The Short Rider Spreadsheet is back

I created this spreadsheet of potential cruisers last fall for beginning shorter riders. Of course, it generated a lot of emails and comments, especially along the lines of “why didn’t you include…” or “why did you include…” Hey, I don’t pretend to be objective *or* all-inclusive… I just thought it would be helpful if SOMEONE gathered the specs on some of the best cruisers so shorter beginning riders could see it’s not impossible to walk into a dealership and buy a bike without a lot of modification. So – take a look! Download the “short rider spreadsheet” here!

I REALLY Heart Site Visitors! Traffic is growing…

Well this is what I get for not checking in here more often… I totally missed the fact that Biker Chick News had an incredible traffic spike in the month of November – over 8,300 visitors!! In addition to my concerted efforts to improve search engine rankings, and the popularity of my Sturgis photo galleries, it looks like the site was picked up by a service called Stumbleupon – as in, www.stumbleupon.com. I haven’t quite figured out how that site works yet, but it looks like a fun tool for casual web surfing so I’m going to check it out. Anyway, here’s a lesson for all of you who maintain websites: I should be providing fresh content every week so my regular visitors and those folks who do “stumble upon” this site will notice a reason to come back. Although I missed the opportunity to impress those stumbleupon visitors with my “freshness,” I would like to tell them THANKS for checking out Biker Chick News! And I’d like to note that a more normal month of traffic for this site is now up to nearly 6,000 visits a month – I think that’s INCREDIBLE, and I thank you for visiting, reading, and looking at pictures!

Is It Spring Yet?

Wow, it feels like just a week or so ago that we were counting down to Christmas, and now January’s two-thirds gone! I’m thrilled to see you all keep coming back… and I’m sorry I haven’t done a good job of keeping things fresh around here. My last couple of months have been very home-focused… I did a lot of hand-painted Christmas gifts this year, so I spent most of November and December working on those. With the new year came a resolution to start eating dinner at home more often (we’d been eating out in restaurants nearly every night for over a year – you can imagine what that did to our finances) so in January I got somewhat addicted to the Food Channel and the Food Network website (does anyone else wish Rachael Ray was their sister?)… anyway, we seem to have hit a new rhythm now with better food so I’m not spending quite as much time digging through recipes as I was a couple weeks ago.And wouldn’t you know it… at just the moment where I was ready to start thinking BIKES again… along comes my next-door neighbor to tell me she just bought a bike! And not just any bike… the very bike I was going to try to trade mine in for, a beautiful deep cobalt Sportster 1200 Low. Anyway, I’m thrilled for her – I can always pick another color, right? – and now she’s going nuts with this awesome bike sitting in her garage and 8 inches of snow on the ground! And, I’ve got a new riding buddy ready and waiting for warmer weather, as well as a fun neighbor!

Something else pretty cool happened back in December. A couple weeks before Christmas, I’d volunteered to help staff the fund-raising gift-wrap table for our HOG chapter. I was talking to one of the gals who had worked the previous shift and as we were talking she suddenly stopped me and said, “Hey wait a minute, aren’t you the gal with the Biker Chick website?” So I said, “You mean Biker Chick News?” And she said, “That’s it! Oh gosh I LOVE your site…” Well this was no small stroke to my ego, let me tell you – the first time I’ve ever been recognized as a celebrity! (Of course, it hasn’t happened again SINCE then, but that’s okay. If it’s happens too often my head’ll get too big and I won’t fit through the doorway.)

Anyhoo, I’m starting to think about what the 2007 bike season might bring – and if you’re in a “winter clime” I hope you are doing the same and following my anti-winter advice. If you’re NOT in a winter climate, well, lucky you – ride safe!

Start Small – or ‘Go Ultimate’?

by Janet Green, Editor, Biker Chick News
copyright 2007

If you’re thinking about learning to ride, you’re probably wondering if you should start out riding a small bike or just “go ultimate” and buy your dream bike right from the beginning. I’ll admit I’m a firm believer in the “start small” strategy, probably because that’s how I began my riding life. But, I know several people who started riding on bigger bikes and had no problems, so I know there are advantages to that strategy too. For what they’re worth, I’ve tried to outline the positives of each approach here.

Advantages of Starting Small

1. Virtually all beginners’ motorcycle safety classes use small bikes (125-250 cc) for students. It will be much easier for the new rider to make a transition to their own bike, once they get their license, if they start with a similar-sized, or only slightly larger, bike. The weight and handling of a large-cc bike would be completely different from the class experience, which might cause problems for riders who did not take to motorcycling with ease.

2. Starting small helps you build confidence. A smaller bike will feel more manageable and therefore, less intimidating. You may find that you quickly outgrow it, but you won’t be overwhelmed with a bike that’s too big, feels too heavy to control, or goes too fast too soon.

