Put them away.

I think I'm showing my age, but at least I'm not dated, unlike a certain portion of the motorcycle marketplace. Why is it that a number of bike accessory shops still insist on draping scantily clad ladies all over their webpage? There I am, surfing the web in work, trying to find new tyres, etc, when up pops the dealership from the seventies, and their "mechanics wives" section. So I've got to explain to the boss why some bare ar$£d bird has appeared on my screen. "Honest, I was only looking for tyres..." Yeah right!

This weekend, my other half bought her first bike, from a dealership that still has the token brolly-dolly on their webpage. Now we've both seen it all before, but it's a shame that the dealership still thinks that sex sells bikes. For once it wasn't me buying the bikes, so the dealer in this instance was targeting the wrong sector of the market.

I'm no prude, and ladies, I don't mind how much or little you're wearing. Sometimes, the less the better, but if I'm at a bike show, I'm only interested in talking to you if you have half a clue about the products you're hired to sell. If not, please put some clothes on and go get the me the hairy ar$£d bloke that can tell the difference betreen a crank shaft and a drive shaft.

Motorcycling - stuck in the seventies and proud of it!

Transformers

Just seen the new Transformers movie. Pretty good, and not disappointing if you are a child of the eighties.

One fatal flaw that every movie with a car theme seems to repeat is the process of hotwiring a car. The hero reaches under the dashboard, pulls out two wires, usually red and blue, and as if by magic, the car starts. They drive off in a plume of blue smoke, and after saving the day, Roy Rogers drives off into the sunset with Grace Kelly. Or was that Gary Cooper..?

What really happens is any or all of the following.

A. Nothing,
B. A fuse blows
C. The airbag fires.
D. Your favourite "Top Gear Anthems" CD is replaced with a pan pipe compilation.
E. All of the above
F. None of the above.
G. Who cares anyway.

Ok, so I'm reading too much into this. I'm off to lie down.

Pan miles so far - Forgot to look...

Starcom Intercom fitting

So now that I have the unit in place I thought I'd share how the unit was fitted. The unit itself, a Starcom Advance Kit B, is located under the rear seat in the space normally reserved for the Honda toolkit. There is room for the unit plus the toolkit, but I keep my tools elsewhere so the space was free. It's held down by Velcro. The headset cables are fed forward to point C on the picture, passed inboard of the helmet hanger and through between the fairing and the seat. There's enough clearance at this point so the wires don't get pinched, and they emerge on the left side of the bike just behind the driver. For storage they are curled up under the seat. I may in the future fit sockets into the fairing, but I'm happy at the moment.

I've used two methods to power the unit.

Method 1.
I've got an Optimate battery charger/conditioner which has a lead permanently attached to the bike. This socket is visible as the white block at point A. A Tamiya battery charger plug, obtainable from most radio control model shops, was fitted to the Starcom lead which allows the Starcom unit to be powered directly from the battery. The advantage with this method was that I didn't have to try to trace a pair of wires to connect to, and I didn't have multiple wires attached to the battery terminals. The disadvantage is that power would be permanently supplied to the Starcom unit, and I'm not sure if it draws any power when it's switched off.

Method 2.
On the other side of the bike, at point B there is an identical socket which was used to power the Oxford heated grips which are fitted to the rear grab rail. This socket is spliced into the Honda quartet accessory wiring harness. On the white plug of quartet harness, the red/black wire is live, the green wire is ground. These wires are only live when the ignition is switched on. The Starcom unit is now being powered from this plug, - I'll do something else with the heated grips.

Hope that makes sense. I'm not a bike mechanic, so if you follow these instructions and end up hurting you, your bike or anyone else then I'm afraid you've only yourself to blame.

Glencoe

A good run was had by all yesterday. The Pan Clan organised a run starting from Kinross then on towards Fort William. Through Glencoe towards Tyndrum, down through Glen Ogle to Lochearnhead. It was a roasting hot day and it felt good to get the breeze. Only problem came after leaving Tyndrum when the group got split up, and didn’t regroup until near Gleneagles. Three of us were left scratching our heads trying to remember where we should go after Crieff.

