January 22, 2014
As I sit here and write this, the temperature out side is two degrees with a windchill of 15 below. There won't be any riding in the near future, that's for sure. Last week there was a glorious break in the weather and my fleet got a brief workout. As I wrote last time, I had the opportunity to ride the 50cc bike into town for groceries. On Wednesday I had another chance to ride when a shortage in some commodity reared its head. Much like on Monday the trip was special and I got even more friendly head nods and smiles from people on the street.
Two days later, on Friday, I had small errands in town that required minimal cargo carrying so it was time to put the 150cc scooter to work. The scooter has more power and gets to town slightly quicker than the 50cc bike. Sadly it has one undesirable trait, it rides like a truck. The little bike, surprisingly enough, has better shocks and is much easier to ride on some of the bumpy roads. The scooter has leg shields, conversely, and is much warmer in thirty degrees. That makes the journey into town more comfortable. I was so glad to be out in the dead of winter, comfort and warmth were secondary and it makes me long for Spring.
I don't know what nature has in store in the coming months but I'm hoping for a chance to ride at least once a month until the more moderate weather settles in. Then Polar Vortex, Wind Chill and snow will just be a memory.
Posted by Jim Zeiser.
January 14, 2014
I have my monthly ride chain intact. It was in the mid thirties yesterday so i just had to ride something. I needed some small purchases from the local grocery store and Family Dollar and the 50cc bike was calling to me. A few kicks on the old fashioned kick start lever and it fired right up and off I went. Now I had a question asked of me and I'll tell you the honest truth. No, I wasn't cold even though the wind chills hovered around zero. Today's modern clothing materials are pretty amazing...
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Posted by Jim Zeiser.
January 2, 2014
It has been an eventful year, riding wise, for my fleet of two wheelers and me. The topper of the year was my daughter Cheryl coming to visit for the first time in ten years and riding a pair of Chinese two wheelers. I won't ever forget the ride to Wendy's to meet my buddy Marc and his family for lunch. Sara on her Rebel, me on the 50cc bike and Cheryl on the 150cc Chinese scooter. Cheri took a picture of the six of us and labeled it "A meeting of the motorcycle gang" on facebook. It got a lo...
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Posted by Jim Zeiser.
December 20, 2013
Since many of you are already Facebook friends this news is a repeat. For anyone else this will be the first you hear of it. My lovely Wife Sara has cancer. She had what she thought was a virus that had her aching in her abdomen and caused swelling in her stomach region. This past Monday we got the bad news that it looked like cancer and a trip to her Oncologist two days later confirmed it. It's a rare cancer that mimics ovarian cancer and Sara will be in for six months of weekly Chemotherapy...
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Posted by Jim Zeiser.
December 11, 2013
As I noted in my last post, the weather had granted us a one-day special. Of course we're paying it for it now. This past Monday we had a small amount of snow and ice and the temperatures plummeted back into the teens and twenties.Last night was even worse and a White Christmas is very possible. If I took last week's video and updated it in the same spot the ground would be covered in a thin layer of white and the thermometer would read "21" degrees. These are the days when you make a trip ou...
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Posted by Jim Zeiser.
December 4, 2013
We're having a grand, one day special today! It's about forty-five degrees outside after a couple of weeks of January weather. It's so nice that I actually had to stand in the driveway for a few minutes and decide which scooter or bike to take. Lazarus, my 150cc scooter was the winner. The sun was shining for the first time in days and even though the wind chill at 45 mph is around zero, it didn't feel it. I only had to pick up a few things at the grocery store so it was a short trip. The goo...
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Posted by Jim Zeiser.
November 27, 2013
My scooters and bikes are slumbering peacefully in the garage today and a holiday ride appears out of the question. The nasty upstate New York weather has decided to descend upon us and dumped a few inches of snow on the area. The driveway is shoveled so a future ride will be possible but the dark days of Winter are here. Any rides from now on will be short and sweet until Spring. Sigh.
The bright spot in all of this is that my daughter will be coming up for Thanksgiving Day festivities at our...
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Posted by Jim Zeiser.
November 18, 2013
I've decided that it was time to give my Chinese 150cc scooter a name. We were calling it the "Blue Scooter", "The other scooter" and "the Original Scooter", to distinguish it from the big scooter, Galileo. I decided that Lazarus was appropriate after leaving the scooter for dead for almost a year with a cracked cylinder head on the engine. In July I finally got around to resurrecting it with a new cylinder head and associated bits and breathing new life into it.
It has now been returned to it...
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Posted by Jim Zeiser.
November 7, 2013
The little 50cc bike just keeps on continuing to amaze me. Over the weekend I managed to kill the battery in a typical boneheaded maneuver and it still forgave me. I put the bike away on Friday morning with the key still on and after lighting the gear indicator LED for three days I finally discovered it with a battery that refused to spin the starter motor. I've spent the last three days push starting it to get it going and decided the only way to recharge the battery was to take a good long ...
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Posted by Jim Zeiser.
October 30, 2013
Yesterday I used the big scooter to commute to work for the 70th time. A quick trip to my calculator tells me that the scooter compiled 2,450 miles of use as a work traveler. That total is not so huge in the face of average automobile mileages of 12,000 miles but it bodes well in the arena of average motorcycle use. That average number is approximately 2,500 miles and says to me that I achieved that mileage through commuting alone. The actual use this season is much higher. At the moment the ...
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Posted by Jim Zeiser.
If you wish to comment my e-mail address is h1500e@hotmail.com. I'd like to hear anything-good or bad-that anyone would like to say. As they said in college, we're all lifelong learners.
