frank’s granddaughters) gave them some stuffed bears to carry along on the ride and they were supposed to take photos with them. When we got back to our bikes, there was a policewoman writing us parking tickets! Frank pleaded our case by holding up the bear and saying, “I’m sorry. My granddaughter gave me this to take pictures with while we’re gone!” While she tried to keep up a tough exterior, you could see it melted her heart. After a lecture about parking, she voided the ticket and let us go. Frank later named the bear in honor of her: Canadian Bacon.

The ride from Whistler to Kamloops via Lytton was one of the most amazing roads I’ve ever ridden. It was windy, twisty, hilly, and very unpopulated. The only catch was that there was a lot of wildlife to watch out for. We stopped for some kind of quail that wouldn’t fly away, mountain goats, big horned sheep, one cow, and a deer that came a little too close for my liking.

By the time we crossed over the mountains, it was HOT. Temps were right around 100, and when that’s blowing in your face at 60mph it feels like you’re in a convection oven. We stopped often to hydrate, ate some ice cream from Dairy Queen, and soaked our shirts in sinks to keep us cool. We stayed in downtown Kamloops and wandered around to find some dinner.

Monday was the last day of our trip, but it was also the longest day. The first two days were around 210 miles but this one was 280 miles. It was all almost all interstate (interprovince?) so it went quickly. We crossed the border in Sumas which had a shorter wait, but still took us about 20 minutes in the hot sun.

By the time we got home, we were all sore, but we had big smiles on our face from the ride. We all had our little hiccups along the 710 miles whether it was a check engine light (me), dripping gas (Doug) or new rattles (Frank), but our bikes held up just fine and we all got home safely. We’ll have these great memories for a long time! A couple photos are posted below and more are in the photo gallery. I rode with a camera around my neck so many of the photos are snapped hastily without really looking at the shot. When we stopped I would sometimes take out the big camera for some nicer shots. Enjoy!

 

P.S. I think I figured out my check engine light without a trip to the dealer so that made me happy. It had something to do with the Speedohealer that I installed, but the error is cleared and hasn’t come back yet.

benmartens July 16, 2012 Motorcycle

Drainage

The area on the northeast part of our lot towards the cul-de-sac has always been mushy and swampy. One day I was out there when the sump pump turned on and I saw it shooting out a LOT of water right down the hill into that area. After chatting with Tim, we decided to see if we could improve the situation.

We met at Home Depot one Saturday morning at 6am (he had to drop Chelsea off for a half-marathon) and were done with the project by 9:30! We trenched 30 feet out to the street, connected the top end to the sump pump and a downspout, and installed a popup drain right by the curb. When the pipe fills with water, the drain pops up and water flows out to the curb.

It was super helpful having Tim there. He taught me a couple great little tricks:

  • If you don’t want to reseed the area, cut rectangles of grass on three sides and then fold it back.
  • Lay down some plastic and throw the dirt on that. It makes for super easy cleanup.

I might need to dig up the popup drain at the end and redo that some day. It has a small hole at the bottom that let’s excess water drain out. But since we just set it right on the dirt, the wet dirt filters up through that hole and plugs it up so now I have a layer of dirt at the bottom of the pipe. I imagine that over time it will start to plug up the pipe. At that point I’ll dig up the end of the pipe, dig a small hole right underneath that point and fill it with some gravel. There’s no rush though. That can wait.

We’ve had pretty consistent rain since this project so the swamp has never had a chance to fully dry out. At that point we’ll know how much this drain helps. I suspect it will still be wet down there since this area used to be a pond and we’re at the bottom of a hill, but hopefully it helps. When we redo the whole yard in a year or two, I’m tempted to tie all my downspouts into drains like this and also run a big French drain along the west side of my lot to stop water from flowing down the hill.

benmartens July 13, 2012 Home Improvement

Outlets and Switches

When we bought this house, the inspector found a few outlets that didn’t work and quite a few that didn’t hold a plug very tightly. Since I had to replace quite a few, I decided to just replace them all. We chose to go with the Decora style outlets and switches. Those are the rectangular ones. I went for the tamper resistant outlets meaning that it’s difficult to shock yourself by sticking something in. Replacing the existing outlets and switches is a pretty simple process (once I picked up a device that helps me figure out which circuit I should shut off), but it’s time consuming.

