Cheshire: the collective noun for sidecar motorcycles (alternately known as “hacks”) owing to the extraordinarily high probability of generating smiles in the people they pass relative to all other vehicles.
Usage:
“Upon encountering a cheshire of sidecars one should strongly consider playing the lottery.” or “Wow! There goes a cheshire of hacks.”
We rode the Trans-Massachusetts-Trail yesterday. A series of dirt roads starting at the border of Connecticut and Massachusetts and working its way north to route 2 where it meets up with the start of the Puppy Dog Trail, which winds its way north all the way to the Canadian border (we’ll be doing that one shortly). Near the end of the trip we stopped for a break in the woods to address the “call of nature” and grab a snack.
Today, my last day, started off about a third of the way across New York in Arkport and found me riding through another cloud. This one was just enough to shorten visibility and mist up your visor. Not like the one in Wyoming which left everything dripping. After a while I made my way past the hills that bounded it and found bright blue skies with sunlight streaming down.
I was excited. “I’m going home!” I thought, but the closer I got to home, the more I didn’t want to arrive. Even taking the Mohawk Trail on the way back through Massachusetts didn’t lift my spirits. In the end, it just didn’t feel like a homecoming. I love seeing Boston’s skyline come up over the horizon after being away. It’s always made me think “ahh, home” before. Today though, I just thought… “Maybe I should have kept going to California…”, and “I don’t want this to end.”
Motorcycling is a lot like boating. You can get yourself a dingy that’ll get you around the bay for pretty cheap, but it doesn’t have much in the way of features, and if a big wave comes along you’re going to drown because you don’t have a life preserver. As with boats, the price range (for bikes and gear) goes from cheap and affordable to mind-bogglingly expensive.
There are a few contenders when it comes to High-Viz motorcycle vests, Olympia, Icon, and FieldSheer are the main ones, and all meet military specs for on-base riding. Of those only the Olympia Nova and the Icon Mil Spec are available in bright yellow. If you haven’t seen the yellow in person I have to tell you that photos don’t do it justice. This stuff is so bright it makes you wonder if you’d still be able to see if you turned out the lights. The orange is, well… orange.
You’d think it’d be a non-issue, but it is. In fact, it can be a real pain in the ass. Sometimes they simply don’t register. You’d think they’d just wave you through since it’s not your fault, but frequently they’ll make you pay, and digging your money out of a riding suit can be a major hassle, especially if you thought you weren’t going to need it. So, if you’re riding a motorcycle and have an E-Z Pass / FastLane transponder. Here’s how to use it without headaches.
I
love this city and I thought it would be interesting to see what I could
see when the roads weren’t clogged with cars… Overall rating: 2
1/2 stars (out of 5). It’s interesting but not very relaxing. Don’t get
any ideas about attempting this during the day either. The traffic would
be evil. The
Route
Note: I’d actually recommend going to the end of Storrow Drive and
following the curve around as it becomes the start of Memorial Drive but
I couldn’t convince Google Maps to do that. All said, it’s about 20
miles, and a little over an hour of driving. What you’ll encounter:
New motorcyclists tend to spend most, or all, of their pennies on their new bike without considering, or perhaps realizing, just how much it’s going to cost to protect themselves on the bike. Of course, having just bought the bike, there’s no way they’re not going to ride it…. While I covered the items you’ll want to keep you safe in “So you want to ride a motorcycle… and not die” I didn’t cover what it would cost. Afterwards I figured it would be useful to put together a list of your basic safety items, and what you can expect to pay for them, so that new riders can plan accordingly. I’m mostly just going to be using low end prices, the cheapest you can get away with and still be safe. You can easily pay many times more for most of these items from different manufacturers.
Lets be totally clear here. The statistics say that your are roughly as likely to get in an accident while driving a motorcycle as you are while driving a car. The obvious difference being that a car has a safety cage, and a motorcycle has, well… nothing. So, if you have a brain, you’re going to want to take steps to compensate for that missing safety cage. There’s no guarantee any of this will keep you from dying but it’ll seriously increase your chances of survival. For some quick & easy to digest stats on motorcycle safety check out the Gear Up! Project
