I got back this afternoon from the round up. I had a great time and met some familiar faces from last year. I'll try to find time tomorrow to post a ride report with pictures.
I had hopes of getting my 18-year old son to learn how to be a passenger so he could go on trips with me. He has no interest and neither does the wife. Sigh!
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Great Lakes Harley Roundup, Here I Come!
Well, tomorrow about 9AM I am off to the 26th annual Great Lakes Harley Roundup. A good fun time of bs'ing with other bikers, enjoying bands, riding along lake Michigan, and much drinking. It's hosted by a motorcycle service/sales shop near Interlochen, MI that has a large campground behind their business.
A good deal for $48. Camping Fri and Sat night, live music Fri and Sat night, meals Friday evening, Sat morning and evening, and lots of things going on Sat afternoon. Plus all the coffee, popcorn, and ice cream you want.
For an additional $24 you can buy their "bottomless mug". They have a Budweiser trailer on site during the roundup with draft Bud and Bud light and you just bring your mug up and they fill it up for free.. They are smart about that though. No one is allowed to leave the campground between 10PM and 7AM unless it is an emergency and they have security at the entrance/exit 24 hours. They want those who have too much to drink to stay inside and off the roads.
I went there last year and had a great time. I thought that since it was a gathering of bikers things would get noisy and out of control. Nope. When the live music stopped it was dead quiet for the night. No one being obnoxious, having fights, or getting out of control. Just a bunch of bikers enjoying socializing and having a good time. Then again, one of the rules of the owners is "no attitudes." You have an attitude and create a problem, they call the cops and your ass is bounced outside without a refund. They don't tolerate BS and that is a good thing.
The owners are long time bikers and bike mechanics and are great people. Their normal camping rates are $6 per person per night if you bring a motorcycle. Doesn't matter if you trailered it in or (as I saw one weekend last summer) if one person pulls in a 5th wheeler behind a pickup and the other person rides in on a trike.
This should be a fun weekend of bs'ing, music, touring, and drinking. http://www.cycle-moore.com in case you are curious.
The campground is open year round (believe it not here in Michigan). They let homeless people stay there free during the off season. Don't know how the homeless deal with the cold, but the campground does have heated showers and restrooms and there are electrical outlets at each site.
A good deal for $48. Camping Fri and Sat night, live music Fri and Sat night, meals Friday evening, Sat morning and evening, and lots of things going on Sat afternoon. Plus all the coffee, popcorn, and ice cream you want.
For an additional $24 you can buy their "bottomless mug". They have a Budweiser trailer on site during the roundup with draft Bud and Bud light and you just bring your mug up and they fill it up for free.. They are smart about that though. No one is allowed to leave the campground between 10PM and 7AM unless it is an emergency and they have security at the entrance/exit 24 hours. They want those who have too much to drink to stay inside and off the roads.
I went there last year and had a great time. I thought that since it was a gathering of bikers things would get noisy and out of control. Nope. When the live music stopped it was dead quiet for the night. No one being obnoxious, having fights, or getting out of control. Just a bunch of bikers enjoying socializing and having a good time. Then again, one of the rules of the owners is "no attitudes." You have an attitude and create a problem, they call the cops and your ass is bounced outside without a refund. They don't tolerate BS and that is a good thing.
The owners are long time bikers and bike mechanics and are great people. Their normal camping rates are $6 per person per night if you bring a motorcycle. Doesn't matter if you trailered it in or (as I saw one weekend last summer) if one person pulls in a 5th wheeler behind a pickup and the other person rides in on a trike.
This should be a fun weekend of bs'ing, music, touring, and drinking. http://www.cycle-moore.com in case you are curious.
The campground is open year round (believe it not here in Michigan). They let homeless people stay there free during the off season. Don't know how the homeless deal with the cold, but the campground does have heated showers and restrooms and there are electrical outlets at each site.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Slow the hell down!
Damn, some kid on a crotch rocket just flew by my house doing about 90. The young dumb asses on crotch rockets are giving us motorcyclists a bad rep. This is not meant to stereotype those on sport bikes. It jjust seems the young riders on them act irresponsibly. So they give all riders a black eye. The public doesn't differentiate between age and type of motorcycle. All they see is these young kids acting stupid on bikes and it looks bad on all of us. Consider the bill under consideration in Florida right now......
Monday, June 9, 2008
Too much heat!
This post has nothing to do with scoots. This work week started out sucky. Scenario: We have a separate high capacity air conditioner (AC) for our server room (about 30+ servers and various other network/storage equipment). Computers don't like heat, so we have our own separate AC system in addition to the building AC. There is an alert system which will put out a loud noise and flash a strobe light on the outside of our building if the air conditioner isn't working. That way security folks doing their rounds will notice the light and arrange to get the AC problem fixed. That is the ideal situation.
