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Monthly Archives: May 2014

Of Dust Bowl Okies and Hot Biker Mommas

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That picture of me is the last time I was cool.  And I don’t mean James Dean cool.

Turns out, James Dean was killed not far from Paso Robles, where Route 46 and Route 41 intersect.  The Texaco station at the intersection of Route 46 and Route 33 has the whole story.  They say it was the last place he stopped before his wreck.  They also have a re-created Dust Bowl truck in a display among the pistachios, walnuts, and maple-covered almonds.  They found it somewhere, cleaned it up, added the utensils and other items the Okies carried, and brought it into the store.  They even had a picture of the same truck to guide their efforts.

Looking over the old truck and reading about the difficulties the people fleeing the Dust Bowl endured, I felt like a wimp for whining about the harsh suspension and non-existent wind protection of my Softail Custom.  They even had a statue of Grannie holding a plate of cookies.  She would have made a good biker Momma.

Missus Fender Bunny is a good biker Momma, too, though I’m not 100% certain that’s what she aspires to.  Why I subject her to such abuse I’ll never know.  I’ll ask my priest, if he’ll still speak to me.

It was 108 when we got to Baker, California.  When she pulled off her helmet, I could see that she was suffering from heat exhaustion.  We got in the shade and sipped a little warm water.  Wet her scarf and put it over her head.  After a while we went inside to enjoy the A/C.  You have to be judicious with the A/C, or when you walk back out, it feels like a furnace.  After a while she started looking better, so she stood up, clapped her hands, and bought a can of Red Bull.

When we got back on the bike it was 109.  Did I mention that she has relatives in Oklahoma?

We rode from San Simeon to Las Vegas in just under 12 hours.  Total mileage was 420 miles, more or less.

GiG

 

Cruising the Pacific Coast Highway

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Riding the PCH would be a sportbiker’s dream if you weren’t afraid of flying off the edge of the road and plummeting to your death against the rocks a thousand feet below.  That’s a lot of time to think.  And wonder, as you spin around the bike and the bike around you, whether you still have a chance to make it, and whether that tiny chance could be increased by landing with the bike beneath you or, since it’s likely to explode in a yellow ball of skin-searing flame, whether you should push it away from you now, while you still have a chance to land a prudent distance from it.  In the end you don’t push it away from you, because holding on to anything, even a motorcycle tumbling through the air, is more comforting than facing a horrifying death alone.  Which makes you wonder, the last instant before you hit the rocks, whether there is indeed a God, and whether he is kind enough to forgive you for not having believed in him.  Or Her.  It had better not be a Her on account of that Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned thing.

No, the PCH is best taken at a measured pace.  So you can stop and enjoy its hidden treasures, like the cove in the picture above.  And take the time to thank God for making Her world such a pretty place.  Just in case.

GiG

Ride to the Sun Reunion – Death Valley

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I left Stovepipe Wells at 5:50 am.  I had to cover 500 miles, so I promised myself I wouldn’t stop for pictures.

I had taken a bunch on the way in, anyway, including the one of the Devil’s Cornfield, above.  The cornfield lies at 150 feet below sea level, and the road keeps going downhill from there.

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The road from Stovepipe Wells heads more or less West, and straight up.  Stovepipe Wells is at sea level.  If you get there from the East, like I did, you’ll get to almost 300 feet below sea level.  I couldn’t stop imagining whales and schools of yellow fin swimming in the air over my head.

tollroad_smAnyway, once you leave Stovepipe Wells and head West just after the toll road in the pic, it’s straight up.  No curves.  Just up.  Until you hit 4500 feet above sea level.  At which point, if it’s 6:00 am, you realize how cold it is.  I stopped and put on some warm gear.

Turns out, Death Valley is actually two valleys.  Once you get up to the top of the West valley, you get to go down it.  It is blessed with a 9% grade.

You’re probably not that interested in the algorithm for calculating the amount of fuel left in a Harley’s gas tank, but to give you a rough idea, when I hit the top of the ridge between the valleys, my gauge indicated 72 miles left in the tank.  Five miles later, when I hit the bottom of the second valley, I magically had 113 miles worth of fuel.