Most of this is pretty boring, but it’s fun to look through the Leviton product catalog and see all of the interesting stuff that they offer. Here are some off the non-standard things that I’ve installed:

  • Digital timer switch that calculates sunrise and sunset. Read more in a previous post.
  • Bathroom fan timers. These come in 5-10-20-30 minute and 10-20-30-60 minute versions. I used the shorter ones for the bathrooms that just have toilets and the longer ones for the bathrooms with showers.
  • Remote control dimmer switch. I have one of these in the theater room and one in the bedroom.
  • Nightlight outlet. This light isn’t very bright but it’s just enough to light up a dark area at night. It has a light sensor so it turns off during the day.
  • USB outlets. I put two of these in the bedroom for charging our phones and Kindles. There are a few different models around but these are UL approved.
  • Surge protector outlet. I haven’t installed one of these yet but I’m tempted to. It saves you from having a bulky surge protector lying on the floor for one or two devices. I’m holding off because I’m thinking about installing a whole house surge protector instead.

The other day I was standing in a bar with my boss and we were going back and forth rattling off different fun things we had seen in the Leviton catalog. That’s when I knew that unequivocally, I was an adult. A geek, but an adult.

benmartens July 11, 2012 Home Improvement

Church Work Day

I wrote a couple months ago about the renovation I oversaw of the house on the church property. The final step in that project was fixing up the landscaping, but we wanted to wait for nicer weather. The big day arrived a couple weeks ago and Tim had a great plan laid out for us and a bunch of nice plants picked out. The main projects were taking down two small trees, removing a bunch of bushes, taking out a huge out-of-control rhododendron, and moving a LOT of rock from the planter area to the church driveway. We rented a Dingo to help move all the rock and rip out the stumps and that ended up being the best decision of the day. There’s no way the work would have been finished with out it! I posted a bunch of photos at the end of this Facebook photo album but here is a before and after photo that shows part of the area we worked on.

benmartens July 9, 2012 Commentary

Home Safety

At our last homeowner’s association, a Woodinville police offer was a guest speaker. She talked about the types of calls that came from our area (there aren’t many), and the size of the Woodinville police force (only 1 or 2 officers on patrol at any given time.) At the end of the talk, she offered to come by our houses and talk about security. Most people seemed to ignore this line, but I got her card and a few days later, we set up a meeting.

When she got to the door, she said, “I’ve been in this house before.” “I hope it was for something good!” “Oh yes, the original owners were the neighborhood watch captains.” Phew!

She walked around inside and outside and gave me some tips. Overall she said we were doing really well. Obviously I’m not going into detail about what she suggested we improve, but here are some general things she talked about that she sees:

  • Don’t put big bushes in front of your windows. This gives burglers a place to hide while they peek in. Keep them trimmed down below the bottom of the windows and the bottom of the bush should be 1-2 feet off the ground.
  • Make sure all your windows are locked or have dowels in the track to avoid them being forced open.
  • Where can someone hide outside your front door? You want to be safe if you step outside at night.
  • Which entries are the least visible from the street and your neighbor’s houses? Those are the most enticing.
  • What electronics can you see if you look in from the windows?
  • What kinds of friends do your kids have? Kids talk and if you have cool stuff in your house and an easy way to break in, word is going to get around.

I’ve made it a point to get to know as many of my neighbors as possible so hopefully they’ll notice if anything odd is going on. While there’s not any special history of burglaries in this area, there’s no reason not to take some simple precautions. A lot of this is common sense, but the trick is to make your house harder to break into than your neighbors’.

benmartens June 28, 2012 Home Improvement

Rubber Meets The Road

If you don’t think that your physics classes were very interesting, hop on a motorcycle and whip through a corner or two. You’ll probably start thinking about those few square inches of rubber that are touching the pavement and somehow holding you in place. How does that really work?

Most of this post is a summary of a longer article so please head there if you want the full story. There are a lot of other good motorcycle physics discussions there too. The basic idea is that there are two laws of friction:

  1. Friction increases as weight increases.
  2. Friction is independent of the contact area.

The first one makes sense, but the second one probably sounds a bit odd. It states that if you set a brick on it’s end or on it’s side, it will start sliding at exactly the same angle either way. It might sound crazy, but it’s true.

