Killing time on long boring streches

[2wTraveler]

Talking about passing the time while riding on long non-challenging streches, like interstate. I us XM Radio, but sometimes I can't quite find programming I am looking for. I also have a plug-in for my ipod in my tankbag, and have tried a couple audiobooks, which sometimes scratch that itch. Problem is, those audiobooks are too damned expensive. Anyone have a source for cheap legal downloads of them?

Another thing I have been running into is finding semi healthy things to snack on while traveling. I wear a shoei rf1000, but I can slip, crackers and thinks of that nature underneath to eat. Most of the selection seems to be limited junk food, which is OK from time to time, but if I am trying to make time and cut out food stops I need heathier options. For example, apple slices work well.

Suggestions?

[2RR2NV]

had a good laugh from one of my buds...  he played Music with his throttle. can kill the gas mileage, but whatya gonna do when you don't have any of those coolio things like radio or ipod. me, i just look around a lot...admire the view. or try listening to the bike and see if i can hear anything that might be outta wack.

[bubba zanetti]

I sing ... loudly. And when the mood strikes, I use the voice of Bella Lugosi to sing 1960's TV theme songs ... sometimes I have to pull over and wipe the tears from my eyes. You simply have not lived till you hear Bella sing the theme to Gilligans Island.

Other than that I get hyperactive, twitch and wiggle my aching butt as I am easily bored.

[2wTraveler]

Amusing story, we rode the Void rally this weekend (3 of us rode together). On the way to Louisville I was leading and we came up on an 18 wheeler and couldn't get past him for a few minutes. I looked up and from my buddies headlights I could see my shadow on the back of the trucks trailer...I raised my left arm and put on a little shaddow puppet show on the back of the trailer. It was good for a laugh from all 3 of us and broke the monotony of that road...good times

[Guy]

Uhhh, I do math problems   . Maybe try to figure out my speed without looking at my speedo, just time and distance. Maybe work what my distance traveled/yet to travel, like "hmmm if I've covered 120miles of a 750 miles trip, I'm just under 1/6 of the way" then I try to figure out time left, maybe gas mileage while I'm at it. Of course I'm also listening to my Ipod, and watching traffic at the same time.

[sassage]

I do slaloms with anything I can find in the road...cracks, tar snakes, road kill...keeps it interesting when music isn't quite cutting it

[2wTraveler]

Uhhh, I do math problems   . Maybe try to figure out my speed without looking at my speedo, just time and distance. Maybe work what my distance traveled/yet to travel, like "hmmm if I've covered 120miles of a 750 miles trip, I'm just under 1/6 of the way" then I try to figure out time left, maybe gas mileage while I'm at it. Of course I'm also listening to my Ipod, and watching traffic at the same time.

I do the same thing some times, a little brain activity keeps me awake, figure out percentages of the route covered or fuel mileage differences between different miles per hour and range.

[Leanintree]

Problem is, those audiobooks are too damned expensive. Anyone have a source for cheap legal downloads of them?

Suggestions?

Ah, there's the rub. Lot's of free audiobooks out there if you're not picky where they come from, but that annoying little 'legal' part is killin' you. Check out some publishers websites. Depending on what you like to read (hear) quite a few of them have been giving away literature to suck people into buying from them.

Leanintree

[JimWilliamson]

"healthy" snack: dried pineapple chunks. They're a nice size for a gloved hand to pinch a piece to slip under chin-bar into mouth. If you like sweet, these work!

In the nuts realm - walnuts are beneficial

Go ahead and toss in some chocolate chips (difficult in hot weather tho) or M&M's (better in hot Wx). Pre-assembled trail mix is often a trip food - or granola bars (nature valley green)

I'd like a gumball machine type dispenser on the left handlebar. Push gloved hand under the opening and have a handfull drop into my palm. Wind might be an issue  

As for the boredom - I try to focus on the environment. Force it to be a mental topic to amuse the brain. "Why would people live here"  "Look at that tree line - I wonder where the creek started / flows to" Railroad tracks - mentally think (I like maps) what towns it passes through and what goods it might be hauling.

