Sorry I haven't posted in a little while. The wife and kids bought me a Bike Brain for Father's Day. I want to put new tires on and swap out the forks for the forks that I just rebuilt before I install this neat gadget. I had to lengthen the sensor wire a little to make it fit. So, at work the other night, I soldiered in an extension and I think it will work pretty good.

I had a member of the Twin Valley Riders give me a Aerostich Kanetsu Electric Vest. The vest had the wires messed up inside and I thought it would be a fun project to try and get it to work again. When I got the vest, someone had already removed the stitching along the bottom of the vest. I started by probing the wires in the vest with the multimeter to see if I can find the break in the wire. I found 2 breaks and one place where the wires had already been repaired. Still, there was another break somewhere. Locating these breaks were quite time consuming. I figured the wiring was too degraded to try and repair, so I measured how much wire Areostich used in the vest. I found 2 circuits each having exactly 15 feet of wire.

I ordered some 30 gauge Teflon insulated silver coated copper wire on eBay for under $5. At about this same time, I ordered a SAE Battery Fuse Cord from Areostich as I knew I was going to have to attach the vest to the motorcycle somehow and this seemed like the easiest way. When the wire came from eBay, I used one of my wife's sewing needles and threaded the thin 30 gauge wire through the eye of the needle. The vest has three layers, The outer fleece, the inner nylon and the center layer between the two, made out of cotton and there the heating wire is sandwiched. I then proceeded to sew the wire into the center cotton layer, following the wire that was already present. I sewed a total of 30 feet of wire. I cut the original wire from the crimp connectors and soldered the new wires to the existing crimp connectors. I wrapped the connectors in electrical tape, connected the vest to the bike battery and what do you know, it worked. I used an indoor/outdoor thermometer to see how much heat it was generating. Now, with the bike off, the vest heated up to about 90 degrees in about 3 minutes. I figure with the bike running, it should get a little warmer, but if you factor in the cold wind chill, it's hard to tell how warm it will keep me. I didn't have the bike running as I was in the basement with the bike. I finished by breaking out the wife's sewing machine and using pretty green thread, sewed up the bottom of the vest. Wrapped up the whole project and tucked it in one of the saddlebags, waiting for cooler weather.

Well, I was almost squished by a FedEx Ground truck the other day. I was on Ferrum Mountain Road, at the intersection with Franklin Street, waiting to make a Left turn, with the Vision stopped and both feet on the ground. I looked both ways and saw a FedEx Ground truck coming down Franklin Street from my Right. As the truck approached the intersection, the driver suddenly turned Left, cutting the corner short across my lane. As he was making the turn, my bike must have been in the blind spot, behind the post between the windshield and the driver's side window. The truck was heading straight for me and I couldn't go anywhere! I was positioned right in the middle of the front grill on his truck. When he finally saw me, the truck was about 3 feet from me. When he saw me, he stopped the truck short and lifted his arm as if to apologize. He then had to back up his truck and cut the wheel to the right to get around me. The really scary part is that I used to work as a subcontractor for FedEx and I am still $40,000 in debt due to that evil company. Getting squished by one of their trucks would have been like having the knife twisted once it was plunged into my back.