Saturday morning was the Wind Dancers End-of-Month Putt, which meets at a Starbucks over in Fremont. Despite my encouraging, mom gracefully declined the opportunity to ride pillion, so we drove the car over to hang out with the gals and drink coffee. It worked out better than I'd expected -- due to the nice weather, there was a really nice turnout of gals, so mom got to meet a bunch of my WOW friends, and I got to drink a lot of coffee. I thought it was funny that at least two of my friends looked at my combat boots and cut-off cargo pants with raised eyebrow and said "you're not riding in that, are you?". I told them the truth -- the one and only time I've ever been on a bike with shorts on (before I started riding; I was riding pillion with Peter), I stepped off the bike and immediately char-broiled my leg on the VF700's exhaust pipe. It was an effective lesson.

When the Wind Dancers left to go on their ride, mom and I headed down to Honda of Milpitas. I've been teasing mom about getting a Gold Wing trike, so she wanted to look at the Wings, sit on one, etc. My joke is that since she already drives a conversion van, riding a Gold Wing really wouldn't be all that different -- a sentiment she echoed after sitting on a new GL1800. Who knows if she'll end up doing it, but she had fun looking at the bikes and sitting on a few and etc.

Being at the dealer reminded me that I'd managed to lose my bungee net, which is obviously unacceptable. Since Helimot was relatively nearby, we continued our tour down there. I showed mom the picture of me that they have on the counter, and she got to meet most of the friendly Helimot staff. I bought both a bungee net and a new battery tender (I only have one, and it doesn't always work); she bought one of their Betsy Bags (mom's a bit of a purse hound).

After all this shopping, we were a bit hungry; where else to go but Alice's? I'd promised mom a ride in the foothills (albeit in the car), so we drove up Page Mill and down Skyline to have a gen-yoo-ine biker scum lunch. I didn't know anyone in the parking lot that afternoon, so we just wandered through the parking lot looking at the various bikes after our cheeseburgers. We took Hwy 84 back down the hill and back into Palo Alto.

So, as you can tell, there isn't a whole lot of actual riding going on right now. I did ride down to my allergy shot in San Jose this morning, and you can tell it's been a slow week since I'm even mentioning that.

bandit updates.
Ha! Just kidding; there really aren't any. I keep meaning to bring the gixxer forks into AfterShocks for a rebuild, but so far, inertia has won out and they're still sitting in my garage. Apparently, I believe that the fork fairy will eventually appear and whisk them away for me.

If anyone has an '86-87 gixxer front wheel and axle just sitting around, let me know. No one on Ebay wants to sell me one. I should go over to Fremont Cycle Salvage, but see previous paragraph on inertia.

superhawk updates.
Peter needs new tires like nobody's business. I've taken over as Head of Operations for Tire Acquisition, since I know what his VF700 rear tire ended up looking like. It completely eludes me how the man can let his tires get that bad.

I hope he doesn't mind my talking about his riding (hi, sweetie!), but I think that new tires will really help his cornering. We've had chats about his lines and his cornering techniques (or lack thereof) recently, and while he definitely knows what he's supposed to do, he seems nervous to actually execute the manouevers. His lines are getting better; the last time I rode behind him, he was starting to do a nice entrance, apex, exit line, which was encouraging. Now we just need to get him to shift his weight around a little, and he'll really kick my ass in the corners.

If any of y'all out there in Internetland ride a Superhawk and have recommendations for tires, you let me know. I'm defaulting to my personal favorite, the Bridgestone BT010/BT020 combo (010 front, 020 rear) -- they're pretty sticky and I get good mileage out of them. I think that'll be a good combo for Peter, too -- he doesn't do as much twisties as I do, but he's more aggressive in the twisties that he does take, and god knows he doesn't want to have to change the tires again soon.

vf700 updates.
I think I mentioned that I'm playing around with the VF700 fuel system -- I did get it idling again, but it runs like shit, so I took the carbs over to my apartment to clean them and check all the needles and jets. Everything's cleaned now, but I had to do a fair bit of drilling out of nasty old stuck screws, and now I'm in Parts-Ordered Limbo. Partsfish.com claims that my order status is "order in process", whatever the hell that means. Hopefully it means "you will get your carb head cover screws before you die".

svs updates.
The SVS is much happier after its stint at G Force. I finally got around to washing it on Saturday, so now it even looks pretty. There's a tiny oil leak on the underside of the alternator cover; I've isolated it to the general area, but haven't figured out yet whether the bolt or gasket is allowing the oil through. Maybe I'll play with that tonight. It's definitely not leaking enough to be a problem; just enough to make the lower left side of the bike a godawful mess most of the time.

The hugger that I ordered from Red Fox has started cracking around the chain guard bolts, which is annoying. It's basically just held on by the brake line mounting bolt and the bolt right in front of the rear shock. I've emailed Red Fox, with no response (not surprising, since they ignored the three or four emails I'd sent when the original hugger was lost in the mail). I'm frustrated, since the hugger only has 4000 or so miles on it, and I certainly haven't abused it. Anyone have any advice for the next course of action to take? They're in England, so it's not very convenient to just call or send a letter.

upcoming rides.
There are a bunch of Wind Dancers rides coming up this month, which makes me happy. This Saturday, we're going to the Marin French Cheese Factory, which looks fun. I'm from Wisconsin, after all. We love our cheese. I think Peter's going to try and go with us, too, which'll be fun. I don't think he's been on a WOW ride before.

blah blah.
Blathery entry today. Time to go pick up my tankbag -- some of the zipper teeth bent, which has been causing me no end of annoyance over the past couple of weeks. Fortunately the "Twenty dollar! I fix anything for twenty dollar!" cobbler near work said he could, well, fix it for twenty dollars. The excitement never ends, I tell you.