January 2013 Newsletter

Happy New Year 

Happy New Year to all of our club members!  It was great to see those of you who were able to come to December 10th club meeting at The Harp and our Winter Solstice Gathering at P.T.'s Grille on December 21st.  We missed all of you whose schedules did not allow you to join us, and we hope you will be able to attend our January "Oyster Roast" meeting (more information provided in the next section).

I hope you are busy planning your motorcycling adventures for the 2013 riding season. 2013 promises to be another great riding season.  The BMW MOA National Rally will be held in Salem, Orgeon, and the Curve Cowboy Reunion is also being held in the west (in Bend, Oregon) this year.  For those who cannot take the time for a cross-country trip, we will have the BMW Riders Association National Rally, which is being hosted at the Biltmore Estates in Asheville, North Carolina on June 20-23, 2013

Even with the (somewhat) cooler weather we are now "enjoying," we are still planning to holding several  day-ride events during the next couple of months. Watch your email inbox, our club web site, and our new club Google+ Community page, for these announcements.

January Club Meeting 

Our next club meeting will be an oyster roast on Saturday, January 12th, 5 to 9 p.m., at the home of club member +JERRY DOCKERY in Kure Beach. Jerry lives at 309 North 3rd Street in Kure Beach [GPS Coordinates: N34.002563, W77.906481].

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This will be an oyster roast!  Jerry requests that everyone bring their own favorite beverage -- he will have PRBs on hand.  There will be no rain date for this event.  There will be covered bike parking available across the street.

Google+ Community Page 

Google is now offering community pages, and we have set up a Coastal Carolina BMW Rider community page.

The new CCBMW Riders Club community page is available for anyone to view without setting up a Google account.  However, if you want to make comments about the posts, or share the postings that you see there, you will need to join Google+ (which is free).

To maintain this as a resource for just our club members, I am only allowing club members to join the community. I have declined a number of requests to join from other Google+ users who are not in our area. You need to "request" an Invite to join the community, and I hope you will decide to join this Google+ community so we can all share information about our passion for motorcycling.

I plan to announce our club meetings, group rides, and other events through this community site, as well as share late-breaking motorcycling-related information. On this community page, I will be sharing the some of same information that I am posting in the newsletter. Hopefully this will get the information to you faster. If you prefer to see most of this information as a "digest" at the first of the month, the newsletter will still be there for you.

Please consider joining Google+, so you can participate in the discussions. I know that some of you prefer not to join "social" sites because of privacy concerns. My experience with Google has been that you can set up your account to maintain your privacy, and they have not abused this priviledge so far. And remember, even if you decide not to try out our Google+ community is the coming year, you can still read everything there.

BMW MOA Web Site 

If you visited the BMW MOA web site before the Christmas holidays, you may have received either a page showing their web site as being down for maintenance, or a warning that the web site could contain malicious software that may try to load onto your computer (I saw both messages, at various times).

The BMW MOA web site is now back online and has reportedly received some major software upgrades. In addition to the new look, the folks at the MOA are reportedly trying to update their information infrastructure to better support smartphone and tablet users in the future. The BMW MOA is also reportedly working toward putting their famous Anonymous Book online for users.

State Signal Light Law Refresher 

During a recent club ride, I was asked about the specific wait-time requirements of the state law for motorcyclists at non-functional signal lights (i.e., stop lights that will not trigger when a motorcycle arrives at the intersection). I could not remember the specific details, so I found the state law and decided and share it with our club members.

You can read the NC Legislative web page here. The law is written in terms of the motorcyclist having received a citation for proceeding at an inductive-controlled traffic signal light, and what is a defense for this action. Here are the main points:

1. You must bring your  motorcycle to a complete stop at the intersection.
2. The intersection must be controlled by a vehicle actuated traffic signal using an inductive loop to activate the traffic signal.
3. No other vehicle that was entitled to have the right-of-way was sitting at, traveling through, or approaching the intersection.
4. No pedestrians must be attempting to cross at or near the intersection.
5. The motorcyclist receiving the citation must have waited a minimum of three minutes at the intersection where the steady red light occurs, before entering the intersection.

IMS Reminder 

The 2013 Progressive International Motorcycle Show is coming to the Charlotte Convention Center on February 22-24, 2013. The Charlotte Convention Center is located at 501 South College Street. The Friday show runs from 4 to 9 p.m., the Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., and the Sunday show from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

To get more information about the show, or to buy tickets online, head to http://www.motorcycleshows.com. Do not forget to use the promo code BMWRIDERS when you buy your ticket to receive a $3 discount on the single day price ($10 versus $13). 

Items for Sale 

Club member Curtis Sewell has some motorcycle clothing items that he is selling.