[2wTraveler]

The legal part isn't the real issue with me, i doubt anyone is going to come after me for downloading a book. The thing is that in my experience when you get stuff that isn't exactly legel, you end up using p-p networks. Then you open yourself up to spyware and viruses.

[JReazor]

Problem is, those audiobooks are too damned expensive. Anyone have a source for cheap legal downloads of them?

Have you looked in to Audible? I don't use them but I know a few people who are happy with the service. Also, google "audible promotion codes" they often give away free stuff through web sites and podcasts.

[Scratch33]

Another thing I have been running into is finding semi healthy things to snack on while traveling. I wear a shoei rf1000, but I can slip, crackers and thinks of that nature underneath to eat. Most of the selection seems to be limited junk food, which is OK from time to time, but if I am trying to make time and cut out food stops I need heathier options. For example, apple slices work well.

Suggestions?

Twizzlers.  And Beef Jerky.  You could even wrap a Twizzler around beef jerky and slip it under your helmet.  

Yum!  

[Scratch33]

I'd like a gumball machine type dispenser on the left handlebar. Push gloved hand under the opening and have a handfull drop into my palm. Wind might be an issue  

Dude!  That's freakin' genius!!    

[FZ1 Matt]

right hand - twist throttle all the way. Keep it pinned until it's not boring anymore.  Never have I had flashing red and blue lights behind me and thought, "Gosh am I bored!"  

[turboderek]

check your public library. rip them to you mp3 player and then delete them when your done

[2wTraveler]

check your public library. rip them to you mp3 player and then delete them when your done

You know, that's a great idea. More time consuming, but a hell of a lot cheaper. I wonder how my local librarys selection of audio is>

[2RR2NV]

Uhhh, I do math problems   . Maybe try to figure out my speed without looking at my speedo, just time and distance. Maybe work what my distance traveled/yet to travel, like "hmmm if I've covered 120miles of a 750 miles trip, I'm just under 1/6 of the way" then I try to figure out time left, maybe gas mileage while I'm at it. Of course I'm also listening to my Ipod, and watching traffic at the same time.

HERE HERE!!!

+1

[nwconk]

I find a rich and varied fantasy life is a big jplus. Developed in corporate America of course.  Another meeting, sure what do I care, I'm not really there.  

--chris

[CLAY]

Twizzlers.  And Beef Jerky.  You could even wrap a Twizzler around beef jerky and slip it under your helmet.  

Yum!  

Wow- creatures of the same habit.  I also thow in a nice suppy of Atomic Fireballs.  I ted to use beef sticks, no bef Jerky thogh.  The consistency in the shape seems to make helmeted eating easier.  I also have a camelback that I will fill up with ice every gas stop. Gas, fill camelback, pee, ride.  I have yet to get tired enough to pee in the camleback.  

For the tunes I have Sirius and a two MP3 players. I rip some good sermons on one, favorite music on the other, and on Sirius I usually listen to the Radio Classics channel- things like Lone Ranger, Have Gun Will Travel, Supemn, etc.  They have classic comedies on there too, but I usually hit pause on the sat radio while I'm listening to a sermon, that way it spools up for awhile and I can skip the commercials and the classic comedies I don' like.  I also listen to various talk shows, Stern (till he gets annoying), and just music.

[Specter]

Best solution found so far for boring slabs is XM Radio.  Switching between various music types, XM Comedy, and "Sonic Theatre" makes I-5 go quickly


For food, I chop Cliff bars into squares I can nibble on.

[David Morrow]

check your public library. rip them to you mp3 player and then delete them when your done

That's sort of what I do but I burn them to CD's. If they're good, I listen to them more than once and always pickup a bit more each time ( slow learner I guess.) When you go to the library, if it's a bigger one, they often store their audio books in different areas - by subject - so search around. It can be a real goldmine.

I also download a lot of podcasts - the various public radio stations have hundreds of good shows - I like science so I find the best at NPR, CBC, Radio Australia, BBC...

