Coast to Coast (and back?) with an Italian Supermodel

Just keep on man! More pics and updates!

I propose we move the philsophical debate aspect of this RR to another thread where it wont muddle the beauty of this RR. Thats just me though.

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You're in good company, my friend.

Agreed. More pics to come (NYC!).

Danny--that video is the perfect period to this portion of the thread. Thanks!

NYC Traffic

Are you going to White Castle to have some belly bombers, murder burgers? I grew up on them and really miss them don't be shy get 20-30 of them, but if you're new to them you might not want to venture to far from a bathroom the follwong day. Keep the RR coming!

Anti, I wasn't jumping your post, or you for that matter. I love this RR and the comments you have made about 'life'. Some people make choices based on fear and the unknown. Some of us run to the unknown smiley due to the fact that we know the 'known' and most of it sucks!

And your report on your 'supermodel'? When can we expect that? I'm interested since I just bought a new Ducati!

yeh man, I'd love to see yer Duc rolling down Lex! You see all kinds of exotica in midtown, some on four wheels, a lot on two legs, but not often on two wheels! Hope you had a chance to open that sucker up and wake up the joint....it could use some red Italian snarl!

Are you not allowed to lane split in NY? That distance wouldn't take much more than a minute if you could.

Slightly off topic but I'm sure many readers of your thread who aren't familiar with US road law/code would be interested - As it seems to change from State to State, how are you supposed to know each States individual laws? Do riders from other countries need to know this sort of detail?

Note the Google map is for Walking not Riding.....


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Yes, the Google Map is set on walking (though I think I was on my bike at the time). But make no mistake--several pedestrians were getting where they needed to go far faster than I was. Lanesplitting laws in the US are easy: you can only do it in CA. I've done it in other states, but the problem is if you get in an accident (which is highly possible, considering cars--even in CA--will intentionally cut you off or open their door in front of you. A buddy of mine (whom you will meet in VA) had a friend who was lanesplitting on the Bay Bridge outside SF. Two dudes in a cage thought it'd be funny to fuck with him and opened their door, causing him to crash. The dude got up, went over to their car and beat the shit out of them both. Lesson: you never know if that guy on the bike is a Navy Seal or not. (In this case he was.)

Anyhow--as long as your speed on the bike is no more than 15% of the speed of traffic while splitting, any fault or injury resulting from an accident will be the fault of the driver (in CA). In the rest of the states I've found that people react with far more hostility than they do in LA (where 1 in 10 cars will actually pull over to give you more space).

Here's what NY traffic is like, though (this isn't me)--and note, not all cops are as nice as this guy, but I found the cops who saw me lanesplit in NY didn't care at all:

Riding on the sidewalk in NY

MeinMotorrad--to further answer your question, other than lanesplitting, the laws in the US are all fairly uniform. A few minor differences/things you have to watch out for while going from state to state:

Street signs (the kind identifying the street you're on) are absent in a lot of states, making either GPS or getting lost mandatory.

In areas where it snows a lot (plows), there are often no white lines signifying a stop sign. While in PA (not on this trip) I found myself blowing through (or almost blowing through) stop signs. They have lots of trees that are not cut back, so the stop signs are nearly invisible, unlike the Western US where a stop sign is accompanied by lines signifying an intersection (and usually a big "STOP" painted on the ground). I quickly learned to be more vigilant while approaching stop signs.

In NY in some counties you can't make a right on a red. This was true in Montreal, too, and it simply makes no sense other than for petrol companies who benefit from lots of cars stopped idling for no reason. In all the rest of the states you can make a right on a red after stopping.

Radar Detectors: State by state. Most states allow them.