So let’s apply this to a motorcycle. The first law states that when you brake you have more traction on the front tire because the weight is transferred to that tire. The second law says that when you corner, you have the same amount traction than you did standing up straight because you have the same weight of the bike pushing down into the pavement. (The force imparted from going around a corner is parallel to the ground so that doesn’t give you additional friction.) However, while you may have the same amount of total traction in a corner, you’re also using up more of your available traction to go around the corner. You can’t grab a handful of brake and expect good things to happen.

The second law always means that the size of the tire makes no difference in the amount of traction you have. In theory, if you built a bicycle tire and a motorcycle tire out of the same rubber compound, they would provide you with the exact same amount of traction. So why are motorcycle tires fatter? You get better handling characteristics from having a tire with a bigger curve on it. You don’t go from tread to sidewall as quickly when you lean over as you would with a bike. Also, most motorcycle tires have a tougher rubber compound in the middle for long tire life and a software compound on the sides for more grip.

Physics isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law!

benmartens June 27, 2012 Motorcycle

DIY Irrigation

At some point we are planning to put in a proper irrigation system, but I think the backyard remodel is a couple years out. Since I’ve been spending so much time learning about caring for a yard, I don’t want to let it die off during the summer months when we don’t get any rain. But I also don’t want to have to move sprinklers around the yard by hand and have hoses laying in the grass. By pulling up an aerial view of my property from King County, I realized that with three sprinklers, I could cover most of the front and side yard.

I picked up three Melnor spike sprinklers, a 100 foot 8 ply 3/4” hose, and some female and male hose repair ends. (On a side note, I’ve been so impressed with that brand of hose that I have picked up two more of them.) I took the brand new 100 foot hose and cut it into three sections to run from the spigot too the sprinkler and then on to each other sprinkler. The hose repair kit gave me new ends for the hose and that all works very well without leaks. Tim had given me a hose timer so once I get into regular watering mode, that will come in handy.

This setup fulfills my requirements of not having to move sprinklers around and I can leave it set up semi-permanently. The downside is that since each sprinkler is covering a different span, the yard isn’t watered evenly. Also, when we had a plumber add a pressure regulator valve to help with the water hammer in the house, he turned down our water pressure to 40psi. Now that I’ve installed arrestors on every termination point in the house, I was able to crank that up to 50psi. 40 wasn’t enough to power all three sprinklers but 50 is just enough.

I also added some Y valves to the middle sprinkler which allows me to selectively shut off sprinklers down the line. This will come in handy when I need to water that big first section a little longer, and it was also helpful for tweaking the water flow to each sprinkler.

It takes me about 75 minutes to put down 1/2” of water in the big section on the east of the house. (An easy way to measure it is to set a used tuna can out in the yard while you run the sprinklers.) Once we get into summer I’ll set it so that it puts down 1/2” twice a week. For now we’re getting a few tenths a week spread out over many days. I’ll supplement the rain with a deep watering every once in a while.

Hopefully this work will leave us with the nicest yard on the block!

benmartens June 20, 2012 Home Improvement

Cruiser vs. Crotch Rocket

There have been a lot of conversations directed at me lately implying that my choice of motorcycle was ridiculous. This comes mostly from pure sport bike riders claiming that my bike is “slow.” However, a couple of the questions have been honest questions from new riders so I’ll give a little spiel about why I love my bike in hopes that it will help some of you decide what you want to buy.

There are two basic styles of motorcycles for the road: cruisers and sport bikes. On a cruiser you sit straight up with your legs out in front. Think of a Harley. On a sport bike the handlebars are very low requiring you to lean forward and tuck your legs up under you. This is what you see people racing on TV.

Cruisers are great for long rides. They’re very comfortable and while you’ll get sore, you could put in a 500 mile day and still be able to move the next day. Sport bikes are built for speed and they can be quite a bit faster than cruisers. Generally, the faster your sport bike is, the shorter the distance you can ride before you turn into a giant cramp. You might think twice about 100 miles on a sport bike, but you’ll experience more thrills in those 100 miles than you would on a cruiser.

Now of course I’m generalizing and it all depends on the specific bike. MattM has a bike that would fall in the sport bike category but he puts in way more miles than I ever have on any of my bikes. But in general, I think the above paragraph holds up.

My bike, a 2009 Kawasaki Concours 14 ABS, falls into a tiny category called “sport touring.” Actually Kawasaki calls it “super sport touring” to reflect it’s race bred ancestors. It’s more of a niche market but it attempts to combine the performance of a sport bike with the comfort of a cruiser. Of course you can’t get the best of both worlds, but this bike comes pretty close. It has gobs more speed than you can ever pretend to use on a street (0-100mph in 4.7seconds?!?), but the seating position is much more upright giving you the ability to ride a lot farther each day.

