I was almost set to ride off this morn­ing, I just need­ed to push the Suzu­ki out of the garage and down onto the dri­ve­way (a total of 15 feet) so I could close the garage door. So I thought I’d  just leave the bike in neu­tral while I put down the stand, not some­thing I had yet done on the slop­ing dri­ve­way. How did that idea play out you ask? Pret­ty much as depict­ed in the left image above.

But ANON! I was able to com­pose the right image by myself with­in 5 min­utes  (cam­era shots and out­takes includ­ed therein).

This morn­ing’s pro­duc­tive new tech­nique was to lift the bike using the han­dle­bars. This allowed some sort of ful­crum action that made right­ing the bike a man­age­able lift by me alone. All pri­or times I’ve attempt­ed the lift cen­tered between the wheels as my mind some­how cal­cu­lat­ed that as the most bal­anced way to right it. Bal­anced or not it makes the lift greater than one I can per­form alone. So much for mind over matter.

Today’s insight was nur­tured by Ian’s help­ing me to right the bike after I fell in the mid­dle of the San­ta Ynez Riv­er on our Decem­ber 10, 2010 out­ing. I was doing my part using my stan­dard cen­tered lift while Ian just grabbed onto the rear most part of the bike and seem­ing­ly pulled the bike up by him­self. I was very impressed at the time. So this morn­ing after again try­ing my futile cen­ter tech­nique I recalled Ian’s effort and tried to right the bike from the back cor­ner.  This was more than I could man­age but when I shift­ed to the front of the bike using the han­dle­bars I was able, with rel­a­tive ease, to pull the bike up.

After my delayed start I had a won­der­ful ride down to and through Cal State Chan­nel Islands, some pok­ing around in the San­ta Mon­i­ca Moun­tains, through Thou­sand Oaks then north to High­way 126 and along 150 and 101 home. An inter­est­ing day see­ing ter­ri­to­ry I have not seen since bicy­cling through it in the 70’s along with some alto­geth­er new.

I am very relieved to know I can right the bike alone as this has been an ongo­ing anx­i­ety when I’ve been off explor­ing by myself.

Leav­ing Ian’s we rode over San Mar­cos Pass, out Par­adise Road, then up the Oso Canyon dirt road. Sev­er­al sec­tions along the road were a big chal­lenge for me on the V‑Strom due to the steep­ness of some hills as well as sec­tions that were a mud­dy clay from the recent rain and there­fore very slip­pery. Ian gen­er­ous­ly rode my V‑Strom up my most chal­leng­ing of these slip­pery hills, spray­ing me with chunks of mud as the rear tire spun for trac­tion and off he went, kind of fun actually.

We went in five or so miles with me enjoy­ing the chal­lenge and scenery but con­cerned the entire time on the com­ing out part, i.e. going down the steep and slick mud­dy sec­tions we’d gone up. Anon, when we turned around Ian offered to ride the V‑Strom back out to the pave­ment while I rode his Suzu­ki  DR-650 sin­gle. What a gift, thank you Ian!

The dif­fer­ence between the bikes is night and day on the chal­leng­ing dirt sec­tions. On Ian’s DR you sim­ply point the bike where you’d like it to go and it does exact­ly that. The V‑Strom is much more mas­sive and just not intend­ed to be a per­former in the sit­u­a­tions we were encoun­ter­ing. In the slick/clay/muddy stuff it starts to squir­rel around and the next thing you know you’re almost side­ways. This would be a total kick IF it was as easy to pick up as a bicycle.

Today was my first day fool­ing around with my new moto/camera mount on the V‑Strom so I took scads of videos, e.g. I videoed our entire ride from my house to the San­ta Ynez Riv­er. So be fore­warned, click­ing on the above mon­tage of us could be anal­o­gous to watch­ing The Ten Com­mand­ments in 10 short snip­pets. The good news is you have com­plete con­trol, you can fast for­ward and watch just enough of us to skirt the edge of boredom.

On our way out I sug­gest­ed we cross back and forth over the riv­er a few times so I could cap­ture videos, both fol­low­ing Ian across the riv­er as well as ones where we’d start on oppo­site sides and pass each oth­er in the mid­dle. Great idea Mr. DeMille but there’s just one slight prob­lem: the cam­er­a’s 4GB mem­o­ry was com­plete­ly filled before we even start­ed all the back and forth busi­ness (hind sight observation).

To cap off our futile film­ing of our­selves, our last cross­ing entailed Ian com­ing toward me from the far side of the riv­er while I rode toward him attempt­ing to direct him with one arm while han­dling the V‑Strom with the oth­er. Alas, I some­how turned too quick­ly or spiked the throt­tle just after we passed each oth­er and I went down right in the mid­dle of the cross­ing; splash, bonk, etc., etc. Ian was quick to help me up with the V‑Strom and after a lit­tle regroup­ing we start­ed for home.

All the way home I was think­ing that the cam­era had been record­ing all our fool­ish­ness so when I arrived home and got set­tled I quick­ly down­loaded all the data from the cam­era then clicked open the last movie expect­ing the fun per­spec­tive of me pass­ing Ian then going hor­i­zon­tal. Of course the actu­al last movie was before all the criss­cross­ing of the riv­er had even commenced 🙂