Honda NC750X update

I just completed a two-week, 3720-mile ride from here in Eastern Iowa to Arizona and Utah by way of Colorado.  Unlike my previous long ride, I was on my Honda NC750X motorcycle and riding in May.  I was hoping to get to Monument Valley before the weather got too hot, but the real result was extremes---rain and deserts, hot and cold, crosswinds and hail, construction and bad pavement, speed limits of 75 and 80 m.p.h. plus high-altitude passes with roadside snow and the endless nothingness of I-76 in Eastern Colorado, which made Nebraska look interesting.  

It was a learning experience.  

As I wrote previously, I got the Honda NC750X for a variety of reason, but most especially for its stability.  The center of gravity is low, as is the seat height.    I grew to trust it.  Going 80 m.p.h. in a light rain with the wind blowing, it took me a while to learn to dress appropriately and to trust the bike.  

The bike was trustworthy.

Wolf Creek Pass on the Continental Divide at 10,857' elevation.

I previously experimented with having a Yamaha X-Max scooter.  I could go 84 m.p.h. on a flat, but I decided that wasn't enough out West. And I was right.  Passing a truck going uphill on the interstate in Colorado or Utah required more power.  With the Honda, I could shift down to a lower gear, and it always responded with good acceleration, taking me up and around big trucks or heavy traffic.  The extra power kept me out of the way of other drivers.

Some reviewers have referred to the NC750X as boring.  It's true that some of the KTMs and higher -powered bikes might accelerate more quickly or flick through traffic more easily.

But I'm 65.  My reflexes aren't what they once were, nor is my physique. I'm not in a hurry. I'm happy with the Honda's stability and responsiveness.  It did well.

Before I left, I put my camping gear in a waterproof bag attached across my luggage rack and side panniers. It's the same bag I took west in 2022---and the same tent, sleeping bag, inflatable pillows, too.  And with the NC750X, I have the accessible extra storage where a gas tank is usually located.

The view from our camp east of Provo UT where I met my daughter and her husband.

But my route this time took me further south:

The Forrest Gump Highway at Monument Valley.

Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River near Page AZ.

Not far upstream is the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell:

From there, I headed to Bryce Canyon National Park:

After meeting my daughter for a couple of days, I went to Colorado National Monument:

And the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park:

Then it was time to face the long ride home.  From Grand Junction to Denver, I-70 is either under construction or deconstruction, with diversions, bumpy roads, and high passes, all taken at high speeds.  As clouds started to roll into the Loveland Pass at above 9,000', I stopped at a historic hotel built in 1880 at Silver Plume:

The few rooms shared a single communal bathroom.  The foundation had settled unevenly, and the floors made me feel like a sailor, but in most ways it was actually quite nice. And it was warm, as the air temperature dropped below freezing. 

From there to Dubuque, there is little interesting to relate---I suggest that you read Progressive Farmer instead.

This trip had neither the aspirations nor the longevity of my previous trip.  However, it left me with more confidence in my abilities to ride cross-country even as I age.  I'm not sure when I will next head out, but there are still lots of places I'd like to see.

Album from the trip.

Honda NC750X Review

 I've gone through far more two-wheelers in the last 15 years than cars in nearly 50.  My first car, purchased when I was not yet 17, was a wrecked-and-rebuilt Ford Pinto that I bought with money from working summers in the NC tobacco fields.  I drove it till I was 29.  It broke down at convenient times, and I always new that if a girl went out with me, it wasn't because of the car.

Motorcycles came much later.  My mom was risk-averse, and then I had kids that kept me from justifying the purchase.  I started small, literally, with a used Chinese-made scooter.  It was the one on which my wife and I got our motorcycle licenses.   A few years later, my older daughter ran it from the gas pump into a wall of the service station.  She was unhurt, but the scooter was finished.  Time to move up.

In the next few years, I went through a Kawasaki, a Suzuki, a Honda scooter (which I still have), a Honda NC700,  a Kawasaki Versys 650, a Honda Africa Twin, and a Yamaha X-Max scooter.  The Yamaha scooter had a top speed of 84 m.p.h, which sounds like a lot, but my experience on Montana and South Dakota interstates made me leery of being topped out when big trucks were zooming by.  Instead, I have now settled on a bike to stick with, a Honda NC750X.

My Honda NC750X in front of a favorite coffee shop, Rosie's in Epworth IA.

