April 2012 Newsletter

Spring is here!  (Okay, maybe Spring arrived here a month and half ago and the calendar is just now catching up.)

Now that Spring is here and we have switched to Daylight Saving Time, we are resuming our monthly club meetings on the second Monday evening of the month.

April  Club Meeting

Our next meeting will be held on Monday, April 9th, 6:30 p.m., at P.T.s Olde Fashion Grill in Leland.  P.T.'s Olde Fashion Grill is located at 1035 Grandiflora Drive, Leland.  The GPS coordinates are N34.21187 W78.02910.


View Meeting Locations in a larger map

In case you missed our March club meeting at The Front Porch Restaurant in Elizabethtown, here are some photos.


The New BMW Scooters

BMW has decided to enter the high-end mega-scooter market with their new C650GT and C650 Sport.  Of course, BMW does not refer to to these as scooters, but rather as Urban Mobility Vehicles.

The folks at Cycle World magazine recently had the opportunity to test drive these new machines in Spain.  You can read the full review at Cycle World's web site.


Ohlins Open House

Did you know that the shock maker Ohlins has their US headquarters in Hendersonville, NC?  If not, here is a great chance to visit them.  Ohlins will be hosting an open house at their offices on Saturday, May 12th, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.  Ohlins is located at 703C South Grove Street, Hendersonville, NC [GPS coordinates N35308795 W82.451035].


GPS Tip-of-the-Month

This month's GPS Tip-of-the-Month is mapping and mobile phone tip for those of you who use an Android-based phone and Google Maps. If you are an iOS phone user, and you the Google Maps app installed, this tip should also work for you.

Then you take a trip, motorcycling or otherwise, it's always a good idea to have a list of the hotels where you are planning to stay, along with their phone numbers. This tip makes it easy to take this information with you on your mobile phone.

Before you take your trip, use your desktop computer's web browser to visit Google Maps (https://maps.google.com) and log into your Google account (you do have a free Google account, right?). This tip only works if you are logged into your Google account.

Next, use Google Maps to look up your hotels, restaurants, and other points of interest that you might be planning to visit and for which you would like to have contact information readily accessible during your trip. Many of these hotels, restaurants, businesses, and places of interest will probably have a "Google Places" page that looks something like this:

As you locate each one, mark the hotel/restaurant/etc. by clicking the star symbol next to the place's name  (it will initially look like the outline of a star). After you click the star, it will fill in like this:

This means you have marked that location. Marking a location adds the location to your list of "Starred Items" in your Google Maps account.

When you are finished marking places, click on the My Places button on your Google Maps page.

You should now see each of your starred items in your "My Places" listing.

Now, get your Android phone and open the Google Maps app. From the menu in the Google Maps app, select "My Places." Two "tabs" should be shown – one labeled "Starred Places" and the other labeled "Recent."

Selecting the "Starred Places" tab will now display for you a list of all those locations that you marked from your desktop computer. If you decide that you need to call one of your starred places, like a hotel or restaurant, the Places page should list the location's address and phone number, and if you look closely, their phone number should be displayed as a link that you can select to immediately dial with your mobile phone. Pretty handy, right!

Special thanks to Daniel Zimbrich for sharing this helpful tip!


2012 World SBK, MotoGP Calendar

In case you missed the Phillip Island World Superbike races, BMW posted a second-place finish in one of the two races -- BMW's best finish thus far!

Here are some of the upcoming World Superbike, MotoGP, and AMA Pro Racing events that are currently scheduled to be shown on SpeedTV):

April 1, 2012 - WorldSBK - Italy (broadcast 4/1@2PM and 3PM, 4/3@1PM and 2PM)
April 1, 2012 - WorldSupersport - Italy (broadcast 4/3@12PM and 4/9@2PM)
April 8, 2012 - MotoGP Moto2 - Qatar Grand Prix (broadcast 4/8@2PM and 4/10@1PM)
April 8, 2012 - MotoGP - Qatar Frand Prix (broadcast 4/8@3PM and 4/10@3PM)
April 10, 2012 - Moto125 - Qatar (broadcast 4/10@12PM)
April 21, 2012 - AMA ProRacing - Atlanta (broadcast 4/21@8:30PM and 9:30PM, 4/22@11PM, 4/23@12AM)
April 22, 2012 - WorldSBK - Netherlands (broadcast 4/22@5PM and 6PM, 4/24@1PM and 2PM)
April 29, 2012 - MotoGP - Spanish Grand Prix (broadcast 4/29@8AM and 5/1@2PM)
April 29, 2012 - MotoGP Moto2 - Spanish Grand Prix (broadcast 4/29@12PM and 5/1@1PM)
May 6, 2012 - MotoGP - Portugal Grand Prix (broadcast 5/6@8AM and 6PM)
May 6, 2012 - MotoGP Moto2 - Portugal Grand Prix (broadcast 5/6@1PM)
May 6, 2012 - WorldSBK - Italy (broadcast 5/6@2PM and 3PM)



Newsletter Contributions 

With the riding season finally beginning again, many of you will be taking trips in the coming months. When you return home, please take a few minutes to write a short trip report to share with your other club members. Trip reports (or any other kinds of articles) are welcome!

Your trip report or article can be one paragraph, or it can be a page, or it can simply be a few photos. It's a great way to share your motorcycling experience with everyone, and perhaps inspire some us to take the same trip sometime. Send any contributions to ccbmwridersclub@gmail.com.


