BrandonOBrien.com

1,200+ Mile Motorcycle Ride: Complete

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:26:50 EDT

I just got back from a ride on my GS500 from Albuquerque, NM to Las Vegas, NV.

Ryan and I left Albuquerque on Saturday the 10th in a downpour. We were in rain and hail for the first 30 miles of the trip. It cleared up for another 100 miles or so, then we had more rain, winds gusting to about 30mph, snow, fog and hail for the rest of the day.

We made it to a town called Seligman, AZ (about 75 miles west of Flagstaff) when it started raining really hard and the temp had dropped to about 30 degrees. We pulled over to a gas station and the guy came out and said there's a motel about a half mile away that gives discounts to bikers. We were cold and it was about 5:30, so we stopped for the night. The hotel let us park our bikes under the awning so they wouldn't get snowed/rained on all night, which was cool.

The hotel needed a little work, but it was a warm and dry place to stay for the night. There was also a pizza joint attached to the hotel that we ate at. The owners of the motel were also the owners of the pizza place and were really nice.

The next morning it was perfect. The rest of the ride to Vegas was sunny (aside from a little fog in the early morning). We made it to the Hoover Dam and got some pictures, then drove down the vegas strip and later went through Red Rock Canyon.

The ride back on Monday was great. The weather was perfect. It took us about 10 hours to make it back.

For those of you planning a long trip, invest in some rain gear. We went to Cycle Gear on friday night and bought some rain suits. They really saved us. I didn't get wet at all and its amazing how much the rain jacket kept the wind out.

I also bought a gel pad for the seat... but after that much riding, it still didn't help. The seats on the GS500 just aren't that comfortable, even with extra padding.

I also noticed that with a headwind and some higher elevations (around 7000 ft) it's impossible to pass a semi. I was maxing out around 70 in those cases, which wasn't very fun when the speed limit is 75.

Some photos and a map of the route can be found here: http://www.incredirides.com/ride?id=11

A word to the wise for anyone who is planning a really long ride:

Get rain gear, even if you don't think you'll need it.
invest in some warm gloves (and get an inner lining for it if you can)
get some extra padding for the seat
Make sure you have a windscreen on. I don't know what it would have been like without one
If you're traveling with a friend or group, invest in some in-helmet headsets. Those helped so much

IncrediRides.com Beta is up

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:22:05 EDT

The beta version of IncrediRides.com is up now. With the beta version, you can find and add rides, upload photos, rate and comment on the various rides. You can also create an account (which you will need to do if you plan to rate or comment on any of the rides).

The purpose of the beta site is simply to get people to start adding rides from across the country. This will give us a nice amount of rides when we are ready to fully launch the site.

IncrediRides.com is a way for people to search and find rides/trips they can take on their motorcycle or dirtbike (or car... there's nothing saying you can't use these rides for your car either). Eventually the site will have a social aspect so you can meet with other riders and go on group rides as well as some other ideas we have.

Starting development of a new website... IncrediRides.com

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:51:28 EDT

After searching online for trips to take on my motorcycle, a friend and I realized that most of the sites out there for that kind of thing suck. We're going to start working on IncrediRides.com as a way to search for both street and off-road trips. The site will interface with Google Maps so you can see the route and we will work on getting GPS data for as many of the rides as possible.

There will also be a social aspect of the site. Any members can join groups and go out on rides with other people. The members can also rate, comment and upload photos for any of the rides posted on the site.

I'm not sure when it'll be ready, as I have my full time job and ClearCheckbook to maintain, but we are hoping to have it launched by this summer.

Motorcycle ride through Albuquerque and surrounding area

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:26:50 EST

It has been about a month since I was last on my motorcycle. The weather this weekend is in the mid 50's and sunny with not much wind, so I decided to get on my bike and go for a decent ride. I pulled up Google maps and tried to find a route that would let me see some nice scenery.

I ended up making a route that ended up being about 115 miles and went through Albuquerque down to Las Lunas and then west toward I-40 on NM-6. The trip took me through some pretty cool rock formations along NM-6. There was also very little traffic through that area, so I got to enjoy the ride a lot more.

Here's a map of the route I took. Click on it to see a larger view:

iPhone SMS issue seems to be fixed now...

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:00:18 EST

I contacted AT&T and had them reprovision my phone number with the 3rd party they use for SMS between carriers. Everything seems to be working now.

If you experience a problem like this, use the Live Chat on the AT&T site and have them update your number with Verisign.

Receiving text messages on my iPhone doesn't work.

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:36:34 EST

As my previous blog post states, I bought an iphone about a week ago ( January 6, 2009). I noticed the next day that I hadn't received a text message from someone. I didn't think anything of it and figured they might have typed my number incorrectly into their phone or something.

Well, this weekend I found out that there's some issue with some people and iPhones that lets us send SMS messages to any carriers and they get them... but when someone from any carrier other than AT&T sends us a message, we don't receive it.

This is highly frustrating and hopefully I can figure out how to get it fixed soon. People have been reporting this problem all the way back since July. There's a huge thread about it on the AT&T forums too. I'm not sure what i'll do if this doesn't get resolved... I guess I'll have to return the phone, cancel this number and get a new one.

I finally joined the iPhone bandwagon

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:29:39 EST

Just bought a black 16 gig iPhone today. Now I get to start the awesome process of letting everyone know my new number and to stop using the one they have been for the last two years.

Time for a new blog post...

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 13:17:44 EST

I haven't made a blog post in about a year, so I figured it's about time to write something. For the past 8 months or so I've been really busy working on ClearCheckbook.com. I finally released Version 3 of the site on Monday, December 22nd and have been working heavily on fixing bugs and other issues since the launch. I think after this weekend the site will pretty much be at the same bug-free level as it was in V2. One cool thing about V3 is that I've started charging $4 per month for some premium features. As of this posting, the site is nearly bringing in the same amount as my current salary at my full time job. Lets hope this trend continues. For the time being, all this money will be pumped back into the site in the form of server updates, development efforts and possibly advertising. In other news, I'm hoping to buy an iPhone next week after the Macworld keynote. I'm banking on them announcing an updated storage size for the phone. I also want to get a new Macbook Pro so I can start developing iPhone applications. My 3+ year old powerbook is starting to get majorly outdated and won't even run the next version of Mac OSX. Maybe I'll try to be better at blogging this year. We'll see.