no picture today.
All my pictures are at home, and I am not. Therefore, no picture for you.

Since I'm just now coming off of the aforementioned "web-surf til your eyes bleed" workday, but it's too early to go home and play Harry Potter, I thought I'd throw some random crap together and call it an entry. ;)

random blurbs for readers with short attention spans.
I'll be gone all weekend, for Peter's sister's college graduation ceremony in Ohio. One of these times, we'll all get our shit together early enough to schedule a visit to the Honda plant in Marysville. It'd be neat to see where the bikes are made. For god's sake, I grew up in Milwaukee and have never even been to the Harley plant. I'm a disgrace.

The helmet saga continues. I had ordered an Arai Signet XS from the Redwood City Cycle Gear back in the beginning of May; when I called about it a week later, I was told it had been backordered until May 29. No prob. I called again on May 29. They couldn't find my order form; could they call me back? No call. I called back in the beginning of June. They still couldn't find the order form. I finally went into the store on June 5. The guy looked all over the store, and could find no trace of either my helmet or the order form. Apparently it was in the computer, so the order had been placed, but no one could find any trace of the actual helmet.

The helmet saga continues. Last Sunday, Peter and I went to the San Jose Cycle Gear, explained that I really didn't want to buy from Road Rider, but that every interaction with Redwood City impressed upon me that they couldn't find their ass with two hands. The San Jose guys seemed sympathetic, and filled out a new order form. I physically watched them take my info, enter it into the computer, and then file the card away. There is hope. They said I should hear from them by the weekend.

The helmet saga continues. My current helmet, sensing my attempts to replace it, has begun self-destructing. There are two little plastic screws which hold the visor to the visor-pivoting mechanism, and then that mechanism to the helmet itself. The bottom screw popped off on the highway the other night, which caused the pivoting mecanism to, well, pivot, and get caught between the visor and the helmet. This had the interesting side effect of causing about 1/4" of space between the helmet and visor on the side, which let air zoom into the helmet while I was going 80mph on the highway. As it was nighttime, and I wasn't wearing sunglasses, this in turn caused my lips to chap to the bleeding point and my eyes to dry up and shrivel away. The next day, the top screw popped out of its hole (though it didn't fall out completely), which gave me the lovely sensation of riding to work with only the left side of my visor attached to the helmet. Whee!

Officemate Ceej and I had an extremely boring day today, which resulted in reading most of the Brunching Shuttlecocks out loud to each other across the room, followed by an invigorating discussion revolving around some rather graphic pictures of motorcycle crashes. I won't go into too terribly much detail, but suffice it to say that I learned a new word today, "mesentery", which is the layer of peritoneum that connects the intestines to the dorsal wall of the abdominal cavity. "Peritoneum" is also a new word: it's the smooth, thin, watery membrane that lines the abdominal cavity in mammals. See? Now you've learned something too, without even having to look at the pictures! The jury is still out as to whether third officemate Jim was as excited to be learning about mesentery.

Yes. Well. Moving on.

Guess what? It's a day ending in "y", so Peter's bike isn't working again. Apparently it just cut out on him while he was on the freeway the other day. I'm suspecting a fuel systems problem, but we haven't really sat down and systematically gone through any sort of organized flowchart yet. We checked the fuel pump relay last night, and unbolted some stuff to get to the inline fuel filter, but didn't really get any real diagnostics in. Naturally, this stuff only happens at Peter's house, so that I don't actually get to use my garage. Whee!

Speaking of bikes and repairs, the fuse problem with my bike has been fixed. After it blew like 6 fuses in two weeks, co-worker Justin and I spent some time with the bike and a box of fuses in the parking lot, trying to find out what made it blow. We finally discovered that the ignition fuse blew whenever the handlebars were turned to full left lock. Peter and I looked at the wiring diagrams for the SVS, but finally decided that I'd just pay the idiot tax and save myself a few days' work. So, for the first time in over two years, one of my bikes went into the mechanic. Naturally, it was the world's dumbest problem, and the mechanic called me back a half hour later saying it was fixed -- the heated grip wire had gotten pinched up under the fork brace, and was shorting out when the bars were turned. So, $75 and a strip of electrical tape later, the problem was fixed. Luckily, the mechanic felt pity on me, and since I'd paid for an hour of labor anyway, he adjusted my chain tension, too.