I loved my Africa Twin, riding it on a 5000+ mile trip west for over 6 weeks.  But I also dropped it a few times, always at slow speeds.  I never felt quite stable on it.  It was just a bit too tall for me.  Still, riding it so much and so far helped me determine what I really needed in a bike:

1. Low seat height.  I'm 65 now and have some arthritis in my hip.  On the NC750x, I can put both feet on the ground.  
2.  Low center of gravity.  I want stability.  Falling hurts more when you get old.  The NC750x has the gas tank under the seat.  Where the gas tank is on most bikes is a storage compartment that will hold my helmet.  
   
   
   
3. Grip warmers and cruise-control.  These were standard on my Africa Twin, and they made long trips possible.  I get cramps in my hands, so I had the warmers and cruise-control added to the NC750X.  They are working great.
4. DCT.  As I mentioned above, I have arthritis in my hip.  The left hip.  The side you normally change gears with.  Honda makes the DCT, and it is available on the NC750X.  DCT stands for Double-Clutch Transmission.  In practice, it works like an automatic transmission, but a very smart one.  It is virtually impossible to stall a Honda with a DCT.
5. Panniers.  I like to camp overnight, and I plan a couple of weeks out west again this summer.  I have a soft waterproof bag I put over the back, and I added Shad panniers to the sides.  It's more than enough storage, even without the frunk.
6. Navigation.  I have yet to find a built-in navigation system that I like as well as Google Maps.  So I ordered a phone holder made for motorcycles.

The advice that any beginning rider gets is to buy a bike that fits.  Good advice, as far as it goes.  But needs---and bodies---change.  I'm not the sort to own a dozen bikes for a variety of needs.  I hang on to my Honda sh150i scooter for around town because it's too old to get much for it, has bigger wheels than most scooters now come with, and insurance is nearly nothing.  Plus, it's a load of fun. 

But for longer, higher-speed outings, the HC750X is about as good an all-rounder as you'll find.  Excellent stability, great gas mileage, a top speed of 105 m.p.h.,  good low-rpm torque, and that Honda reliability---a Honda has never left me broken down on the side of the road.  

I'll post photos of my next outing.

Cutting the Fat

When confronting the decisions being made currently about cutting the fat in our federal government, I am reminded of the two most effective ways of losing weight in my personal past.  One was when I had malaria while teaching in Africa.  Another was more recently when I caught Lyme disease while on vacation in Colorado.  For the latter, I have weight data:

Quite effective, eh?

Yet I haven't yet encountered anyone who has chosen Lyme disease, much less malaria, as a way to lose weight.  Huh.

Now I am seeing many parts of our national government being sickened with the justification of cutting the fat.  The parts that feel most real to me are what's happening with U.S. AID, given my work overseas,  with the National Park System, given the dozens I've visited, often with student groups, and education and research, given my career.  There are many others.

But an event that made the abstract more personal was the firing of Brian Gibbs from his job at Effigy Mounds.  His story has been taken up by NPR [here], but I wanted to share with you what he wrote on Facebook:

There are many who will tell you what a great guy Brian is, how he has enriched their lives through his Park Service work and through his organizing of music events in the Elkader IA area.  But as great as he is, he's not unique.  Lots of good people are being hurt without due process nor compassion.  

We are acting like being sick is a great way to lose weight.

Naturalists, Meskwaki, and Murakami

Queen Anne's lace, an invasive plant from Europe.

On the Wednesday after the election, I was fortunate to have already planned to attend a conference for the Iowa Association of Naturalists. The Naturalists are a great group to hang with—In Iowa they are used to being undervalued by politicians but keep trying to make the world a better place. A lot of kids love them for the opportunity to be out of the classroom, learning about a frog by getting muddy while learning to catch one.

Accommodations for the IAN conference were at a hotel on the Meskwaki Settlement. An option for the afternoon of arrival was visiting the Meskwaki Cultural Center and Museum. Coming from Dubuque, I was familiar with the story of the early Europeans encountering the Meskwaki at their encampment along the Mississippi River, now the location of Dubuque’s sewage treatment plant. Julian Dubuque married the chief’s daughter and got the mining rights. He is now buried atop a bluff just downstream in the Mines of Spain State Recreation Area.

The Europeans remain. The Meskwaki do not.

But some Meskwaki returned, purchased land, and created the Meskwaki Settlement. Now their casino advertises the loosest slots in Iowa. There’s something ironically just about them using gambling to get back some of the wealth taken from them.

But most importantly, they persisted. Compared to what Native Americans have endured, I have no room to get upset about the outcome of an election.

---

Around the same time, I was rereading a few Murakami books and looking forward to his The City and Its Uncertain Walls, now recently published. Murakami was rejected by Japan’s literary establishment but has seen his books translated into 50 languages. Now he is regularly considered for a Nobel Prize in Literature.

