Wherever I May Roam - One Woman Livin' on a DR650

Of course, most of us would concur with Fey... we are all creative human beings who largely discovered parts of our buried souls through living two shared passions: motorcycling and travel.

When y'all have time on a rainy day, watch this BBC documentary about the rise of Consumerism as a form of social control, you will understand why we feel the way we do:

Century of the Self

This is a smart four part documentary series that begins at the end of WWI and wraps up in the modern era at the beginning of the Clinton Administration. The first half focuses first on the work of the nephew of Sigmund Freud who applied his famous uncle's research to create the new industry of Public Relations which was founded on the effectiveness of Propaganda during Wartime. The second half illustrates how the people in the West have largely imbibed the Psy-Ops cool-aid to no longer require the threat of punishments, merely the idea of rejection works to keep us in line.

To Corporations, Banks, World Leaders, we are not even viewed as slaves so much as beasts of burden on a yoke, to be controlled and manipulated for their ends. The sad part is we believe ourselves free human beings. Few are, even if we see what's going on. Many people in the South knew the system was corrupt before Civil Rights movement but lacked the courage to fight Slavery or Segregation because the system seemed to big, too strong. "Freedom," was the final cry when they could take no more and arose en-mass.

To be free requires action, the sort of stepping away from the "norms" when they are insane; the kind of life that Fey has chosen.

Watch the documentary and see if you disagree.

Thank you - I will watch that maybe on tomorrow's rainy day. Today's rainy day had my out in a feeder band of tropical storm Isaac for an early morning 210 mile DR650 ride , Tomorrow and Monday are gonna be worse, so... perfect time to watch vids.

I can't completely agree that all things that seem to control us (tax breaks for the married for example) were meant to control us, instead of being legislated in earnest, but such things seem to control nonetheless.

Smaller is better, bigger is toxic. For a brief synopsis of where all that "stuff comes from,
http:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8
Well worth a watch, shorter than 1/2 hr. sitcom. "ricky

Or even this non-motorcycle related think piece...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygV25ny5riw

:huh

Thanks for the link Ed. I've made two hours of it and it's quite interesting.

The best RR's on ADV are usually slightly off the wall from folks who are doing things we think about but never seem to get around to. They have an ability to take life as it comes and go for it. One that comes to mind was the lady from the northwest (a firefighter if I remember but her name/handle escapes me. SunnySideUp maybe?) who went to south america with three friends and through various incidents ended up doing the trip alone. She had an incredible soul and outlook that shone through the whole adventure. It wasn't just riding from point a to point b and it added so much to the read.

So let your freak flag fly and give us the full dose. It's good to experience things different from oneself.

John

I should probably stop rambling, because people are here for the RR, not Fey's Philosophy.


Please don't. I am enjoying all of it.

subscribed

In!!!

Feyala
That is a long hike I hope everything is good. You have a style of writing as well as your way of looking at life. I hope to read many more of your posts.

Thanks

Brian

"I should probably stop rambling, because people are here for the RR, not Fey's Philosophy".

Nothing wrong with your philosophy. I retired from corporate America a couple of years ago....maybe too soon, but don't give a damn. Semi-retired now & working for myself. I may not have as much money, and the benefits sure suck, but I am happier and far more free. We get sucked in by money and benefits, and then held in the trap by possessions. Before we know it, twenty years have slipped away.

You are thinking straight and have a good attitude. I hope you find a balance in your life that you are happy with.

BTW........nice report

Hey Fey! Did ya sell everything yet? Hope things are all right and that you can hit the road again soon

Fey - Excellent R&R. Been a while since your last update so I hope everything is OK.
I'm in.

I agree whole heart about the way you see life and how to experience it ..how someone stays on the same job for the same company for 30 years is something I could never do .
I feel I missed somethings at home but was able to scratch that ich in my heels by driveing a truck for 30 years ..changeing jobs every 4 years or so when I would be tired of dealing with the same crap every day .
so I d be off to find some new crap to drive for
but being in the great outdoors and experienceing the seasons change before my eyes smelling the smells and meeting the people in every state tasteing the foods they eat the only part I missed was the being on a bike with the wind in my face .
I am retired and catching up on the road trips I missed one piece at a time ..I go for days without wearing a watch something I thought I would never do isn`t it great to not really give a damn what time it is .

Spent the day with Fey in Corvallis Oregon. We replaced the steering head bearings and welded mounting brackets on the new skid plate her friend made for her. We got the skid plate bolted on but were a few bolts short of finishing the task so used zip ties for her ride north to her home.

I'm waiting for her to post her pictures from today.

Here are the two pictures I took.





Thanks for getting us dinner (pizza).
Dave

I love your ride report and all that goes with it. And, that philosophy! Now that's word for word what I feel pretty much.....thanks much for taking all of the time that it surely takes for writing this up. It's super-cool.

Gary "Oldone"

Grampa’s Lake Superior Ride
Grampa’s National Monument Ride

I had a wonderful time with that darn kick stand switch too, every time it would rain the bike would stumble, like it was missing....came to find out that when the switch got wet, it was cause a quick short to the engine and tried to stop it.....got that POS out of the loop and all has been good since.....BTW it was on a DR-Z 400.

