Hello All,
I had a really good weekend - spent Saturday out on the
bike, Sunday with Paula and her best friend and been very busy doing
it.
Saturday was an interesting experience, I had a PGR event to
attend about a two hour ride to the South. In preparation for this I
had purchased a set of headphones for under the helmet and a mount for
my GPS to stick onto the bike, replacing the last one I had that
broke.
Tested the GPS mount Friday night, worked very well, went to
plug the GPS power adapter into the lighter socket on Saturday morning
- and it promptly broke, shorting out the main fuse and killing all
the lights. Great. Plan B was improvised on the spot - and I
remembered that since I was going to take my Android powered
smartphone to listen to music through, I could just as easily use the
onboard GPS function, combined with Google Maps and navigate with it.
Having never done that before, I was a little nervous about the
quality of the navigation and directions. I'm not sure why - since,
well, it worked perfectly. I rigged the phone in the GPS mount - ran
a power cord down to a USB adapter stuck in the lighter socket,
plugged in my headphones, jumped on the bike and took off.
Just about 2 hours later I arrived at my destination after a
pit stop and fill up about a half hour into the ride.
I have to recommend this combination to anyone looking to
navigate and have tunes on the cheap - as long as you already have a
smart phone :-) Pandora internet radio kept me grooving the whole trip
down and back and I used 76 MB of data to do it. That works out to
approximately 15.2 MB an hour, since I took the scenic route back and
added about an hour to my trip.
The cool part about using a single device for this is simply
that the navigation app lowered the volume for Pandora, said what it
needed to say, then turned Pandora back up. Slightly annoying, but it
works better than having to look at the screen to figure out what was
meant when you didn't hear it in the first place.
I used these 'headphones'
http://www.amazon.com/JVC-HAEBX5B-Inner-Sports-Headphones/dp/B003XQLNMC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341234520&sr=8-1&keywords=jvc+over+the+ear+sport
- purchased locally, and they caused very little discomfort in my ears
and were very good at blocking out the road noise, while providing a
very nice sound for my ZZ Top Pandora station.
On the way back from the PGR ride, taking the scenic route,
I came upon a Victory dealer who happened to be offering the demo ride
program they offer "Try one and you'll Buy one" I believe they call
it. Well I tried one. I jumped on the Victory Cross Country in Candy
Apple Red -
http://www.polaris.com/en-us/victory-motorcycles/touring/cross-country-tour/pages/features.aspx
- and I gotta say even at $22,499 retail price - that bike just might
be worth it. It floats over the road, has torque and oomph to go - a
loud stereo - and in stock form is so quiet I had to keep checking the
Tach to see if it was running!
On the other hand - I don't have $22 k and if I did - I'd
probably pay off some debt instead!
Anyone else ride a Victory?
-Joey
--
-Joey Kelley
JoeyKelley.com - My Life Online
JoeyFixesComputers.com - Its What I Do!
JoeyKelleyPhoto.com - Photographing Today, For Tomorrow
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