At least I completely understood, BUT IT IS better explained in this post! LOL
I personally wasn't being defensive and I believe I know a lot of my limitations..... I will never be a computer hacker, by the time I learn how, all computers will be obsolete!lol

I like it! A LOT!
They should play that video on MTV, TMZ and all those other shows that seem to make actors, musicians and other celebrities seem really important! LOL

NO! I forbid it!
I like the mix of the RR, philosophy and quotes, just keep the latter 2 to 15%.
I do think that your "Fuck it" attitude was a learned behavior, right?
There are a lot of outside influences that can shape one, was it one for you?
Spill the beans!
I know, I personally had lots of outside influences that made me miss some great opportunities, personal demons which took a few years to get over, human losses that shaped me, and little ones that make me more cautious......still I probably wouldn't change 99% of it, because it makes me who I am. I say 99% only because to me there is no absolute in life. Well maybe in math.lol

Never heard of the band or the song till this was posted. Cant stop watching it and feeling the sentiment now. 'Never let your fear decide your fate', Wise words......

Here goes. :)

The "Fuck it" attitude was literally learned--it came directly from studying rationalism (gotta love the irony). Specifically Cartesian rationalism. Exposure to Descartes&#8217; Principles of Philosophy really fucked me up, so to speak, and completely changed the way I viewed my own thoughts, beliefs and the world. Most know Descartes for the &#8220;Cogito ergo sum&#8221; (I think therefore I exist) argument, but what led him to that conclusion (and what it really means in context) is rarely discussed outside of the ivory tower. In summary, the statement is the end result of Descartes' efforts to arrive at absolute certainty. His attempt to find truth required the eradication of all beliefs based on sensory experience (the senses can be deceived) and then he continues to cast aside intellectual beliefs before arriving at the only single idea that we can be certain of: I think, therefore I exist. (Because the act of thought demands we exist and even if we were being deceived in to thinking we&#8217;re thinking we exist.)

It wasn&#8217;t the conclusion that really got to me&#8212;it was the idea that just because we think something or have ideas or opinions (even from direct experience) doesn&#8217;t make them true. So I began to systematically examine and tear down all of my own ideas that I had about the world. I dispensed with opinions about things I knew nothing about ("it&#8217;s dangerous in that city," for instance), and the end result was my head emptied. If I had a thought or an idea, I&#8217;d quickly trace back the history&#8212;and found that about 90% of everything I thought I knew was based on conjecture or second-hand information or my own plain stupidity. In the span of about a week I went from &#8216;knowing&#8217; something about everything to knowing nothing. (This is what I mean by &#8216;fucked me up&#8217;.)

As I ran these mental &#8216;inventories&#8217; I began to see a pattern&#8212;I knew the least about things that scared me. So if it frightened me I went out and did it. This is where the first form of the physical &#8216;fuck-it&#8217;/adrenaline junkie started. Things like mountain biking were insane ascents (2000&#8217; in 3 miles in the mud) or riding said mountain bike to SF and back after work (100 mile round trip). The more I did the more personal boundaries I pushed. I felt fucking alive! Even when I was had to sleep outside (lost and exhausted) or was doubled up with muscle cramps on some trail in the middle of nowhere, I&#8217;d never felt so alive. Happiness became finding an edge and pushing it. These types of situations gave me immediate and direct feedback about who I was, what I was capable of surviving and enduring--and provided me with an accurate mental landscape of what the world was really like.

The tests to 'get to know myself' continued with experiments that I called things that 'cultivated my will'. Exposure to cold, heat and various forms of deprivation taught me how far I can push myself into discomfort. In one particularly poignant exercise, after 3 days without sleep I stopped eating, just to see how long I could go with no nutrition. My intention was to run my body into the ground to get a baseline of my own limits and find out how long I can survive. On the 6th night my heart started &#8216;missing&#8217;, I felt like I was going to die and had to have my step mom drive me to the hospital. Got an IV for the dehydration, antibiotics for the strep throat and a warning from the ER Doc to knock it off. But since then whenever I get a little hungry or think of how tired I am I know it&#8217;s just a suggestion from my body, not a mandate. (Cross country on a Panigale seems easy in comparison, no?) Shootfighting and kickboxing, Ironman&#8212;all of these accomplishments were all a physical test of a philosophical idea and a desire to live in &#8216;truth&#8217;, to not deceive myself according to what is comfortable and what&#8217;s not. (While taking ice-cold showers I used to tell myself 'the rider is not responsible for the shivering of his horse' .)

