• I called the Honda dealer today and ordered the stupid upper fork bridge bolt from Brad. It should be here by the weekend.
• I tried calling Janet at Meriwest back again, to try and clear up that mystery paperwork again, but she didn't pick up her phone, and didn't call back after I left a voicemail. I figure, whatever, if they really needed it signed that badly, she'd get in touch with me. *shrug*
• Peter checked out the cost of ordering all-new clutch plates from PartsFish, and came up with an estimate of a couple hundred dollars. He says he's going to call the Honda dealer tomorrow and ask them for time and monetary quotes for them to do it; I think he figures that it's going to cost more than a hundred dollars no matter what, it's worth the extra money to have the work done quickly.

enough mechanic stuff already!
I've been so hung up on the mechanics lately, that I've completely forgotten to whine about Central Expressway (home of most that is evil). I was reminded of this fact on my way home from work today, when four separate incidents annoyed me to the point of yelling "foo!" at the drivers. I'm not sure what it is about Central Expressway. It's like you can only drive there after your full frontal lobotomy or something. Here are my most recent observations:

• No one on Central Expressway understands physics. I don't know if it's the motorcycle, the fact that it's a sportsbike, the fact that it's a red sportsbike, or what, but it seems like every single car driving behind me thinks I ought to be going faster than the car in front of me. Today I rode home around rush hour, so the ambient traffic was around 40mph, even though the posted limit is 45mph. I was following the car in front of me at a reasonable distance: hanging back enough so that I had more than enough stopping distance if need be, but definitely not lagging. The car behind me was acting as though I was walking on crutches in front of him. He'd tailgate me until I flashed my brake lights at him, he'd slow down for another couple of minutes, he'd speed up until he was tailgating me again. When we came to a red light, he stopped right behind me and then kept inching up during the light until I swear, he was no further than 3 feet behind me. What a jerk.
• No one on Central Expressway knows how to deal with a red light. Just like Mr. Assplunge in the previous example, every day I see fellow drivers who have no idea what to do at a red light. At least three times a week, I get stuck behind someone who comes to a complete stop no less than two or three car lengths behind the car in front of them, and then proceeds to spend the *entire* duration of the red light inching forward until they're practically in the backseat of the next car. Can someone explain to me the point of this? Is it just a feel-good thing to be the only car moving at the red light? I don't get it. Aside from these usual displays of ineptitude, I'm also seeing an alarming increase in the number of idiots who deal with their red light confusion by just not stopping at all for them. My favorite is when the red light comes on because a train is coming along (Central Expressway runs parallel to the CalTrain tracks). Last week, I saw some idiot on the cross-street run a red light, only to realize that the train gates were down on the other side of the intersection, so she had to sit in her car, completely blocking the traffic running parallel to the tracks, and no one got to go on the green light. At least she had the common curtesy to look a little bit embarrassed. Like, running red lights, OK, I understand. You're either blind or a total moron. But running a red light INTO A TRAIN? Really, people. C'mon.
• No one on Central Expressway can drive without their cell phone on. Almost every time I looked in my mirrors on the way home tonight, the person behind me was jabbering away on a cell phone. Not terribly surprisingly, these were the same people who were tailgating and weaving lanes and just generally being self-important pricks. Whenever I'm driving my car and I see someone on a cell phone, I just sort of shrug and think, "eh, whatever, loser." But when I'm on my bike, I get really indignant about it. "Oh, what the hell, buddy? Why're you on a CELL PHONE now? Can't you see there's a motorcycle in front of you? Just great, you're probably going to rear-end me now, aren't you? Hey! Hey! We're at a RED LIGHT! Quit inching forward! Asshole."

i'm feeling much better now, thanks.
Aside from defending my life at every red light, I've been catching up on the eight million motorcycle magazines that I subscribe to. I noticed a couple of pretty interesting articles in the past couple of days, so I thought I'd pass them on.

First of all, American Motorcyclist, the magazine from the American Motorcyclist Association, had an interesting article about kids and motocross. The full text of the article is here, but the basic gist of it is that a state's attorney in Connecticut has sent a letter to the Milford Riders Motorcycle Club stating that "its members could be charged with 'the felony crime of Risk of Injury' to a minor if they let anyone under the age of 16 take to the club's motocross track." The Risk of Injury law was originally passed in Connecticut to prosecute child molesters and "those who engage in...the selling of children"; the club is understandably quite pissed that it's being lumped in with such company. The article goes on to say that Hawaii currently has a bill before the state Legislature which would make it illegal for children under 12 to be passengers on a motorcycle; Rhode Island has a similar bill, except that the age limit in that case is 16. And, to quote again, "in Pennsylvania, there's a bill that would make it illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to ride as a passenger on a motorcycle, which would mean that you couldn't be a passenger until two years after you could get a license to ride a motorcycle on your own." [emphasis theirs]

My thoughts? I think it should be up to the parents, not the state, to decide what's safe for their children. I certainly wouldn't want to see a child hurt because their parent thought it was appropriate to bungee-net 4-month-old Billy to the pillion seat, but at the same time, people have to understand personal responsibility. The more and more the government regulates what's "safe" for us, the less and less people use their own heads. It's like we talked about after the entry on danger -- soon people will assume that it's OK and "safe" to do anything that's not illegal, since if it were dangerous, it'd be illegal, right? Bloody morons. But the point being, no one can force someone else to have common sense, but I don't feel that government over-regulation is the correct compensation for that, either. I realize I'm sounding somewhat self-contradictory: if we can't force people to keep themselves safe and have common sense, then shouldn't we regulate their behavior and pass laws to keep them -- and their children, and those around them -- safe? Maybe I'm a cold-hearted bastard, but I don't think so. i realize that laws involving the safety of chidren are a bit different than, say, helmet laws (where arguably, the person who chooses not to wear a helmet is only endangering him/herself). However, I don't think that it does much for the child in question to sequester them and force them to live in an unrealistic little "safety bubble." Besides which, age-limited safety bubbles don't work. The legal drinking age in Wisconsin was 21 when I was growing up, and the legal smoking age was 18. Yeah, right. How well did *you* follow your state-imposed age-limited safety bubbles? They didn't keep me away from cigarettes, sex, alcohol, or even -- gasp -- ATVs, they're not going to keep your kids away either. Stupid legisation; as if passing a safety bubble law is any substitute for parents actually sitting down and talking with their kids about what's "safe" and "dangerous" and maybe even doing some of those "dangerous" activities with them (like -- gasp -- motocross) to teach them how to do them more safely. Feh.

Ok, off the soapbox.

I was going to talk a bit about the other article I read and liked, but now I'm all worked up, so I'm going to put that off and go play the Sims for a while. ;)

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