Good luck!

Hey guys, no, I'm not dead, just been doing more prep work. Thanks for the support! I will respond individually as I have been when I get a bit more time.

In the past few days, Dave (Hi Dave!) was awesome enough to help by welding up the bash plate Oz made (the old aluminum one broke all its mounts), and helping with the steering head bearings, Ed was kind enough to teach me how to change the brake fluid and assist with the front wheel bearings, kickstand switch, and chain guide. Thanks guys!

It's getting pretty dialed in now, I gotta paint the fairings (bike is going to be green!), finish attaching the mermites to the rack, add some hardware that I already have (handles, hinges, hasps), paint the bash plate with truck bed liner so it reflects slightly less noise. I need to get the hasps keyed alike so I don't get confused which key goes where, visit a cobbler to re-sole my boots, blah blah blah. Million tiny little projects, and everything seems to take twice as long as I think it will and cost twice as much. I am very eager to get out of here.

Sorry this all is taking so long, I guess people usually do this sort of thing before they quit a job and start their adventure so you don't see as much of it, unfortunately for you all I'm doing it in the middle so you'll have to suffer through some posts about it!

I have the next seven or so posts written, but I'm still stumbling over that video - I'll spend a couple hours futzing with various software, and then give up and go do something else. If I can't figure it out in the next few days, I might just break chronology and add the video later in the interest of getting things done. I need to get this thing up to date before I leave. I would say there are another 6 or so posts to write to bring it current, and I need to resize and choose a couple hundred photos.

It will be interesting to see how well I can keep this up on the road. I bought a bluetooth flexible waterproof keyboard thing that will work with my droid, so it's a bit more like a tiny laptop now...

Why not sign up to a free account with photobucket? You can upload your 100 pictures with their bulk uploader in about 5 to 15 minutes {depending on connection} and then link them into your posts {very quick}... The bonus with this method is your photos get automatically resized and end up being a lot larger than the images you are posting now...

I run my own web server (I am a nerd), so I don't really need the hosting space. I've seen a number of older pages that have used photobucket for hosting and the photos just aren't there anymore, I'm not sure if this is because the owner has removed the photos or if photobucket just drops things that aren't used after a while. I also don't like blank images with "bandwidth exceeded". Plus, I like the control that only running your own stuff can provide, not having advertising on galleries, and not needing to worry about somebody else's terms of service. I subscribe to the theory that if you aren't paying for a service, you're the product, not the customer, and I've seen similar sites that reserve the right to appropriate your photos for whatever use they deem fit (such as their own advertising, or for their "partners" to use).

I tend to resize my images down because there's only so many usable pixels that come out of my droid's camera, due to the small sensor, but they like being able to advertise that it's an 8mp camera, so you end up with huge useless files. It'd be one thing if I had a DSLR and it was 2-3 megs of print-quality beauty per photo, but I'd rather scale things based upon how decent they look at 100% and how many details they contain - gorgeous landscapes get a larger final size than a grainy photo of bike repair.

I probably won't have time for that aspect on the road, so I'll probably do a bulk resize on the droid before I put them up on the server, which automatically generates the thumbnails (what you see in the posts). You can click on any of the thumbnails and get a much larger version of any image, which I like - people don't have to wait 5 minutes for this thread to load, less work for the server. I then tell wordpress to crosspost to my livejournal, and take the generated html there, clean up the code a bit, and post it here. It sounds like a lot of steps, but it's pretty effective and usually doesn't take more than 10 minutes to make sure everything looks kosher elsewhere once the wordpress entry is finished. I will probably write a php script to clean up the code for me, or to provide me with an ADV-friendly version so I can cut time that way.

The time taken for photos is mostly in selecting the right one - I will frequently take 5-6 pictures of something if I think it's awesome, and then I have to figure out which one looks the best. I take into account the crispness of the lines, how grainy it is, whether it conveys the right mood, and the composition. Sometimes I'll use a photo that is slightly worse technically, but which contains a fun aspect the other photos don't. Most of the photos don't come out as well as I'd like, which is why I take multiple, there are no manual settings on the droid so I'm stuck with whatever it thinks is best. Since I have access to a PC currently, sometimes I will fix the contrast. Sometimes I find photos of something I forgot to mention in the entry, and then I have to write more. Eventually the entry shapes up how I want it and it gets posted up. I'd say each image probably takes less than a minute to decide on, fix, and upload, but it's still a considerable time investment when trying to catch up 12+ entries like I'm doing. It will be easier when I only have to do a day or two at a time.

I would say that I probably spend more time editing than writing or putting the photos up combined, reading through each entry multiple times, catching typos, improper grammar and my weird verbal tics. If I was to upload my first draft and whatever random photos, an entry would probably only take me about 20 minutes, but I'd be a lot less happy with the quality. We'll see how that plays out with a smaller screen and less patience!

Thankfully, time is the one thing I have plenty of!

As a sidenote, if people would like larger thumbnails, I can easily accommodate that! I just don't want to clog things up, I know not everybody's on broadband...

Love the inside scoop on how to put together an awesome ride report! I welcome hearing about all the prep that goes into getting a bike road ready. Looking forward to more Feyala!