Teh Interwebs of Joe

Last weekend I spent a little bit browsing at Foothills BMW/Triumph.  That place is like Willy Wonka’s factory to me.   So much I must own :)  From the BMW K1600GTL that costs more than many sedans (but looks more comfortable than any car I’ve seen!), to the Triumph Tiger 800 XC.

I sat on a few bikes, and really liked the feel of a Tiger 800 (not the XC as I felt it was a bit too tall for my short build.)  I may take one out on a test ride coming up just to see what I am missing out on. 

But in the end I know I am just going to keep my Sprint ST for a while longer.   Because of that I have a laundry list of fun projects coming up for it.

1. Replace anything worn or broken from the last couple years  (all those parts are already on their way from England)
2. Oil changes, fluid checks, etc… (new Motul 300V and WIX filters in hand)
3. Replace the rear brake pads with sintered HH pads ( to match the front)
4. Order an LSL handle bar conversion kit to make the ride a little more comfortable for long trips.
5. Re-valve, rebuild and oil the front forks. (Via RaceTech valves)
6. Potentially ship out the rear shock to get the preload spacer tweaked.
7. New tires  (Pilot Road 3’s)

And besides that I am looking at getting a new Schuberth C3 helmet, and some heated riding gear.

Going to be an expensive spring for my bike, but I plan for that to be about the extent of the purchases for the bike this year.  Since my game plan is to use the bike for probably 2 to 3 week long trips this year, and many day/weekend trips, I might as well make sure it will get me there.

MuteMath drummer being moved by the crowd to a drum setup in the middle of the audience during the show at the Gothic Theater in Denver.

MuteMath is the second concert in a row that blew me away.   Where Puscifer is incredibly cerebral, and detailed,  Mute Math is a sensory overload.  Full of energy and drive.   The stage show is very well produced, the band seemed like they had a absolute blast.  The lead of the band spent the concert jumping off stuff, running around, and in general doing some crazy shit.

He at one point slipped on a dive from the keyboard and almost cut his head open, but took it in stride.

The band took turns playing in the audience, or on items on stage, etc…    Excellent concert and I highly recommend it!   I have some video I shot of the drummer being moved by the crowd out to the center of the main floor and starting to rock from there.

In the same way people are proud to be an American because of the people who fought and died in its creation - should I also feel the same for my iPhone?  Who knows how many people died in building it?!  I feel honored people put their life on the line for me to be able to view LoL cats anywhere I go.

Listening to this stuff today.   Pretty Lights is a local CO artist (out of Ft Collins, went to scool at UC Boulder).  Brings lots of funk and style into what has become known at Dub Step kinda stuff.   Really dig this song, its so complex and detailed.    Got me really jamming while typing docs for work. 

Cleaned the bike today over lunch in the garage, after leaving it uncovered accidentally for a month it was a nice grey color.   Now its looking good.   Checked the oil, and let it warm up nicely and rode it around a couple laps of the basement (to heat the brakes up after getting them wet to dry out).

Definitely going to need to ride some more this winter as weather allows (which out here seems to be every day except for the few minutes it snows in Denver.)

My office this afternoon.  Conference calls, presentations, even a system demo, and wrenching on cars inbetween.  Turns out LTE access points are pretty fast! 

I was doing some Geotagging of ~20K  GoPro photos today and while I was running through them I found some stills that I thought were either nice looking or fun.

The first one is after finding the only place open to get some lunch in Norwood, CO on Labor Day.  The Happy Belly Deli - which was fantastic, a real treat.  In the pic you can see the storm clouds growing behind me… there was some nice down pours a few minutes later.

Some of the others are bits like riding through Telluride during the film festival being in full swing,  the hazy mountains near Lizard Head Pass just outside Telluride, Beautiful canyon roads near Gateway, and some of the views from CO National Monument National Park.  

As I browse through the GoPro stills I’ll probably post a few more here and there.

After spending a bit of time looking at my vacation time I have to burn this year, and the extra week+ I get toward the end of the year… I figure I have 3-4 weeks of vacation I can use this year and still carry over a couple.

So because of that I think I am going to try and use the motorcycle quite a bit for a handful of adventures this spring/summer/fall.    Probably not more than one that is on the scale of what I did last year (7 days), but lots of mid week camping and exploring trips around the state and surrounding states.

In prep I know I need new tires for the bike (rear is badly squared and over 3 years old), an oil change, and quite a few other things that will come closer to summer.   But to get some important things out of the way I ordered a new clutch cable, new rear brake pads (Sintered HH EBC pads - to match the front that I put on last spring), replacement for the busted foot peg on the right side, and some replacement rubber parts under the bodywork that were a tad dry rotted (Triumph rubber FTL).

I am also exploring getting the bike better setup for me  and getting the forks re-tuned, and the rear strut re-tuned or replaced with something more tweak-able.

I figure the bike will be paid off soon enough here, there is little interest in buying a new bike right now so I am going to make this thing do what I want for the long term.

While on Saturday night my ankle was in more pain than I have ever felt before…  by Sunday morning I was at least able to walk on it, and by Sunday night I was walking with a minimal limp.   So we skipped going to the doc to see how this would play out and it seems it’s OK, just sore.    Still planning on starting a new workout routine/goals this week, just need to baby the left foot a bit at first.

Well after rolling my ankle nicely on the mall tonight on the way home… I think I f’d something up.   When it rolled I heard a nice pop and it’s in some serious pain now (but doesn’t seem broken)… to the doctor in the morning.  Fun…

and I didn’t even f it up doing anything cool like Ski’n or Motrocycle’n… this was just walking over the light rail tracks on the 16th st mall…

Thankfully we had compression wrap stuff from when Kate busted her ankle a few years ago out here… coming in handy tonight.  Now all I need is the good meds they put her on :)

Webcam of Denver is backup.  Had to use some spare parts to build a seperate machine to run this as my install under window server tanked.   Timelapse is being rebuilt after clearing all the stored images for the last day.

Ugh… seems my setup for my webcam has failed me… time to fire up some virtualbox and run this deal in Win7 as it was meant.  Should be back up in a day or so.

Last night I tried the Ghost Face Killer beer…

As you can probably guess - it was hot.  But surprisingly tasty.  Real solid flavors of the variour peppers, and a good beer behind it.

With that said, I consumed about 1/8th the beer.   It was impossible to drink a gulp in any rapid succession of it as the burn was so damn hot.    Fun experiment, and an awesome prank for someone drinking a beer bong :)  I imagine it would be like getting pepper spray down your throat.

The humble r/c car in a rarely seen non broken state. Ready to race.