blog.mitza.net

East Bay Motorcycle Route

2012-03-29T15:36:00.001Z

This is a 1 day ride around the San Francisco East Bay hills.

Distance: 150 miles / 240 km
Duration: 5 hours
Difficulty: medium

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Death Valley Tour - Day 3

2012-03-18T12:00:00.000Z

The long way home. This was a hard day with 450 miles (over 700 km) and we caught rain, snow, hail, wind, below freezing temperatures, and all over again.

GPS route: kml / gpx

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Death Valley Tour - Day 2

2012-03-17T13:00:00.000Z

Day 2 of the Pashnit Death Valley Tour takes us into a big loop around Death Valley, starting with Scotty's Castle, to Shoshone for lunch, then back on Hwy 178 Badwater Rd.

We got rained on on the first half. Freezing cold on Dante's View Rd. Then amazing riding in the afternoon on Badwater Rd high speed sweepers.

Distance: 280 miles / 450 km
Duration: 1 day
Difficulty: medium
GPS route: kml / gpx

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Death Valley Tour - Day 1

2012-03-16T12:00:00.000Z

First Pashnit tour of the year. Over 1300 miles (2000 km) in 3.5 days.

Day 1 - Tulare to Stovepipe Wells.

Distance: 250 miles / 400 km
Duration: 1 day
Difficulty: mix of easy straights with difficult mountain passes
GPS route: kml / gpx

Roads:

99 South to Earlimart
East to Ducor
South on Old Stage Rd / Mt Rd 109
White River Rd into Glenville
155 East over the pass into Lake Isabella
178 East to Ridgecrest
Lunch
Continue 178 East to Trona
Trona Wildrose Rd
Panamint Valley Rd
190 East into Stovepipe Wells

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Death Valley Tour - The Road to Tulare

2012-03-15T06:35:00.000Z

This is the first motorcycle tour of the year. It's Pashnit's Death Valley Tour -- a premiere!
We start in Tulare, CA. But first we need to get there. The following is the map to Tulare, from the San Francisco Bay area.

Distance: 400 km / 250 miles
Time: 5 hours

This is the long way round: Hwy 9 to Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Hwy 129 to Hwy 101, Hwy 156 to Hollister, Hwy 25 to Hwy 198 to Coalinga to Hwy 99, and into Tulare, CA.

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Kawasaki Concours 14 Tire Pressure Monitor Sensor Battery Change

2012-03-08T01:30:00.000Z

My 2008 Kawasaki Concours 14 started displaying a warning recently: "Tire Pressure Sensor Battery Low". It usually only happened for a few minutes in the mornings, when tire was cold. After a few miles it went away and the reading was normal.

Anyway, I thought I would change it. The problem was the price of a new OEM sensor from Kawasaki ~$350. So I looked on the forums and I found a mod to change the sensor battery. There is one catch with this mod - on my bike model, the battery is glued to the contact pads. So I had to resort to actually forcing the old battery out and put the new one in.

The following describes the steps I took for this mod:

1. Take out the Tire Pressure Monitor Sensor from the wheel (I cannot do this at home, so I did it at my local bike shop when I replaced the tire). Also buy the new batteries, type CR2032 (approx $5).

2. Unscrew the back of the sensor. The screw is normally placed under a label, so first remove the label.

You need to use some weird screw driver head (TX-5) is the one I have in this image:

3. Once the lid is off, take out the electronics from the casing.

I used a sharp tweezers to take it out.

4. Now the delicate part: unglue the battery from the pads. I used a sharp pointed knife for this. Careful not to cut the pad contacts or yourself. Also remember which pad is which (+ vs -).

5. Put in the new battery. I did't have a battery holder, so I kind of made one myself. First I taped about 1/4 of the battery side to prevent a short-circuit from the - (negative) pad on the positive pole of the battery.

6. Insert the battery in between the two contacts.

7. Put one more layer of tape around and pads and battery. Just enough to hold it in place while you insert it into the casing.

