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TIP # 1: Question: What do apples, grapes, raisins, salt-water taffy, coffee and mom’s chocolate chip cookies have in common with bottled water, sport drinks, trail mix and energy bars? If you guessed “travel food past and present” you win a bag of turkey jerky! Taking a long trip can wreak havoc on your GI tract. If you don't plan accordingly, you may spend your riding breaks chowing down on fast food, candy bars, chips and pop. Before you know it, you'll be dehydrated, over-caffeinated and seeing double on a sugar high. Fortunately, there are a number of good travel-food choices and most of them can even be purchased at the quick mart where you buy gasoline. And if you take a little time to plan ahead, you can even take the culinary comforts from home out on the road with you. Back in the day—say the 1960s or 1970s—there weren't many pre-packaged and portable foods designed specifically for the traveler—remember Space Food Sticks? But that didn’t mean we didn’t have a lot of choices, many of which were downright healthy, too. Today’s motorcyclist can still take advantage of “old-school” mother-knows-best munchies, starting with fruit snacks. Apples, oranges, and grapes have always been a solid choice for day trips, offering solid nutrition and a quick lift. Raw veggies like carrots, broccoli tips and cherry tomatoes work well too. Unless you have a way to cool them, however, they don’t last long within the confines of your backpack, tank bag or trunk. Today as in years gone by, dried fruit and fruit strips serve as great alternatives for the long haul because they keep well for days on end. To get a little protein in the mix, try adding some unsalted dried nuts. Throw in some granola and candy-coated chocolates and you now have homemade trail mix. Sports bars and protein bars offer tasty combinations of fruits and nuts, and they're available almost everywhere these days. They are typically formulated for active athletes and contain a lot of calories, and can therefore stand in place of a full-on meal in a pinch if circumstances so dictate. Jerky is also a long-time favorite protein source among riders, but watch the salt, which can lead to dehydration and also increase your thirst. And remember to pack along at least one bottle your favorite beverage. Speaking of fluids, there’s no replacement for a big slug of water and most of us do not consume nearly as much as we should. There’s a fine line between drinking enough water and the need for extra pit stops, so strike a balance that works best for you. A generation ago we often filled thermos bottles and canteens with as much water as we could carry. Thankfully, inexpensive bottled water is now readily available at just about every convenience store and that means we don’t have to haul quite as much of it around. Sports drinks are practical if we have been sweating in the saddle for hours on end, but be careful not to overindulge in these tasty drinks as they have high levels of sodium and sugar. It goes without saying that coffee and tea, natural sources of caffeine, must be consumed prudently. Along with soda, their diuretic affect can dehydrate your body rapidly and soon moist membranes (think lips, eyes, nose and sinuses) can dry out and become irritated and sore. If you need a quick energy pickup, it’s hard to beat the pleasure that comes from eating a candy bar. It seems that this is one road ration that has withstood the test of time. And if you want to pack some homemade sweets along, it’s hard to surpass your mom’s chocolate chip cookie recipe, the ones she lovingly baked every time your family piled into the station wagon and embarked on a wandering road trip in the heat of summer. In general, when you're really doing some serious two-wheeled travel, it’s always a good idea to have spare rations and water packed to prepare for the unexpected. Flat tire? Out of gas? Lost in space? Or maybe you've merely found a gorgeous spot that absolutely demands that you stop right here for the night? A decent stock of energy bars, assorted munchies and water, along with some matches or a lighter, can do a soul good when it’s time to bivouac in the bayou for the night. Which leads to a future topic—turning your carry-along food into a three-course meal.
