Getting old

Haha. I've yet to see anyone carrying an artificial horizon on a motorcycle. :)

Although you can use a dish of oil as an artificial horizon. Shoot the angle between the sun and its reflection in the oil and divide by 2 to get the Sun's elevation. Neat trick but it only works when the sun is low enough in the sky so the double angle is within the range of the sextant (celestial altitude <60°). So more useful in high latitudes like Canada. That's how people used to navigate in Antarctica (and the Arctic) in the old days. Oil was used because it's less likely to freeze (can turn to wax if it's cold enough).

Maybe that's what Ron does whenever he's lost on some back road in the frozen Canadian wilderness. A quick oil change on the bike and take a sun sight in the oil tray while he's at it. Although if he's in the middle of nowhere he might need to wait a few hours to take a second sight so he can get intersecting lines for a position fix. He wouldn't want a moose to wander along and kick over his oil tray between sextant shots.
 
G'day Vince, the effect is amazing. I had the eyes done one month apart, left eye first. In between operations it felt that my right eye had a very pale yellow filter over it. I had the right eye done just over a month ago and saw the optometrist just last week for a check, I now have 20/20 vision for long distance and will need reading glass, which are due later this week.
Been on a couple of rides without glasses (first time ever) and have no issues apart from being a bit sensitive to bright sunlight but I've got one of those helmets with a flip-down internal tinted screen so there are no issues there.
Don't know if you wear glasses but the lack of embuggerance of putting glasses on through a full-face helmet is a bonus.
I guess the greatest effect is how much brighter everything is and I never realised there so many stars in the night sky.
By the way, only two hours in hospital for the op on each eye.
 
I had the same thing done a couple of years ago. Vision improved, but I ended up with a few floaters drifting about in the vitreous stuff of my eyeballs. Not a bother for 90% of the time, but occasionally they get a bit distracting when reading.
 
I have had floaters since I was in my early 20s, I had never heard of them at first. I thought I had something in my eye, common working in Construction so I spent days washing my eye and then a trip to the Dr had me understanding what the hell it was. There no big deal, just a bit distracting once in a while.
 
The bloke who did my intraocular lens implants got the focus pretty good. The optometrist said it's within 0.25 diopters (that's pretty damn close) of being perfect for long distance stuff, so I don't need to wear glasses for general looking around.

I do have glasses for reading and multi-focals for driving so I can see both the road and the dashboard clearly. The optometrist put in a small correction for the distance vision, but I can hardly notice any difference. The driving glasses also have a set of clip-on sunglasses so I can use them day or night.

I just got a set of multi-focal sunglasses made. I wanted to make sure they'd be OK for motorcycling so I took my helmet to the optometrist to choose a set of frames that were easy to put on through the helmet window, and were comfortable to wear under the helmet. I haven't had a chance to road test them yet.

After I'd had the artificial lenses put in and then had my eyes tested for a glasses prescription, I assumed the resulting prescription would be fixed for the rest of my life (plastic lenses won't change, right?).
Wrong. When I went to get the sunglasses (a couple of years later), my prescription had changed a little bit. Apparently eyeball shape can alter over time, so even old farts like us with bionic eyes still need occasional eye tests.
 
I thought about clip on sunnies for the car and as a test I tried putting my Sunnys on over the proscription glasses and it made a huge difference out on the long flat sunny straight roads west of the great dividing range. It worked that well I didn't bother with the clip ons, I just wear 2 sets of glasses, one over the other. My helmet has one of those inbuilt sun screens so with the bike its just the script glasses, suitably doped up with Cat Crap to stop the fogging of the glasses,works brilliantly and a pin lock to stop the helmet visor fogging as well.
 
I have a pair of photochromatic multi-focal glasses that I've been using on the bike because they're the only ones (until recently) that fit OK under my helmet, but they don't work so well in the car. The glass in the car windscreen must filter out a lot of the UV that makes them change colour. That's why I got the clip-on sunnies for driving. The "clip-on" sun lenses attach to the frames by little rare-earth magnets, so you have to be careful where you put them. If you put the glasses down where there's screws, paper clips or iron filings, there can be a whole bunch of crap hanging off the buggers when you pick them up again.

