Working the Shaft

I'm at the BMW store getting a once over on the bike prior to
embarking on solomoto ( I'm just going to call it that. 'my solo cross
county motorcycle road trip' takes too long).

There are a lot of nice bikes here including a BMW HP2 with a $27k tag
hanging on the handlebar.

Found a GPS Tracker iPhone App

Instamapper is an iPhone app that tracks your position and puts it on
google maps so that you can share it with the world. I'll use this for
my trip. Check out my embedded map at michaelb1.com.

The good: it's free which is $100 cheaper than the Spot tracker.

The bad: Like all iPhone apps it does not run in the background so
you have to leave it on to allow it to log and upload your coordinates.

I just tested it out today and it works well. Looking forward to using
it on the solomoto trip.

NYTimes: BMW’s Boxer: A Classic Design Is Updated and Refined

From The New York Times:

HANDLEBARS: BMW's Boxer: A Classic Design Is Updated and Refined
By STUART F. BROWN

The flat-twin engine has been a distinctive BMW attribute for decades,
but a devoted following does not mean the company has lost interest in
innovation....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/automobiles/05BOXER.html

MB

My Route is Set in Pixels

Can't change it now.


View Cross Country Via Motorcycle in a larger map

I'll travel through 16 states, stopping at a bunch of parks. The highlights:

• Yellowstone NP, WY
• Grand Teton NP, WY
• Glacier NP, MT
• Monument Valley NP, UT
• Devils Tower, WY
• Badlands NP, SD
• Mount Rushmore NP
• Little Big Horn, MT
• Rocky Mountain NP
• Mt Ranier NP, WA
• Bonneville Salt Flats SP, UT
  

This is a test...

...of the mobile blogging system.

I am typing this post on my iPhone. If all goes according to plan this
email will end up on brandnewinformation.com.

I'm attaching a picture to see how it handles that.

MB

Treat Her Like a Lady

Yesterday I gathered up all my gear, packed it into my bikes luggage system and a giant duffel bag and loaded it onto the bike. My two objectives were to see if I could get everything onto the bike and to see if I could do it safely.
All this stuff....



Packed into this:



The side bags will hold 22lbs each. The top case holds 11lbs. I was able to put most the heavy stuff (read expensive) in the saddle bags. Best to keep the heavy stuff low. This includes the laptop, camera, etc. The giant duffel holds my tent pegs, chair, and some other knick knacks.

The test ride was successful. You gotta treat bikes like a lady. In this case it means not laying her down, mindful of the extra 70+lbs of baggage she is carrying.

6 Days until I head west.
~MB

Michaelb1.com Is Up and Running

I just finished the site for my cross country motorcycle website, michaelb1.com. Since hopefully my Mom will be visiting the site to see what I'm up to let me take a minute to pretend that she cares how it works and explain it to her in laymans terms.

Soooo...all the data I create on the road will be automagically uploaded to the big internet cloud in the sky via my iPhone and MacBook. What I cannot upload cellularly I will use the nation's libraries and McDonalds free wifi for. The cloud analogy is not mine but I'll stick to it for this post.

So now all this data is swirling around in the cloud. That's where michaelb1.com comes in. If you don't mind we'll keep the cloud analogy going. This internet cloud is made up of everyone's data. Data = rain. Michaelb1.com is my rain collector.

The cloud is actually a bunch of sites scattered across many servers all over the internet.

• Flickr.com host my pictures


• YouTube and Vimeo have my videos


• this site (Blogger) hosts my blog


• Loopt shows my geo-position


• Google maps is storing my route information


• Amazon has all my gear listed with convenient links so you can buy stuff and I will get kicks-backs from Jeff Bezos


• and my tweet of course, come from Twitter.

Michaelb1 gathers up all the data from those myriad sites and sticks them on one page for your convenience. So Mom, it's like having your own personal rain cloud above your new garden.