[jwhite518]

Audible.com is especially good if your player supports their format. It's highly compressed, way smaller than mp3's. Plus you don't have to buy the high fidelity versions, after all you're competing with wind noise. You can get the a la carte program, don't have to buy a monthly subscription.

My favorite are the Car Talk shows for $0.99 each. I remember riding riding from Gerlach to Alturas late one night during a rally and totally cracking up in the middle of nowhere. Those guys are funny.

Exercises are good too. I'll rip off a few sets of squats to get the blood flowing. You can do bicep curls but without any weight it's pretty dorky. Ride standing up on the pegs for a good long time.

[Desmo Demon]

Maybe try to figure out my speed without looking at my speedo, just time and distance. Maybe work what my distance traveled/yet to travel, like "hmmm if I've covered 120miles of a 750 miles trip, I'm just under 1/6 of the way" then I try to figure out time left, maybe gas mileage while I'm at it.

I do this, but I also try to catch the odometer rolling every 100-mile increment. Also, I guess it is due to all my bikes and the maintenance I always seem to be doing, I sometimes I will run through the steps of a maintenance chore. I've mentally built motorcycles from the frame-up, race cars, and small block Chevy engines in my head while riding.

I do slaloms with anything I can find in the road...cracks, tar snakes, road kill...keeps it interesting when music isn't quite cutting it

No music for me, but I also tag the reflectors or will see how long I can stay riding on the painted line before either wobbling or having to get off of it because of traffic.

[Kiwi]

My favorite are the Car Talk shows for $0.99 each. I remember riding riding from Gerlach to Alturas late one night during a rally and totally cracking up in the middle of nowhere. Those guys are funny.

Car Talk actually has a free pod cast, just look it up in iTunes. They don't offer many old episodes, but all the newest episodes are on there and they update it every week.

[jwhite518]

I know you can get it free but it takes up too much space in MP3 format. I use a Zumo for audio and it only supports MP3s and Audible.com For those of you listening to ipods on your motorcycles maybe it's a different story.

[helodoc]

Once the right hand twist wears off, deer counting wears off, calculating solutions to the Riemann hypothesis, Poincaré conjecture, Hodge conjecture, Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture, solution of the Navier-Stokes equations, formulation of Yang-Mills theory, and determination of whether NP-problems are actually P-problems wears off.....Milinda usually sings Etta James in her low sultry voice into my head set.

[jwhite518]

OK now I know you guys are cool. "At Last" was our first dance at our wedding.  

[squeezer]

I really like listening to fiction to break up a long slab run.  

For free (and legal) stuff:   http://escapepod.org/ does a free science fiction short story podcast every week.  Quality of the readers varies but the stories are mostly good.  For the last few years, the publisher has managed to snare the audio rights to all the Hugo nominees except one (I think).  Snag those out of the archives first.  You can download them as mp3's.  Each show is 30 to 45 minutes long (occasionally outside that range either way), short intros and outros, almost all story.  I save them up before long rides.  I think I went through about 8 of them during slab chunks of the Void.  Although I listen to full length books on the bike, short stories work even better.  It takes a shorter attention span and you don't have to ride all the way across the country to hear the ending.

The same publisher does a weekly horror story podcast at http://pseudopod.org/ and a fantasy story podcast at http://podcastle.org/.  It's all good stuff and you can't beat the price (I make a small annual donation to escapepod, but it's really not necessary).

My wife loves audio books and goes through a couple a month while walking the dogs in the woods, so a couple of years ago I got her an audible.com subscription for her birthday.  I think she likes it better than any gift I've ever given her -- at least, she uses it more.  I download books from her library.  It's a really nice service, they're the professionally produced commercial versions you see on the store shelves, as noted above the format saves space, and tho' not real cheap, it's much less than buying them at a bookstore (roughly half price).  Garmin units are audible compatible so I usually keep one or two on the zumo.  I "read" a couple of books while riding back and forth to Colorado last summer.  You get a free one with a trial subscription and it's worth checking it out for that one book, at least.

