There it is folks, the 270 mile sandwich.

The other day at breakfast, I was drinking out of an old reusable cup I had from Jimmy John’s. After I went to work, the thought occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten a Jimmy John’s sub since before I moved to Georgia in 2008. This got stuck in my head all day, and so I decided to find out where the nearest Jimmy John’s shop is located. The answer: Columbia, SC, roughly 130 miles away.

So, here’s the thing. There’s nothing all that special about a Jimmy John’s sub. It’s tasty and all, but nothing that’s really worth going out of your way to eat. But, I do have a pretty blue motorcycle, and it does like taking me places…

I hatched a plan to head out on Saturday morning. When I checked the weather forecast early on Friday evening, Saturday was supposed to be nice and clear. The path looked super easy: US-301 N to US-321 N. A right onto US-1 in Columbia, and I’d arrive at my sandwich shop. Upon waking up on Saturday morning, I heard the sound of rain. There was also intermittent thunder. I don’t mind riding in the rain, if I need to get somewhere, but it’s not worth it for a wet ride to get a sandwich.

This morning it was still raining and thundering. Around noon, though, the rain had stopped and the weather radar wasn’t showing much precipitation anywhere in the area. Though it was still a bit dark and overcast, I decided to set out to get my sandwich.

The ride up was uneventful. I didn’t stop for any photos, as it was pretty overcast the whole ride up. By the time I ate lunch, it was clearing up in Columbia, so I decided to stop by a park to read a little bit in the book I had with me before heading back home.

Checking the iPhone, I saw that there was a park listed less than 1/10th of a mile away from the sandwich shop:

Based on that image, “Bicentennial Park” looked like a pretty sizable park right on the river. Seems like it had promise.

Well, when I got there, it turned out that Bicentennial Park really wasn’t much of a thing. Here’s an overhead view:

There was a little parking area and a wooden walkway leading down towards the river. The ground was pretty much scraggly overgrown grass and not very pretty or park-like. I decided to give the place a shot, though and walked down the bridge to see where I would end up.

The walkway went around a couple of bends and ended up at the tiny little observation deck type thing. It was maybe 10′ x 10′ and had a little bench. From what I could tell, this observation area, and the scraggly overgrowth were the entirety of “Bicentennial Park”. There were some folks off in the grass areas near the water fishing, but besides that there wasn’t anyone around.

To the North, the deck offered a view of a the US-1 bridge over the river.

To the South you can see more river.

I sat on the little bench and read a couple of chapters in The Girl Who Played With Fire and then packed up for the ride home.

The ride home was also rather uneventful. I didn’t want to get back too late, so I just rode straight through, stopping just to fill up. By the time I got home, it was roughly a 7 hour trip, and was exactly 270 miles.

So there you have it, friends: the story of the 270 Mile Sandwich.

Recently, I picked up a new exhaust system for the motorcycle. Now, I’ve been trying to live on the cheap lately so that I can pay off some bills and get some more life into my savings account. However, I found a great deal on these pipes and picked them up for less than half of their retail price.

I put them on the motorcycle a couple of weeks ago, but hadn’t gotten a chance to rejet the carburetors until this past Friday, which I had off from work. I got the carbs back on the bike on Saturday, but didn’t have a chance to give the bike a shakedown cruise until today.

I headed north out of Statesboro. A little ways out of town I passed a chimney in the middle of some trees.

It must have been part of a house at some point, but as you can see, these trees are pretty tall around it. Whatever structure it was a part of has been gone for decades.

Anyway, as you can see from the route above, I went north until I hit GA-17, followed that until US-1/GA-4, took the US-1 Business route into Swainsboro, then popped onto US-80 to head back to Statesboro.

On my way, I passed a sign for George L. Smith State Park. I decided to check it out.

There’s a pond in the park. Trees are growing out of the pond.

There’s a restored grist/saw/cotton combination mill at the park. Here it is from the outside. It was built sometime around 1880.

Here is the original mill turbine (quite rusted) and the ‘original’ diesel generator (which was installed to supplement the water power in the 1950s).

After checking out the mill, I hiked around a trail for about 2.7 miles, and then headed back towards the mill.

I took a seat in a little gazebo, read a chapter in the book I had with me, and then headed back to the bike.

Here’s the saddest part of the trip. When I got back to my bike, there were two other Shadows parked next to it!

They’re matching Honda Shadow 1100 ACE Tourers. The Ace T is very similar to my bike, but set up from the factory as a touring bike. According to the stem stickers, these pretty bikes were built in May of 1998. A check of their odometers, though, revealed troubling news. They only had just over 15,000 miles on the clock.