I seem to have glasses all over the bloody place. Apart from the prescription glasses already mentioned, I buy those cheapo magnifier types that you can get at the chemist shop for close-up stuff like reading, using the computer or tinkering about with the bike. There's at least half a dozen pairs of them all over the house and workshop. I regularly sit or tread on them so there's a high attrition rate with those things. I'm a bit more careful with the prescription glasses.

My helmet doesn't have the flip down sun visor. Last time I went helmet shopping I had a look at a sun visor type, but it had an astronomical price tag. Something like 3x the price of the Bell I ended up buying. The shop (one of the big Melbourne bike shops) had a half price promotional offer on Bell helmets at the time, and it's a nice comfortable fit so I figured for the price difference I could put up with wearing sunglasses.
 
Dellortoman said:
Apparently eyeball shape can alter over time, so even old farts like us with bionic eyes still need occasional eye tests.
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Aye, eyeball shape can definitely change - I've worn contact lenses since my early teens because of kerataconus and apparently the useful side affect of hard contact lenses is that the pressure from them slows the distortion of the eye...
 
Vince said:
Ha Legs, how did you find the effect of having your Cataracts done on riding, seems I am stage 1 and Surgery occurs at stage 3 or 4. Approx 3 or 4 years off for me.
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He’s finally noticed that, although Italian, the triples Ian & I were riding recently weren’t Laverdas after all...
 
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Not wrong. Who done dat?

Actually, the conversation at Walker Flat become pretty boring; all about stuff called fuel injection, ABS, traction control, my tyres are fatter than yours and other futuristic shit. 😉
 
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This daily radiation treatment is getting to be a bit of a chore. Driving into the city every day I'm beginning to feel like a commuter going to work. I thought being retired would be the end of my commuting days. I feel for you poor buggers who still have to go to work. :)

No major ill effects from the radiation. It's a bit like mild sunburn so the treated area is getting a bit red and sensitive to touch. The only issue so far is that it's on my right shoulder and my seat belt aggravates it when driving (drivers sit on the right side of the car in Australia).

Oh well, only 2½ weeks of commuting to go and I'm done with the radiation. Just another 10 months of chemo after that. I suppose a little bit of inconvenience is better than being dead from skin cancer. :rolleyes:
 
Dellortoman said:
This daily radiation treatment is getting to be a bit of a chore. Driving into the city every day I'm beginning to feel like a commuter going to work. I thought being retired would be the end of my commuting days. I feel for you poor buggers who still have to go to work. :)

No major ill effects from the radiation. It's a bit like mild sunburn so the treated area is getting a bit red and sensitive to touch. The only issue so far is that it's on my right shoulder and my seat belt aggravates it when driving (drivers sit on the right side of the car in Australia).

Oh well, only 2½ weeks of commuting to go and I'm done with the radiation. Just another 10 months of chemo after that. I suppose a little bit of inconvenience is better than being dead from skin cancer. :rolleyes:
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My burns have pretty much healed. The external ones on my neck got pretty ugly. Judging by the difficulty swallowing the internal ones were probably much the same. Can now swallow solids but still no tastebuds working.
Cam, the burns will get worse up to about 10-14 days after the treatment finishes.
Had a clearout the other day. the trick self-adhesive burn dressings I gave to the local district nurses. The unopened box of diet supplement - I asked for one tin and got sent six!! - and unopened tube of Strata burn cream, went to the Oncology dept ChCh. They're always short of them.
Bloody cold here atm. Really don't feel like getting out into the workshop. Snow on the hills now.
 
I can well understand your frustration with traffic, Cam, especially with your health and related stress issues. Spare a thought for Melbournites - I've been out cycling (paid to audit a whole stack of bike trails) and whenever I have to enter the general traffic flow it's am nightmare. Every time I'm in the car in it I have to try and meditate to control my irritation. A lot more people are driving to avoid public transport.

Had my AZ vacc on Monday - only side fx was a bit achy the next day and sore at the inj site. Hoping I don't get the other 4-21 day clotting sidies now!
 
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