happy birthday to the svs!
The SVS came home to live with me exactly one year ago today. :) I technically bought it a year and two days ago, but as I was sick that day (and most other days last winter/spring), I had it delivered instead of riding it home.

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I'm sure you know where this is going.

When it came time for me to go home that night, we unhooked the tender, put everything back together, went to start the bike.....and nothing. The battery was totally dead. So we pushed the bike into Peter's garage, took off the seat again, re-hooked up the battery charger, and there it stayed until tonight.

the first hotgrips report.
So tonight, Peter stopped by and drove me to his house, so that I could ride the SVS home. Obviously, this was a great time to test out the HotGrips, and see if they really made a difference on my ride back.

It's actually a fairly warm evening tonight, in comparison to some recent nights -- it's in the low-to-mid 40s with very little wind. I turned the HotGrips up as high as they'd go, and wore both my Held gloves (no winter padding, but the leather is a bit thicker than that on my earlier Olympia leather gloves) and my extra glove liners. The route I took was fairly varied -- surface streets to an "expressway" (y'know, the 6-lane 50mph-ish roads with stop lights. In Wisconsin, they were called "highways"), to the freeway, back to surface streets. My speed averaged around 55mph -- 35mph-ish on the surface streets, and 80mph-ish on the freeway.

Diagnosis: very good. I could definitely feel the heat from the grips on my hands, all the way through the leather gloves and glove liners. On the surface streets, the grips were almost distractingly warm (though I imagine that was more of a "novelty" thing due to it being my first ride with them); on the freeway I didn't notice the heat as much, but neither did I notice the biting cold that's usually associated with riding at 80mph in 40-degree weather. When I took off my gloves at home, ~20 minutes and ~10 miles later, my hands were much warmer than they usually are. They weren't warm -- I couldn't have played a viola concerto immediately -- but my fingers were relatively limber, and I didn't have the urge to run inside and put my hands right up against the wall heater (or the engine block of the bike, for that matter). So, I consider that to be a success. I'll probably still want to wear the glove liners when it's at or below tonight's temperature, but I think that anything much warmer than tonight will suffice with just the gloves and grips.

I know I rode a little funny on the way home tonight; between the heat eminating from the grips and having totally new grips in general, it took a little getting used to. I also kept looking down to check my righthand bar end -- I didn't Locktite it down after reinstalling it on Sunday, and since the last two bar ends vibrated off on the freeway (hence the Locktite now), I was a little paranoid. I'm not sure what good that I thought checking the bar end was doing me ("whoops, yep, there it went"), but luckily, I arrived home with all parts of my bike intact. I need to remember to set the Locktite out so that I remember to put it on in the morning.

other news.
Not much else in the way of biking is going on (mainly because the bike's been in Peter's garage since Sunday). At work, the apps team is in a sort of strange limbo decompress state right now, so coworkers Ceej, Justin, Tony (hi, Tony!), and I should definitely do a lunch ride sometime soon. Considering that Ceej and I spent a part of the afternoon today sitting on the floor of our office with our officemate Jim, hitting a balloon around the office and making pirate noises at each other (*whack* "arrrrrrr!" *whack* "aaarrrrrr!"), I think we could all do with a break. Poor Justin -- he's the lone BMW amongst a flock of SVSs. ;) We need to convince him to get a blue SVS, so that we have all of the colors represented.

Have I mentioned that I'm moving yet? This weekend, in fact. This is extremely good, because aside from having more space for my cats to run around and attack each other in, it also has...an individual, enclosed, garage. :D You know what that means: bike workshop! Peter, who must have been a building contractor in a past life, has offered to help me set up a workbench and lighting/electricity. The only downside is that I'll have to buy myself sets of all of the tools of Peter's that I'd just been using over the past two years, but that shouldn't be very much (some pliers and a rubber mallet are the only things that pop to mind). We spent an expensive hour or so at Sears last weekend, and I bought My Very Own Torque Wrench, which, aside from the price, made me very happy. Boys are so funny -- Peter had a minor conniption when I revealed that I'm going to buy some -- gasp! -- matching furniture for my new apartment ("you're just trying to act like you're 35. Who needs matching furniture, anyway?") but he encourages all the Craftsman purchases in the world ("here, let me get you this screwdriver set, too! Now you just get the screwdriver set organizer, and you'll be all set!"). I guess as long as my "adult purchases" (no, not that kind!) are limited to the garage, it's acceptable. Men. ;)