arlen ness
The Wind Dancers went to the new Arlen Ness HQ in Dublin, CA last Sunday. It's really neat. Click the pic to see all the pictures.

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andrea joins the cult.
When I first came out to California, way back in the 20th century, I worked with a lovely woman named Andrea, who brightened my workday considerably by doing things like shooting me with Nerf guns. Andrea recently came to work for Danger, and I am paying her back for the months of wet willies and Nerf assaults by endlessly blathering to her about bikes. It came to my attention that Andrea had taken - and passed - the MSF class about eight years ago, but had never actually gotten her license. To make a long story short (too late!), we drove up to Oakland on Monday, and she bought a nice red 1990 Kawasaki Vulcan 500.

I did the test ride for her, since she felt she'd forgotten too much of the MSF class (she's signing up for it again). It was the first time I'd ridden a cruiser; quite a different experience. It took a block or so to figure out where the hell to put my feet. Once I'd gotten that under control, though, it was a really fun ride. The previous owner lived in the southern Oakland hills, so I rode the Vulcan around for about 5 miles through twisty residential neighborhoods. There was no tach, so I really have no idea if I was shifting correctly (I have this vague impression that you shift sooner on cruisers than on sportsbikes, but past that, I'm pretty ignorant of our feet-forward brothers and sisters), but I never heard a grind or growl. It was odd to turn at first - first off, I felt very low to the ground, almost like I was falling over already. Second, I really had to push to get it started turning, but once it was started, it leaned right over almost instantly. Very disconcerting in the first turn. I found that the easiest thing to do was to grind my elbow into my ribcage and then push straight out with my arm, perpendicular to the angle of the handgrip. It was sort of like doing an inverse Chicken Dance.

After the test ride, I looked over the bike while Andrea schmoozed with the previous owner. Aside from needing an oil change and some liberal application of WD-40, the bike was in excellent condition. Andrea parted with hard-earned money, and I rode the bike back to Palo Alto from Oakland (about 40 miles). We stopped before the highway to gas up; I let Andrea have the honors, and she learned right away the joys of filling up a motorcycle gas tank with those stupid foreskin pumps.

I'd love to say that Andrea's Vulcan is now sitting in my garage, awaiting a quick tune-up, but I've run out of space. The Vulcan is actually in my neighbor Rob's garage, keeping his R1150 company. I hope to make a dent in the number of bikes in my garage (though not in the bikes themselves) this weekend.

So, anyway, Andrea - welcome to the cult! Here, have some Kool-Aid.

how to waste away your life.
I accidentally took revenge on Andrea today by dragging her along on my "quick run" over to Fremont Cycle Salvage.

Back story: the righthand grip on the SVS had come unglued, and in the process of re-gluing it, I tugged on the switch housing. You know that little plastic nub that fits into a hole in the handlebar, keeping the housing from spinning around on the handlebar? Mine broke off. I tried gluing it back on (hey, I already had the epoxy out), but no dice. I figured the easiest thing would be to replace the plastic switch housing.

Ha ha! I could not buy just the plastic switch housing. Suzuki, kindly, would sell me an entire new switch for $80. No one on Ebay had one. So, I called Fremont Cycle Salvage. After a wait time of approximately 3 seconds, they said, "sure, we have one".

So, Andrea and I drove over there during today's lunch "hour". I was looking for the switch housing, an '86-'87 gixxer wheel for the Bandit, and a Ninja 250 lower fairing for Cat. Simple. It took them 45 minutes to tell me that they didn't, in fact, have an SV switch housing. 15 more minutes, and we figured out that the switch from a Bandit 1200 was identical and would work.

The parts guy disappeared again, and a half hour later, I was concerned that perhaps something heavy had fallen upon him. I asked the guy at the counter, who told me that "oh, Bob had to run to the warehouse to check on those lowers". By this point, Andrea and I had been gone for over an hour, we were actively dying of starvation, and I could have told Bob to save his effort. But no, Bob was gone.

Andrea wandered off to the deli next door, to provide us with needed caffeine and nourishment. I continued to stand at the counter, staring off into space, and occasionally chatting with the high school-ish guys working at the counter (summer jobs, I guess).

Bob eventually came back, with the correct lowers. Bob had, however, not looked for the gixxer wheel. Fortunately, I caught him before he left for the warehouse again and convinced him that, really, it was OK. Two and a half hours after we left, we were finally back at Danger, and I had a complete switch for $25. Moral: don't go to Fremont Cycle Salvage (or any other salvage place, I'm sure) if you're in a hurry.

I removed the broken switch housing tonight and replaced it with the "new" one. I quickly realized why the old one had broken - when Peter and I swapped on the Hawk GT bars, we had to drill a hole in the handlebar for that plastic nub, and we didn't quite get it lined up properly. I had to shove the new housing nub into the hole and hold it there pretty tightly while screwing the assembly together. I wouldn't be surprised if the switch housing becomes a disposable part for the SVS every 20,000 miles or so. I suppose the cheaper long-term solution is to find another righthand Hawk bar and drill the hole correctly next time. Something to think about.

other maintenance news.
I did the 20k mile service on the SVS, which actually brings me up to date on its scheduled maintenance. Huzzah!

This weekend, I'm going to do the tune-up on Andrea's Vulcan; she ordered the Haynes manual for it, so I'm waiting around until I can get my grubby little paws on that. I bought the oil filter and sparkplugs at Fremont Cycle Salvage (hey, I had to do something for two hours...), so we should be good to go with that.

I'm hoping to get to the Pegaso this weekend as well. Poor thing. It occurs to me that I haven't told the Pegaso Taco story in the journal here, but it's too long and involved for me to get into. Here's the summary: to pop off the carbs, you need to tilt the subframe (yes, seriously). Sadly, John's subframe did not gently tilt, as the manual implied. Rather, when the appropriate bolts were removed, it pivoted on the remaining ones and,well, fell a good foot and a half. So, now, the Pegaso's subframe is being supported by the rear wheel. The bike looks like an upside down "V". But the carbs popped out of the airbox. Tony and I spent part of a meeting today discussing the merits of using the chain winch (currently supporting the Bandit) to hold up the subframe while I remove the carbs. This is probably one of those ideas that Seemed Like A Real Good Idea At The Time.

an observation.
I've been noticing lately that, when Things Go Wrong, my women friends tend to blame themselves while my male friends tend to blame the bike. Recently, I've heard perfectly capable women blame themselves for some glaringly obvious mechanical glitch. Similarly, some male friends have been citing faults with the bike to explain away simple "newbie rider" errors.

Before I get hate mail (since some of you probably know who you are....I can't gossip about anyone anymore!), let me just say that sometimes we gals really do have something to do with the mechanical faults. And the guys in question really have encountered legitimate technical difficulties. I just find it interesting, from a social standpoint, that our subjects of emphasis when talking about the problems are so cleanly divided along gender lines.