Bike problem, easy solution

I rode the 1994 BMW K75S down to the Lebanon License Branch this morning and shuffled the papers for an Indiana title and license plate.

When I started the bike in the BMV parking lot, the battery seemed weak. Riding away, I noticed the ABS warning light stayed on after I applied both brakes - a move that usually turns it off. Stopped at a traffic signal, I tried a fix that always worked before - turning the engine off and restarting. It started very feebly, died and restarted even weaker and the ABS light stayed on.

Fearing I might not have enough battery for another restart, I rode straight home, ruminating on whether my ABS was dead - I lost the ABS on my 1991 K100RS several years ago and it was very expensive to replace - and whether I should plan to take the bike down to the BMW dealer in Indianapolis. The speedo was also 99 per cent dead, with a little needle movement now and then. I'm pretty sure I know where the loose connection is for that problem.

Then, about 9 minutes into my ride, I realized I don't have to hassle with the dealership because I have reliable motorcycle service just four doors up the street from my house - Grumpy's Gold Wing Service. Grumpy repaired gummed up fuel injectors on the K75S several years ago and also installed new tires on my 2003 K1200GT.

I stopped at the entrance to my driveway and killed the engine, hoping a re-start would solve the ABS problem. The battery just barely turned the engine over and, of course, the ABS light stayed on. I stopped a few yards short of the shed where I keep my bikes and removed the saddlebags so the bike would fit with its younger brother and with our lawnmower and other shed stuff. Then I put it on a trickle charger in the hope of getting a final start, either into the shed or over to Grumpy's.

Grumpy remembered me from when we lived here 10 years ago. He looked up the appropriate battery and ordered it for me, saying it should be here next Thursday. Then we spent the next hour chatting. I was interested to learn he and I were at Indiana State University at the same time. He lived in Sandison Hall and I was next door in its twin, Gillum Hall in the 1963-64 school year. He also thought he could probably remedy the speedo glitch.

The charger did its job and I was able to fire up the K75S and ride it into the shed where it will languish until Thursday.

Proof

Back in the saddle again

There's nothing like a break in the weather to get me moving on outdoor projects.

Today I petitioned St. Anthony to help me find the Arkansas titles to my two bikes. After going through a couple of file boxes and all 27 drawers of the steel cabinet I inherited from my dad, I dug deep on my desk and found a yellow folder labeled "Vehicle Titles" and there they were.

So after lunch I rolled my 2003 BMW K1200GT out of the shed, aired up the tires, put on the saddlebags and the Garmin Zumo 550 GPS, topped off the fuel tank at the Marathon down the street, and rode down to Lebanon and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. I walked out about a half-hour later with a temporary paper plate and title. The Arkansas plate will remain on the bike until May 1 or the arrival of a metal plate, whichever comes first.

Weather permitting, I'll take the K75S in for title and plate tomorrow.

I pretty much lost my 2017 riding season because of our move back from Arkansas and having the bikes in storage much of the year. I have higher hopes for 2018.

Porch cam

I set up a trailcam on the front porch to photograph birds at the feeders yesterday.

I pulled the card this morning and found 1,452 images - almost all of them of passing vehicles and pedestrians and only about 5 of birds. This cardinal is the best of the bunch.

Getting charged up

My high priced BMW motorcycle battery charger/tender charges my bikes through the accessory plug. It also has a cable with conventional battery terminal clamps, but the cable got separated from the charger in the move from Arkansas.

I've done fruitless searches for the cable through boxes in the house and conclude it must be in storage somewhere.

In the meantime, the grass is growing and our yard sprouted hundreds of dandelions over the past few days. It was clear that I had to find a way to charge the flat battery in our John Deere LA125 mower and I had to do it in time for the first decently warm day.

Today was that day, so I drove in to the Lebanon Walmart and spent $30 and change on a battery charger with the desired terminal clamps. It showed fully charged after a couple of hours, which came as a great relief because I figured the battery was probably done for after seven months of inactivity, much of it in freezing temperatures in the shed. I fully expected to have to drive down to the John Deere dealership and buy a new battery.
But wonder of wonders, it started.

