Remiss Resolutions

Okay, I have been a bad blogger and have not posted in 2 months. I have absolutely now excuse for the first month, although, I suppose I could try the old "Hey, it was the holiday season" ploy.

Nah, I'll just take responsibility for my lack of action.

Now, I do have a couple of good excuses for the second month. Here they are:

On the left is Lucius and on the right is Serenity. They are my grandtwins. My daughter and her husband moved in with my wife and I after finding out that they were having the twins. They were born on 1/12.

I expect that the picture above will be re-enacted multiple times over the coming years. Lucius shaking his fist and Serenity yawning at him. What do you think?

So, on to my 2011 scooter resolutions. Above is my current stable of scooters. The nearest is my newest bike, a SYM RV 250. I'm still getting used to it and have only put about 500 miles on it thus far. Behind that is the Genuine Stella. Just beyond that, partially covered is Iron Buddy.

Having added a 3rd scooter at the very end of 2010, I do not resolve to add another scooter to the current herd. I do love to ride so most of my resolutions will involve putting more miles on the scoots.

Today, 2/1, I went out and photographed the odometers of each bike. Above, Iron Buddy has 20,855 miles. I resolve to have more than 24k miles on I.B. by the end of the year.

I turned over 10k miles on the Stella on 1/12 and have added another 71 miles on her. I resolve to have 14.5k miles miles on her by 2011's end.

The '08 RV250 have a whopping 2,383 miles as of this morning. (I bought it with 1900 miles on the odo.) I resolve to have in excess of 7000 miles showing by the end of the year. I am, therefor, resolving to ride a minimum of (hmm, let's see carry the one, cross multiply, add the square root of pie..... ) 12,191 miles. That seem like a good distance to attempt.

Here's another pic of the RV250. They are pretty bikes. I'm getting 65mpg and have gotten it up to 80mph (indicated) with no difficulty at all. That gives me a 200 mile range and I can travel interstates without too much difficulty. All things considered, though, I still prefer my small wheeled scooters.

I also resolve to do my part to help this year's Sky Island Riders' rally to be our best yet. (It's only our second, so I'm not setting the bar too high.)

I further resolve to design and build a scooter theme rocking toy for the twins to ride when they are ready for it.

Ride on,

Howard

Resolutions

Like most people, I'm sure, I make goals for myself, my family, my job, my hobbies etc, as I go along. Also, like most people, the beginning of a new year makes me reflect a little more than usual about goals (aka resolutions) that I'd like to make for this newly started year.

One goal I had for most of last year was to start a personal, scooter related blog. Check! It took til, uh, the 9th of November, but I got this thing going. I'm still not real happy with it, but my first resolution is not only to post regularly, but to improve quality.

So, now it's 2010 and I now have two blogs. One of the member of our scooter club, the Sky Island Riders (SIR's), gave me a new website with blog for Christmas. There is also a very nice bulletin board as well.

Goal #2 - To keep both blogs rolling. Specifically, I want the SIR's blog to be useful and to be a"force multiplier" for the overall website. You can check it out here:

http://skyislandriders.com/

Goal #3 - I want to make more off road rides through non-scooter terrain.

The picture above is taken on the fire road (4wd only) on the north side of Mt Lemmon. I did this ride in August of last year. I am hoping to ride through Reddington Pass and also I want to ride the Florence/Kelvin "Highway." Per haps ride out to another ghost town or two.

Goal #4 - I am hoping that our Mayday Rally will be successful, although I'm not sure how I want to define its "success" yet. Above is a photo taken at the Great Southwest Scooter Fiesta in Gilbert in October. This was the metro-Phoenix club's first attempt at a rally and it was very good. Look at that turnout!

Goal #5 - I am planning on riding an Iron Butt ride. Known as a "Butt Burner" one must ride 1000 miles in less than 24 hours. Iron Butt is an organization that promotes endurance riding. The Butt Burner is their shortest qualifying ride. a thousand miles is tiring, but simple on a motorcycle. After all, with a 75 mph speed limit, it would take less than 14 hours to ride a thousand miles. However, on a 150cc scooter, this a much more difficult. If I can average 50 mph, it will take 20 hours of continuous riding. I'm looking forward to it, but will have to wait til March or April so that weather condition will be friendlier. I'll keep you post.

Have a prosperous, healthy, happy, productive 2010.

Ride on,

Howard