On Saturday morning, SimeonC and I headed to Qwest Fieldhouse the 2008 Seattle Motorcycle Show. I had never been before and I wasn’t expecting much, but I was very impressed. They had both areas of the fieldhouse and the upper level filled with bikes, accessories, and a trials bike show.
I enjoyed checking out some of the passenger to rider and rider to rider headsets that are available. Now that I ride with Tyla a lot, it would be really nice to be able to chat with her on the ride. I’m not sure if I’m going to get a wired solution or a wireless headset package, but I’m hoping to pick something up for next riding season.
The motorcycle dolly I built has been working very well, but I’ve been wondering how the new bike will fit on it. The new bike will be a bit taller and I think it’s a bit longer as well. I saw a great new product at the show called the Park-N-Move. You fold the center stand on the bike down onto this dolly. The bike then rolls in any direction. It rests on this dolly and the front wheel. At $199, it seems like a very simple solution and much easier to maneuver than my large platform.
And last, but not least, the main reason I went is because I wanted to sit on the bike I’ve been drooling over: the 2009 Kawasaki Concours 14. They had two of them at the show. Yes, I sat on both even though they are identical. In short, I absolutely loved it. I’m a big guy so I’m conscious about how I fit on bikes, but this one seemed to fit me quite well. I can’t wait to put this thing in my garage!
I finally finished up a project that has been on my mind for years. I scanned in most of the photo prints that I have collected in my life. Here are a few things I realized through the project:
Keeping photos in print form is extremely unreliable. Any number of things could damage the pictures. Now they are safe in digital form and stored on multiple hard drives.
I skipped a lot of photos of animals and places. The photos that I really considered valuable were of people.
I’ll never recommend this project to anyone. There are many companies on the internet that will scan in bulk qualities of photos for pennies per pictures. Pay for the highest resolution possible. You don’t want to do this twice.
Digital cameras have completely changed our lives. Looking through all these pictures brought back floods of memories about how careful I used to be with each picture. I ended up with a higher percentage of quality pictures, but I missed a LOT of moments.
All in all, I scanned in over 600 pictures. It’s done! I will still keep the shoeboxes with pictures, but now I’m not so nervous about them being damaged. Someday I’ll probably toss them.
In 2004, a TV mini series was produced that followed Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on a motorcycle trip around the world. The documentary starts months before they leave and shows all the struggles of planning a trip of this magnitude and then follows them around the world. It’s an amazing story, and if you’ve ever ridden a motorcycle, chances are you’ll thoroughly enjoy this story. Apparently there is a book about this trip as well which I may have to add to my reading list. This show brings back a lot of memories on that little two day trip I took last summer down to Vancouver, WA. I’m super excited to get the Councours 14 next spring and take some longer trips!
Some of you have been hearing about this project for almost a year. For a long time, I’ve wanted to build my own arcade machine. Only this arcade machine is a little different than the one you’ll find at your local bowling alley. This one will play over 2000 different arcade games and Nintendo games!
January 23, 2004 Swarna and I took a road trip out to Rheems, PA (about 100 miles away) to pick up an arcade cabinet from Discount Blowouts (www.discountblowouts.com). I found them on EBay and found out that they had a couple old cabinets they would sell me for pretty cheap. I rented a minivan and we were off. The journey was quite an adventure. We headed deep into farm country and finally found the buildings in the middle of a farm down a dirt road. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of the inside of the buildings, but here are a few of the outside and the surrounding area:
January 24, 2004 This morning, Tyler and I dragged the arcade machine into the house. You want old school? How’s this for old school… Asteroids! It doesn’t get much better than that!
I spent the rest of the day cleaning 24 years of dirt off the machine. I also went to Home Depot and picked up a new fluorescent light to put behind the marquee.
January 26, 2004 Tonight I mounted the power strip inside the coin door. Now I can just open the coin door, reach inside, flip the switch, and everything turns on. Right now “everything” is the marquee light, but eventually that switch will trigger the whole system. In other news, the I-PAC keyboard emulator shipped from England today.