I backed the BMW K75S out of the shed to make room to get the mower out, put a couple of fresh AA batteries in my Work Tunes headphones and attacked the yard. We have less than a quarter of the 1.23 acres I'm used to mowing in Arkansas, so a riding mower almost seems a little silly for such a small lot.

Since I had the K75S out and standing in the driveway, I aired up the tires and went for my first motorcycle ride of 2018 - just a short spin of a couple of miles - but enough to get my blood flowing.

Now I have to figure out what I did with the Arkansas titles to our two bikes so I can get them titled and plated in Indiana.

Tesla time

I got a call from my son Steve early this afternoon.

He was cruising down I-215 in Las Vegas, on his way to pick up a bass, in his self-driving Tesla. He sent me this image of his dashboard display, showing the relative position of nearby vehicles as well as speed, posted speed limit, temperature, and the fact that he was on the phone with me.

Outrageously cool.

Adios, memory foam mattress

After sheltering the free full size bed and box springs on our porch for four days, we put it out at the curb last night for trash pickup this morning.

We also put out a king size memory foam mattress that we no longer need.

Someone took the conventional mattress and box springs overnight, so the trash haulers only had to contend with the memory foam.

Free bed

Somehow, we find ourselves with an extra bed that must leave the house to let us configure the upstairs to our liking.

In the past, we've been able to put cast-off items like appliances, furniture and other stuff at the curb in front of our house and someone would come along and help themselves to it - sometimes in less than an hour.

Not so with this bed. Maria and I wrestled it down the stairs and out the front door yesterday afternoon and put it back together at curbside. Then we waited for it to disappear. The Little League Baseball season is underway in the park across the intersection and there was lots of traffic up and down our street, but nobody took the bed. We even advertised it on three local Facebook pages.

Finally, as dusk approached and it looked like rain, we hauled it up onto the front porch.

I suspect the reason nobody wants it has to do with the disgusting lifestyle of the people who rented our house for nine years, up until last August. When they moved out, they put a huge pile of trash at the curb and it reeked so badly that neighborhood kids crossed the street rather than walk past it. It could be that townspeople, knowing what kind of animals lived in our house previously, don't want the bed because they think it is filled with bedbugs and/or hideous stink.

I amended the advertisements to emphasize that it's clean and we brought it with us when we moved here from Arkansas and that there's nothing wrong with it, we just have one bed too many.

If nobody takes it before Friday, we'll put it out for the trash collection.

Happy Birthday, Morgan!

My lovely and brilliant stepdaughter Morgan is 34 years old today. I'm very proud of her.

Happy birthday to a friend

This is the first April 13 in 75 years that my friend Doreen Tracey isn't alive to celebrate her birthday. Cancer and pneumonia took her in January.

Porch furniture

I'm evaluating this piece of patio furniture for the Amazon Vine Program.

It took me about 90 minutes yesterday afternoon to assemble. I could have probably done it under an hour were it not for windy conditions on our front porch.

I think I like it. Maria loves it.

Pardon the porch floor. It will get a new coat of paint soon.

Damned Chinese spammers

I just spent the better part of an hour deleting spam from the comments on my blog, left last night by some asshole in China.

In the process, I found hundreds of other posts from spammers.

I am seriously considering turning off comments.

Gross blog negligence

I'm assembling a profit and loss statement for our commercial building in Jonesboro, Ark. in preparation for filing a tax return for our LLC.

In the process, I've been using last year's blog posts to refresh my memory about what improvements were made and when. I am also reminded of how badly I've neglected this blog, largely because we spent pretty much all of 2017 moving our stuff back to Thorntown, selling our Arkansas house and un-doing the horrible damage done by our Thorntown tenants in the nine years they lived here. I only posted 132 times last year, making it the least active year since I started the blog in the spring of 2004.

Last year's focus on getting back to Indiana also reduced my motorcycle mileage to double digits.

Algot!

What can you do with a closet that's 3 feet deep and 19 inches wide?

It turns out that the IKEA Algot storage system is a perfect fit.

Maria and I spent less than $100 on components yesterday morning at the Indianapolis IKEA story, assembled the lower unit in the afternoon and finished the upper shelves this morning. Maria did all the hard work on the upper shelves.

The closet was a nasty, dirty little space with crumbling plaster when we moved here. Maria wallpapered it a few months ago and we completed the project today. Woo-hoo!