{"id":21707,"date":"2018-01-12T18:33:18","date_gmt":"2018-01-13T01:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=21707"},"modified":"2018-01-12T18:41:09","modified_gmt":"2018-01-13T01:41:09","slug":"ridin-writin-fixin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=21707","title":{"rendered":"Ridin&#8217; &#038; Writin&#8217; &#038; Fixin&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I returned from the Death Valley ride earlier this month, I uninstalled the helmet-mounted Bluetooth comm system I&#8217;d put in for the trip and sent it back to Amazon for a refund. No, I&#8217;m not <em>that<\/em> big an asshole\u00a0&#8230; the unit was defective. I may get something to replace it, or I may not. Around town I wear a half-helmet with speakers mounted in the ear flaps. With that I can listen to NPR or music while I&#8217;m putting around, and that&#8217;s good enough for now. The cord that connects the helmet to the motorcycle was frayed, though, and a couple of the wires had broken, so I rode down to J&amp;M Motorcycle Audio yesterday to buy a new one.<\/p>\n<p>J&amp;M\u00a0is set up like an auto parts store. You ask for what you want from a guy behind a counter. He goes to get it,\u00a0enters your info into a computer,\u00a0then\u00a0hands\u00a0you your part and a\u00a0receipt.\u00a0When he asked my name and I\u00a0told him, he gave me a look and pulled a magazine out of his inbox. This magazine:<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Screen Shot 2018-01-12 at 5.21.38 PM\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/halfmind\/38948433374\/in\/dateposted\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4755\/38948433374_35fe64d95f_o.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2018-01-12 at 5.21.38 PM\" width=\"467\" height=\"674\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Which he then opened to this page, already marked with a paperclip:<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Screen Shot 2018-01-12 at 5.20.00 PM\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/halfmind\/27878793069\/in\/dateposted\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4667\/27878793069_c9448abe68_o.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2018-01-12 at 5.20.00 PM\" width=\"467\" height=\"674\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And I said, &#8220;Yeah, I wrote that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I know,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We all read it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So how about that? People who know nothing about this blog are reading things I&#8217;ve written. I submitted two stories to Wing World last fall, each about the motorcycling misadventures of my friend Ed, and they published them both in the January issue. If you&#8217;ve been reading this blog for long, you probably already know the stories, because I\u00a0first posted them here on Paul&#8217;s Thing. They&#8217;re easier to read on the blog than on a screen grab, so click away:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=20556\">You&#8217;ll Put Your Eye Out with That Thing<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=19340\">Mission of Mercy<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I have a copy of the magazine itself, but the two photos above should be enough to give you the idea. I&#8217;ll just say this: as when I used to write for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harriermagazine.com\/\">Harrier Magazine<\/a>, it&#8217;s nice to see\u00a0my own stuff\u00a0in an actual glossy-paper magazine.<\/p>\n<p>I spent some time with Ed this afternoon, replacing\u00a0an engine side cover that blew off on the last leg of our Death Valley ride. I told him about the guy at J&amp;M, and how he said everyone there had read the stories.\u00a0Ed saw the stories when I first wrote them for this blog, and it was his idea for me to submit them to Wing World. He gets partial credit for the first one, because I could not have written it without his assistance &#8230; I wasn&#8217;t there, as I was for the second story. Read them and you&#8217;ll understand.<\/p>\n<p>About that engine side cover: I&#8217;ve lost four of them over the years, all at speeds over 85 mph. They&#8217;re held on with plastic pegs which fit into rubber grommets, an iffy proposition. My latest replacement cover, which I bought from a guy on eBay after getting home from the trip, didn&#8217;t have foam padding on the inside, and looking back I&#8217;m not sure any of the others did. Ed pulled the same cover from his bike and it had a foam lining, so we cut some rubber to fit and tried it that way. The lining\u00a0seems to help the cover fit more snugly. That should cure the coming-loose problem, but we added a velcro strap as a last-ditch safety, a sort of tether secured to the foot peg mount at the bottom and fastened at the\u00a0top to a velcro\u00a0pad glued to the the cover. You can see the strap sticking up from the bottom of the cover, just above the foot peg:<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"IMG_5107\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/halfmind\/25785238228\/in\/dateposted\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4744\/25785238228_f763ebe5eb.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_5107\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>No, it&#8217;s not pretty, and if I had a newer bike I might have looked for a more elegant solution, but having bought several replacement covers to\u00a0date, at prices ranging from 50 to 100\u00a0bucks each, I&#8217;m going with what&#8217;ll work. Or at least what I <em>think<\/em> will work &#8230; I won&#8217;t know for sure until the next time I pull\u00a0the ton!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I returned from the Death Valley ride earlier this month, I uninstalled the helmet-mounted Bluetooth comm system I&#8217;d put in for the trip and sent it back to Amazon for a refund. No, I&#8217;m not that big an asshole\u00a0&#8230; the unit was defective. I may get something to replace it, or I may not. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2],"tags":[946,1667,669],"class_list":["post-21707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motorcycling","category-personal","tag-maintenance","tag-motorcycling-2","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21707"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21713,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21707\/revisions\/21713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}