NorCal Revisited Part 4: Eleanor does the Corbin Factory

It was my kind of vacation day: get out of bed, ride, eat, chill, ride some more, sleep, repeat. There was some hockey thrown in there as well, and I'll talk about it a bit later. But first, I took a 5:30 AM departure on Friday morning from Petaluma all the way down the 101 to the world famous Corbin seat factory in Hollister, CA. It was approximately a 130-mile jaunt from start to finish, and I made it there as the doors were opening at 8 AM. Traffic was non-existent, even in the more populated areas such as Alameda and San Jose on the 580/880, and Eleanor ran like a charm for the straight shot down.

First guest motorcycle here!

So why were we here? Below is Exhibit A. The Corbin seat on Eleanor has seen over 192,000 miles of road in ten years, experiencing every weather condition that has hit the continental United States short of a hurricane and a tornado. The leather was dried up and shot, the foam gone in some places from wear and exposure, and it was long overdue for a complete refurbish. Fortunately, Corbin has a special program in which a seat purchased directly from them can be restored to original factory condition for half the cost of a new one, provided that you bring the seat in. (Side note: if you purchased the Corbin seat private party or through eBay, you would get 30% off a complete refurbishing.)

Now, this isn't the first time that I have been to the Corbin factory. I was here once before back in July 2011 en route to the Women On Wheels® International Ride-In™. If I had thought ahead sooner, I would've had the seat done back then, but like many things in my life, it was worth the extra wait.

This seat has seen many things. It was definitely time for a refresher.

On-site ride in service at the factory is done in an appointment-based, first-come first-served basis. I called ahead on Wednesday to get a slot for Friday. When I made it to Corbin that morning, there was a gentleman with a 2015 version of my Yamaha FJR1300 who was there to get a full rider and passenger seat combo. It was nice to get a neighbor with a newer, yet nearly identical ride (everything from the tank to the tail is practically the same). Since we both had different preferences for what we wanted in our seats, it was fun to see the options that were out there and find out what we each chose for our own needs.

Seat creation/restoration takes a few hours, so I took a break inside the Wizard's Cafe for a little blogging, photo organization, and a breakfast burrito. Coffee was complimentary and there was a lot of it to go around.

This was a very tasty burrito.

After an hour or so, my "seat wizard" came back with my seat without the leather covering. He placed a temporary seat pad on top of the foam and asked me to take a lap around the street to see how I felt. I will say, it had been so long since I had a cushiony seat on Eleanor that it felt like I was riding on a cloud. When I came back from my test ride, I talked to the gentleman with the FJR who had made a slight modification to his custom seat. The middle area was replaced with a softer foam that reduced the pressure to the tailbone and related area. After sitting on his seat in comparison to mine, I requested to have my seat's internals done in the same fashion. It's moments like these when I knew that it was totally worth it to spend the extra miles to get exactly what I wanted. After all, I'm looking at several more years with this bike at the minimum, and I'd like to enjoy every minute of it. It was also great to receive peer feedback and suggestions that helped improve my own seat.

Here's the unfinished seat with a test ride pad.

Here's a closeup of my "neighbor's" seat after the softer foam was added to the main area. My front seat received the same treatment.

The service areas where the trimming and shaping of the foam were within walking distance of where the motorcycles were staged.

My "neighbor's" finished product, a front/rear seat combo with a smooth top (similar to my original seat) with color-matched welt and a textured side vinyl pattern. He was very happy with the results.

As for me, I decided to change it up this time around and requested stitching on the top of the seat. The extra stitching also offered a little extra foam cushion on the top as well as a nice textured look. The sides were lined with a textured vinyl pattern with the welts remaining black.

Eleanor's odometer reading at seat restoration.

The new seat's maiden break-in ride was a 150-mile ride from the factory all the way back up north to Sacramento where I was headed to meet up with my other friend and then carpool another 40 miles westbound toward Vacaville for the first game of the Vacaville Classic hockey tournament. It was a long, yet very productive day, and with the 250+ riding miles on the road that day, I still pulled a 2-0 opening game win. I'll discuss the rest of the outcome of the tournament in the next blog post, but I will say that there were a lot more miles involved as well as really warm temperatures! Not to mention, a surprise ending...

Transcending Spanish: On lessons learned beyond foreign language.

In 1999, I embarked on an academic journey through the levels of Spanish offered at my high school. For all but one year of that journey, I had the same teacher. This particular person had a passion for the power of language, and his uncanny way of teaching this mandatory academic requirement still has me reminiscing about some of those moments in time, even 15 years later. I've written about many of those tales and they lie in the old archives of my written journals. However, beyond learning the ins and outs of Spanish grammar and sentence structures, what I really learned and still value are life lessons that transcend any language. So, I figure with the end of my 20s peeking around the corner, I'd share a few of these lessons as my thank you to him for being one of my most influential mentors.

Long Beach Hydrobikes...because sometimes you need to get away from wheels.

As part of a week-long celebration of the triumphs over my struggles throughout this past year, I treated myself to a hydrobike ride in Long Beach at the Alamitos Bay. From where I live, it's a very quick drive across the Vincent Thomas Bridge, through Downtown Long Beach, and right past Belmont Shore before hitting Pacific Coast Highway.

Just head all the way to the end of the bay and follow the signs. You can't miss.

The hydrobikes are right at the end of a dock. I got there for the first appointment at 11AM so they were all still parked.

Riding a hydrobike is quite easy. If you can't ride an actual bicycle, you'll still be okay...no balancing of the unit is needed. Just pedal away and point the bike toward your destination. You'll get there eventually.

