Perspectives
or
The perfect corner… isn’t.
There is a perfect corner somewhere between Ruggs and Condon in Central Oregon, if I remember correctly. It’s a decreasing radius right hander, with great camber, perfect tarmac, a great approach and wide-open exit path.
There are just one or two things that make the corner a problem.
First: You can’t see the inside line because of the low standing brush until you are right on top of it.
Second: The inside line is usually covered in gravel from the horse trailers clipping the inside and dragging crap on to the roadway.
This perfect corner isn’t. I guess it is a matter of perspectives.
The first time I hit this corner I was on my first camping trip on the DL. It was early morning and I was alone on the road. (6 am on a Sunday) I saw the corner before me and thought, great I can carve it! When I got close enough to really see the full corner I didn’t see a clean line through the gravel and I was already committed (read: going too fucking fast), so I picked a higher line which so happened to be in the on-coming lane of traffic.
Squid move.
I don’t know why I remembered that one, but I do. I’m sharing so you can avoid the move the next time you spy a perfect corner before you.
I rode the KTM to work this morning. It was another slow start day. I worked a bit late yesterday. So walking in late I was still ahead of my hours for the week. Intel has a no overtime policy right now, which is more than fine with me. I don’t want to pour all of my time into my ‘day’ job. I’ve still got other client projects running on the side and I do want to enjoy my life by playing on the evenings and weekends.
I did the mental math the other day and realized my daily commute is over 50 miles a day at the moment. That’s a lot of time and fuel. Riding a bike I can get from A to B so much faster. If I stick with the general pace of traffic and use my small size to optimize lane selection, I can drop 15 minutes from my evening commute. I get to have fun as I go about my business. All while I burn considerably less fuel. I’m getting about 200 miles out of 4.5 gallons of premium with the KTM. I still get 12 mpg in my 4 wheel drive V8 Titan truck. Her Corvette gets over 20mph depending upon the traffic flow. It will get almost 30mpg on the highway when you can put it in 6th and cruise at 65 -70mph.
There’s another PADNUG meeting this evening. I’m a bit undecided on going tonight. Originally, it was supposed to be a discussion on Azure. It has been changed to ASP MVC Unit Testing. Hmm…
