a neat picture.
I took this picture a few weeks ago, when leaving Peter's house early in the morning. It was really cold out, and the dew was just barely liquid, and I thought it looked like a combination of ice and some sort of stained glass. The picture doesn't really do it justice, sadly.

Sorry it's such a huge JPG this time, but I wanted to keep the detail. :)

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[* Well, OK, the reason was a good job, gorgeous scenery, better nightlife, and a cute boyfriend. But the warm weather didn't hurt!]

The downside to the weather is that no one's riding. Co-worker Justin rode in today, and I watched him have to peel his hands off of his grips, even while wearing a one-piece Aerostich Roadcrafter suit, long underwear, two sweatshirts, an electric vest, and heated grips. Me, I'm waiting out the cold. It should be back to lows in the 40s by next week, which to me is a lot more reasonable than this "snow in the Bay Area" below-freezing-at-night bulltwiggies that's been going on recently.

centerstand fu, part deux
I went over to Cat's tonight, bearing sushi, and we sat outside (brr!) in her apartment complex parking lot, eating California Rolls and playing with the baby Ninja. After only a couple of well-intentioned attempts, I was able to get the Ninja up on its centerstand, and then roll it back off, with no difficulty at all. It became even more evident to me that the SVS's centerstand feels like it's just too far back -- the Ninja's sidestand and centerstand were practically overlapping, and it was trivial to pivot the bike on its center of gravity.

Later, we ended up back at my apartment, and decided to give the SVS a go. Neither of us could even make it budge. As I mentioned, the Ninja's centerstand was right at the bike's center of gravity (horizontally, obviously), but the SVS's centerstand is a good 6" at least behind the sidestand. It just feels wrong. I've double checked all the pictures of other peoples' installations, though, and it all looks right. I've sent a shout out to those folks for any tricks 'n' tips, since I really think now it's a "SVS with this particular aftermarket centerstand" issue, and not a "general how-to-work-a-centerstand" problem. We'll see. It just may be that the guys I know who have this stand have more upper body strength or just a lot more weight in general to toss at the bike, so the extra 6" of "front end" to lift up over the centerstand doesn't faze them.

the return of the steering head bearings.
I heard from Kim today that a mutual friend of ours has bought a '93 VFR with, quote, a few front end problems, unquote. I haven't seen the bike, or even heard too much about it, but I gather that the previous owner had an encounter with a ditch with this VFR (I'm sorry, Peter, I keep wanting to say "viffer"), and the front end is a bit worse for the wear because of it. Apparently the forks are over at Aftershocks now, but the rest of the steering head needs to be reassembled and taken out of the previous owner's garage. So Kim hooked me up with Mark as someone who might be able to help him out with reassembling the steering stem, given all the joy I had last year with the Nighthawk's. I'm not sure how much help I'll actually be able to be, given that he wants to have the whole thing done by Thursday, and not only do I have to work tomorrow, but it took me four months to reassemble my own steering head, for chrissakes, but I told Mark I'd be happy to swing by if he'd like. I also started rambling about greases and bearings and steering stem crap at him, so he very well might be like "please make the crazy lady go away", but we'll see. ;)

suckers.
People on the SV mailing list are actually starting to refer to me as somewhat of an expert as far as the carb sync modification is concerned. I don't really have the heart to tell them that I just make all this shit up as I go along. ;) I'm really glad that the pages have been helpful, though. They're fun for me to write, and it's cool that others are getting use out of them, too. Plus, it means I have something to refresh my memory with when suddenly called out of the blue to, oh, say, help reassemble someone's steering stem.