theboondork's RV blog

Complain, complain, complain.

3/14/2018

Arctic Fox Boondocking in a casino parking lot

I took this picture of the Arctic Fox to show that even though there's a lot of RVs in this parking lot were still not packed together like sardines.

For the last couple of weeks I've been trying to figure a way to make the little Beta 250's seat more comfortable. Before I got to Ajo I hadn't spent a whole lot of time sitting on the Beta, but since I rode it a lot more there the shortcomings of the seat became more apparent.

Now don't get me wrong, the seat is way better than standing up on the footpegs all the time but it's still very narrow and very hard and it doesn't take a lot of bouncing over bumps to make you wish for a few more inches of foam.

The problem is the seat is not built like an ordinary motorcycle seat so it can't be readjusted like an ordinary motorcycle seat. It's basically just a fairly stiff piece of black foam with no cover over it glued to the plastic gas tank.

Ordinarily to make a motorcycle seat fit your unique posterior you just Unstaple the Naugahyde or leather cover and reshape, add, or take away some foam and staple the cover back on. But the Beta design is not conducive to that method of remodeling the seat.

I knew that foam is going to have to be used to change the design I'm just not sure how. But this morning I went to a shop called "A Foam and Fabric Place" in downtown Tucson and bought a few pieces of foam for the motorcycle and another project I want to work on. I must say the part of town they were located in had seen better days and the shop itself wasn't much to look at but they had all kinds of foam and the guy that helped me was very nice and very knowledgeable knowing exactly the firmness of foam I needed for a motorcycle seat.

If you haven't bought any foam lately I'm here to tell you the stuff has gotten really expensive. Apparently global warming has just about wiped out the foam farmers in the Midwest so most of the foam is now grown on farms in China where the foam is picked by hand raising the price considerably. And from the prices I saw on the Internet I expected this little store was going to be outrageous but they had so much foam of different kinds that they had lots and lots of scraps and most of the scraps were just the sizes I needed for my projects. And since scraps are priced way less than blocks or sheets of foam I walked out of the store with an arm load of foam of different thicknesses and firmness for 20 bucks, I was very happy.

So now I've got plenty of foam to play with I just need to go to Lowe's to get some glue and figure out how I'm going to make this project work.

theboondork

Jet drag truck casino parking lot Tucson Arizona

This is one of my neighbors he's been here since I got here and Fortunately he doesn't crank up the race truck every morning before dawn. I'll bet if he did run it every now and then it would be a long time before I would complain about somebody's generator. Click the picture for a short video

11 Comments

Barney Ward

3/14/2018 04:28:35 pm

It seems my internet has held up for more than 3 minutes in a row for a change. I am catching up with your misadventures. It sure is cold late in the year over this way.

theboondork

3/14/2018 05:25:22 pm

Yeah, Internet difficulties are all part of the boondocking lifestyle. A good part of my meager finances are spent trying to keep myself with enough Internet to be entertained and post to my blog. But I think Ajo was the worst I've had it with no Internet at all for four days and no way to get any.

Cold is not a problem here in Tucson, it's been in the mid-80s since I got here but I think it's supposed to cool off pretty soon.

It sure brought back some memories when you mentioned the Ah-choo tree. That tree is solely responsible for me having to leave the area.

Tom... Staying toooo warm in Tucson.

3/14/2018 09:43:06 pm

My Honda 2000 would put that to shame! LOL

3/14/2018 10:36:46 pm

The little Beta 250 is definitely a work in progress. From its rather embarrassing initial debut the day I got it when I had to cover it up to keep people from staring, to the homemade Styrofoam seat it sported for a week or so, or the still useless rear brake which is only two inches from the foot Peg, progress has been slow.

But it's coming along and I try to concentrate on one thing at a time which at this moment is the seat which is a pain in the butt.... And I mean that literally.

Tom

3/14/2018 10:43:54 pm

Wait a minute I thought you were talking about the little Beta but now it occurs to me you may have been talking about the Shockwave Truck. I'm a little slow catching on to things when the sun goes down.

Jets don't accelerate incredibly fast and it wouldn't surprise me if most sport bikes wouldn't easily beat it in a quarter mile. If I see him outside I'll see if he wants to race the Beta 250 across the parking lot.

Tom

Darrell

3/15/2018 10:08:16 am

I would need an old fashioned wide tractor seat. Have fun out there.

3/15/2018 04:13:32 pm

I've actually sat on a few of those and even though there just steel with no padding they felt more comfortable than this motorcycle seat.

Tom

Linda Sand

3/15/2018 04:07:30 pm

Unicycle riders often bounce their bikes on purpose. Their seats are long and skinny. You might want to see what you can find out about those seats.

3/15/2018 04:23:31 pm

I've seen those so I know what you're talking about. It's what used to be called a banana seat on stingray bicycles back in the day. But I'm beginning to think it has more to do with me than with the motorcycle seat. For instance I've tried to sit on bicycles with those tiny little seats the road racers all use and to me it was torture.

So it's beginning to look like I'm just a sissy and won't be comfortable on anything but a La-Z-Boy recliner.

Tom

3/16/2018 03:16:39 pm

I remember banana seats. Unicycle seats tend to curve up at the ends which helps you stay centered.

3/16/2018 05:36:28 pm

Yeah it's that staying centered thing that's the problem with the unicycle style seat. Riding an off road motorcycle means sliding back and forth on the seat for various reasons.

For instance, If you're making a turn in loose dirt you slide all the way forward on your seat to put more weight on the front wheel so it doesn't slide out from under you. Going up a steep hill you do the same thing, but for different reason, having your weight forward helps keep the motorcycle from looping out, which means flipping over backwards.

Going downhill you do the opposite, you slide to the back of the seat to put some weight on the rear wheel so your back brake will slow you down and to keep from flipping over the handlebars when you put the front brake on.

Now I'm to geezerly to be doing things that require all that sliding around on the seat. But it makes me feel better to think that I could if I wanted to, it's just that I've grown too wise to ride fast like I did 30 years ago, okay 40 years ago!

Tom

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