Might as well be in Kansas!

The fires raging out west of Colorado have caused smoke filled skies for us here.  I've not seen the Front Range mountains for the last few days and it's not getting any better.  Hence the title, since it appears as if I am in Kansas.

I rode out this evening hoping for some of the clearing of the skies forecasted by the weather guessers but it was not to be.

60 miles of riding later, none of the usual spots gave views of either distant Pikes Peak or the nearby Front Range Mountains, even nearby Mount Evans was invisible behind a gray hazy sky.

As the sun set,  I stopped briefly along Crowfoot Parkway on the way back to the town of Parker from Castle Rock.  The sun was a glowing red ball low in the sky and my photos failed to capture its redness but should give you an idea of our hazy smoke-filled skies.

I can only imagine how much worse conditions are for the folks who live near the current fires burning in several western states.  Hopefully weather conditions will favor the firefighting efforts that are ongoing.

Storage Farkle for Scarlett

So I was wandering about the local Home Depot and stumbled upon this little storage gem.

Image Source: Home Depot

It was the right dimensions: 22" x 13" x 6.5" (55.8mm x 33mm x 16.5mm) to fit nicely on top of the cargo rag that is mounted on top of the spare tire on Scarlett, my 2014 URAL Patrol Sidecar Rig.  It is, in fact, slightly larger than the recycled ammunition can that I had hard mounted onto the bottom of the sidecar's trunk area.  LINK

It's got a dust/water seal so should do a better job than the ammo can did in keeping things dry inside.

For the price ($29), you really get a nice bit of storage space, that when mounted, is lockable yet easily accessible and in my case can hold everything I had stashed in the ammo can under the sidecar's trunk!

Here's initial views of the storage box, just lying on top of the cargo rack over the spare tire:

 The object in the bag?  Tripod.

.

Next, I removed the inside organizers and plastic dividers:

 The orange plastic bins just lift out, as do the plastic dividers

holding the orange bins in place laterally.

 Now, no bins, just the plastic dividers, which came out.

I also popped out the plastic insert on the top lid to

gain about another inch or so of storage vertically.

There's four anchor points, two on each side of the case, 

which are used to clamp these cases to other cases made by 

Ridgid as a set.  I used them to anchor the case to the 

storage rack.

 The entire contents of the ammo can fit comfortably

within the confines of the tool case, with a little room to spare!

I used one of the four anchor points as a way

to mount a lock to keep honest people honest.

The whole process took less than 30 minutes, including the securing of the box to the rack using metal wire ties, with velcro straps as secondary tie-downs.  The velcro straps are removable, the metal wire ties are insurance, and yes, the forward two straps will have to be removed in order to access the spare tire.

I believe I'll end up painting the orange square with the Ridgid logo in black soon.  

Now, what to carry in the ammo can?  So many storage options now on my sidecar rig!

Update:  I applied some black retro-reflective tape to cover the Ridgid logo on top of the case.  Also, using velcro as primary tie-down mechanism since I can tension it, and using small snaplinks as "just in case" anchors.  Going to use the old ammo box under the sidecar for carrying consumables such as oils.

New Hella Headlamp and a Sunset

Today, the Hella Headlamp I ordered from Amazon a few days ago arrived.  It had shown impressive lighting abilities on RichardM's Ural Rig whilst he blew away all records for last winter's Polar Bear Challenge.  Of course, the fact, he was riding on snow, and everything around him was covered in snow probably helped reflect light but still, it had to be better than the headlamp I'd been using.

Image src: amazon.com

The install was pretty straightforward but I elected to use an upgrade version of the H4 bulb that came with the Hella headlamp.

Then it was time to wait for dark to see how the new headlight performed.  I will say this, while shooting the below pictures, I couldn't use the hi-beam setting as it was flaring out the camera sensor.  (This, is a good thing in my mind).  In fact, with low-beam engaged, there was still some flaring issues, so the new headlamp is definitely brighter.

Clouds blocked the setting sun pretty effectively, I had to adjust the rig's position to take advantage of reflected sunlight on clouds to the south west of me.

Mount Evans

 Sunset Mode

All three shots below were with the headlamp in the low-beam position.

 underexposed by one full stop

 Sunset Mode

-0.3 step underexposure

There was still some light in the sky as I rode home so it wasn't fully dark but I could see my path lit by the low-beam headlight just fine.  The high-beam option lit up distant signs well once I was in the darker neighborhood streets away from the sparse street lights.

More testing to be done of course, but this Hella Headlamp appears promising!

Andrey Kotofey: Winter Nordkapp

Here's a man after my own heart, a winter Uralista who rode to the Nordkapp in Winter.

It's worth the slightly more than 14 minutes of your time, if you like riding in the Winter like I do.

He and his passenger made the ride in January of 2014 apparently.