Here are two beautiful touring bikes, with lots of aftermarket accessories, even: driver floorboards, highway floor boards, GPS, a bike to bike intercom system… all the accessories were matching, of course. But in their 12 years of life, only 15,000 miles on them.

I don’t understand a couple that will drop the money on two great touring bikes, outfit them with hundreds of dollars of aftermarket parts, and then ride them less than 1300 miles a year. Bikes had GA plates too, a further tragedy, as these people live in a place with 10 month – year round riding weather.

Oh well, to each their own I guess.

As for my bike, it performed beautifully. The new jetting feels great on the bike, the pipes sound good, and I still hit just a tad under 45 miles per gallon.

All in all, a good day!

It didn’t take long for me to hatch plans for a ride. I hadn’t really given my new speakers a test, yet. Nor had I really tested the highway pegs on a longer ride. After thinking about where I’d like to go, I decided I’d take a ride up to Hilton Head Island. Hilton Head is about 94 miles away from Statesboro by back roads. I checked the weather radar, which indicated I might hit some rain or thunderstorms along the way, but I didn’t care. It was time to go.

Above is the route I took. With the exception of US-278 approaching Hilton Head, it’s all quiet two lane back roads. There were many stretches where I didn’t see another vehicle, or anyone at all, for a half an hour at a time. The map is clicky, so you can look at the route more closely if you like… or change it into aerial photos, or…. well, you know the drill.

This photo is from after I had already crossed into South Carolina. I pulled over to try to get a shot of how conflicted the sky looked. I don’t think I really captured it, but the sky was always a mixture of clear blue and dark & stormy. On the way to Hilton Head, I hit a few pockets of really really light rain… while directly under blue sky. Usually just the windshield and the front of my shins would get wet. Everything would dry out within ten minutes each time.

Much of the trip was through quiet, abandoned back roads such as this one. I pulled over here to try to get a shot of a wild turkey in the road, but he ran away before I got the camera out. I was greeted by some other friends though….

There was a whole family of armadillos on the side of the road. Most of the pictures didn’t come out right, including the one of the armadillo-guy who came right up to my boot to say hello. These were the first live armadillos I had ever seen (being from Connecticut, and all) and apparently they were strange ones. There were 5 of them out together, in the middle of the day, and one came up to say hello. According to what I’ve just read, this is not usual. Maybe they knew that I didn’t want them for their tasty pork-like flesh. I prefer tofu.

A couple of shots of the beach once I made it to Hilton Head. I was the only guy walking up and down the beach in jeans and boots. Beach wear and bike wear don’t correlate too well. Who knew?

The temperature was about 79 degrees with a gentle breeze. It would have been a nice day to hang out there, if I had been properly equipped. Instead, I just got some strange looks.

Before heading back, I grabbed some dinner at Giuseppi’s Pizza and Pasta, a restaurant decorated with a whole bunch of Pittsburgh sports memorabilia. There’s Steelers stuff, Pirates stuff, Pens stuff, and even some Pitt stuff. Apparently the owner was originally from Pittsburgh. I felt under dressed, having only my Buc’s cap to offer. Next time I’ll have to be sure to wear a jersey. At least I was able to get an Iron City with my pizza, though!

After pizza, it was time to head back. This photo, taken about here, shows that the sky was still a mix of clear and dark. Since it looked like I might be headed into some stormy weather, I decided to stop and put on the rain lining for the jacket as well as the visor for my helmet. While I did hit a few pockets of very light and brief rain, it was dry most of the way.

All in all it was a good ride. The speaker system gets high marks for its performance through out the ride. Both music and spoken stuff comes through pretty well. On the way up, I listed to the most recent episode of This American Life. It was almost entirely comprehensible, save a few short phrases here and there that were lost to the wind. Music comes through fine all the way up to 70, even on busy roads. I didn’t go much faster at any point in the ride, nor do I usually go any faster anyway, so it’s a win.

As it turns out, though, my 3rd G iPod only lasts about 3 hours on a full charge these days. for the last hour of my ride, I had to hook up the iPhone instead, which has a much more limited selection of music on it, currently.

All in all: great day, and a great ride.

What is more interesting is that my blog seems to become something of a water cooler for PNC rage. It started slowly. Eighteen months after I wrote the post, it received it’s first Anti-PNC comment from someone who I did not know. Two months later, another appeared. Then just two weeks after that, two more appeared. Since then, I get a comment posted on that blog post every so often.

