hotter than the sun.

Spring has sprung in the bay area, and tonight, I started my summer-long mantra: "wearing these leather pants is still more comfortable than skin grafts."

peter update.
The elusive clymer's manual has been located! We're going to start "tearing down" his bike (his terms) so that we can do the valve adjustment and check which clutch parts need to be replaced. We'll replace all the plates, but we need to check the springs and some other crap too. So expect more maintenance fun. In the meantime, I've told him that he can take the Nighthawk to work or whatever; I hope he takes me up on it. I hate to think of it just sitting in the garage while he's suffering in his car.

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As Chai and I walked up to the coffee shop, I saw a group of bikers across the street start waving and walking over to meet us. I assumed (correctly) that the one in front was Paul, the guy from the message board, since he stuck his hand out, laughed, and said, "the blue hair gives you away!" I guess I can't sneak up on anyone. ;) We all went inside and ordered our coffees, and then stood around outside drinking them and chatting. There were seven of us total, on six bikes: my SVS, Chai's Ninja, Paul's Suzuki Bandit 600, a Suzuki GSXR, an older Kawasaki EX500, and another Ninja. There was one other woman along, whose name I don't recall; she was a passenger on her fiance's Ninja. If any of the rest of the group thought it strange or weird or otherwise unusual that I was riding my own bike, no one said anything. In fact, it was a really nice group; everyone had their own riding style, and bike preferences, and they all teased each other (of course), but everyone really respected the others' opinions. It made for some really nice conversation and riding. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. :)

We chugged down the coffee, and Chai and I headed back to our bikes (the rest of the group had found parking right across the street). We made a quick pit stop at a gas station to fill up, and when we rode back to the coffee shop, everyone was geared up and on their bikes, waiting for us. They pulled out in front, and Chai and I took up the rear. I pullled in last, which was perfect for me, since the rest of the group knew the roads well and were taking them faster, and I could sort of keep an eye on Chai just in case. I had already been really impressed with how he was riding, but it was still his first ride in the twisties less than a week after buying his first bike, so I wanted to make sure that *someone* was watching. Anyway, we were off! Up into the foothills.

Have you ever had one of those days where everything you did just jelled? Where you didn't even really *try* to do things perfectly; they just happened? That's how this ride went for me. All the extra effort I've been spending on remembering to lean more, all the extra times I've told myself "turn your head more!" when cornering, all the extra energy I've spent on keeping the throttle on and the brakes off while in curves all paid off in spades. It was the easiest, most natural, most graceful thing in the world to be on that road and flicking the bike through the twisties. I kept waiting for the old anxiety to come, the sinking pit in my stomach when I came upon a tight turn. I kept thinking, "maybe we just haven't hit that part of the road that I suck at yet." But it never came. It was sunny and clear and Chai was dancing around in front of me, and I was dancing along myself, and everything was just *good*.

There was one thing that totally entertained me (and the fact that it amused me rather than stressed me out shows you how great I was doing) -- the kamakaze crazies. At one point, I was zipping along at a decent speed, and I heard a weird buzzing coming from behind me on the left. It sounded almost like there was a mosquito next to my ear. I glanced over in my sideview mirror and....HOLY SHIT! there was a helmet there! I was looking right into someone's face! Half a second later, the helmet had passed me on my left, in the same lane, going at least 15 mph faster than I was. Zip! He (assumedly) was immediately followed by another guy, probably his riding partner. I watched them overtake Chai, and they were gone. Zoom! It happened three or four more times on our 9-mile ride up to the summit; you'd just hear a little weird noise, and zip! another crotch rocket passed you in your lane. I got used to periodically checking for kamakaze crazies in my mirrors before moving around in my lane. Far be it from me to discourage Darwin, but it's sorta creepy to think that if I would have had to swerve for some reason, that guy would have totally crashed right into me from behind, and I would have never known what hit me. I was pretty surprised that we didn't come across any bike carcasses laying around the side of the roads.

All of a sudden, I rounded a turn, and we were at the summit! Already! The rest of the guys in front of Chai and I had waited for us right before the stop sign at Four Corners (the intersection where Skyline Blvd meets Big Basin way -- which we took up -- which then becomes Highway 9). We rode past the big parking lot where the bikers usually gather, and continued on another half a block to a smaller parking lot with less people and a much better view. We all got off the bikes and immediately started laughing and joking about the kamakaze crazies and a couple of other morons. We hung out up there for a while, just chatting and looking over each others' bikes. Paul showed me the camera setup that was on the GSXR -- he has a little cylindrical camera mounted under the bike, with a wire running up the frame to a camcorder in his tank bag. Pretty cool. I took a picture of the setup because I thought Peter might get a kick out of seeing how he set it up. A couple other groups of bikers came and left while we were there; mostly cruiser groups, if I remember correctly. A couple riders waved or honked as they rode by, and we lost count of the number of kamakaze crazies we saw that tore down the roads on the R1s or CBR929s at no less than 60mph. Paul and his friends commented on the number of riders they saw on bikes like that in full leathers, and then sneakers. Pretty silly.

I had a good time looking at Paul's Bandit -- it looks so similar to my long lost love, the Triumph Sprint 900 (Paul's is the Bandit right in front, in the group picture). I just love the look of the Sprint, and the color...it's really too bad that the Bandit matches it so closely, since I know the Bandit wouldn't be too topheavy for me. So now I have another bike to passively persue, once I have money coming out of my nose every time I sneeze. But in the meantime, I'm happy knowing that Paul's little green Bandit kicks all sorts of ass.

Chai and I left the group at the summit, after a frenzied exchange of business cards and email addresses, and promises to ride together again. I really hope we do, too -- I was wondering if I'd enjoy riding with a group, and I really had a great time meeting these guys. Chai and I headed back down the hill, and I jokingly told Peter later that I knew I had done the ride correctly this time because it was a lot harder going down. ;) A stupid car pulled out right behind Chai when we left the parking lot, and stayed between us the entire ride down. Even though Chai was only going a little bit slower than most cars probably would have, the stupid car tailgated him like you wouldn't believe. It was one of those annoying drivers, too, where you know they're not trying to get you to go faster or anything; that's just how they drive, in your backseat. Feh. Chai handled it pretty well, though, and maintained a constant speed until we got back out of the foothills and onto Saratoga Avenue. We ended up going down into downtown San Jose for lunch (he had to go to work, which was downtown), so we parked the bikes outside of OpenGrid, called our friend Laura who lives nearby, and we all went out for a nice Mexican lunch, where we heard a spanish all-male cover of "Walk Like an Egyptian." Very surreal.

So that was my ride in the twisties. Yay!