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This weekend also had some motorcycling-related firsts, which is probably good, since no one reads this journal to hear about my dietary habits. Let me start from the beginning.

saturday.
Saturday morning, Mark knocked on my apartment door. "He sold it," said Mark. He was referring to an NC30, also known as a VFR400R, that the two of us were planning on looking at that afternoon -- me with the intent to drool and Mark with the intent to buy. It was particularly irritating because the seller never bothered to call Mark to cancel their appointment -- Mark found out by accident when he looked up the online classified ad to double check the seller's contact info.

Never ones to let someone else's acquisition of bad karma get us down, Mark and I instead headed off to Honda of Milpitas. I bought a multitude of parts: fuel line for the ignored VF700, a new choke plunger assembly ("starter valve set" to the Honda microfiche) for the Superhawk, and for me, a front and rear socket and new chain. I ended up going with the 15/45 combination, with a DID 525 chain, for those playing along at home. Why? Because I wanted a 15-tooth front and either a 45- or 46-tooth rear, and Nicky the Parts Goddess told me she could get me a 45-tooth but not a 46. And just like that, the decision was made.

After Honda of Milpitas and some lunch (who knew Alviso had good restaurants?), Mark and I traveled north to Peninsula Honda/Ducati. We sat on, well, Hondas and Ducatis. I had a lovely conversation with the loitering sales guy about valve services on Ducatis. He told me that if I could do a shim-under-bucket valve adjustment, I could do a Ducati valve adjustment. Maybe so, but who wants to check valves every 6000 miles? Don't get me wrong, valve checks are actually one of my favorite service tasks, but, y'know, only with a healthy 15k miles in between them. While leaving Peninsula Honda/Ducati, I had the misfortune of sitting on a '96 VFR and learning that I do actually fit on it. This is bad news. Peter and I will probably end up with one someday. *sigh*

Our next -- and last -- stop on the Great Dealership Tour was Redwood City Honda/Suzuki/Kawasaki/KTM/blah/blah/blah. This dealership always sort of confuses me. The time I took the SVS there to get the wiring fixed was a relatively positive experience, but the people there always give me odd vibes. Frankly, the guy working there on Saturday was a bit of an asshole. He started yelling at me for sitting on bikes while wearing my leather jacket ("I heard that zipper hit the tank! I heard it! We're going to have to explain to someone who wants to buy these bikes why they're brand new but then they're going to want us to swap out a new gas tank and blah blah blah" and on and on for literally two full minutes. He finally ended with "you can sit on as many bikes as you want if you remove your jacket", at which point, I pretty much decided, nah, actually, I wouldn't.) He also rambled on for an inordinately long time about a stark naked man who, for some reason, walked down the street right in front of the shop a few minutes before we arrived. A funny story to be sure, but he sure did like telling it to each and every person who came into the store. Mark and I did enjoy sitting on a used '00 CBR600 F4 that was there on consignment, however.

Most of Saturday afternoon reminded me of why I actually give my money to Honda of Milpitas.

Saturday evening was spent over at Tony and Stephanie's. It was the first time we'd all gotten together to really start talking about our great Alaska adventure. I'll get into that more at some other time, but the short story is that the six of us (myself, Peter, Tony, Stephanie, Ceej, and David) are talking about taking a motorcycle/ferry trip up to Fairbanks, Alaska in the summer of 2004. It sounds like a really amazing trip.

sunday.
Yesterday, Peter came over to pick up the Superhawk. I was worried that it was running too rich, so we let it idle for a good long time. After the aforementioned good long time, it was still showing symptoms of being rich: stumbly idle, grey smoke coming from the exhausts; I offered to open it back up and readjust the pilot screw. Peter agreed, and we got to work.

All I'm going to say about that is that I can now go from 100% assembled bike to bike minus carbs and back to 100% re-assembled bike in between 2.5 and 3 hours.

Naturally, the damn thing is still running rich. The pilot screw is only backed out one turn now, so I guess it really wants to be seated (or close to). Guess what I'll be doing again soon? Ha ha, that's right. Pulling the carbs on the Superhawk.

Last night, I sat down to write the write-up for the fuel system mods that I've done on Peter's bike, but quickly realized that -- much like this entry -- it was getting too long and rambly. Unlike this entry, I did something about it and chopped it up into four separate write-ups: (1) removing the fuel tank, (2) removing the airbox, (3) pulling the carbs, and (4) doing the actual fuel system mods. They're not up yet, since I don't have any pictures to accompany the text yet. Wow, good thing I'll be pulling the carbs again soon and will have to do the whole damn procedure again. I think that I could pull carbs in my sleep now, which, while ultimately a good thing, makes me pine for a nice valve adjustment or the second half of the Nighthawk's brake rebuild.

monday.
More from some financial incentive than from any sense of cultural significance, The Powers That Be at Danger gave us Martin Luther King, Jr. Day off today. Naturally, we DangerRiders celebrated by going riding.

Things weren't looking good when I woke up at 9:30am and couldn't see the foothills from my apartment window. It was 45 degrees and foggy out, with a light mist. By the time we met at Danger at noonish, the misting had stopped and it was a few degrees warmer. Stephanie told us that we were practicing for our Alaska trip.

We took city streets from Palo Alto to Woodside Road (aka Highway 84) and up to Alice's Restaurant for lunch. Woodside ended up being a really nice compromise, I think: Ceej, Tony, and I would have normally taken the freeway down to Highway 9 to 35 to Alice's, but that would have been too much freeway riding and twisty riding for Stephanie and David, who are our newest riders. Actually, in hindsight, taking 35 would have been a terrible idea today due to all of the fog.

[For the non-Bay Area readers in the audience: the route that we normally take would have involved 20 miles of freeway, 11 miles of twisties, and about 5 miles of a summit road that has about 15 feet of visibility in heavy fog. This would not have done for our novices. Therefore, we took city streets for a few miles to a road that took us up about 10 miles of twisties, but delivered us straight to our destination.]

We filled up on hot chocolate, coffee, hot apple cider, garlic fries, and burgers at Alice's (rough life, huh?). It was a nice lunch -- the sun was breaking through the fog a little bit, so it wasn't bone-chillingly cold out on the deck. On our way back to our bikes after lunch, we ran into Paul, who was hanging out in the bike parking area. We chatted for a while about nothing in particular. Paul and I talked about going to go see "Biker Boyz" when it comes out next weekend (1/31). He wants to bring a beach ball to toss around the theater during the movie, which, frankly, sounds tempting. Post-movie will probably find us in some sort of alcohol-providing establishment, in an attempt to forget any horrors seen.

Stephanie and David were worried about the ride back down 84, but they both did really well. David even ran out of gas halfway down, and managed to figure this out, pull over, switch the petcock onto "reserve", and get back on the road with a minimum of excitement (I was behind him, riding sweep, so I saw the whole thing). I was impressed. :)

After the ride, we all went back to Ceej and David's, drank hot fluids, played with their adorable dogs, and watched MST3K. Gearing up after "'Manos': The Hands of Fate" was particularly amusing, as with all of our armored pants, our knees stuck out like Torgos'. Hilarity ensued.

And now, here I am.

the coming week.
Tomorrow night is January's Women on Wheels meeting.

I really should get cracking on a review of the new rain suit for Motorcycle.com, but as I haven't worn it in the rain yet, there isn't much to say. It's supposed to drizzle tomorrow, so perhaps I'll ride and bring the suit.

Next time, I'll talk about the plans so far for the Alaska trip. Yum. Yum yum.