Men’s Gear:

• Aerostich Darien Trousers, Size 34
• Olympia High Viz Jacket (AST Z Touring) w/ zip out lining, Size M
• BMW Air-Flow jacket, High Viz, Size 44R
• BMW Club Jacket (Blue & white), Size L
• Hein Gericke Hi-Dri Jacket w/ zip out lining, Size M
• Hein Gericke Hi-Dri trousers, Size L
• Zero Go Trousers (Air Flow), Size L
• BMW All weather boots, Size 44

Women's Gear:

• BMW Airflow-2 Jacket (RED), Size US 6R
• Olympia High Viz Jacket w/zip out liner, Size M
• Olympia Pants w/zip out liner, Size 10
• BMW All weather boots, Size 39

Curtis said all the gear is in excellent shape. The women’s stuff is virtually new, having been worn once. As for pricing, make an offer. He is more interested in seeing this stuff with someone who wants it. Anyone who is interested can call him at 910-256-5355, and they are welcome to take a look at a mutually agreeable time.

The brother of club member +Omar Kharbat has recently purchased a R1200GS (just like Omar's!) and is looking to sell his other motorcycle, a 2012 Ducati Diavel (in red, of course).  The bike has less than 200 miles on it, and the asking price is $16,000


Make: Ducati Engine Size (cc): 1,198
Model: Sport Touring Warranty: Vehicle has an existing warranty Vehicle Title: Clear

Contact Omar at (910) 233-4621 if you wish to inquire.

Old Maple Hill Reopened

Some of know that Old Maple Hill Road has been closed for a while, for replacement of a bridge and resurfacing of the roadway. Fellow club member Eileen Sahlin reports that that Old Maple Hill Road is now open – repaved from large bridge to curves beyond the small bridge. She also said the best part is a new small bridge – wider, concrete, and guard rails. Pass this along to your fellow riders.

Non-Ethanol Gas 

Last summer, prior to the BMW MOA National Rally in Sedalia, Missouri, a couple of club members expressed interest in the availability of "pure gas" (non-ethanol gas) during the trip.  There is a web site (pure-gas.org) which purports to have a good database of locations where "pure-gas" can be purchased.

Recently, I converted their database into a point-of-interest (POI) file which is suitable for use on Garmin GPSs (.GPI format).  If you are interested in using the file, you can download the .gpi file from our Google Drive folder.  If you use the POI file and learn that a listed location does not offer non-ethanol gas for sale, please let me know so the location can be removed from the POI file.

Also, if you are a subscribed to Motorcycle Consumer News, the December 2012 issue included an interesting article on a relatively simple process that allows you to remove the ethanol from gasoline.

All this serves as a word to the wise -- plans are underway to soon begin selling E-15 (15 percent ethanol) gasoline at some service stations, so you should become more vigilant about what gasoline you are using when filling up your motorcycle's tank.

GPS Corner 

Over the Christmas Holiday, I finished a step-by-step guide for creating custom IMG maps that you can use as overlays on some Garmin GPS devices (the Colorado, Dakota, Montana, and Orgeon series GPSrs, and perhaps some other models) that are capable of displaying multiple maps sets at the same time.

If you own a Montana GPSr, you already know that you can display (or hide) a number of tracks stored on your GPSr. However, there are limits to the number of tracks that you can display in this fashion, and you have to individually display or hide each one of those tracks. An example of where you can use the custom map feature is creating a map that displays a large number of tracks that you may have previously ridden in an area. Once loaded on your GPSr, you can quickly enable or disable this custom map overlay

The complete step-by-step guide is available online as a Google Document, and a Community Page post is available that also links to the Google Document. The process to create the custom maps can be accomplished solely with free software. If you decide to try it, please let me know if you find the guide helpful

New BMW Boxer Engine

Most of you have already heard that BMW is releasing a new water-cooled boxer engine in their 2013 R1200GS model. For those of you who are not BMW MOA members, and thus have not had a chance to see the article about the new engine/bike in the the BMW MOA's BMW Owners News magazine or the BMW-RA's On The Level magazine (both, November 2012 issues), you may be interested in the Kevin Cameron's article available at the Cycle World web site.

Video-of-the-Month 

Many of you are familiar with Touratech, the German manufacturer of gear and accessories for adventure-style motorcycles.  I recently discovered a series of short videos, prepared by TouratechUSA and hosted by famed world tourer Helge Pedersen, that are tips for adventure touring motorcyclists.  

Check out Touratech's seven  Tips From the Road videos.  You will almost certainly pick up something worthwhiel from one or two of these videos.

The Wrap-Up 

That's it for the January newsletter. Again, I would like to wish all of you and your family a Happy New Year, and you many great motorcycling adventures in 2013. Ride safely and ride far!