Mounting A Garmin GPS-60C On A Sportster

As I’ve been getting ready for this road trip one of the things I’ve been wanting to do is use my GPS, but putting it inside the map pocket of my tank bag just didn’t work. First off I had to look down in order to see it, thus taking my eyes off the road. It also got unacceptably hot in that pocket, to the point where I was worried that it’d be damaged after a full day’s ride.

So today I went down to Bass Pro Shops and picked up Ram MountsGPS-60C mount and a U Bolt adapter.

The GPS is now mounted on my handlebars just to the left of the speedometer and there are no visibility issues, either with the GPS or it blocking the view of the road.

CRABB 2005

Red’s annual birthday bash was this weekend and after getting back from getting the new tires on I hopped in the Jeep and drove on up.

The usual suspects were in attendance, including Redbeard Emeritus, Ghost, Yo Adrian!, Sam, Redbeard, Banker Bob, and Amada Hargis.

Yo Adrian! and I spent about three hours trying to get his GPS working with the mapping software, including a trip back to my house and one to Bass Pro Shops. He finally did get it going.

He also brought along some Cuban cigars and we enjoyed some Montecristos and Cohibas along with some good single malt scotch after the rain cleared off.

We finally turned in at around 3:30 in the morning after a full night of catching back up.

Morning came around too soon and we all parted ways for points elsewhere. Once again the time together was much too short.

There are some photos over at my gallery in the CRABB 2005 album.

Rain, Headphones, and Tires

The big job for this morning was to go down to Two Wheel World in Arlington to get new tires put on the Sportster. I’m planning on running Deal’s Gap in a couple weeks and have been thinking that if that isn’t a good excuse for new tires, I don’t know a better one. The weather was pretty bad all morning with rain coming in from the south and I hit the first patch of it at Grapevine Mills.

On the way down I got to really test the ER 6i‘s. At 80 mph I heard as little noise as with plain foam earplugs and didn’t have to turn the volume up at all. The sound level was exactly the same as when I was in the garage with the engine off.

The new tires are a matched set of Avon Venom X tires.

On the way home the sky opened up and I got to take it really easy, riding through 1/2 – 1 inch/hour rain on brand new tires. The good news is that the tank bag is waterproof and the Roady 2 worked splendidly in the wet weather. The bad news is that I got drenched and it’ll be a couple days before my boots dry out.

Cosmic Cafe

I went to Cosmic Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant on Oak Lawn just north of downtown Dallas, for dinner tonight. The food was a delicious mix of indian and southwestern vegetarian cuisine and was definitely on the spicy side. I had the veggie quesadillas which were delicious and delightfully spicy. The only down side to the meal was that the service was slow and a little spotty, but that could have been because I was sitting outside, away from the flow of traffic.

My Headphones Are In

The Etymotic ER 6i in-the-ear headphones that I ordered arrived today and I gave them a small lap around the block to test. They’re incredible. I actually had to turn the volume down because it was too loud! Tomorrow will be the real test though with my ride to get new tires.

Team America: World Police

If you’re a fan of South Park you’ll love this movie. Get the unrated, uncensored version to see a few extra scenes of simulated pupped sex that the MPAA deemed too much for us, even though they didn’t complain about a single scene of puppet violence.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone definitely keep their titles as some of this generation’s best satirists.

Wiring Up The Sportster

In preparation for the road trip I’ve been planning on bringin my GPS and my XM radio with me. In order to do this I needed to be able to convert the SAE plug on the battery tender pigtail into two lighter sockets. Thanks to the nice folks over at Powerlet Products I was able to get the cables I needed. The bike’s now wired for power and the GPS is in the tank bag. I’m still waiting on the headphones for the XM, but other than that everything’s ready.

More On The Hydrapak

I went over to REI on my lunch break in the hopes of picking up a right angle valve/connector for the bite valve on this Hydrapak. It turns out that Camelpack’s stuff won’t fit. They use different tubing diameters. Grrr. So I fell back to plan B and ordered straight from Hydrapak’s website.