Nov 26 - a long fast ride

I spent the morning yesterday mostly finishing things off in the two bathrooms. In the guest bath I only had to cut the baseboard. It's sitting there now, waiting to be nailed. In the master bath, I cut the baseboard and put it in place, did the painting thing, two coats in many places, after spraying the orange peel and letting it dry. I installed the shower control, arm and head. I've left the separate slider for Luke to install, since he has the drill bit and correct screws.

It looks to me like Ritchie cut the hole too big where the pipe comes through the tile for the slider shower ... but that will wait until Luke comes and replaces the long nipple with a shorter one. I suspect that we'll have to apply white silicone sealant around the outside to bridge the gap. Alternatively, I suppose, a bit of grout would do the job.

Later in the day I attached the toilet roll holder and moved Sandy's hand towel ring higher. With the higher vanity top the hand towel was hitting the granite -- and of course moving it left holes in the wall which I'm now fixing so the work continues. It's not hard work ... nor am I watching the mud dry, as Ritchie put it.

I hung the plastic shower curtain and christened the shower. Sandy will contact the glass people shortly and have them come in and measure. In the meantime, the plastic curtain works fine. I don't mind plastic curtains if the shower is wide enough.

Sandy had left to get Angelika while I was working. They returned shortly after I finished lunch. Next up, go for a motorcycle ride !

I had decided to do a longer loop, effectively riding one of my cycle routes. Since I had not gone south for quite some time due to north winds, I headed down to Merritt Island, across the causeway, then the big loop done, west on SR 44 to the HD dealer and u-turn back home. All told I put on 80 miles. The bike now has 136 miles on it or thereabouts.

The speed limit on US 1 gets up to 65 mph for part of that route. There was a wind coming from the north at 15-20 mph. Combined, for the short time that I rode with the traffic around 70 mph, that means a wind of 85-90. Even with my helmet which covers my ears, it's very noisy. Without a windshield it's very windy. The bike has no problem at all getting up to that speed ... I didn't maintain it for more than a minute. With that headwind, it was uncomfortably noisy at anything over 50 mph. For the most part the speed limit is 55 and I hung out a little under the speed limit.

When I picked up the bike Dave had pointed out the small screw-in pins that came out of the footpegs at 45 degrees, commenting that I could remove those. Sure enough, as I turned one corner on a city street one of those pins hit the road with a scraping sound ... once I got home out came the wrench and off came the pin. The bike only has around 4 inches of clearance (remember, this is the "low" version) so a drooping footpeg is not something that I want. Mind you, having a "sacrificial" pin might also be a good idea .... hmmm.

Before my ride, I hit the gas station and filled it up. A little over two gallons later, i.e. a little over $6 later, and I was off. If I had a riding lawn mower, perhaps I could get out of there with less gas :). The tank holds a little over 3 gallons and the fuel light comes on at 0.8 gallons ... at 50 mpg rated highway that means that I would have to fill the tank up every hundred miles or so. It's clearly not setup for long distance cruising. I set the trip meter when I filled up so it will be interesting to see when the light comes on again. I will also say that the seat is not designed for long distance cruising either ! It ranks right up there with a bicycle seat in that category. The only difference being that I cannot stand up for a while with the HD like I can with my bike !

Speaking of the quiet bike, I've decided to do my long distance ride tomorrow, i.e. Saturday. That strong north wind is still blowing today and I'll skip that, thanks. It's supposed to ease off later today. The only trouble is that the temperature is going down to 43F overnight so I'll have to dress warmly tomorrow. Perhaps I'll install the rack on the Hummer and take it tomorrow ... I'll decide later today.

Sandy and Angelika just left for Disney World's Animal Kingdom. They'll have a late day so Abby and I will be doing our thing here. I'm going to take her for a boat ride, packing a lunch, assuming that NCM is open to get my boat off the rack. I expect that they were closed yesterday and am hoping that they are open today.

I already did my "Black Friday" shopping today. I went onto Newegg and purchased a replacement set of ear buds for $8.99 with free shipping. The nice Altec Lansing ear buds that I purchased a while ago for $15 mostly died in one channel. I was thinking that there were parts of the music that I was missing ... and there were.

That's about it. I'll finish up that bit of work that I'm doing in the master bath, perhaps fiddle in the garage some more organizing things since the M5 is out of the way, go boating, likely go for a (motor) bike ride later, browse the internet and see if there are any other interesting specials out there ...

Oh -- there's a website called mountguys.com that specializes in all sorts of mounts -- GPS, cellphone, camera -- a couple of dozen categories -- for bikes, motorcycles, golf carts, boats, cars etc. I'm looking for a secure mount for my Garmin 705 for the motorcycle. Alternatively I might just find a cheap GPS -- many on special now -- and get the corresponding mount. When cruising I like to have a map handy so that I can see where I'm going and where I might explore. The 705 would be perfect for that but the bicycle mount is not very secure, especially at high speed, nor is there a lanyard specific to the 705 to hold the thing if the mount fails. It's too expensive to have fall off at speed. I sent them an email to see if they have any ideas.

That's about it.

Onward !