And, yeah, libraries are great sources.

[helodoc]

OK now I know you guys are cool. "At Last" was our first dance at our wedding.  

Nothin', but Nothin', beats Etta on day 6!

[PlayWithGravity]

Uhhh, I do math problems   . Maybe try to figure out my speed without looking at my speedo, just time and distance. Maybe work what my distance traveled/yet to travel, like "hmmm if I've covered 120miles of a 750 miles trip, I'm just under 1/6 of the way" then I try to figure out time left, maybe gas mileage while I'm at it. Of course I'm also listening to my Ipod, and watching traffic at the same time.

I do this, too.

And I ponder the funniest sounding words I can think of.  Talk about making your riding buddies scratch their heads at the gas station:  "Hey, don't you guys think the word "familiarity" is pretty funny?"

[CLAY]

Twice I've solved all the world's problems and created world peace- the problem is that without a pen and paper I don't remember the formula, necessitating another long ride to work it out.  

[mike goodwin]

I cant remember ever really being bored on a ride.
And if i wanted music i would have taken the truck.
So i count fence posts and try to play that old time travelers game of "Name that road kill".

[opera guy]

I look to the left, check the view.

look to the right check the view.

look ahead, check the view.

when i'm riding next to farms, i speculate on how people lives are around farm lands.  ditto for desert, mountains...

even crossing Kansas on highway 70 wasn't that bad.  i have to admit, the second time around, on the returning trip 3 days later, it did loss a little novelty.  such is life on the the super slab.

3500miles on super slab isnt that bad.

you're out riding your motorcycle, you've been looking forward to this for weeks/months (mine was 13 years in the making) can't be THAT boring.

[zer0netgain]

If I'm not deep in thought or listening to my MP3 player...I play back movies in my head.  

[Scoop]

Uhhh, I do math problems   . Maybe try to figure out my speed without looking at my speedo, just time and distance. Maybe work what my distance traveled/yet to travel, like "hmmm if I've covered 120miles of a 750 miles trip, I'm just under 1/6 of the way" then I try to figure out time left, maybe gas mileage while I'm at it. Of course I'm also listening to my Ipod, and watching traffic at the same time.

I do this too.  And I have the added bonus of trying to convert everything from kilometers to miles.  And sometimes I can sing one verse from a song for hours on end.  I never think about real things...life, problems etc.  

[black hills]

Ride fast, real fast.. not only does it reduce the time spent on the boring sections but it keeps you busy scanning the horizon for hazards/cops

[DougD]

This is easy: Phone a friend and yak on your cell phone, and or
Flip up the screen on you portable DVD and watch a movie and or
Clean your bike. I always carry a damp cloth in my pocket so I can get right on those bug spatters before they dry.
Mini naps are nice too.

[Guy]

Mini naps are nice too.

Those have a tendency to turn around and bite you on the ass.  

[Paulie]

Like someone's sig line here, I'm "On the trailing edge of technology". So I far up my FM & scan for "local color".

Once in awhile I strike gold. Last summer in BF western CO picked up some very kewl creepy injun (?) tunes.   Wasn't a boring stretch by any means, tho.

[minnebiker]

When my wife and I used to ride with this one other couple we used to make faces at the kids in the cars on the freeway.

We even had a mask or 2 we made of paper plates and pulled out on unexpecting kids.  We would do something and then drop back a bit.  As we came up on them again we would do something else.  It was great fun to see what the kids would try to do back in response.

We once followed a car for over an hour.  Those kids had the crayons and paper going like there was no tomorrow.  We had a great laugh.  I am sure the parents enjoyed us keeping their kids entertained on their trip also.

This was before mini DVD players and portable video games when it took imagination to entertain.  It probably wouldn't work now because you would not be able to get a kid to look away from his movie or video game.  Think of all the scenery those kids are missing!

[Scoop]

Also, now children must be bolted down so tight that they can't even move.  No way to turn their heads to see the unencumbered motorcyclists.  What happened to the days of riding in the back of the station wagon (burning gas like there was no tomorrow)!