8. Insert the electronics back into the casing. The battery will fit really tightly in its corner. Press it down to make sure it's all the way in.

9. Put the lid back on and make sure you have the yellow plastic protrusion actually pressing on the contact pad. This is what will keep the pads in contact with the battery. Screw the lid back in place.

Notice that this method is not using any soldering or special battery holder. Rather the contact is kept in place by pressure from the lid or centrifugal force.

I'm going to update how this mod works out for me. If all is good, I'll make the same for my other wheel.

Garmin Nuvi 1350 Lost Maps

2012-01-02T12:30:00.000Z

Today, my father's brand new (1 week old) Garmin Nuvi 1350 lost all its internals. This included the internal maps, voices, keyboards, vehicles, favorites, etc...

This is what I did to fix it:

1. The following will make sure you can communicate with the Nuvi device directly from the garmin.com website and also the Nuvi software is up to date:

Registered Nuvi device on garmin.com website
Installed Garmin Communicator Plugin (worked well in Firefox 8, but not in Chrome 16)
Installed software update on the Nuvi device

2. Install the maps:

Download and install Garmin Map Updater from garmin.com
Run the map updater and through it, download, prepare and install the maps you are entitled to on the Nuvi device

3. Install missing voices, vehicles, keyboards:

Download and install Garmin Web Updater from the garmin.com website
Run the Web Updater and select all keyboards, vehicles, voices, updates, FM traffic databases, etc that you need

Napa Valley Motocycle Day Trip

2011-12-26T12:00:00.000Z

This little tour takes you from San Francisco South Bay, where I happen to live, to the famous California Napa Valley and back, through roads such as Suisun Valley Rd, Wooden Valley Rd, Sage Canyon Rd, Chiles Pope Valley Rd, Butts Canyon Rd, Trinity Rd.

All in all is about 300 miles (480km) and I did it in about 8 hours at relative good pace with many stops. Most of the road is through the mountains (except highway bits) and includes large sweepers, so difficulty is intermediate. The last part on Trinity Rd is pretty goaty and it gives you a workout both physically and mentally, so difficulty is advanced.

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Santa Cruz Mountains Motorcycle Day Trip

2011-12-21T12:00:00.000Z

This is a short and sweet motorcycle mini-tour around California Santa Cruz Mountains. It's less than 4 hours (Google Maps estimate), but in fact in can be done in about 3 hours. The roads are hand-picked for their turns and twisties, so difficulty is intermediate-hard. Length: about 120 miles (200km).

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Bear Creek Rd
Jamison Creek Rd
Smith Grade Rd
Bonny Doon Rd
Swanton Rd
Cloverdale Rd
Pescadero Creek Rd
Alpine Rd
Page Mill Rd
Moody Rd

Southern California 2 Day Mini-Tour

2011-11-26T13:00:00.000Z

Day 1: Santa Clara - Pismo Beach (~450 miles / 11 hours)

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Day 2: Pismo Beach - Santa Clara (~260 miles / 8 hours)

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Places to see. Roads to ride.

2011-11-25T12:00:00.000Z

High Sierra Pashnit Tour Day 3

2011-09-18T12:00:00.000Z

Last day of the Sierra Nevada Pashnit tour took us from the West Walker Motel (in Walker, CA) to Georgetown, CA. We then continued a little tour to Quincy.

Roads followed:

Monitor Pass
Alpine Village
Hwy 88
Mormon Emigrant Trail
Silver Fork Rd to Kyburz
Hwy 50 West
Ice House Rd
Big Hill Lookout
Wentworth Springs Rd
Georgetown (Chinese restaurant lunch)
Hwy 193 West to Hwy 49
Hwy 89 to Quincy

Distance: 320 miles / 515 km
Duration: 8h30m
Difficulty: Super twisty
GPS Routes: kml / gpx

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High Sierra Pashnit Tour Day 2

2011-09-17T12:00:00.000Z

Day 2 of the Pashnit motorcycle tour Sierra Nevada. From Bridgeport to Walker taking passes Sonora and Ebbetts.