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The road leading out of the second valley is a sportbiker’s dream.  Beautiful curves.  But I was distracted by the vistas.  The sun was peeking over the East ridge, lighting up just pieces of the landscape around me, leaving others dark.  To make it even more interesting for somebody who hadn’t sworn off photography for the day, the sky to the West was dark grey.  So the sun lit up the desert in front of me, making the Joshua trees pop.  It was gorgeous.

I wasn’t able to post last night because here, in Silicon Valley, the wifi is slower than in the middle of Nowhere, Utah.  The farmers in Wenatchee ship their best apples to other states, where they’re more precious.  I suppose Silicon Valley exports most of the broadband it grows, too.

Total distance 524 miles, including about 30 extra because somebody missed a turn.  Elapsed time: 11 hours.  Will post more about Zion and other parts of the trip when I can find some bandwidth.

GiG

Ride to the Sun Reunion – Red Canyon

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Dirt bike?

I don’t need no stinking dirt bike.

Cabin Hollow, near the West entrance to Red Canyon on Route 12.

Day 3 had some spectacular scenery, so I may have to post a few blogs about this portion of the ride.

I left Tropic at a leisurely 10:30 after doing a little email for work.  You can’t go dark at work nowadays.  Things move too fast and it’s just too painful to catch up when you get back.

This detour to Cabin Hollow was cool.  I took lots of detours today.

Total mileage, about 150, though I’m not sure because I forgot to set my odo.  Elapsed time from Tropic to Zion: 7 hours, mostly because I stopped to take so many pictures. Will post more pics in the morning.

GiG

Ride to the Sun Reunion: Tropic, Utah

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Day Two.

380 miles.

300 of it into some of the strongest headwinds I’ve faced yet.

After 6 hours my neck, shoulders, and forearms were burning.  Tough riding conditions have a way of making me reflect …

It was late afternoon and hot in Nebraska. I was baked, parched, burned, annoyed, and worn out.  I pulled off the road at an intersection of two country roads, mine going North-South, the other one East-West.  I took off my helmet and gloves, and shed my jacket.  I had one bottle of water left, and I was going to slowly pour it over my head and let it run down my chest and back, down my pants, and into my boots.  Biker air conditioning.

vulture2_smWhile I was unscrewing the bottle cap, a black chopper with a long haired biker wearing black leathers and carrying only a round day pack on the rear fender roared past me, heading West into the sun.  He cast a perfect silhouette, stretched forks, long hair trailing behind, and a slouch that would make a vulture proud.

It was a memorable motorcycle moment.

To have one, everything has to be right.  The bike, the weather, the road, you.  Mostly you.  If you’re not right, the moment goes right past you.  And you won’t even know you missed it.

It only happens to me on a Harley.

I still remember where I was sitting when they brought in the smooth talking new management guy to tell us that, henceforth, there would be no more problems at Sun.  Only opportunities.  I had to bite my lip so I wouldn’t squeak from the back of the room …

Houston, we have an opportunity.

Today’s buzzword, and I hope it’s yesterday’s buzzword soon, is passion.  Management wants us to be passionate about our work.  Sure.  Passion is a powerful motivator.  While it lasts.

Sorry boss, I lost my passion for build 12.  I’ve got a thing for ham radios, now.

I’ll leave passion for the bedroom or perhaps the garage, and take old-fashioned reliability to the office.  Which means that plenty of the time work is going to feel like anything but passion.  That’s why they called it work in the first place, in case some of you young punks were wondering.

And so it comes to pass that in a work environment, sooner or later the boss will ask me something dumb like why my performance evaluation isn’t done and all I’ll want to do deep in my soul is lift him by his lapels and growl straight into his face, “Because I don’t give a shit!”

Instead, I’ll tell him I’ll get right on it.  Like I always do.  Because I have a family.  I’ll do it day in and day out.  Week after week.  Month after month. Over the years, all that restraint?  It shrivels my soul.  After enough years, I want to scream.

Harley_fishtailsBMW’s, Hondas, Triumphs, and the others, they are fine motorcycles. But Harleys are the proverbial Middle Finger to the Man.  They are some of the slowest motorcycles made, the heaviest, the poorest handling.  Yet  with a defiance that gives me solace, they claim to be Number One.  When the industry demands performance, they deliver blinding chrome.  When the pundits vilify their 19th century engineering, they equip their bikes with hand-stitched leather seats.  And when sportbikers mock them for going too slow around corners, Harlistas drop the suspension even lower, add apes, and install fishtails.