3. If you start with a small, used bike, you won’t have as much cash outlay at the beginning of your journey. It will be easy to sell the smaller used bike to the next beginner, and you won’t be “upside down” in an installment plan with a big, new bike, only to discover you don’t really care for motorcycling. You’ll also be less worried about “dropping” the smaller used bike, because it will likely have a few dings already – rather than being your brand-new pristine baby.

Advantages of ‘Going Ultimate’

1. You won’t have to go through the hassle of selling one or more bikes you’ve outgrown, possibly in a short period of time.

2. You’ll learn everything on the bike you plan to ride, so you won’t have an adjustment period getting used to new bikes as you move up.

3. This could be a less expensive option for you in the long run if you are “inheriting” a bike from someone else in the family who’s getting a new bike, or b). are buying a brand new bike and plan to keep it long enough to spread out the “hit” you’ll take in resale value.

If you’re the type of person who does well by grabbing a new challenge by the horns, and if you have no reservations about being able to handle the size and weight of a larger bike, by all means “go ultimate” and buy your dream bike. If you learn best by building confidence in graduated steps, or if you tend to refer to larger bikes as “beasts,” then starting small is probably your best option. Whichever you choose, ride safe! And – if you have something to add to this list, please send me an email!.

Why Winter Won’t Make Me Crazy

Crap! Well it had to happen, we got a little snow here yesterday and contrary to what’s SUPPOSED to happen in November, it seems to be sticking! So, the off-season’s definitely here, and I thought this would be as good a time as any to offer some suggestions for how to survive the winter when you HAVE a winter and can’t ride. Here’s what I’m planning to do to make sure I don’t go nuts!

2006 Season Recap

Well it’s time to wrap up the 2006 riding season for this biker chick! We took probably our last cruise of the year on Sunday, October 29. Just a short hop “up around the lake,” but it was about 70 degrees and beautiful. Here are some highlights from the year: Riding in January was awesome! We had, I think, three days when it was above 45 degrees, so we took advantage and got the bikes out. Very unusual to be able to do that in Iowa. On July 15 I went on an all-girls’ ride with two of my friends and a great bunch of women I’d never met – we never did get a second ride planned for ’06, but I’m taking the lead in ’07 to get these gals organized as I had a blast! Also in July, hubby and I (and two friends, both who ride) took a butt-building ride over to see Albert the Bull in Audubon, Iowa – this was a very nice day trip where I got to hold up a giant set of concrete & plaster testicles.

The big trip took place the first week of August. Steve and I left on August 4 for the ride to Sturgis, our first trip to the mother of all rallies. I posted ride reports for each leg of the trip, as well as photo galleries, so grab a cup-o coffee and settle in for our little slideshow. It was definitely the highlight of the year; my favorite day was the day we rode through Spearfish Canyon and visited Deadwood. Another great trip was the “gal pal weekend” where my friend Susan and I rode to the Loess Hills Region of Iowa. We rode the Loess Hills Scenic Byway, stopped at the Harley dealership in Sioux City, then on to Le Mars where we stayed overnight and then took a tour of the Blue Bunny Dairy Visitor Center. Great weather, and the kind of meandering itinerary where you feel like you’ve done something major but at the end of the day you realize it took you 8 hours to go 250 miles.

And finally, of course the Toy Run sponsored by ABATE of Iowa – always a great way to end the season. I didn’t make any major purchases this year for the bike, though I got the full benefit of my Mustang seat (with driver backrest) and love the sound of my drag pipes.

It was a great summer; next year I’m thinking about trading in the ’00 Sporty 883 for an ’07 Sporty 1200 Custom. We’ll see if that happens. I may just commandeer hubby’s Heritage Softail Classic.

A site note: this website surpassed the 4,000 VISITOR mark in October – you, my readers, are the BEST!! I’m so glad to have you back here each month, and my plan is of course to provide something new or entertaining at least twice a month so please stick with me over the winter months!

More later –
Janet

How to pick a destination

by Janet Green, Editor, Biker Chick News
copyright 2006

When I first started riding my own bike, I was happy just to get out and practice. This usually meant a ride “up around the lake,” which gave me a variety of things to encounter: curves, tight turns, road surfaces, etc. This was fine when I was very new to riding, and still thinking purposefully about the mechanical operation of the bike, when to do what as far as shifting, leaning, and that sort of thing. But there came a point where I wanted to GO somewhere… since the day I’d started, I’d had a vision of packing up the bike and taking a trip, and I finally I felt that I was done practicing, and ready to “really ride.” But where to go, and what to do? As it turned out, an invitation from some online riding sisters determined my destination and, ultimately, the route for my first overnight/longer distance ride. But in finally settling on that particular ride, I hit upon a few other ways for generating ideas about “where to go and what to do,” so for what they’re worth, I’ll share them here.