That &#8216;fuck-it&#8217; attitude is a way (maybe the only?) of discovering what&#8217;s real and what&#8217;s possible. I pushed myself the same way mentally and academically, artistically and occupationally as I did physically. (Pic below, btw, demonstrates what you can accomplish over 5 nights of 'enforced insomnia'.)



It&#8217;s exceptionally uncomfortable to challenge yourself over and over and over. Your ego goes to shit as you test what you think you know and who you think you are. But after doing it over the period of years a sort of innocent fearlessness and a curious insensitivity to adversity develops; and the ability to engage the environment in uncomfortable--even abnormal--ways, produces a version of the world that very few feel, see or experience.

I like it! New sig line

Great RR! The AWOL Nation song & Iced T philosophy vid made me think of this vid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWfph3iNC-k&sns=em

Went into NYC to visit a friend the second or third night I was here. I really expected to have a lot of fun bombing around the city on the Panigale, even though it was raining. And the streets were looking fairly traffic-free when I got in.





Unfortunately once I found the way to where I was going, traffic was awful. And it started pouring. Hate to bring up the topic again, but in SF (or Rome even) there's a hell of a lot of cars, but there's FLOW. NY is like Boston--you go block to block if you're lucky. Most often you're just sitting behind parked cars (from 3-7pm).

I'd called around to parking garages in advance. Showed up at one that accepted bikes only to discover the "NO MOTORCYCLES" sign. I went into the office to see if I couldn't park in one unused corner or another....only to find out that yes, they do have motorcycle parking--by the month. They wouldn't let me park in a car spot and they wouldn't let me just pay for a night in one of the monthly motorcycle spots. Assholes....it probably took me 20 minutes just to get to the damn garage and then another 10 minutes arguing back and forth.

After several more calls I found a garage a mile away that verified they had hourly moto parking. Another 20 minutes later I was finally in a $50 per night space. (Yeah.)

Clearly having a motorcycle in NYC sucks. There are places to park outside, but after seeing some dude in an S Class Mercedes literally bash his way into a spot too small for him (along with all the bike theft warnings I received), $50 was cheaper than whatever deductible I'd have to pay in the morning to come out and find my bike gone or on its side.



Friend Julia lives right near the new World Trade Center:


After a pour of white whiskey, we took the subway (which, compared to BART in the Bay Area was spotless and clean) to DO Hwa.





DO Hwa is Quentin Tarantino's Korean restaurant in the West Village. I was expecting it to be more fusion than Korean, but it was fairly legit. No mangoflower infused Bulgoki filet, no kimchee made with fried acorn squash spears. And since we were basically on a Tarantino set, we went for the carnage of meat experience (this was the first half).



Can't eat grilled beef without sharing a bottle of dericiuus soju:

Wow...just....



wow. I'm speechless. :eek1

Wow...just....

+1

I've felt what he is talking about many times, but what is really baking my noodle at the moment is his stunning ability to express it accurately.

I more or less accidentally ended up in Manhattan with the family one time on a Sunday. I was surprised that the streets were practically deserted. (We had parked on Staten Island and taken the ferry--parking and ferry free on Sunday!) I could have easily driven anywhere. Maybe it was a fluke, but if I go back I'll make it on a Sunday. And I, too, was impressed with the subway. I usually hate big cities and crowds, but we had a blast in Manhattan. (Chicago is the only other city I would choose to go into, but all the museums near Grant Park make up for the hassle--Art Institute, Field, Science and Industry.)

Cheers,

Mike