Video-of-the-Month

This month's video is an interesting "confrontation" involving two racing bikes.  You may enjoy watching their very unique "dance."

Video-of-the-Month Link


That's all for this month. Ride safe and Ride far!

Google Earth Network Link Tutorial

This is a quick tutorial to show you how to add our club's CCBMW Google Earth file link as a "permanent" place in your collection of Google Earth Places.  This is actually very easy.  The article below provides you step-by-step instructions (including pictures) on how to do this.

Prequisites

If you do not already have the Google Earth browser, you can download it for free from http://www.google.com.  The Google Earth browser is similar to a web browser, but it displays geographical information (locations) rather than web pages.  If you have never tried the Google Earth browser, I high recommend it – it's a lot of fun!

Background

Our club now has a file available that will add a network link to your Places collections in the Google Earth browser.  When you open the Google Earth browser and select the club's network link (by clicking the check box next to that Place entry), Google Earth will access another file stored on our club web site and provide you with the club's latest location information on motorcycling-related rallies and events.

The network link file is a Google KML, or Keyhole Markup Language, file.  KML files are simple text files that tell the Google Earth browser how to find and display geographical information.  The file being accessed by the network link file is also a KML file (it is actually a compressed or Zip file version of a KML file) stored on our club web site's collection of downloadable files.

Once you add the network link to your Places collection, you never need to do so again (unless we make available a "new-and-improved" version of the network link file).

The "Motorcycling Events and Rallies" file provides you location and background information on various motorcycling events and rallies scheduled during 2011.  This includes the International Motorcycle Shows, the BMW MOA and BMW RA national rallies, various local and regional rallies being sponsored by BMW MOA-affiliated and BMW‑RA-affiliated clubs, local motorcycle racing events at Virginia International Raceway and Carolina Motorsports Park, as well the 2011 World Superbike racing events.  I hope to soon add the 2011 AMA and MotoGP motorcycle racing event locations.  When events start being announced for 2012, we will be able to simply add these to the collection – you will not need to do anything different to have the latest information!

Network Link File Download

Using your preferred web browser, you can use the link below to download the network link file.

https://sites.google.com/site/ccbmwridersclub/download-files/EventsandRalliesNetworkLink.kml

In Internet Explorer, right-click on this link and select the Save Target As… option to save the network link file to your computer's hard drive.

In the Firefox web browser, clicking on the link opens a dialog window which will allow you to save file to your computer's hard drive.

In the Google Chrome browser, clicking the link will download the file to your computer's default location for downloaded files.

Adding the Network Link to Google Earth

Locate the network link file that you downloaded to your computer's hard drive.  If you have Google Earth installed on your computer, double-clicking the downloaded network link file should cause this file to open in the Google Earth browser.  The "Motorcycling Events and Rallies" entry should appear in your Places panel on the left, under the Temporary Places folder.

To permanently add the new Motorcycling Events and Rallies entry to your "My Places" folder (which is shown immediately above the Temporary Places folder), all you need to do is answer a question when you close the Google Earth browser.  After you select the File, Close menu option, a dialog will appear on the screen to tell you that you have unsaved places in your "Temporary Places" folder.

If you answer Save (by clicking the Save button), the Motorcycling Events and Rallies entry will automatically be added to your "My Places" folder, and will appear there the next time you start the Google Earth browser.

Notice it will display a special "network" symbol next to the Motorcycling Events and Rallies entry.  To see the latest information, click the check box beside the "+" box located to the left side of the item in the list.  This will expand the list for that entry.  Checking the boxes beside items will make those locations appear in the main window.  Likewise, unchecking items (or folders) will make those items disappear from the main window.

Congratulations!  Your Google Earth browser now includes a network link to access our club's events and rallies information.

The current Motorcycling Events and Rallies list includes "Rallies," "Events," "Race Events," and the "2011 World Superbike Races."  On occasion, additional entries will be shown for things like a planned club ride event (for example, to show the proposed club ride route).

After you click the "+" box, you can scroll through the list and click on any item your want to display.

Double clicking the individual item will cause the Google Earth browser to zoom to that item.  For example, double clicking the Rallies folder will display all the rally locations in the main window.

Double clicking on any item in the Places panel will zoom to that location in the main window and display a "bubble" which provides further information about the location/event.

GPS coordinates for the location can be obtained by looking at the status bar at the bottom of your Google Earth browser's window (as shown above) or by right-clicking on the individual item in the Places panel and looking at it's properties (also shown below).

Future Information

Please help keep this information up-to-date for your fellow club members!  If you know about an upcoming rally or event of interest to our club members, please forward any information you have (especially the location and date) to ccbmwridersclub@gmail.com.  These can be events you have read about online or in a magazine, or events that you have learned of by word-of-mouth.

Let me know whether this is a useful tool for you.  You can leave comments at the bottom of this post, or provide them via email to ccbmwridersclub@gmail.com.

A future addition being considered is adding the locations for all BMW dealers in the U.S.  This could be done as part of the club's rallies and event places collection, or it could be done as a separate collection of places (which would you prefer?).  Since this is a lot of work to assemble, I would first appreciate feedback on the usefulness of this tool, before I invest the time.

Thanks for contributing!

Bill Murray
March 9, 2011