1. Draw circles on your atlas. One day I was bored and wanted to generate ideas for future road trips. I wanted to know what I could explore in my immediate region, say, no more than 2 hours away by car. So, by using the scale of miles on my atlas and some drawing tools, I was able to put some circles around my home city that showed where I could go if I wanted to go 60, 90 or 120 miles out before heading back. The map gave me cities and towns, some points of interest, scenic roads and state parks. I was able to come up with quite a list of things to see just from this one exercise.

2. I found more ideas in my state’s tourism guide. I’m sure every state has these, and many of them are online. (Here is the one for Iowa, in case you’re interested.) It was easier to browse the print guide than the online version, but by leafing through it I was able to find attractions, events and places in my state that I had never heard of. Those that interested me went on the list of “rides to ride,” no matter how far away they are from my home city.

3. Pick a theme. At one point I was getting quite elaborate with my trip planning. I dreamed up a theme and would come up with three or four rides that suited that theme, and called it a “Tour.” For example, the Shop til you Drop Tour included day-rides to J&P Cycles in Anamosa, Iowa (to shop for chrome), Jordan Creek Town Centre in West Des Moines to shop for shoes and cheesecake, and a couple others. A day-ride by itself could also be centered around a theme; I planned a “four corners” tour where I would hit the town in the four corner-most locations of my state (this would have actually taken two days), and a “World Tour” where I planned a route that went through towns named after famous places (Jamaica, Orient, Peru, Nevada, Paris, etc. – all towns in Iowa). Another “tour” just had me riding all of my state’s designated scenic highways over a period of several weeks.

4. Pick up a “roadside oddities” book for your state. My book on “roadside Iowa” includes all kinds of fascinating locations, from the Villisca Murder House and the Grotto of the Redemption, to the giant Strawberry of Strawberry Point and the giant bull in Audobon.

5. Tune in when you hear people talking, and be ready to recognize possible destination ideas wherever they may come from. I work for our local chamber of commerce, and one of my jobs is to answer the emails that come into the “info@” email address on our website. One day I received an email from someone asking about where they could find a roadside attraction that was rumored to be a “painted rock with a military theme.” A couple minutes’ internet research revealed the “Painted Rock” over by Greenfield, Iowa, painted with a veterans’ mural prior to each Memorial Day by a young man who had recently graduated from Iowa State University. A new destination was added to my own list!

Thanks to these ideas, I have somewhere around 50 planned rides that I can take when the mood strikes. I’m sure there are other ways to generate ideas, but when you get stuck wondering “Where can we go,” just try one of the above and you’ll find yourself out on the road!

Toy Run 2006

Participated in the 2006 ABATE of Iowa District 4 Toys for Tots Toy Run on October 8 – it was a nice event with, I’m guessing, over 2,000 bikes. We gathered at the State Capitol building here in Des Moines, left there right at Noon and rode to Plaza Lanes which is a popular “bike night” spot during the summer, where we donated our toys and socialized for a bit before heading home. This event is always an impressive one… a lot of people don’t like the challenge of getting out of the parking lot at the Capitol because it’s not organized. You just *go*, along with 2,000 others, and hope you don’t crash into anyone. I’ve found that the secret is to be just aggressive enough that you can hold your spot (or claim a spot) without actually competing for it: meaning, I will creep forward and get my nose in there (into the column of moving bikes), but I will also let someone else in if it looks like they aren’t paying attention or for they *really* want my spot. (In other words, the secret is to never occupy the same physical space as another rider! LOL) It IS a challenge, but it can be done – I’ve done it without incident for four years in a row now, and many others have done it much more than me.

I posted some pictures over on WEBSHOTS, because the trial version of my gallery-making software ran out and I’m too broke to pay for it at the moment.

Ride to LeMars & Blue Bunny Visitors Center

It was a beautiful weekend here in Iowa and here are two biker chicks who took full advantage of it!  After our successful trip to Albert Lea last summer, my friend Susan and I decided we needed to plan another overnight trip for this year. We had originally planned to visit Galena, IL, but the day before the trip we checked the weather and learned that “they” (whoever “they” are) were predicting rain for that time period in that locale so we switched gears and decided that it looked like it was going to be warmest over in northwest Iowa. So we decided we’d ride the Loess Hills Scenic Byway from about the middle of the western border of the state up to Sioux City, and then spend  the night in Le Mars.

We had both taken Friday off from work so we met at my house and left about 9:30 a.m. We went west out of Des Moines on Highway 6 then picked up Highway 44 at Panora. From here, 44 is designated in Iowa as the Western Skies Scenic Byway. Now Susan and I are not “let’s get there” kind of people. We are more “let’s take our time getting there” people. So to say that we stopped frequently would probably be an understatement, but generally speaking, we stopped frequently. We passed through several lovely small towns, including Adel, Redfield, Guthrie Center, and Harlan, and finally picked up the Loess Hills road in Logan.