The route that patrons are given will lead you across the bay and into the Naples neighborhood of Long Beach. Naples is modeled after the same part of Italy and is known for its romantic canals (yes, there are gondola rides too for you boyfriends looking for ideas). We rode in a counter-clockwise direction, and with no wakes or fast boats in the way, it was more of a pleasure cruise with a little bit of cardio involved.

What you see is me having fun. What you don't feel is that it was nearing 95°F on the water with a heat advisory and the sun blazing down on me at noon. I'm wearing a UPF 50 wicking shirt from REI. No burns here.

Naples holds onto its namesake quite well with actual gondola rides along the canals. The city of Venice (near Santa Monica) had the same thing for a while but the area is no longer as well-maintained as this place.

Pedaling for a straight hour is definitely a great workout! I was glad that I didn't bring my giant Nikon DSLR camera, holding my cell phone to take all these shots was enough of a challenge. Fortunately every hydrobike has cupholders and a cubby compartment for a small bag and your refreshments and personal items. I took the rehydration bit one step further and wore a my Camelbak, the same one I use on my motorcycle rides. It was hot, and I was drinking out of it a lot.

The name of this boat took the words right out of my mouth.

Tip: Wear athletic shoes, unless you want to try to fish your flip-flops out of the water. If you follow instructions, there's no real way you can fall off the bike.

After that fun excursion, I headed up the road to have lunch at nearby Joe's Crab Shack. I had wanted to try this national chain at least once while I still lived in Ohio so it made my personal victory even sweeter as I was making a mess of myself cracking crab legs and munching on hushpuppies. I even topped it off with a root beer float! For an escape of a Friday before heading off to courier work, this was definitely one of my more memorable adventures.

Joe's Crab Shack offered a wonderful view of the Alamitos Bay Marina. Why the hell did I leave California? Anyway, the reason no longer exists, and I'm a better person for it.

Steps for enjoyment. 1. Take a nice photo. 2. Destroy it efficiently.

For more information about Long Beach Hydrobikes, visit http://www.lbhydrobikes.com/. Bring your friends or go by yourself! It's all good either way...and go eat some crabs too. Because crabs are awesome.

Tales on the Motorcycle Courier Shift...how this all started.

After throwing on a few screenshots of my motorcycle courier shift status updates, I realized that I didn't share how this all started. I have to say, it was a bit of a learning curve, trying to figure out how to manage the streets of Los Angeles while managing my time in between dispatches. Practice made perfect, and fortunately I have the right bike for the job, complete with luggage and multiple places to strap things down.

Not every delivery was perfect. Sometimes, things would spill in transit or an order would get screwed up. It happens. I have to say though, one side effect of being able to order delivery was the large amount of customers who indulged in certain herbal products. I was so glad this kept them off the streets.

The convenience of getting "anything anywhere anytime" made delivery dispatches from the richer (and more isolated) areas of LA more commonplace. Because of this, I frequented mansions who would often order hundreds of dollars worth of food without blinking an eye. However, lots of the "normal" people utilized the service as well, even for little things...

Okay! Now back to normally scheduled programming.

Tales on the Motorcycle Courier Shift...for starters.

I haven't touched much on this topic, but I think this needs to be on this blog since it is about motorcycles and travelling. Sometimes travelling just means going around in circles, over and over again.

Since I was laid-off of my full-time job back in April of this year, I started doing courier work for Postmates, a startup based in San Francisco. I've been doing this since the first day of launch in May here in Los Angeles, and it's kept me busy when other gigs were far and in between. While most people do deliveries in a car, I took advantage of the carrying capacity of my touring bike to actually make decent money with this, even developing a system that makes it easy to respond to dispatches that come in on my phone.

I usually work the dinner shifts to try to avoid the traffic of the day, and some of the things I've encountered while taking this from Point A to Point B have been quite amusing. I've shared most of these things on Facebook with my friends, but I think some of these screen snippets definitely detail my level of amusement on being "paid to ride."

As I had mentioned in a previous post, Eleanor was gone for a month due to repairs and long-awaited maintenance. Once I deemed her road-worthy again for the daily grind of the night shift, the stories came back. When I have a chance to sift through some of the posts from earlier this year, they'll appear in a future blog post. But for now, enjoy.

Cagin' it to Salt Lake

I'm out for the weekend with Matt in Salt Lake City, UT for a friend's wedding. We took an unusual (at least for us) method of transportation to get there due to time constraints: our 1999 BMW 528i wagon.

In nerdy fashion, here's the list of all the electronics we took with us for anti-boredom, navigation, and car maintenance.

• Garmin Zumo 550 GPS with built-in MP3 player, car cradle, and audio output. This is the same GPS unit that's off my motorcycle.
• Cassette tape adapter for audio - the car doesn't have a CD player and this is much cheaper than an audio input integration
• Toshiba NB255 netbook with built-in SD card reader for easy transfer of over 9000 MP3s from my personal collection for on-the-fly uploading to the Garmin Zumo 550
• 150W power inverter for charging the laptop
• Automobile fault code reader - for interpreting check engine lights (a must have for any car)

Here's the Zumo 550 mounted next to the BMW's shift lever.  A cassette to stereo adapter is playing in the tape player. Its easy-to-adjust cradle neck made it easy to tilt it toward the driver or the passenger for reading or just changing the songs.

We left on Thursday about 1AM and drove continuously across I-70, I-74, and I-80, driving the first 1500 miles by alternating drivers, only stopping at gas stations to fill up. One person would nap while the other would take the wheel. To help with sleeping, we had the "Cubby Hole," a makeshift bed using the small seat partition laid down and sticking one's legs into the trunk section. Add sleeping bag and two pillows and you're set for several hours of naptime. Privacy screens built into the passenger doors add to incognito snoozing.