Ah Thank you for this- I did not see Dougs post above and probably would have missed it all together if you didn't mention it.
I am power via the barrel jack HOWEVER I have a 5v regulator inline PRIOR to it- because I thought I'd aim for safer lower voltages (vs the 14.5 the bike throws).
As he said though- this is too little and could be causing strange behavior- I am going to wire in a 9V regulator that I have and see if that fixes it... hopefully that won't run too hot (really don't like it getting hot, at 14.5 volts the 328 chip actually scorched my finger a bit which was surprising.)
I'll post back here once I've tried this again w/ a 9v regulator.