[USA MEDIC]

i just have a subscription to audiobooks. I mean if you read alot, then just get the next book of your story before a trip. It is not much if you have a subscription, if you try to buy each one though it will bankrupt you

[jwhite518]

I'm on Audiobooks a la carte, because I only listen on long trips. Have spent a few good hours listening to books on tape while riding. I try to get books that are relevant to the activity at hand. One of my best was The Old Man and the Sea, listened to while on an endurance rally. Also dig Car Talk. The audiobooks versions are much smaller than the free MP3s.

[cbolling]

I see how long I can hold my breath.  I do it from mile marker to mile marker.  Start out at 1 mile and then see if you can work up to 2 or 3 miles without taking a breath.  It takes a couple miles to recover between each attempt so before you know it you have gone 20-30 miles.  

[Mulepick]

I'm always thinking about the geology.  When I hit the midwest, I turn to solving the mysteries of the universe, unencumbered by mathematics.  Sometimes I sing like Etta James, sometimes Johnny Cash.  Sometimes Etta James sings Johnny cash...

Bob

[Blunder]

I see how long I can hold my breath.  I do it from mile marker to mile marker.  Start out at 1 mile and then see if you can work up to 2 or 3 miles without taking a breath.  It takes a couple miles to recover between each attempt so before you know it you have gone 20-30 miles.  

I too count mile markers, but I don't hold my my breath. To me, that's just plain stupid.

I think AC/DC music is perfect for synchopating a measure to get you down the road.

There's a marker and I'm TNT. I'm Dynomight!

I do that for 40 minutes and I'm back into "The Philospher's Song"

When I get into the Wagner late on a ride I think it's time to look for a room and rest.

YMMV

[Scoop]

I see how long I can hold my breath.  I do it from mile marker to mile marker.  Start out at 1 mile and then see if you can work up to 2 or 3 miles without taking a breath.  It takes a couple miles to recover between each attempt so before you know it you have gone 20-30 miles.  

I try to see if I can keep my eyes closed between mile markers.  But, then I never know when the next mile marker has come along......

[2wTraveler]

I try to see if I can keep my eyes closed between mile markers.  But, then I never know when the next mile marker has come along......

 

[DougD]

I'm impressed with all the good ideas, creative suggestions and humourous scenarios. I have turned your comments and suggestions into a travel list. I intend to pull it out and read it and try some of these so I can kill time on long boring stretches. Thank you all!!!

[black hills]

Sometimes I see how far I can go without touching the bars, I think somewhere around 50 miles is my current record.

[SpitfireTriple]

Like most here, I sing. Better than I ever could in real life.

Sometimes, I think about the Enigma machine.  It really was a complicated piece of kit.  

On my Big Trip to Turkey though I was, for the first time ever, writing a blog as I went along (see link below).  In order to minimise time spent in internet cafes en route therefore, I mulled the words as I rode.  As well as passing the time pleasurably, this also meant I squeezed more from my travels - by requiring my brain to think about what I was seeing and experiencing, I somehow experienced more.  Does that make sense?

But I was never bored.  Not once.

[protondecay123]

Like most here, I sing. Better than I ever could in real life.

Sometimes, I think about the Enigma machine.  It really was a complicated piece of kit.  

On my Big Trip to Turkey though I was, for the first time ever, writing a blog as I went along (see link below).  In order to minimise time spent in internet cafes en route therefore, I mulled the words as I rode.  As well as passing the time pleasurably, this also meant I squeezed more from my travels - by requiring my brain to think about what I was seeing and experiencing, I somehow experienced more.  Does that make sense?

But I was never bored.  Not once.

As an excuse to ride my bike places I've told my wife " Know how to take a boring drive and turn it into an adventure? Ride a motorcycle! I'm riding my bike, baby!"

I've rode quite a bit across the Plains. I stay focused on the road, wind, temperature, scenery and other traffic.  No Ipod, No XM radio, nothing but the craziness, reflection, and entertainment going around in this brain.

Never bored. Not once.