On the subject of technology, the intercom is working great now, though it took a couple of stops to get the volume and microphone sensitivities set up right.

Off topic now, but it’s my blog... At one of the main beauty spots in Glencoe, and there’s loads to choose, someone had installed a statue and a memorial plaque. Now this sort of thing gets on my nerves. I’ve came out here to enjoy the scenery and someone has tried to claim our landscape with a memorial to an unknown person.

When my metabolic processes are history, I'm off the twig, have kicked the bucket, shuffled off my mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisibile I don’t want you to pollute the landscape in my memory with the sort of tasteless sculpture that gets sold off in the rejects section of a budget garden centre. And no, I don’t want a bench either - round here it would be used as somewhere to land when the Buckfast hits hard. These people are littering the hills. No it’s worse than littering, litter is thoughtless. Someone had to think up this rubbish. It’s pollution.

I can’t believe that anyone who loves the countryside would want to be remembered in this way. Whatever happened to “take only memories, leave only footprints” or is that optional? Is it OK for me to spray paint my name on the rocks? No. So it’s not all right for you to concrete, drill and chisel your memorial into a place of natural beauty. I think the right approach has been set in place with regard to Ben Nevis. See http://www.nevispartnership.co.uk/memorials.asp


I have no objection to memorials, but to spoil the landscape is taking it too far.




















And on that note, the landscape can have the final word.


Pan miles so far 003047

Intercom

First of all, it's good to see Alan Johnston is free. Hope the whole experience hasn't messed with his head and he is given the space to get things together.

The intercom for the bike has turned into a bit of a saga. Starcom seemed like the best solution, as so far we hadn't heard a bad word about it. When initially fitted, the sound was very clear, and it didn't take too long to get the levels set. We took a run to Glasgow and it was OK, with good clarity at legal speeds.

The next day saw us on a Pan Clan run, which was going quite well when we had an enormous feedback sound through the headsets. This was painful, and it was an effort to keep the bike upright long enough to get to the side of the road and to shut the unit off.

So off to Starcom went the unit, it was replaced and thus far we have not had a repetition. I'm still a bit iffy about using it, as that hurt. We'll see what happens over the next few runs.

In other news, some muppet pulled out in front of the car, so for the next few days/weeks we will be commuting on the bike until the insurance companies get their act together. How he didn't see me when there wasn't a cloud in the sky, on a dry clear road. I'm looking forward to the blizzard of paperwork that this will cause. I've decided not to use bad words on this blog, but I've used a few this weekend.

Pan miles so far 002574

Free Alan

Not a bike update this time. Please sign the Alan Johnston petition calling for his safe return.

Awol

No updates recently as I’ve been changing PC’s, with all the associated trouble that goes with moving between window versions.

Since the last post I’ve been keeping busy. I’ve been on my first Pan Clan outing – a short tour round the battlefields of East Lothian. All those exciting places where we fought off the old enemy. Occasionally we won.

I’ve even commuted through Edinburgh, and despite the size, it’s not too bad at fitting through the gaps in the traffic. It’s not as nippy as my old CB500, and it gives of a tremendous heat, but I got to and from work a lot faster than taking the car.

And I’ve even had my first damage. During the high wind the other week, the cover acted as a sail and toppled the Pan over, scratching the left pannier when it landed. To say I was spitting bullets was an understatement. The cover was only on to prevent damage from the elements. And to make matters worse, I had to spend ten minutes getting the cover off before I could attempt to pick the Pan up. The only plus was that I was needing fuel, so the upper tank (lower one too) was empty, so I wasn’t having to lift 30ish kg of fuel at the same time. Bend the knees, brace yourself and make sure when it is eventually up, you don’t go and push it over on the other side.

More rambling nonsense follows shortly.

Pan miles so far 001577

Update

This is a short post just to keep the blog ticking over. Recently I've been off round in the Stirling direction, and on other occasions went for a short blast round Fife, interspersed with the odd local short runs. Rear heated grips and the lighter socket have been fitted, and instructions will follow soon.

Right now I'm in the process of moving over to a newer computer, so the photos that I'd like to upload are currently elsewhere. Watch this space.