TIP # 2: Fuel Stabalizer
If your are not going to ride your bike fore a couple of months or longer you should add fuel stabalizer to your fuel. This will help the fuel from becoming lacquered and create problems in your fuel delivery system. When adding fuel stabalizer run your bike with it in so that the added stabalizer makes it to the carbs and the lines. Next riding season you should be able to start and ride without any ill effects from old gasoline. | |
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| TIP # 3: Over and over we hear that internal-combustion engines are just air pumps, and that’s largely true. But what happens when you take that pump up to high altitude, or run it on a hot day? And for that matter, what happens to the other air pump in the equation, you, the rider? Most of us know that with a carbureted engine we need to adjust the jetting at higher altitudes because of changes in air density. At high altitudes and on hot days, there’s simply less air in the air—a cubic foot of the invisible gas has fewer molecules than it does at sea level on a cold morning. Note that there’s not just less oxygen—there’s less of everything: Air is bout 78.09 percent nitrogen, 20.9 percent oxygen, 0.93 percent argon and 0.03 percent carbon dioxide no matter where you go on planet Earth. And our engine wants about 14.7 parts of air to every one part of gasoline (by weight; by volume it’s more like 20,000 to one). Changing your jetting lets your carburetor get close to this perfect ratio, while fuel-injected engines like those on Honda’s flagship FourTrax Rincon and many of Honda’s street bikes automatically compensate for changes in altitude. Neither fuel injection nor revised jetting will recoup the horsepower lost with altitude; they just eliminate additional losses from running too lean (too much air in the mix) or too rich (too much fuel). How much power do you lose at, say, a 12,000-foot pass in Colorado? For every 1,000 feet in elevation gain you’ll lose about three percent of your engine’s horsepower. That 250-horse engine in your pickup is only going to be putting out 160 ponies at 12,000 feet, a loss of 36 percent, and the same applies to your ATV or motorcycle. A hot summer day can make matters even worse: at 100 degrees on that same 12,000-foot pass, the air gets thinner yet so the density altitude jumps from 12,000 to 17,000 feet; now you’re only getting 57.4 percent of your sea-level horsepower—your 250-horsepower truck is down to 143 hp. Approaching this another way, if you take your ATV out to the deer stand in the winter, on a 35-degree winter morning, and then visit the same stand in the summer when it’s 105 degrees, you’ll see a drop in power of about ten percent from the rise temperature alone, even though the geographic altitude stays the same. As mentioned, neither jetting nor fuel injection can compensate for this, although they both will minimize any further losses from an inefficiently running engine. Only turbocharging or supercharging—stuffing more of that thin air into the cylinder—can compensate. This is why virtually every high-performance internal-combustion aircraft engine from World War II used one of the two systems. And it’s also why all those guys in the mountain states choose an ATV or dirt bike with a big engine in the first place. So much for your ATV or motorcycle—now, what about the rider? If the internal-combustion engine is a relatively simple air pump, human physiology is much more complex. Drive up to our 12,000-foot pass and you’ll feel “winded” or “short of breath.” Again, most of this is because the air is less dense—there’s less oxygen in every breath you inhale. Humans are incredibly adaptive creatures and we can get used to higher altitudes, given enough time. Mountaineers call it acclimatization; think of it as a natural, biologic rejetting. There’s still a lot that’s not fully understood about the body’s ability to adapt at high altitudes, but in general, we know that most humans plateau in terms of acclimatization at about 16,500 feet—you can go higher, but your body won’t compensate for it and you’re just losing ground in terms of fitness. Unless you’re a serious mountaineer, that’s not an issue—the highest point in the continental U.S. is about 14,500 feet, and few roads go much over 12,000 feet here. Below 5000 feet, few people show signs of altitude-related discomfort, but above that we begin to see symptoms—elevated respiration rate, shortness of breath, more rapid pulse, and headaches. Above 10,000 feet we see a thickening of the blood and a greater loss of fluids due to urination. You may have trouble sleeping as well, and experience a loss of appetite. And really, at any altitude above 8000 feet, you need to be on the lookout for something called AMS—Acute Mountain Sickness. AMS victims commonly complain that they feel like they’ve got a hangover—headache, loss of energy and depressed appetite or nausea. Severe cases show a loss of coordination. None of these are irreversible, though—just descend to a lower altitude and everything should be fine. Above 14,000 feet, however, two far more serious health problems appear: High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE) and High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE). You may have noticed that at high altitudes, your hands, feet, and face feel puffy. These are external signs of mild edema—the accumulation of fluid in the soft tissues between the cells in the body. In your hands and feet it’s no big deal, but when these fluids accumulate in the lungs (pulmonary edema) or start pressing against the brain (cerebral edema) it’s time for a rapid descent to lower altitudes. Acclimatization and staying hydrated are two of the keys to staying healthy. But how to acclimatize? Here are a couple of rules of thumb. First, few people have difficulties up to altitudes of 5000 feet, even if they live at sea level. Above that, a very conservative approach would be to raise the altitude at which you sleep by 1000 feet per night—this is the general rule of thumb for travel higher than 10,000 feet. Drink plenty of fluids, treat headaches with aspirin, get plenty of sleep, avoid alcohol and avoid overexertion for the first couple of days. Finally, if your condition deteriorates or fails to improve, descend. When in doubt, play it safe—so there will be more days to play in the future. The books Altitude Illness: Prevention and Treatment by Stephen Bezruchka and Mountain Sickness, Prevention, Recognition and Treatment by Peter H. Hackett are two of the up-to-date standards, and are available at any good mountaineering shop or bookstore. |
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