Some how, this became your PNC Rage Center. Guess what is the #1 google hit for “fuck pnc bank“. That’s right, it’s me.

Interestingly, while researching this post, I found out that some other site has blatently stolen my post and posted it as their own. WTF? The site seems to just steal and repost blog items without attributing them. For what purpose, I have no idea. There don’t seem to be any advertisements on it. What’s the point here?

There appears to be no way to contact the people who run the site, and whois information just shows a generic godaddy thing. You can ‘register for account’, so I tried signing up with a back up e-mail address. At any rate, I object to people taking my posts, reposting them, and claiming copyright.

Ideas?

Instead, I found the Sound of Chrome system, also from Kuryakyn. Almost every review I read about the setup was positive, and I was able to get it for $280, new, including shipping on eBay. After trying to be responsible for a while, I finally pulled the trigger and bought it.

I received the package on Friday, and took the time to install it yesterday. The installation only took about 1.5 – 2 hours, with me going very slowly and double checking every step before I did anything. Here’s the story of the installation process.

Here we have all of the parts of the kit laid out.  Kuryakyn really put togehter a nice set up.  They include everything you need in order to properly install the system.  They even include 8 wire ties and small packets of anti-seize compound for the fasteners and dielectric grease for the connectors.  The left speaker is the “brain” of the system; from it comes the connections for the power, right speaker, and input.  It is also where the on/off/volume knob is located.  The clamps allow the mounting of the speakers in a number of different configurations.  Mounting the speakers is the first order of business, so let’s get on to that.

When mounting the speakers you want them to point towards your head for the best results.  because of the way the Spirit’s speedometer  is mounted, there is plenty of room between the windshield and the handlebars to mount the speakers above the bars.  Additionally, when spaced out like this, I think they complement the speedomoeter pretty well.  Note the tank is covered with a towel.  I highly recommend this as I dropped the clamps and bolts a couple of times, and the towel saved the tank from any knicks it would have otherwise received.  You can see the cords for the speakers hanging off.  I ended up using the wire ties to bind them to the switch wires, and then routed them through the front frame cover.

Now it’s time to start the wiring. The instructions tell you to remove the seat. I also removed the side covers (as you need to in order to access the battery) as well as the tank. Removing the tank isn’t necessary, but it was well worth the effort. It would have been a big pain in the ass to try to route all of the wires with the tank on. This photo shows the power wires entering the battery area. I routed these wires under the frame into the battery area from the air box area under the seat.

There was not really anywhere for the noise filter to fit under the seat. I ended up routing the wire under the seat and put the unit in the storage area under the right side cover. This is where I used to keep my insurance / registration info, but I’ve moved them to the saddlebags instead. The cable on the left comes from the battery. The cable on the right leads to the block connector. I routed it back under the seat and over to the left side of the bike. I found it useful to actually remove the battery while routing this cable. Doing so allowed me to keep it much more out of the way on it’s trip up to the front of the bike.

I routed the power cable to the front of the bike along the same path as the other electrical wires. Had I not removed the tank, this would have been very difficult. I used the wire ties along the way to keep the cable in its place.

Here are all of the block connectors hanging out behind the front frame covers. I don’t think I would have been able to get into this area with the tank in the way. This seemed like the best place for the all of the connectors to have their party. Unfortunately, from here, the audio cable does not have enough length to reach back to the handle bars. I had to use the long extension cable they provide for keeping your music player in a place like your saddlebags. I had to coil the cable up, and use a wire tie to keep the coil out of the way up at the handlebars.

Here’s everything put back together. You can see the speakers up on the bars. I think they actually look pretty nice up there. I have an power point as well as a universal mounting bracket on the way that I will add to the handlebars to power and mount the ipod or iphone.

After I finished everything up, I took the bike out for a test ride. For this, I used my old 3rd generation ipod with the wired remote. The remote wire is long enough to reach from the handlebars to my jacket pocket, with enough room to spare. Additionally, the remote controls end up hanging right on the handlebar for easy control.

How does it sound? Pretty darn good for little 3″ speakers. This does not sound like a nice car system, of course. There’s not much low-end, but still much more than I expected. And at 70 mph on a secondary highway I can still hear the music loud and clear. I imagine that it wouldn’t perform as well with the windshield off. I’ll test that soon.

The big downside, for now, is the stupid weather. A week ago I made a comment about missing Pittsburgh. Since that point, it’s been rainy here every day, and is forecast to continue for the next week, with heavy rainfall and thunderstorms at times. This is not typical. The weather is mocking me.

So, there you go. Motorcycle music.