It’s probably not a great category for your first bike since these bikes tend to be pretty heavy and they have huge engines that can get you in a lot of trouble. But if you like taking overnight trips but you want a little pep in your step, it’s a great style!

What’s next for me? Of course I dream about that a lot. I think I’ll have this for many years down the road, but when it does come time to sell it, I think I’d strongly consider going full “old man” bike. After I’ve hit 300-400 miles in a day, I really envy those guys on Goldwings with arm and backrests!

benmartens June 11, 2012 Motorcycle

Your Mileage May Vary

If you’ve used a GPS in your car, you may have noticed that it doesn’t match your speedometer and odometer. Just about every car on the market has about a 3% difference between your actual speed and the displayed speed. (You’re really going slower than you think.) Imagine the lawsuits if people were getting pulled over because their speedometer reported that they were going slower than they really were. The difference can vary by car, tire size, etc.

Since getting the latest set of tires on my motorcycle, I noticed that my speedometer was getting pretty far off. It’s annoying to do math just to figure out how fast I’m really going. An actual speed of 60mph was reported as something more like 63-64mph. It also means that you’re racking up the miles faster which devalues your vehicle quicker than it should.

Enter the Speedohealer. They make a little box that connects in between your speed sensor and the dash. (Vist the HealTech web site to find the correct wiring harness for your bike.) You tell it exactly how much your gauges are off and it will make sure your gauges read correctly. I did a couple tests on the interstate with a GPS measuring my actual speed until I got it dialed in correctly. The unit also comes with a little button that you can mount somewhere near your dash that will recall your max speed and display it on the speedometer.

Installation on my 2009 Concours wasn’t just plug and play. When the unit was connected, the bike got a little hitch in it’s giddy up at low speeds. The instructions with the unit (specific for my bike) said that I needed to send the unaltered speed signal straight to the ECU. That meant cutting one wire from the main wiring harness and splicing in another one. I had to make the cut right by the plug going into the ECU, so if I did something wrong, it would have been very difficult to repair. I finally took the plunge and made the snip with visions of a four digit repair bill if I screwed it up. Thankfully all went well.

I hesitated to post this because I wasn’t sure how legal it was to monkey with your odometer, but I couldn’t find anything that said it was illegal to calibrate it correctly. Either way, I’m happy to be able to tell how fast I’m really going and have my odometer read the correct mileage. I don’t usually carry a mapping GPS on the bike so when I need to make a turn in 17.4 miles, I’ll actually be able to find it now!

benmartens June 5, 2012 Motorcycle

Lake Chelan

On Memorial Day weekend, Tyla and I headed over to Lake Chelan State Park with her family. It’s on the east side of the mountains, so if you remember your Washington geography, you’ll know that it’s in the desert.

The park is more focused on day use than overnight camping, but we probably had the best trailer camping spot in the park. We bordered the woods on one side so we had some privacy. And even better, there was a small stream running in the woods behind the site that the guys named Pee Creek.

The park does have some incredible tent sites. Each site has room for one car to park along the road and then you carry your gear about 50 feet down to the water. Your tent gets set up on the banks of the lake. There’s no immediate water access since there are about 10-15 feet of huge rocks heading down to the lake, but it’s still a great view. If you have a boat, you can even rent a dock right by your campsite!

The lake itself is gorgeous. It’s 55 miles long and is the largest natural lake in the state. At 1486 feet deep, it’s the third deepest lake in the US and the 25th deepest lake in the world. The bottom of the lake is 388 feet below sea level! I couldn’t find any stats about the cleanliness of the water but it was amazing how far down you could see.

We had beautiful weather all weekend which let us enjoy a lot of time playing with Oskar down by the lake, go for a couple short hikes, and check out the small dam just down stream from the lake.

It’s a very popular destination which means there can be big crowds, but since it’s such a big lake, the boat traffic didn’t look too crowded. When I make my millions, it will be tempting to buy a house somewhere on the lake. Maybe this one will still be for sale.

In a three hour drive home, we went from desert lake to snowy mountain pass to wet coastal region. I love the Pacific Northwest!

A few photos are included below and more are in the photo gallery.

benmartens May 31, 2012 Outdoors