2021 Brown County Indiana GS Thang - June 10-13 - SAVE THE DATE!

[Redman]

Great pics, see a lot of old friends. I will get back one of these years.....

. . . . 2024 . . . ?

[Dogma]

Not going black. I have been keeping my color choice a small secret. I may as well keep it going for a little while longer. I just hope it turns out well. It’s not an easy mix to apply. Fingers crossed.

Chrome to match the polished frame? Isn't that technically black?

[Spyder]

Not going black. I have been keeping my color choice a small secret. I may as well keep it going for a little while longer. I just hope it turns out well. It’s not an easy mix to apply. Fingers crossed.

[Dogma]

Still can't thank you enough Brian. Don't forget to reach out one of these trips north. We will meet up for lunch somewhere. I owe you at LEAST that.

All replacement part have been acquired. Slowly working on getting them prepped for paint. Still a bit sore, and the back start yelling at me after a couple hours out in the garage. We're getting there though...

Again, thanks to all that helped get my girl out of the cornfield and back to the motel. Really can't say enough about the hospitality, and great nature of this group.

Are you doing black again? After all the paint discussion, I can't believe I don't know what you have in mind. Glad to hear you're feeling well enough to get sore in the garage.

[phydeauxmutt]

Again, thanks to all that helped get my girl out of the cornfield and back to the motel. Really can't say enough about the hospitality, and great nature of this group.

It's too bad when something like this has to happen, but you KNOW we'll be there to help.

[alke46]

Glad to hear you are getting the bike back to pre- cornfield condition. Also glad to hear you are recovering as well as can be expected.

[Spyder]

Still can't thank you enough Brian. Don't forget to reach out one of these trips north. We will meet up for lunch somewhere. I owe you at LEAST that.

All replacement part have been acquired. Slowly working on getting them prepped for paint. Still a bit sore, and the back start yelling at me after a couple hours out in the garage. We're getting there though...

Again, thanks to all that helped get my girl out of the cornfield and back to the motel. Really can't say enough about the hospitality, and great nature of this group.

[bwringer]

I can’t believe none of you guys have the nice lady a ride..... she must have smelt the presence of the “hillbilly whisperer”

She did ask me for a ride; must have been attracted to the shiny red bike. I already had my ear plugs in and was departing for dinner, so I mumbled something about needing a helmet and vanished.

So I missed all the excitement, which I'm pretty happy about, honestly.



In other news, I delivered Spyder's bike to his driveway a few weeks ago. He's healing well, and has already collected many of the parts needed to put the GSXR back on the road. Fortunately, corn fields are fairly soft (but not soft enough...), so the bike escaped a fair bit of damage, and not much is bent.

[salty_monk]

I can’t believe none of you guys have the nice lady a ride..... she must have smelt the presence of the “hillbilly whisperer”

[ddaniels]

Those cicadas make a mighty fine "large" splat on your helmet face shield, I can tell you. So glad they are gone again! It seemed to me they were the worse up in Bloomington area.

[marvinsc]

Don't come this way, I rode through a willow fly swarm crossing Kentucky Lake yesterday.

[gbw]

Yeah, those spattered cicadas were something else. I hit the coin-operated power wash by my house on the way home. That took care of most of them. I need to ride through a good rain shower to get my jacket clean though.

[Redman]

Just today, I washed the Indiana Bugs off the bike. THere was a lot.

Am well accustom to wetting the bugs, do something somewhere else, wett some more, do something somewhere else, come back wett them some more, wipe a little, wett again, before most of it softens up and comes off without scrubbing too hard (so not scratching shield with bug shells etcetera). But was one area, at bottom of windscreen where the dryed up bugg gutts just were not comming off. Took me a while to realize they were on the backside of the windscreen! Yah, were so many bug gutts splatters, was even some that were on the backside of the windscreen. Bug Probably hit the fairing and the splatter went under/behind the windshield.

But that does not diminish the fine experience of the weekend.

[bwringer]

I had a few questions, and someone asked earlier...

The GPS app I'm using is called "Locus Pro". They have a freebie "lite" version if you'd like to try it out. The Pro version is well worth the few bucks. You can load up GPX tracks and follow them, and if course it will record your path as a GPX track you can export.

AFAIK, it's Android only. I'm using a cheap Motorola phone that's water-resistant. The mount is a RAM "Quick-Grip", and I've mounted it using two rubber "sandwich" mounts from McMaster-Carr to damp vibration; I've killed the cameras in two phones, but so far things are OK with the rubber mounts.

Locus has a pretty steep learning curve, but it works beautifully once you're dialed in, and has proven extremely reliable. The main developers are German and Polish, so Googling for info if you get stuck is difficult, and there are some really bizarre translations and strange interface choices.

I store my GPX files using a folder on Google Drive, and Locus can easily access the Google Drive folder. I have a ton of tracks stored in my phone, but I use Drive to reduce the number sometimes, and it's handy for moving tracks from my computer to my phone.

Buying state maps to keep on your phone (so you don't need a data signal) is a slightly bizarre process; you have to buy a batch of "LoCoins" first, and then spend these to download state maps. These also come with elevation files that give you terrain shading. Very handy. It all still ends up very cheap.


The other major GPS app is called Osmand, and it's available in Android and iOS versions. From what I can tell, it has less of a learning curve. I had some reliability problems with it a while back, so I moved to Locus, but I would probably recommend the paid version of Osmand to most people.


There's also a paid app called "Rever" that's somehow tied to Revzilla/Cycle Gear. I've heard good things, but I haven't tried it. The main benefit, IIRC, is that people share their tracks. Rever also can give you turn-by-turn directions in your earphones if you're into that sort of thing. It's worth a look.



And no, Google Maps is NOT the same thing at all. Google Maps depends on having a cellular data connection, and of course it doesn't track your path and you can't import and export GPX files.


Lots of folks also run Locus or Osmand on an old spare phone; you don't need a data connection as long as you set up the app and download your maps and tracks using wifi. That's a good way to avoid risking damage to your expensive primary phone. Both will run fine on very old phones.

For continuous use as a GPS, the phone must be plugged into power. I use a few different ways of doing this; I've added SAE plugs to two of my bikes that are switched on via a relay when the ignition is on, paired with an SAE/USB adapter. I also have a couple of adapters with built-in volt meters, which can be handy.

My Yamaha has a cigarette lighter style outlet, so I use a charger in that. Depending on where things end up, you can buy shorter than normal USB cables on Amazon to keep things neat.

[Redman]

. . . . .=youtube;. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ideo]

Nice Carl. Thanks.
Good way to show all the bikes (was 2 or 3 more down on lower level).
Vidio was fun to watch the wheel's shadow move from side to front to the side back to front and back to side and back and forth....