Roads:

Hwy 395 to Hwy 108
Sonora Pass Hwy 108
Middle Camp / Sugar Pine Rd
Big Hill Rd
Yankee Hill Rd into Columbia
Parrots Ferry Rd to Hwy 4
Ebbetts Pass to Hwy 89
Monitor Pass to Hwy 395
to Walker, West Walker Motel

Distance: 200 miles / 320 km
Duration: ~5h30m
Difficulty: Advances (super twisty)
GPS Route: kml / gpx

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High Sierra Pashnit Tour Day 1

2011-09-16T13:00:00.000Z

Day 1 of Sierra Nevada motorcycle tour. We officially started in Manteca and ended up in Bridgeport.

The roads we took:

Hwy 120 East to Hwy 108
La Grange Rd
Bonds Flat Rd
Hwy 132 to Coulterville
Hwy 49 (The Little Dragon) to Mariposa
Hwy 140 to Yosemite National Park (lunch at Ahwanee Restaurant)
Big Oak Flat Rd to Hwy 120
Tioga Pass to Mono Lake
Hwy 395 to Bridgeport

Distance: ~300 miles / ~500 km
Duration: 7 hours
Difficulty: Intermediate / Advanced (super twisty)
GPS Route: kml / gpx

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Day Trip to Hwy 25

2011-09-15T12:00:00.000Z

Motorcycle ride to Hwy 25, Holister to Hwy 198 then back.

GPS Route: kml / gpx

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Picking up Hans and Albert from San Francisco

2011-09-14T12:00:00.000Z

Going to SF to pick up Hans and Albert from Eagle Rider. Then we did a small motorcycle loop around the Peninsula, visiting Alice's Restaurant for lunch.

Distance: ~150 miles / 240 km
GPS route: kml / gpx

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Pashnit Grand Tour - Day 2

2011-09-03T12:00:00.004Z

http://www.pashnittours.com/tour_4.html

Approx: 300 miles, 11 hours

Part 1: Cambria - Forest Route 23S16

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Part 2: Forest Route 23S16 - Three Rivers

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Overnight in Comfort Inn, 40820 Sierra Drive, Three Rivers, CA. 559-561-9000

VMware (Player) Port Forwarding

2011-08-16T02:16:00.002Z

As I said in one of my previous posts, I _love_ VMWare Player (much more than its Workstation brother). There is no surprise, I want to have some neat port forwarding (from HOST machine to VMWare).

I found the following information on http://asunix.tufts.edu/howto/vmware/portforwardingWin7:

Step 0: If using VMware Workstation, continue to Step 1. However, if using VMware Player, you need to extract the `Virtual Network Editor' from the installer via the following command:

$> VMware-player-setup.exe /e .\extract

Go into `extract' -> `network' and copy `vmnetcfg' into the VMware Player directory before you use this tool. Once `vmnetcfg' is in the VMware Player folder, you can launch this tool to configure the NAT port forwarding.

Step 1: Open the Virtual Network Editor ( either from Workstation or launch `vmnetcfg' )

Step 2: Choose `VMnet8' from the interface list, change the Subnet IP at the bottom of the panel to `192.168.192.0' then and choose `NAT Settings...' from the VMnet Information panel.

Step 3: Ensure that the Gateway IP is set to `192.168.192.2' and then choose `Add' under the Port Forwarding panel.

Step 4: Fill in the port map information with the following data:

Host Port: 22

Type: TCP

Virtual machine IP address: 192.168.192.100

Virtual machine port: 22

Description: SSH

Step 5: Apply all settings and close out of the Virtual Network Editor.

