Interstate camper van on a diet

[InterBlog]

We are at the stage of life where we are looking to either downsize or not purchase in the first place, but rather re-purpose as much as we can.

Here's that same motorcycle rack stood up against the garage wall and supported by the small hoist that used to hold my knife-throwing target at various heights.

Most of the weight is on the floor, but this ensures it does not topple over and crush either a skull or a windshield.

[wachuko]

Not sure if I am more impress with the idea or the knife throwing skill.

Very cool on both accounts!

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by wachuko

Not sure if I am more impress with the idea or the knife throwing skill.

Very cool on both accounts!

Yeah, well, I suck at knife throwing. It's a VERY difficult skill to acquire. I learned that, no matter how careful I am, I need to take the target outside. Otherwise I'm going to tear up the gyprock.

Video below, although I'm not sure it will load properly.

Edit - you can see the third knife bounce straight back, even though it's very soft pine end grain I was throwing into. You can put a few teeth out with this sport if you are not careful.

Edit 2 - What on earth does this have to do with an Interstate?! Well, I practice throwing while camping off-grid. Plenty of dead trees to assault in the wilderness. And my sporting knives are generally legal in all jurisdictions. Speaking theoretically of course, this is not the worst hobby to have, if you tend to boondock for extended periods around large wild carnivores in locations where firearms are prohibited.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bor7cT4HptG/

[wachuko]

Good thing you suck at it! That was a pretty closed group...

[InterBlog]

Following up on the previous sidebar, here is a 7-second video illustrating the different outcomes that can result between static and dynamic loads.

Instead of sports fans going rah-rah-rah, visualize your tail load (motorbike or other) bouncing up and down due to road roughness.

I'm not saying it will happen - I'm just saying that this is a phenomenon that is (gulp) not always well accounted for in engineering design. Case in point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SI0nTbipSw

[Rig Rat]

The Swivelwheel-46 System has a deck dimension of 6 ft wide x 4 ft long. There is a weight capacity of 600 pounds with the system. This system is great for transporting motor scooters, generators, small ATV's, etc. The Swivelwheel-46 system may also be loaded from the rear or from the sides. The tailgate on the pickup may be lowered with the Swivelwheel system attached. All Swivelwheel systems incorporate regulation DOT lighting with a 4-wire flat trailer plug. The single point hitch bar is standard with the SW-46 and you also have the ability to option out for the dual hitch bar for heavier loads to have better stability. https://www.cruiserlifts.com/collect...wivelwheel-eco

[InterBlog]

I would need to research that product carefully before I could comment in detail, other than to say, for two grand, it would need to be perfect for me to bite.

"Trippin With The Smiths" broke their Swivelwheel axle twice while they were underway. You can find reports on YouTube, but they tend not to make concise, focused videos, so I will not link them here. I didn't stick with the videos long enough to find out why the thing failed twice in rapid succession.

[InterBlog]

Sidebar to the scooter / e-bike issue since it is a tangent to this thread...

I needed this for work anyway, because some industrial environments are very strict about how many square inches of retro-reflective material are on your person as you are in their workspace. Don a conventional backpack over your safety vest and you might have violated the provision.

BUT, what a neat option for scootering. In a see-or-be-seen world, it doesn't get much more vivid than this. The technology behind these tapes is fascinating to me. They are otherworldly in their glow. My husband took this picture below, and the reflectivity washed out the image.

Additional consideration: I've been flying a lot lately on crowded planes. Nobody is going to secretly abscond with this backpack if I am forced to stow it six rows ahead of me. I'll see it a mile away, unlike the solid black pack I am using now, which looks like everybody else's solid black pack.

It's not the most comfortable pack out there - no cushy padded straps. But I will live with that. It does swallow a 17-inch mobile workstation.

Edit: Also useful for hiking during hunting season.

The Caribee Pilbara 34 liter version, an Australian creation imported by a company in southern Maine:

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by TayaraTravel

I'll reiterate a recommendation for a Yamaha TW2200
https://www.yamahamotorsports.com/du...t/models/tw200
Fat tires, low seat, low weight. Enough power for highways (not freeways!).

So, I spent the past two days being the recipient of some serious Texas whoop a**, because our state motorcycle licensing course is no joke. Students go from never having sat on a motorcycle at the beginning of Day 1, to doing a right hand turn from a dead stop (no feet touching down), tight figure-8 (20 foot-wide box), swerving, tight cone weaving, controlled emergency brake stopping inside a one-foot-wide box, and other stuff on the proficiency test at the end of Day 2. It's mentally exhausting, but it's excellent training. I like it when people force me to bust my butt making an effort to do things right.

Anyway, my instructor was an old "motorcycles R us" kind of guy, been riding since forever. To speak to Tayara's recommendation above, the instructor predicted that I will get rid of the scooter and start riding a REAL motorcycle inside a year.

Tayara had the benefit of knowing the basics of my personality when making that recommendation - i.e., in 7 years on Air Forums, I haven't shown any pattern of doing anything half-way, no matter what the thing is.

Anyway, LB_3 and I have a lot going on in our lives, and I don't know that I will take motorcycling beyond the quick and dirty that a scooter provides. But it was much easier to control a standard motorcycle than I expected. There's a lot you can achieve with the controls that you are given. It reminded me of learning to drive a car in Nova Scotia in snow and ice. A hell of a lot depends on technique. Two people riding identical vehicles on ice can either kill themselves, or breeze through it like nothing happened. Similar deal with a motorcycle. You have a clutch and a gear shift and a throttle and two brakes. You can make a complete mess of that assemblage, or you can get real work done with it.

[TayaraTravel]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

So, I spent the past two days being the recipient of some serious Texas whoop a**, because our state motorcycle licensing course is no joke. ...and I don't know that I will take motorcycling beyond the quick and dirty that a scooter provides. ....

Don't be surprised if you do (take it further). It can be addictive.