Harleys are my scream.  That long-haired black rider on the blacked-out chopper, he’s my Tyler Durden.

Top photo: Linda Lu at Red Canyon
Middle photo: sculpture from roof of scrap metal junkyard in Cortez
Bottom photo: custom Softail Heritage Classic courtesy of hotbikeweb.

GiG

Ride to the Sun Reunion – Cortez, Colorado

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The Rockies were uncharacteristically hazy today, so I couldn’t get any clear pics.  This is the fence that runs along Route 160 on the West side of Wolfe Creek Pass.  Temps were warm, between 60-80, but there was a stiff wind coming from the Southwest.  Linda Lu did fine.  The bag-on-the-fender hack held up.

The friendly folks at the White Eagle Inn in Cortez, Colorado warned me to stay away from Monument Valley.  The big wind swept a lot of dust onto the road, and it’s deep in some spots.  I rode through a dust storm just South of the Great Sand Dunes National Monument a few years ago.  Not a lot of fun.  Neither is fishtailing on a road covered in several inches of dust.  So I’ll stick to Northern Arizona.

Here’s another pic of the San Juans.  I tried removing the telephone pole from the picture, but it was too heavy and stuck too deep in the ground.

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Total distance: 380 miles.  Elapsed time, including stops to eat and chat with the locals: 9 hours.

GiG

Why I’m Going to the Sun Reunion

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People are tempted to dismiss the Sun Reunion as an exercise in sentimentality.  High tech is about the latest and greatest.  Not about reliving glory days.  Besides, the past often proves to be far less pleasant than we remember.  Kinda like childbirth.

But Roland Smart  asked me today if I knew any other company that did reunions.  I could think of colleges, fan clubs, alumni organizations, veterans, vintage car clubs, towns, countries, and biker clubs.  Not companies.  Companies don’t do reunions.

So why are Sun alumni doing one?  And why did I jump at the chance to attend?

I’m going because of Lou Delzompo. Lou taught me the meaning of competence.  To show up prepared.  Before productivity software was invented, Lou kept a complex engineering project on track using an ASCII keyboard and an inkjet printer.  As Laura Ramsey put it, sooner or later everyone at Sun got their Lou Delzompo.

I’m going because of the engineering team for NIS+.  The product was released too early and, as a result, had a lot of problems, but it was that engineering team that taught me to expect and demand excellence.  Besides, they gave me my own small lab to write this book.  🙂

I’m going because of Mateo Burtch.  Walk the halls of Solaris engineering, and to this day you’ll find Mateo’s cartoons with “Save” boxes drawn around them.  Erase one of those, and you will die a quick and painful death.  But Mateo was a lot more than his cartoons.  He was the type of guy to show up to a customer meeting wearing Boston Celtics boxers over his suit. Not sure it helped his career, but Mateo’s irreverence gave the rest of us the courage to question authority.  And with those questions, to contribute to the innovative culture of Sun.

I’m going because of the Rocky Mountain Technology Center.  I didn’t stop smiling for the two years I worked there, and I believe I gave everyone at least a dozen hugs.  At RMTC and other Sun campuses I met too many delightful people to enumerate. The picture of the San Diego Timex crew, above, will have to represent.  At Sun we bonded because we learned to count on each other.  We delivered.  No matter what.

I’m going because of Dave Miner.  Smart, like all Solaris core engineers, Dave is willing to slug it out on the technical issues like all great Solaris core engineers.  But he’s also kind.  And willing to take the time to explain this technology to head-scratchers like me and the folks in the BigAdmin and OTN communities.  Even though he can’t dunk worth a damn.

I’m going because of Robert Weeks and BigAdmin.  And Constance McKenzie, Karen Perkins, and Christine Sterner, who helped me keep it alive during Sun’s financial decline.  A decade later, an entire engineering team couldn’t muster the courage to tackle what Robert built.

I’m going because of Ed Zander.  Next time you walk through a rough part of town after dark, bring Ed.  In no time he’ll have the gangs on your side of the river working for him, and figuring out how to take down the gangs on the other side of the river.  Ed imported some badly needed Brooklyn street swagger to Sun’s California Sunshine culture.

And, of course, I’m going because of Scott McNeally.  If ever this phrase applied to anything, it applied to working for Scott: if I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand.

I don’t know how many of them will  be at the reunion, but I will.  And they’ll be on my mind.

Rick