22-aug-2022
I’ve been at Ralphs place now for almost 20 hours, so obviously it’s well past time to wash the bike. As expected Ralph didn’t sleep well last night knowing a dirty motorcycle was in his garage. He’s the type of guy who thinks OCD should be called CDO, so that the letters are in proper order.
It took time, multiple types of cleaning products, a few sponges and brushes, enough tea towels to host an Irish wake and some serious elbow grease but we got the bike back to looking respectable. I say “we” but Ralph did most of the work. I enjoy washing my bike even though I don’t do it often enough, but Ralph gets actual satisfaction from it. It’s his method of relaxation, of getting order in his world for peace of mind. It’s something I can totally understand.
We went out to dinner at a really good Japanese restaurant called Tomo. The service was really great and the food was fantastic. For a small town, Arcata has a very eclectic mix of restaurants and a really neat town centre. After dinner Ralph and I jumped into the hot tub. Man, what a life, sitting in the hot tub on the back deck, up on a hill above town, looking down at Arcata Bay and the Pacific Ocean all while under the canopy of giant redwood trees. It sounds like a scene written for a novel.
When I was planning what to wear for this road trip, I knew I would be dealing with high temperatures for most of the country, and then cool temperatures along the coast. I can dress warmer when it gets cold, but there’s a limit to how ‘cold’ you can dress when it gets warm. With that in mind I decided on the layered approach, wearing shorts and a T-shirt under an older one piece mesh Olympia Stealth riding suit (the Silver Sasquatch seen in a previous post) with a rain jacket and rain pants to wear over it as required for rain and/or wind protection, and a heated liner if it gets really cold. In theory, this was going to be perfect, and the one piece design means I can undo three zippers and literally step out of it, and be comfortable walking around. When I got to the coast and the temps dropped into the 50’s, I discovered the flaw in my plan. Most riding jackets and suits have a pass through port for the heated jacket wire. A mesh suit wouldn’t have this. So I could put on my heated liner but I had to choose between plugging it in, or leaving the zipper open from half way up my thigh to above my waist. Neither was an ideal solution. And then along comes Ralph. Of the thousands of skills he has learned over the years, one of them is sewing. I can sew a button, maybe even a small tear, but it looks like crap and won’t last forever. I figured out the ideal spot for the pass through, and Ralph made me a thread reinforced button hole to pass the wire through. While he was at it he fixed a seam that was falling apart on the back. How awesome is that? This riding suit is very comfortable, breathes incredibly well, and is quick to put on and take off so I’m thrilled with this new pass through port and renewed life in what is an older model discontinued riding suit.
Unfortunately there is absolutely no way to make a 60 year old guy look good in a shiny silver onesie.