Cover up (11/22/23 Wed)

I've been home almost a month. How did I transition back to normal life after touring all summer (a full 1/3 of calendar year 2023)? Don't ask me, I know zero "normal people" and have never been accused of being normal. My normal resembles what most would consider obsessing over something or other.

During my first week home made worked on my bike problem, and also photographed and listed my touring gear. The Deconstruct of my worn, bike and touring gear was already posted. Unfortunately the bike problem remains.

The first sign of this problem occurred just west of Denver, CO. After cresting a 11,500 foot peak on the highway I started heading down hill, the engine then bogged down, bucked a few times and could not remain running. Through moderate traffic I coasted to the roadside, suspecting I was now dead on the road with an electrical or fuel pump failure. The bike engine turned over, sometime starting, but just would not stay running. Pausing to consider my options while I still had battery power. Thinking back to a prior trip and my friend Rob's DL650, perhaps my bike just has a fuel vapor lock. The test was easy, just vent the fuel tank (opened the cap), and restart. After a few attempts, the bike stayed running, as long as I kept it throttled up into it's new goldilocks rev range. Continuing down the hill, it bucked during the next couple miles but then ran OK. I had less than 100 miles of range left on that tank, when this began, and used half of that before refueling. Once filled I had no further problems until the range indicated about 80 miles remained. Common characteristics of: a lack of power, not wanting to idle, and triggered by a near empty gas tank or altitude. That leans me to diagnose it as a fuel supply or quality problem. Once again I filled the tank from a more reputable gas station brand. Plus added a car sized bottle of fuel treatment over the next few tanks of gas. The lack of symptoms that followed convinced me to chalk if off as a tank of bad gas. After being dormant more than a week, it re-appeared in heavy rush hour traffic outside of New York City. Further testing revealed it probably never truly went away. It's just uncommon for me to push the bike hard enough to experience it. I made it home fine, but was uncompetitive in the interstate racing circuits. Passing trucks on hills required some forethought. Slow passes induce rode rage in the speed freaks who orbit major metropolitan areas. Luckily my late night return helped. Allowing me to see their approach and strategically time my escape from being lane trapped behind slow truck traffic.

By my return in late November the motorcycle riding season is long over for most New England riders. Often I ride each year until my gravel access to paved roads "ices up". The bike I've been riding was parked in the garage a few days ago with a little over 53,000 miles on the odometer. In mid-December of 2021 it was parked with 700 miles on that odometer, when the path out to pavement received ice that lasted until spring. In the spring of 2022 I was very eager to ride my "new bike". To start preparing it for my August 2022 two week Newfoundland trip. I currently lack any compelling destinations to keep me riding up to the last few days of the season. In prior years I would ride to work, now only a walk across my bedroom to the computer. At this time other "work" takes priority over bike maintenance, since I now have all winter to sort out the bike.

My effort to sort out the bike began by ensuring that I had all the worn items on hand. Another set of new Anakee Adventure tires was ordered to replace the third pair this year that I have worn flat and smooth. My garage was stocked with: a new chain, sprockets, brake pads, brake fluid, oil, oil filters, spark plugs, and an air filter. Air filters are not something I normally stock, so I ordered one with my tires. Putting the new filter away revealed the one I already had. My maintenance log confirmed that I NEVER changed my air filter after Alaska. So the air-filter was now replaced at 52,000 miles, and I expected the full throttle bog down would be resolved. It wasn't. Next I changed the oil and filter. The oil filter had gone 10,000 miles, the oil only 5,000. Neither of these restored the bike to a condition it would accept full throttle. Fuel injector cleaner was then added to a full tank of premium fuel. Followed by a series of multi-day breaks and short rides to confirm it's not yet 100%. Possibly improving, but I don't feel it has been resolved. Next attempts will include inspecting: the spark plugs, fuel pump volume, and the in-tank pre-pump fuel filter.

So what did I do the other three weeks? Road repairs, spent time with my wife, roasted and brewed many single cups of coffee. None of which I have I perfected yet.

Exploring book publishing tools consumed the majority of my time. When my position was eliminated in April, I decided to blog and capture fodder for a book. After not finding a decent blogging platform I pivoted my winter goal from book writing website development. Setting up a quick website to capture my trip data. Post riding season I could then develop it into the web platform I really wanted. I surprised myself by getting a crude but viable mapping tool online with a weeks work at home between trips. My intention was to return home in October and continue my work on that map, extending the website and updating the data with tracks and photos from my last trip.

However, while I was away, Anne filled her spare time working on a project of her own. She wrote a story about her wild mustang horse, and how he came to be a part of her life. Without a loving husband to disuade her, she did all the work required for a book. Intending the book proceeds going to support the wild horse sanctuary efforts. Once involved I took every opportunity to push the idea of an EBook over printing paper books. I envisioned a $10,000 expense for cases of stockpiled books we would periodically ship to the sanctuary store in South Dakota to match a low sales demand. Contrast that with an epub that could be easilly downloaded for a low sales price and near zero expense, accumulating funds without expensive book shipping. Anne is willful and had all summer to gain momentum directed at a printed book. She even had an appointment scheduled with a publisher, so we both went.

I was wrong. Through her contacts, Anne discovered a local publishing company where printing a trilogy does not equal the cost a new car. They typeset with open source software and have developed all of the other contacts necessary. I now believe we could have a first run of books for close to $500. So I climbed aboard Anne's moving train and learned to typeset her book in Scribus. Then explored generating it as a PDF and epub3. Of course I also looked into creating an epub book from my web content. Within a few weeks time I was able to typeset a printed book, and auto-generate PDF and epub3 books directly from my website content. Now if only I had website content that was worth reading. I'm not naive enough to think what I have is even close, but at least I have the backend sorted out now.

While making book covers I found myself generating a map so large it deserved a globe, not just a simple flat map. A quick check revealed that the Leaflet web mapping tool on my website does not support mapping to a globe. So I looked into another one that does called CesiumJS. A half week of work later and I now have a prototype displaying my data mapped on a globe. Over the remainder of that week my Leaflet code was reworked to make my generated data sources compatible. Eventually it should be possible to setup either a Leaflet or CesiumJS view for maps on the website. My Leaflet prototype has more functionality than shown yet on this website. The most interesting part of the Leaflet prototype was re-living my photos precisely located on a topographic map. Now I can say that it's even better with the CesiumJS prototype when viewed with OpenGL rendered 3D terrain. Here's a quick example screenshot.