so, like, how's life?
Really bipolar at the moment. I'll start with the "really shitty," and if
you can live through that part, you'll be rewarded with the "really awesome."
really shitty.
My life sucks. I have no bike. It's 60 degrees out, and sunny, and I drive my
stupid car to my stupid job every stupid day down stupid Central Expressway
(home of most that is evil). Every day I see at least one happy-looking
motorcyclist on my commute, whom, I'm convinced, is riding home from their
well-paying job as a guinea pig for professional masseuses, going home to
their all-wood-and-glass mansion in the hills, where their gorgeous significant
other has called and ordered a delicious meal next to the fireplace. And they
have a heated indoor swimming pool, with one of those set-in bars that you
can just swim up to and have a cold Heineken. And cats that don't rip open
holes in the brand new 25-pound bags of cat litter while the motorcyclist is
off snowboarding in Tahoe for the weekend. Each and every motorcyclist I see
has this lifestyle. And I drive my Saturn and pay $20 in gas and get parked
in every day in our stupid too-small parking lot at work.
There's no "speed" at all in my life right now. No acceleration. No forward-moving inertia. I blame this on the lack of bike. At least when I ride to work, if I have a useless day where nothing gets done and I feel like ass, well, I can get on the bike and take the long way home and ride at 80mph (I mean 65mph, the safe and legal posted speed) along 280 and look at pretty sights and feel like I'm *moving*. Now, I get in my Saturn and wait at the end of long lines at red lights with all the other poor commuting schmucks. I know it's probably pretty ridiculous to blame my lack of productivity at work with not riding (to be fair, there is a real concrete reason for the uselessness at work, and it *is* getting fixed), but, y'know, it's just like the little things all piling up. A lot of life in the bay area is focused around traffic, and going somewhere or another, and it's just amazing how much an effect it has on the rest of my life if I'm not grumpy every time I have to go somewhere.
The Nighthawk is coming along, but so slowly that it's not really noticeable right now. I've been going to the garage and spending like an hour on it at a time, and then saying, "oh, fuck this," and going home again. A lot of that is because I've needed a lot of "alone time" this week for various reasons, but some of it is because I just can't get ramped up about working on it. I just can't get ramped up about anything. Feh. Last night I made sure everything was all degreased and happy, and I got my big smelly tub of grease, and glopped everything all back up. It was smelly and nasty and digusting, but at least it was all greased up and ready to be assembled. I got the top bearings mostly in (for some reason, they won't fully seat in the head tube, and I'm trying to squelch the feeling that it's because I messed something up), but when I put the lower bearings on the stem, I realized that I hadn't actually taken the old lower race *off* the stem. So now it's all greasy and smelly and disgusting, and I have to degrease the whole damn thing *again* to get the race off. Which, of course, I couldn't do (get the race off, I mean. I'm not so bad yet that I can't spray Brakleen). I worked on that damn race for like 30 minutes, and all I succeeded in doing was bending the shit out of the washer that the race sits on. The Clymer's helpfully suggests "pulling and twisting it off by hand," which is so laughable that I'm convinced it's in there as a joke. They then say that if this doesn't work, to "try prying gently with a screwdriver," which is equally useless. This race ain't coming off. Torn between prying my own eye out with the screwdriver and just spraying the whole thing with WD-40 and letting it sit overnight, I had enough common sense to choose the latter, and that's where things are now. I'm still loving playing with it, and all, but my current opinion is that if I get this bike back together and it works and doesn't kill me, well, I'll be pretty fucking amazed.
I had a dream last night where I was working on the bike in a park, and all my gear was strewn all over everywhere. While I was working, one of my coworkers (I don't think I knew her in my dream, but when I woke up, I recognized her as a woman I work with) came up to me and said, "I live right behind here, and we're having a party for our new roommate, and you're blocking the driveway. Could you move your bike?" And I looked, and in fact, I was working on the bike in the middle of a driveway. I felt really badly, so I moved all the stuff, which took a long time. The woman helped me out, and said that I should come in and hang out at the party. I was all nasty and dirty and greasy from working on the bike, and she was very stylish and pretty, but I said OK anyway and went inside. Once I got inside, it turned out that Peter was her new roommate, and he was dressed up all fancy too, and admitted that he was happier living with this other woman than with me. So I went back out and worked on the bike for the rest of the party, but even after I was done, the bike still wouldn't work.
I have no idea where the hell my subconscious was going with that dream, but it seemed to fit my mood, and if anyone is into dream analysis, hell, hook me up.
really awesome.
So, despite all of that, there's absolutely nothing going wrong with my
life right now. I've made decisions, for better or for worse, about how
I'm getting my new motorcycle home and how I'm paying for it. And best of
all, *tomorrow* I'm going down to Salinas to pick it up! Assuming all goes
well, and the bike is really in stock like they promised, by this time tomorrow,
I should be the proud and slightly poorer owner of a brand new SV650S.
I'm so incredibly excited about this. Tomorrow night, if I spend the night
at Peter's, I'll ride My New Bike. Sunday, Kim and I are going to try to
go for a ride together, and I'll be riding My New Bike. Sunday night, when
I go to Alan's to watch movies, I'll take My New Bike. Even if I wrestle with
the stupid steering stem on the Nighthawk this weekend, it'll be while My
New Bike is parked in the driveway. How cool is that? I'll actually
get to wear the new riding pants I got!
Hrm. Sadly, I can't talk quite as much about how my life is awesome as I could about how it's shitty. That's not *really* reflective of my "real life," but I guess it is as far as motorcycles are concerned right now. It's just been a weird week. I always get like this when I feel totally unproductive for any amount of time. Just smile and nod and wait for the next entry, when I'm sure I'll either be bouncing off the walls because of my new bike, or livid because something got messed up. ;) The pathos, the pathos.