January 27, 2004 There’s not much I can do until my two packages arrive. One is the keyboard encoder from England. That made it to NYC today so maybe I’ll get it tomorrow or Thursday. I was concerned about the joysticks and buttons I ordered from Happ Controls because I never received an order confirmation. But thanks to their website (big ups to retailers that allow you to check the status of recent orders), I found that my package had been shipped and got the tracking number. It’s currently in Addison, IL. UPS predicts a Friday delivery for that one. This means that I might be able to start hooking stuff up this weekend!
January 30, 2004 After two trips to Home Depot (and one to Top Dog), I ended up getting a lot done on the arcade machine. The buttons, joysticks, and keyboard encoder all got delivered. As you can see from the pictures, I did a lot of cleaning on the inside. I left one of the big circuit boards up on the side wall just for looks. While I was cleaning it out, I found a counter that read over 39,000. I’m hoping to find some way to hook it up to the start button. I also mounted a power strip just inside the coin door for easy access to the switch.
February 01, 2004 The project has hit a snag. I was hoping to drill new holes in the metal control surface for the new buttons and joysticks. Unfortunately, I can’t get through that metal with any of the tools I have. So I’m moving to plan B. I’m going to make the control surface out of MDF. I’ll paint it black and it should look almost as good. It would have been nice to have the more retro look of the original control surface, but at least this will work and look good.
February 03, 2004 After finishing my homework (like a good boy), I did a little more on the arcade machine. I cut and sanded the MDF to fit into the area for the controls. I got the screws in and countersunk them so they are flush. Hopefully tomorrow I can get the holes drilled and get the first layer of paint on it.
February 04, 2004 I got the new control surface drilled with the holes for the buttons and joysticks. I also got the first coat of paint on. Tomorrow I’ll decide if I’m going to put another coat on or start putting on the polyurethane. It’s hard to wait for all this stuff to dry when I know I could be done with a couple hours of wiring! I was thinking that the house was going to smell really bad in the morning since I had the drying paint in the dining room, but Tyler’s dad (on the phone) suggested that we put it in the bathroom and leave the fan on. Hopefully that will help out a little.
February 05, 2004 Not much going on tonight. I just put another layer of black paint on. I was debating whether or not it needed it, but now I’m glad I did it. It looks much better. Tomorrow I’ll start the polyurethane.
February 06, 2004 I put on two coats of polyurethane on today and it looked fairly nice. After plans for the evening got cancelled, I decided to spend the night soldering. Seemed like a logical alternative to me. I started by putting all the buttons and joysticks on as well as the I-Pac keyboard encoder.
After that it was time to solder. One lead from each microswitch goes to the corresponding hole on the I-Pac. It really doesn’t matter where you put the wires on the I-Pac because it is reprogrammable, but if you follow the default markings it will work on MAME without reprogramming it. I used CAT5 network cable for the wires and it ended up being pretty slick. I used the leftover sheathing to clean up some of the cable mess and the color coding made it a little easier to keep the wires straight. The last step was running two common ground wires through all the microswitches. For that, I stripped long pieces of wire and then used CAT5 sheathing to keep it from shorting on other switches. (See Dad? I was paying attention after all. Ha ha) Here are is a shot of me in action and of the board all wired up.
Finally it was time for some testing to make sure it was all wired correctly. I’m not sure what Cory is testing. Below that, Tyler is pressing the buttons as they show up in notepad on the laptop.
Finally it was time to plug it all in and play some games!
It works great! I have some finishing touches to perform such as installing the 80 watt subwoofer and probably reprogramming some keys to make it a little easier to navigate windows. (You can also just pull the keyboard and mouse out through the coin door.) One other thing that is a little annoying is that the left joystick records a right movement very easily. I took it all apart and I know why it’s doing that, but I’m not sure how best to fix it yet. Eventually I’ll probably try to throw a larger monitor in as well. But for now, it works! It’s done! After a year of talk, I finally came through. The only thing left that I need are people to come over and play it. So what are you waiting for? Stop by and check it out!
It occurred to me that a masterpiece has sat unpublished on my hard drive ever since our camping trip to Fort Flagler back in July. Chelsea spent the first afternoon writing a letter to Diana (her roommate from college) who is spending the summer as a camp counselor in Massachusetts. Tim was whittling and my book was terrible so I figured I'd send her some mail too because what's better than getting mail at camp?