The Loess Hills region of Iowa is beautiful, and fall colors have not quite peaked here so everything is just barely turning red and gold. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t see anything terrain-wise that really surprised me… but, I think if we had explored the State Park or the western side of the hills, we would have been better able to appreciate what makes this region so unique. 

We rode north keeping to the designated scenic highway, which zig zags its way through the hills. We stopped for lunch at the Old Home Fill’er Up and Keep On Truckin’ Cafe in Pisgah (immortalized by C.W. McCall in the Old Home Bread commercials) and then went on to Sioux City. We took Highway 75 north through Sioux City to the Harley dealership, where we stopped to shop and make phone calls home, then continued on up 75 to Le Mars at about 6 p.m.

We checked into a motel and walked next door to Uncle Albert’s Pub & Grille, where we had a very good dinner and a couple drinks. We got a good laugh out of the fact that it had taken us 8 hours to travel 250 miles!

Slept in Saturday morning and after getting the bikes packed we went to see the Wells Blue Bunny Visitors Center. Le Mars bills itself as “The Ice Cream Capital of the World,” because the Wells Blue Bunny company produces more ice cream in their Le Mars dairy than any other company in any other location in the world. They’ve built a very nice museum which tells the history of the company and the history of ice cream, and includes a 3/4-scale model of part of their production line so you can see how the products move around on the line. The facility also includes a full-service ice cream parlor, where we learned that ice cream tastes even better when it’s fresh – meaning, you’re eating it right next door to where it was made and it hasn’t been frozen, thawed, re-frozen/etc. at the whim of your freezer’s defrost cycle.

We spent about an hour at the museum and then took off to the east on Highway 3, where we passed through more lovely small towns like Cherokee, Ida Grove, and Carroll. (Note to self: need to return to Ida Grove with the family to visit the COOL Pizza Hut with outdoor patio that overlooks a lake!) We picked up Highway 44 again at Panora, which took us straight back into the Des Moines area in our northern suburb of Johnston. In all, we traveled 460 trouble-free miles with beautiful weather – we are going to have to come up with a name for these little overnighters!

A Stupid, Stupid Mistake!

I am a freaking IDIOT!!! I had today (Sept. 8) off as a vacation day from work, and after some errands and grocery shopping, DH and I went for a short ride around town. Stopped at the dealership, “where everybody knows my name…” LOL… then came home. Rolled into the garage, shut off ignition, turn bars to the left and proceed to park bike, except FORGOT TO PUT THE @#$ KICKSTAND DOWN!! I laid her down as easy as I could, but when she went over, she went completely on her side as I have no engine guards. DH parked and came over to help lift… Busted tail light lense and partially crushed tail light housing, and I think I also broke the bolt stem that holds my seat in place because the front end of it wiggles now. That fucker’s not even PAID FOR yet, being as it is on the “priceless” installment plan. We’ll remove the seat tomorrow to assess whether it can be fixed. No other damage, thank God, but CRIPES!! What the HELL was I thinking? So it was a perfect, beautiful blue-sky day, perfect for a ride… and I ruined it! (In fact, how’s this for come-uppance: I was riding along, looking sharp and feeling great, and thinking about how I’d been wanting to maybe trade the ol’ Sporty in for a Lowrider. But, because of our recent discovery of the need for some orthodontia in our family, the new-bike project had been put on hold. I was thinking, “I shouldn’t get a new bike anyway – I would probably drop it. I started out with a used bike, and never dropped it. Then the one time I did buy a brand-new bike – my Honda – I dropped it twice. Now I have a used bike again – the Sporty – and I’ve never dropped it.” So that’s what I get for taking pride in the fact that I’d never dropped the Picky Bitch! Apparently, she’s picky too about having her kickstand down as a condition for remaining upright!) *sigh*

Damage Control Update – the only damage was to the left rear turn signal lens and housing. The housing was slightly bent inward, which busted the lens. The filament inside the bulb was also broken off. The seat, miraculously, was not broken – just shifted which made it feel loose (I forgot that it’s not mounted with a bolt on the front, it’s mounted with a tab-and-slot system), so we tightened it back down and all is well. Hubby gently beat the signal housing back into shape with a ball peen hammer – if this had been a metric bike the housing would have been made of plastic and would have been shattered, so I’d have had to replace it. We had a bulb on hand, and I spent $5 on a new lens up at the dealership. Total cost to fix, $5 plus whatever we paid for that bulb awhile back. The housing still has a small scuff-mark, as does the butt-end of the clutch lever up on the handlebar, but that’s it. Did I mention how lucky I feel?

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