On a related note, I give Redwood City Honda/Kawasaki/Suzuki/KTM the big thumbs-up. They were polite, cheerful, knew what they were doing, weren't obscenely expensive, and had lots of helmets in stock. Unfortunately, none of them were Arai Signet XS, but there were a lot of helmets nonetheless.

Speaking of spending money, Peter and I went to Helimot this weekend. I put down a down payment on....drum roll please....a custom made leather suit! I'm very excited at the prospect of wearing gear that actually fits, and has the armor in the approximate location of the body part it's supposed to be covering. The backlog is about three months right now, so I punted the task of helping me design the graphics/colors onto my co-workers and coffee clutch cohorts, Justin and Yumie. As they make up 2/3 of Danger's graphic design department, I feel confident that they can help me come up with a suit design that Doesn't Suck. Justin's first action was to trace Helimot's basic suit outline and photocopy it about 50 times, then put the stack of copies on the table in their office with some colored pencils and a sign saying "help design Carolyn's suit!" So far we've got three colored pencil designs posted up on the office refrigerator. You can tell it's sort of a slow work week for everyone.

While I was at Helimot spending money, I decided to check out boots again. I really liked a pair of Daytona Lady Stars that have an inch of rise inside the boot, but from the outside, they look "normal" (i.e. not like platform shoes). They've got Gore-Tex waterproofing, reflective strips, the works. And they're not that expensive. Woo! Naturally, they didn't have my size, so I ordered those too, to try on when they come in.

I went back to the sports medicine doctor about my arms yesterday. She told me that since I wasn't in constant excrutiating pain anymore, there wasn't much she could do (she's more of a surgery-oriented carpal tunnel specialist). So, she referred me to the "Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation" doctors in the hospital, and also gave me a "prescription" for physical therapy at a nearby outpatient facility. From what I understand, the physical therapists can help me learn exercises, stretches, etc that can help my arms right before/after long rides, and the doctors do non-surgical procedures like accupuncture, accupressue, deep tissue massage, etc. It's all covered by my insurance, so, hey, why not? I'm going to try to get to the physical therapist at least once before the ride to Cambria at the end of the month, and once when I get back, and we'll see if that helps.

After parking in the hospital parking structure, I walked past an employee directing traffic. He waved me over to him, and I thought maybe he was going to ask me to move my bike (I'd done the typical motorcyclist parking with questionable legality thing), but instead he just wanted to chat about bikes. His name is Carlos, and apparently he'd had a bike when he was younger, but he'd broken his leg in an accident and his dad sold the motorcycle while Carlos was recovering in the hospital. "I would drive very quickly," he explained. "My father, he probably saved my life." He was still pretty interested in hearing about the SVS, though, and got that faraway "maybe someday I'll get another one" look and tone. He wasn't there when I came back from seeing the doctor; the new parking lot attendant didn't give me a second look when I walked by.

I finally went out riding with Paul and his cronies again last weekend. Paul and I have had the uncanny ability lately to schedule things whenever the other person is busy, so it's been....erm, well, almost a year since we'd ridden together. Though I did see Paul and Carla at the bike show last November, and Diana and I ran into Paul along highway 35 in February (not literally). It's always a bunch of fun to ride with them, though. I got to our coffee shop meeting place a little early, and ended up bumping into Debi, a fellow Women on Wheels member (she's the one I took the motocross class with). We chatted for a while, which was fun as always. It's neat to have a large enough circle of riding friends that we just all sort of bump into each other in random places.

It looks like Diana and I are going to re-do our Marin route next weekend, slightly modified. She took the new route alone last week, and it sounded like a lot of fun; at least, she got some amazing pictures. ;) Here's her journal report of the trip. I'm looking forward to going on that ride again; it makes for a really fun Saturday.

OK, that's enough random tidbits for y'all. Wish me luck in Ohio, and be back next week!