Santa Cruz mountains route

2011-08-14T18:03:00.004Z

Redwood Retreat Rd (to Mt Madonna Rod) - closed, private with signs of no trespassing, but gorgeous drops, redwoods
Summit road - closed, private, unpaved portions, trespassing alerts, dirt, potholes

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Citate cu sens

2011-08-03T12:00:00.000Z

Urmatoarele sunt citate de pe http://2roti2picioare.blogspot.com. Mi s-au parut ca 'fac sens' asa ca le-am adunat aici:

"cu siguranta peretii ar spune multe povesti daca ar putea [..]. Gasesc semnaturi vechi si chiar fotografiez cateva din 1845. Este reconfortant de stiut ca eram cel putin la fel de prosti si atunci ca si acum. Macar nu ne-am tampit intre timp." - http://2roti2picioare.blogspot.com/2011/08/contraste-umane.html

"ne miscam foarte disciplinat, Pomo care conduce sirul merge regulamentar, depasim pe rand si refacem formatia, ascult “Bohemian Rhapsody” si ma gandesc ca, daca as vinde clipe din viata mea, astea ar fi foarte scumpe." - http://2roti2picioare.blogspot.com/2011/08/contraste-umane.html

Breaking-in my new front tire

2011-07-09T12:00:00.001Z

Got a new front tire - Bridgestone BT023-GT. Time to break it in. What a fantastic tire it is. I love the handling. It feels like it's a whole different bike.

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How to Increase VMWare Partition

2011-06-23T15:50:00.003Z

My latest hack is the following: I ran out of space on the C: partition on my VMWare image. Needed to add a few GB extra. My issue was that I only had VMWare Player and not the Workstation.

VMWare Player cannot perform the partition increase by default, so it needs to be helped (note that VMWare Player and VMWare Workstation cannot coexist on the same machine). I needed the following files from a VMWare Workstation installation:

vmware-vdiskmanager.exe
vmcryptolib.dll

Run vmware-vdiskmanager.exe inside VMWarePlayer folder (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player)

From here the steps were straight forward:

Convert the partition to be ‘single growable virtual disk’:

vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -r "C:\My Virtual Machines\Image\hdd1.vmdk" -t 0 "C:\My Virtual Machines\Image\hdd1Converted.vmdk"

Resize the virtual disk to new size (15GB max):

vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -x 15GB "C:\My Virtual Machines\Image\hdd1Converted.vmdk"

Launch the VMWare Image

Use a hard disk manager tool (e.g. “Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8.5 Server Edition”) to re-allocate all unused space in the partition to the given disk

Big Sur Route

2011-06-18T18:00:00.005Z

A little day trip to Big Sur.

- Santa Clara
- Gilroy
- Hwy 25 to Hwy 198
- Nacimiento-Fergusson Rd to Hwy 1
- Lunch in Nepenthe in Big Sur
- Return to Nacimiento-Fergusson Rd
- King City
- Greenfield
- Carmel Valley Rd to Monterey
- Hwy 1 to Santa Cruz
- Hwy 9 to Saratoga
- Back to Santa Clara

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Another variant including lunch in Cambria:

- Santa Clara
- Gilroy
- Hwy 25 to Hwy 198
- Nacimiento-Fergusson Rd to Hwy 1
- Hwy 1 South to Cambria
- Green Valley Rd to Paso Robles
- Indial Valley Rd becomes Peach Tree Rd
- Peach Tree Rd to Hwy 25
- Hwy 25 to Gilroy
- Hwy 101 to Hwy 85 to Hwy 87 to Hwy 280
- Back to Santa Clara

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And finally this is the route I took (with an overnight stop in Paso Robles to change the back tire) :)

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California Tours - 1

2011-06-15T07:00:00.003Z

Northern California tour thoughts:

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Pashnit Sierra Nevada Tour - Day 3

2011-06-12T18:00:00.000Z

Last day of the Pashnit Sierra Nevada tour.

Taking the long way home.

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