After much deliberation, I broke out my incredible drawing skills and produced this amazingly accurate depiction of our campsite. I know you're impressed. I'm pretty much the best I know, although Chelsea's jaw might be slightly less square in real life. Also, we had another tent up but I got tired of drawing. Notice how I signed it with her name on it so she couldn't resell it on eBay. Lithograph reprints are available for purchase.
While I had a blast on my Syracuse trip, I was a bit disappointed to miss this year's Oyster Run. It's a huge motorcycle rally up in Anacortes and this year they had over 30,000 motorcycles there!
Jeff Henshaw organizes the big rides that I go on and he got a group together for the ride up to the rally. If you've ever wondered what it feels like to be in one of these big packs of motorcycles, check out the video blow or go straight to Vimeo for the HD version. The rider on the back of his bike was holding a camera for part of the ride and while it doesn't communicate the full experience, it's a great start. I think these big rides are about over for this year, but hopefully next year I'll get to join up on a new pair of wheels.
The first half of this video shows the bikes loading up on a ferry and then riding up Highway 20 and over the Deception Pass bridge. The second half has some shots from Anacortes.
The Puyallup Fair is back in action. When your website is “thefair.com” you better have your act together. Last year over 1.2 million people visited the fair in 16 days! On Saturday, 127,837 people walked through the gates and I think we (Tim, Chelsea, Brittney, Tyla and I) sat behind every one of them in traffic. I think we were all a bit crabby by the time we finally arrived, but that was quickly erased by the fun of the fair. We saw oodles of animals, rode some rides (Ferris wheel and swings for Tyla and me!), and ate deliciously terrible fair food. I wish I had a better picture to show just how big this place is but the one from the top of the Ferris wheel will have to do. It only shows part of the fair though. The fair overs 160 acres. That’s 30% bigger than Six Flags Great America! Over 1900 people are hired every September to work the fair. GINORMOUS.
When night fell, we entered the concert area to watch the guys from the American Chopper TV show. The OCC band started off the show with some rock and roll. Tyla and I weren’t too interested in them so we walked down to see some of their bikes that were on display. After the band played about six or seven songs, the main show started. Mikey came out and riled up the crowd by passing out tshirts and whistles. He was the referee for a bike building match between Team Senior and Team Junior. At the last show in upstate New York, Senior won so Junior’s team was looking for revenge. The bikes were obviously preassembled (ie. the front forks, handlebars, and front wheel were already put together) but they still had to do a significant amount of work to put them all together. Junior ended up firing his bike up first. Senior was furious (not an act!) about the shoddy workmanship on Junior’s bike. Pieces were loose all over the place but finally Senior’s team conceded and headed for the dunk tank. It will be fun to see how they cut it all up for the TV show in a future episode. All in all, it was interesting to see them and see the bikes in person, but if you aren’t a fan of the show, don’t go. It was only fun because we knew the personalities of the people on the show. I’m glad I went but I doubt I’d go again.
Saturday morning started dark and early as I headed over to Kirkland to pick up Tyla. We made our way up to Anacortes and caught the 8:45am ferry to Friday Harbor. The ferry ride is a gorgeous one hour trip through the islands.
Tim from San Juan Kayak Expeditions was waiting for us as we walked off the ferry. He drove us down to the beach and gave us a very thorough overview of how to use all the gear, safety information, and tips for a successful trip. He also suggested a great route that took into account the wind and tides. Since Tyla and I are both kayaking newbies, we chose the easiest route.
We rode past a couple rocks that were covered in seals and ended up at a tiny island which might have just become my favorite summer spot in Washington. You can walk around the whole island in 20 minutes but it's actually a state park. There are about a dozen campsites which are only accessible via boat. Tim said it gets pretty crowded in the summer but mentioned a couple quieter islands nearby. I'm already planning the camping trip in my head. The usual camping crew should prepare themselves for an incredibly awesome camping trip next year. The first picture below is looking east from the campsite and the second picture is looking back west at one of the campsites. The third picture is Tyla checking out the seals.
