My bike is a money pit.

I went over to Hare Racing today for a new set of tires for the SVS. The old ones were so squared from the trip that the bike practically stood up on its own.

I’ve been running Bridgestone’s BT010/BT020 combo for a couple of years now (about 30k miles total). Bridgestone recently retired the BT010, though, so Hare put on the new BT014. I’ve heard it’s a good tire, and since it’s replacing the BT010 in Bridgestone’s lineup, it should be right for my needs.

After mounting the tires, the service guy told me that my rear sprocket was looking a little worn. I’d noticed that while doing Part One of the 36ish,000 service a couple of days ago, but it was good to hear a professional mention it — I’d seen pictures of worn sprockets, but wasn’t 100% sure that mine fit the bill. I’ll take a picture when I replace it, so that y’all can see what I’m talking about. This was a short-lived chain and sprocket set: I just put them on in mid-February…though that was about 9000 miles ago. Normally I get twice that for a set, but Alaska just ate the sprocket right up.

Speaking of buying things: while I was waiting for the tires, I walked down the street to the Bike World Kawasaki/Suzuki dealership. I used to live right around there, and hadn’t been to this particular dealer in years, mainly because their parts guys were as dumb as a box of hair. I was pleased to see that there was a woman at the parts counter now, and that she knew her shit. We got to chatting, and she told me that the dealership is now under new management. She seemed pretty cool; I may go there for more parts in the future. I bought a new battery from her and yes, I got the right one this time.