How could I forget the motorcyces?

In the rush of things to do when setting up a new account, I somehow completley forgot to add motorcycles as an interest. Given that I am from the elsewhere lands of Canada where it freezes 6 months out of the year, I guess that is a forgivable sin in January. But I moved to Vancouver Island in May and have repeatedly marvelled at the year-round riding here, so it is still weird that bikes aren't near the top of mind.

I have only been riding since 2020, but I have had four motorcycles so far:

I started out with a 750cc 2007 Honda Shadow ACE (American Classic Edition which was deliberately designed to look bigger than it is to compete with the Harleys of the day). I outgrew that one in a year. I do not have a picture of that one.

Then a 1997 Honda Valkyrie which is an absolutely amazing bike with a 6-cylinder flat engine rather than the very common V-Twin engine seen on most bikes. They went out of production in 2003 except for a single 2014 (ish?) modernization that failed to inspire because they ditched the bad ass hulking look of it. I had to let this one go because bikes that old just need too much maintenance and I had neither the money, skills, nor the garage to maintain it.

 

Next was a 2011 Kawasaki Vulcan Nomad 1600cc cruiser. That is a really nice bike and is very common on the steets. Its main identifying characteristic is side-opening saddle bags, although the 1500cc has those too. I sold that one because the pre-1700cc Nomads have notoriously rattley engines and while I am not autistic, I do have almost zero tolerance for noises like that so I was never able to actally enjoy the ride. I did a run from Nova Scotia to Ontario one year, though, and it performed well.

Today I have another Nomad, a 1700cc from 2011. That is about 103 cubic inches (for you imperialists) and has a dry weight of over 800 lbs. It is a heavy bike and I have had it the longest of all - about 3 years. I got it with 9,000kms on it and it has 25,000 today. I love this bike, but it is heavy and I am not a spring chicken any more so there may come a time when I have to let it go based on weight alone.

I also have an ebike that is a lot of fun to boot around on, but nowhere near as excting.

OK, now you are caught up on the motorcycles!

The amazing BeeperBerry that I use totally incorrectly.

I was chatting with someone today and mentioned that one of my home lab tools is a “BeeperBerry”. I’m not sure how many people know what that is, but essentially it’s a little Linux SOC with a Blackberry keyboard.

It was originally developed for Beeper which is a unified messaging system, but that is not very interesting to me so I use it as a pocket computer.

It doesn’t have cellular so I plan to get a USB dongle for that one day, but it has wifi so that’s good enough these days. Even my iPhone can make a hot spot for it if I’m not within wifi range.

The case was 3D printed for me by a friend. It’s not perfect but it’s hella better than wandering around with a bare SOC and battery dangling off it.