What really happened this weekend instead of the ideal situation: The air conditioning malfunctioned over the weekend, the battery unit for the alert system was bad and thus no alert was sounded and no strobe light. A coworker and I come in to work today and find that the server room was over 120 degrees! It may have been hotter than that, but the thermometer only read up to 120. Yes, 120 freaking degrees farhrenheit. That is almost 49 degrees for those of you in the celcius part of this world. Servers and equipment everywhere malfunctioning with lots of beeping noises saying the equipment is overheated.
Oh crap! Open up the one window in the server room and turn on the huge fan. Get all the doors to the server room open, plus all doors and windows to the other side of the building open to get air circulating and we start shutting off servers. Some were unresponsive, so we had to force power off. Those in IT know that is not a good thing to do, but we had no choice. Try calling the number for maintenance. Get voice mail. Call the main physical plant #. Get voice mail. No one answered the fucking phones! I called security (emergency #) and immediately got someone on the phone. I told them, "Our air conditioner in the server room doesn't work, it is 120 degrees in there, and we need an AC person here NOW because equipment is malfunctioning and some people in physical plant are going to lose their jobs if we don't get someone to get their ass over now ASAP and fix the problem!"
An AC person came over about 10 minutes later. Apparently the AC unit failed because it was low on coolant. WTF? Aren't they supposed to check that shit during their maintenance intervals or whatever? Do they even have scheduled maintenance for the damn thing?
45 minutes later the AC is running again. We waited an hour for the room (and the equipment) to cool before turning them back on. Man, did we ever dodge a bullet! Out of all that equipment, the only casualty was one failed hard drive, and that one was mirrored, so no data was lost and all services were back in action.
Meanwhile, back at the farm, the building AC itself wasn't working today. My office faces windows on the south side of the building. I finally said "to hell with this" and told my boss at 3 "I'm out of here, I can't take working in an office that is over 80 degrees." I went to my American Legion and had a few beers to replace all the water I sweated out today.
An interesting day indeed. I hope the AC is working in the building tomorrow and they get the replacement battery for the alert unit installed ASAP
What really happened this weekend instead of the ideal situation: The air conditioning malfunctioned over the weekend, the battery unit for the alert system was bad and thus no alert was sounded and no strobe light. A coworker and I come in to work today and find that the server room was over 120 degrees! It may have been hotter than that, but the thermometer only read up to 120. Yes, 120 freaking degrees farhrenheit. That is almost 49 degrees for those of you in the celcius part of this world. Servers and equipment everywhere malfunctioning with lots of beeping noises saying the equipment is overheated.
Oh crap! Open up the one window in the server room and turn on the huge fan. Get all the doors to the server room open, plus all doors and windows to the other side of the building open to get air circulating and we start shutting off servers. Some were unresponsive, so we had to force power off. Those in IT know that is not a good thing to do, but we had no choice. Try calling the number for maintenance. Get voice mail. Call the main physical plant #. Get voice mail. No one answered the fucking phones! I called security (emergency #) and immediately got someone on the phone. I told them, "Our air conditioner in the server room doesn't work, it is 120 degrees in there, and we need an AC person here NOW because equipment is malfunctioning and some people in physical plant are going to lose their jobs if we don't get someone to get their ass over now ASAP and fix the problem!"
An AC person came over about 10 minutes later. Apparently the AC unit failed because it was low on coolant. WTF? Aren't they supposed to check that shit during their maintenance intervals or whatever? Do they even have scheduled maintenance for the damn thing?
45 minutes later the AC is running again. We waited an hour for the room (and the equipment) to cool before turning them back on. Man, did we ever dodge a bullet! Out of all that equipment, the only casualty was one failed hard drive, and that one was mirrored, so no data was lost and all services were back in action.
Meanwhile, back at the farm, the building AC itself wasn't working today. My office faces windows on the south side of the building. I finally said "to hell with this" and told my boss at 3 "I'm out of here, I can't take working in an office that is over 80 degrees." I went to my American Legion and had a few beers to replace all the water I sweated out today.
An interesting day indeed. I hope the AC is working in the building tomorrow and they get the replacement battery for the alert unit installed ASAP
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Playing Chauffeur
Not too much riding lately due to the severe thunderstorms and playing chauffeur. The son has been going to lots of graduation open houses, so I've had to take him in the car since he doesn't drive yet. I've only had a passenger one the bike one time and it was on a crappy gravel road. Intimidating to me.
I'm thinking of teaching him how to be a passenger on my bike. I've got a helmet that should fit him, need to get some riding gear for him.
I'm heading to the Great Lakes Harley Roundup http://cycle-moore.com/Roundup.html next Friday. It's not just Harleys. I had a blast last year at the roundup.
I'm thinking of teaching him how to be a passenger on my bike. I've got a helmet that should fit him, need to get some riding gear for him.
I'm heading to the Great Lakes Harley Roundup http://cycle-moore.com/Roundup.html next Friday. It's not just Harleys. I had a blast last year at the roundup.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thunder Storms!
We've had thunderstorms across Michigan all day, so I wimped out and took the cage to work.
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