We felt like we had the whole island to ourselves and only found five other people on the island during our hike. After a nice picnic lunch (with Liz Lovely cookies for dessert!), we meandered our way back, taking time to watch the seals. Tim picked us up and drove us back to the ferry for the trip home.
All in all it was an incredible afternoon. I know you can rent kayaks down by the arboretum for a lot cheaper, but the scenery and the equipment are no comparison to what we got from that rental company. I think I speak for both of us when I say this is a highly recommended trip! We'll be doing it again.
Mom, Dad and I spent the weekend in Whistler. I wasn't sure what to expect there in the summer, but it was a blast. The weather was a bit foggy the first day but it didn't deter us much. The second day was full of sunshine and we had some great views. And we got actual snowfall at the peak on both days (no accumulation though.)
The main events on our trip were hiking down Harmony Ridge past Harmony Lake, the zip lining 100 feet above Fitzsimmons Creek, and hiking the new High Note trail around the south side of Whistler Peak. Oh and of course we ate some great food and found things to buy in the village.
This was the first time I stayed in the Windwhistle Condos (#402), but it won't be the last. It's located right in the village above the Whistler Grocery Store (near Citta's Bistro and the Amsterdam Cafe.) That condo could sleep six and has two separate decks overlooking the mountains. You can find the info on alluradirect.com if you're interested.
Plenty of pictures have been posted in the photo gallery. You can also click on the panorama below for the full size version. And finally, I have embedded a video of one of Mom's zip line runs.
It is Mom and Dad's last day in town so I took them on a hike up to the top of Rattlesnake Ledge. It was a pretty nice day so we had a great view from the top. I, of course, took another panoramic photo. You can click on it for the full size view.
On Saturday morning, SimeonC and I headed to Qwest Fieldhouse the 2008 Seattle Motorcycle Show. I had never been before and I wasn’t expecting much, but I was very impressed. They had both areas of the fieldhouse and the upper level filled with bikes, accessories, and a trials bike show.
I finally finished up a project that has been on my mind for years. I scanned in most of the photo prints that I have collected in my life. Here are a few things I realized through the project:
In 2004, a TV mini series was produced that followed Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on a motorcycle trip around the world. The documentary starts months before they leave and shows all the struggles of planning a trip of this magnitude and then follows them around the world. It’s an amazing story, and if you’ve ever ridden a motorcycle, chances are you’ll thoroughly enjoy this story. Apparently there is a book about this trip as well which I may have to add to my reading list. This show brings back a lot of memories on that little two day trip I took last summer down to Vancouver, WA. I’m super excited to get the 
Saturday morning started dark and early as I headed over to Kirkland to pick up Tyla. We made our way up to Anacortes and caught the 8:45am ferry to 
Mom, Dad and I spent the weekend in Whistler. I wasn't sure what to expect there in the summer, but it was a blast. The weather was a bit foggy the first day but it didn't deter us much. The second day was full of sunshine and we had some great views. And we got actual snowfall at the peak on both days (no accumulation though.)
Do the Puyallup
When night fell, we entered the concert area to watch the guys from the American Chopper TV show. The OCC band started off the show with some rock and roll. Tyla and I weren’t too interested in them so we walked down to see some of their bikes that were on display. After the band played about six or seven songs, the main show started. Mikey came out and riled up the crowd by passing out tshirts and whistles. He was the referee for a bike building match between Team Senior and Team Junior. At the last show in upstate New York, Senior won so Junior’s team was looking for revenge. The bikes were obviously preassembled (ie. the front forks, handlebars, and front wheel were already put together) but they still had to do a significant amount of work to put them all together. Junior ended up firing his bike up first. Senior was furious (not an act!) about the shoddy workmanship on Junior’s bike. Pieces were loose all over the place but finally Senior’s team conceded and headed for the dunk tank. It will be fun to see how they cut it all up for the TV show in a future episode. All in all, it was interesting to see them and see the bikes in person, but if you aren’t a fan of the show, don’t go. It was only fun because we knew the personalities of the people on the show. I’m glad I went but I doubt I’d go again.