06-04-2026, 12:19 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-04-2026, 12:40 AM by Gone in 60.)
Good on you, Cormanus! That's fantastic. You'll have to keep us updated on your adventure. The fact that you're doing it as a volunteer is very admirable. I'm not being paid much, but I am being paid. I'm calling it my Mental Retirement.
No adventure for me today... and that turned out to be a good thing. I picked up a chest bug a few days ago and haven't been getting much rest. Comes from growing up in the '70s in L.A. Might as well have been a smoker as a child, and I I'm still prone to the occasional lung cookies. So, a day with no riding, just doing my thing in the garage turned out to be just what I needed, especially as I'm heading out at zero-dark-thirty to meet up with Mrs. G in Seattle for the next few days. She's been up there training new members of her team working at a hospital there, and I'm taking the next few days off to take in the city and catching up with her for the weekend.
Lots of deliveries are good for business, but keeping #5 on the road has kept me from finishing her full conversion. So far, I had put the front-facing yellow/white strobes and yellow windshield decals on to break up the "cop bike" look and for the "please make room" advantage from the lights. I spent the day working on everything else - the full decal livery, rear brake strobe, horn (decommissioned police bikes don't have one, as the horn function was part of the now-removed siren speaker), battery tender lead, LED headlight bulbs and camera mounts. That makes five fully liveried and outfitted bikes in our fleet. Curiously, while the decal kit for #5 included the decals for our licenses, they managed to forget the company logos, so those will have to be added whenever they arrive.
Offroad, interesting comment about "Blood" being spelled backward on the windshield. It isn't in the kits that are made in England - at least the kits we purchase, and just yesterday as I was meeting up with a friend for dinner and happened to pull up behind him at a traffic light, he commented "Don't you think "blood" should be spelled backwards on the front?" I really don't know how effective it would be - he was studying my bike knowing I'm working on it, but having ridden with one of our new recruits behind me and imagining the average driver glancing in a side mirror, the impact of all that yellow in the mirror makes a 10" word in red on the windshield a very minor part of the whole visual.
As for the Helite vest, I mentioned in another thread about blowing mine when I dropped one of our bikes in the boss' driveway. Very effective, and easy to deflate and recharge with a new C02 cylinder. I hope a driveway drop is the only experience I have inflating it. I found a tailor who can skillfully sew our company patches on the fronts of them in a non-essential area, so they're part of the uniform.
And as for the BMW RTP, yes, if the mirrors fit, the rest of the bike will, even the wide crash bars. However, spending the better part of any given day lane-splitting on this beast, if I'm concerned about mirror clearance between two cars, it's too narrow a gap to even consider in the first place.
No adventure for me today... and that turned out to be a good thing. I picked up a chest bug a few days ago and haven't been getting much rest. Comes from growing up in the '70s in L.A. Might as well have been a smoker as a child, and I I'm still prone to the occasional lung cookies. So, a day with no riding, just doing my thing in the garage turned out to be just what I needed, especially as I'm heading out at zero-dark-thirty to meet up with Mrs. G in Seattle for the next few days. She's been up there training new members of her team working at a hospital there, and I'm taking the next few days off to take in the city and catching up with her for the weekend.
Lots of deliveries are good for business, but keeping #5 on the road has kept me from finishing her full conversion. So far, I had put the front-facing yellow/white strobes and yellow windshield decals on to break up the "cop bike" look and for the "please make room" advantage from the lights. I spent the day working on everything else - the full decal livery, rear brake strobe, horn (decommissioned police bikes don't have one, as the horn function was part of the now-removed siren speaker), battery tender lead, LED headlight bulbs and camera mounts. That makes five fully liveried and outfitted bikes in our fleet. Curiously, while the decal kit for #5 included the decals for our licenses, they managed to forget the company logos, so those will have to be added whenever they arrive.
Offroad, interesting comment about "Blood" being spelled backward on the windshield. It isn't in the kits that are made in England - at least the kits we purchase, and just yesterday as I was meeting up with a friend for dinner and happened to pull up behind him at a traffic light, he commented "Don't you think "blood" should be spelled backwards on the front?" I really don't know how effective it would be - he was studying my bike knowing I'm working on it, but having ridden with one of our new recruits behind me and imagining the average driver glancing in a side mirror, the impact of all that yellow in the mirror makes a 10" word in red on the windshield a very minor part of the whole visual.
As for the Helite vest, I mentioned in another thread about blowing mine when I dropped one of our bikes in the boss' driveway. Very effective, and easy to deflate and recharge with a new C02 cylinder. I hope a driveway drop is the only experience I have inflating it. I found a tailor who can skillfully sew our company patches on the fronts of them in a non-essential area, so they're part of the uniform.
And as for the BMW RTP, yes, if the mirrors fit, the rest of the bike will, even the wide crash bars. However, spending the better part of any given day lane-splitting on this beast, if I'm concerned about mirror clearance between two cars, it's too narrow a gap to even consider in the first place.
You know what? I actually would like a pickle.