Despite an uphill battle, he kept writing. He says, “My books have been criticized so much over the years, I don’t pay much attention.”

And the criticism continues:

“Bad magical realism lacks both magic and realism, and The City and its Uncertain Walls should take its place alongside Coelho’s The Alchemist, Fowles’s The Magus, Gibran’s The Prophet and any number of other books that you can just about be forgiven for admiring as a teenager but which, to an adult reader, offer little more than embarrassment.”
Review in the Guardian, 10 Nov 2024.

Recently while driving through Wyoming, I and my wife listened to Jeremy Irons narrate The Alchemist—we nearly ran out of gas because time passed so quickly. I was embarrassed about the gas, not the book.

---

In reading the above review of Murakami, I’m reminded of some of the critiques of Democrats after Trump was elected—arrogant and out of touch. Did the reviewer of Murakami’s book need to not only trash the book but also anyone who likes it? Is it not possible to despise Trump while liking some of his followers? Or at least showing some compassion?

Bret Stephens said, “The Democratic Party at its best stands for fairness and freedom. But the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity. It also, increasingly, stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms on hundreds of millions of Americans who want to live and let live but don’t like being told how to speak or what to think. Too many liberals forgot this, which explains how a figure like Trump, with his boisterous and transgressive disdain for liberal pieties, could be re-elected to the presidency.”

I’m also reminded of experiences at academic conferences—often parades of ego and one-upmanship. But, yes, those academics were once my tribe, and I have certainly demonstrated my share of arrogance.

Somehow the naturalists have mostly escaped arrogance. Part of the reason, no doubt, is the time they spend with nature. They see the slow changes, the beauty and the damage, and they choose their times and opportunities to make a difference.

They believe in the magical realism of nature. But they have few illusions about the uphill battles they face—you can’t make a baby in a month by getting nine women pregnant.

So the Naturalists, the Meskwaki, and Murakami all teach me to be a bit more humble, to take my own burrs a bit less seriously. But also to persist.

This Old House

The ceiling in the kitchen after removing the old track lighting.

This old house

has no standards,

no built-to codes,

no protection from

shocking yourself.

Nothing is quite square
nor level.

Wires are hidden,

connected to

unexpected circuits.

Not designed

nor planned,

but grown,

a random add-on,

a strange mutation.

The old track light rusted.

Dead beetles hid

behind the halogen bulbs

that warmed the kitchen.

It had to come down.

Track lights have four screws---

two to the junction box,

one at each end.

Almost as easy as

changing a bulb.

But there was no box.

No ground wire.

A hole in the dry wall,

hot wires poking through.

Better recheck the circuit.

The new LEDs

burn cool.

The fixture?

Clean for now.

That'll do

Beaverhead 2024

In July of 2024, my daughter ran the Beaverhead 100km race in Salmon, Idaho, over 50 miles of which followed the Continental Divide Trail (CDT).

 

I lace tight my Brooks Cascadia
before the 4:00 a.m. start.
8500 feet and then climbing.
Over 50 miles on the CDT.

Breath in, breath out.
I’m not alone.
I have friends/husband running nearby.
But not in my head.

Climbing.
Feeling good.
OMG, the skree field.
38-minute miles.

On the keen-edged CDT,
if I fall right,
my blood flows to the Pacific.
If left, the Gulf of Mexico.

Dark.
Still running.
Everything narrows
to the glow of my headlamp.

11:09 p.m., cross the line,
19+ hours.
With my husband and three friends,
Holding hands!

All Paws on Deck!

 My dog, Jaeger, is even more part of my day-to-day after traveling west and camping for a month.  Upon returning, I decided to invest in a sit-on-top kayak.  Being late in summer, kayaks were harder to find, and the shipping costs were prohibitive.  I ended up buying a display model at a big-box store.  They were nice about helping me load it on the rack on my CR-V.

First-mate Jaeger and his captain.

With my arthritic hip, getting in and out of our traditional kayaks is tough enough by myself, much less with a dog.  And if he were to tip us midstream, the only option would be to head for the bank and look for a flat spot.  But with a sit-on-top, I hope to get us back aboard.  Maybe. The odds are better.

Yesterday was our maiden voyage with Jaeger as first mate.  We went to the A.Y. McDonald Park on the Mississippi River, put in, paddled around the marina near the Yardarm Riverfront Bar & Grill and out into the channel, then returned to the dock and practiced getting into and out of the kayak.  From my sit-on-top kayak to Jamie's regular kayak, Jaeger went back and forth, climbing out onto the dock and then into a kayak.  Success so far!

Jaeger with Jamie.