Winter- and Spring-izing the Ninjette

Well, all good things must come to an end (at least temporarily) and thus Peter and I winterized (and springized) the Ninjette yesterday.

On the positive side, we got all six bikes in the garage running, even if a couple of them had to be hooked up to life support (the truck battery) to keep them going.  Every year we say “we really should ride some of these bikes more or sell them” and this year is no exception. 😉

Chug chug chug goes the old gas out of the Ninjette…

Putting Stabil into the fresh gas (different gas can, though it looks the same) to put back into the bike…dang, I look tired in that pic.  Ah well.

We put the Stabil gas in, ran it a bit, and I drained out the carb.

Incidentally, a pox on whoever at Kawasaki decided to make the carb drain bolts 3mm hex heads instead of a nice Philips as god intended.  That gave me the rage face.

We drained the gas from the other bikes as well and will be filling them with Stabil gas this week (except for the DRZ and the CRF, which have plastic tanks; we’ll put gas in them but probably not fill them to the brim as those tanks can’t rust).

Finally, I need to get the Ninjette up on its centerstand and find one of my million bike covers to keep dust off of it.

And that’s that.

With any luck at all, I’ll be riding again in June.

In the meantime, I’d like to introduce you to the reason for all that Stabil — our future motorcyclist, hockey fan, and blueberry extraordinaire, set to make a grand entrance in May 2012:

The baby is already measuring tall for its age; thanks to the infusion of Peter’s genes, current predictions have his/her inseam longer than mine at about 6 months old.   S/he may in fact come out of the womb taller than me.   Perhaps the 1st birthday present will be a Tenere.  🙂