Odds and Ends

A few weeks ago, it was time to go back to school...my daughter Annie is now a sophomore at college and kind of on cruise control at this point.  She came home for the summer, and many of her things for her dorm room never got unpacked. Her bedroom looks rather like a storage room...certainly did make it easy to get her back to school!

The last weekend of August was move in time....it was looking to be a beautiful day ahead and so I invited Annie to ride on the back of my bike and we would send Dad in the car with her belongings.

 

To my delight, she said yes!  I don't get much bike time with my daughter, she has a busy social schedule, or one of us is working, or off on a trip for that matter, as Annie is a willing hiker with my Mom.

We left at 8am to take back roads to the college, about 100 miles.  This beautiful child, although she does not look like me with her dark eyes and very dark hair, is a natural at riding. I am going to claim this as a boast that she gets that genetically from me, because when I was her age, I was constantly told that it was difficult to tell that I was on the back of someone's bike.  For me, being only 5'4" and putting 5'6" Annie on the back of my 800+ pound bike and being able to say that I can hardly tell that she is there is a huge compliment to her riding sense.

The weather was perfect that morning!  Just cool enough to be super comfortable in the gear. It was a joyful ride with Annie.

And here she is, my gypsy girl, all moved into her dorm... oh, yes, that bright eclectic sense of style also comes from me in case you are wondering.  It falls under, the less that matches, the more fun it is rule of decorating.  We are into polka dots at the moment!  Even her shirt is spotted.  :)

Kisses all around, I blessed my girl and hit the road for home.  I tapped a couple of little boxes on Jack's screen and my route to the college was reversed to take me home.  It was not quite as pleasant a trip, as the temps crawled up into the 90s and about 30 miles of the ride I had chosen were through a commercial strip after another. Of course, being later in the day, the traffic was congested.  It was one of those 'note to self' moments, to fix this part of the ride.

When I got home, I immediately took Jack  (my gps, remember?) into the house to edit the back road ride to UNH.  I needed to cut out the rt102 stretch between Hudson and Chester NH.  I found a potentially sweet route, very zig-zaggy as it wound its way through the smaller towns of NH... and in the end, was the same mileage.  I got to test the route the very next day as Annie forgot a couple of VIPs....those Very Important Possessions, our children all have them. :)

One little thing happened on that Sunday at her school, when I got back to my bike, there was a note tucked into my cup holder:

  I installed my Kruzer Kaddy just before I left on my trip and felt that there were a couple of inherent design flaws... one solved with some bright yellow duct tape and the other solved by only using a half full bottle of water.  When I put a full bottle in, the cup holder would swivel and the bottle fell out.  Well... this was not the best thing, was it?  But I can adjust in a situation like this, and ride with a half full bottle.  And then when I took the bottle out of the holder, the holder itself would often unattach and go rolling on the ground.  GRRR.  So the duct tape covered the key hole that the post slid into. What I did not realize was that I was missing a part, someone may have opened the box at the store where it was purchased because the grommet was never in it.  

So I called Shannon and we had a delightful conversation!  I was highly impressed with the fact that she left the note and offered to fix the obvious issue. She and her husband own the company and are very proud of their products. Shannon told me how excited she was to be in NH (from Mississippi) and to have seen their product in use. I know the feeling, it never gets old.  She also explained how to take the swivel play out of the mounting so that my bottle stays put.  I just have to turn the bolt around.

And THEN, icing on this yummy little cake was that she told me that they are developing a travel coffee mug to fit this particular holder and she will send me one to test for her and give them feed back.  Gotta love a small company and its pride in customer service!  As always, I will share when good will is sent my way...  KRUZER KADDY

Back to riding for one more comment or two...  the alternate route up to Annie's university was delicious!  It is saved in my favorite routes because you never know when some other little thing needs to be delivered.  And in my motorcyclist's brain, a 200 mile round trip is just a scoot down the road  :) :) 

In the weeks following my ride, I have been at odds with writing about riding locally... the adventures were so amazing on my cross country trip that I was feeling as though these weeks would have been a big let down for me and for my readers.  I am getting over that! 

A great experience happened this past week... it was SO much fun, revolving around riding, but all via a phone conversation.  There is a motorcycle radio show, called Side Stand Up, airing Tuesday evenings 7-9pm eastern time. I was invited to be a guest on the show and I accepted it.  How much fun this was!!! 

So, two things... I am going to be self promoting here and tell you how you can still listen to my interview...

go here for the page with archived interviews and click on

AUG 31, #282 . My segment is about halfway through, you are invited to listen to the whole show or you can fast forward it to where you want to start. 

The second thing is, tune in on Tuesday nights! 
SIDE STAND UP RADIO

The show is all about regular people getting out there and doing what they love :)

The link to the show is under the monkey on the left side. 

As always, thanks for reading!

love, Bee