me? obsessed?
This is my desk at work. How can you tell it's mine? Well, aside from the SVS desktop picture, we have the two framed pictures of the bike on the wall (as opposed to the one framed picture of Peter and I), the little motorcycle guy that Peter gave me, and the svrider.com mousepad. The little black sticker on the bottom of the monitor says "real women ride motorcycles." This is a sick, sick hobby, people. Seriously.

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i hate the word "ergonomics."
I really do. It makes me think of rich yuppie dotcommers who spend thousands of dollars on custom-fit butt pillows for their thousand-dollar custom-fit chairs. The problem with hating the concept of ergonomics in the 21st century, though, is that I haven't paid any attention to them. At all.

About two months ago, I noticed that my wrists hurt a bit after a day of programming and an evening of working on this journal. During the Redding trip, I noticed that my wrists hurt a bit after a day of riding in the twisties. The rather unfortunate byproduct of all of this is that now, after the ride, my wrists hurt all the time. And I don't mean like, "blechh, time for another break to stretch." I mean like, "time to take another three ibuprofens and forget about getting any more work done today."

So, I bit the bullet and visited an ergonomics website and ordered some crap for my workplace that will hopefully make life suck less. I'm also paying more attention to my posture, both on and off the bike, and let me tell you, it's absolutely horrible. If you ride, pay attention to what happens the next time you come to a stop. Where's your weight? While you're sitting at that light, where's your weight? For me, it's been all on my handlebars. Since I'm short, if I'm stopped in gear at a light, my weight is all the way forward on my handlebars. I'm stretched out grabbing the levers, so my center of gravity is somewhere over the tank; my legs are too short to pick up the weight, so it all defaults onto my wrists. Lovely. When I'm moving, and I start braking, I don't have enough mass to balance out the slight dive in the front end. Guess where the weight goes? Handlebars. I'm trying to squeeze the tank more with my knees to force the weight to stay off the bars, but that then runs the risk of tensing up the lowerpart of my body. Yuck.

I'm going to be borrowing (with the assumption that I'll buy it if I like it) a Suzuki gel seat from a fellow SV'er, which should hopefully help. The gel seat is thinner than the stock seat, so it actually gives you almost an inch less seat height. Maybe if I can get more foot on the ground -- I'm currently tiptoeing -- I can balance the weight better.

This really sucks. It makes it nearly impossible to come home and type more. So, sorry for the infrequent updates. And my free advice of the day is: if you type for a living and then ride for fun, don't ignore the evil "e" word. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and all that, and I should have bought a footrest and wrist support at work a long time ago. Don't be dumb like me.

i meet the nicest people in my work parking lot.
As I was pushing my bike out of its parking spot at work yesterday, I noticed a vintage bike parked near the driveway. The owner came out of a nearby store while I was out there, and we started comparing notes. Turns out it was a 1965 Triumph, looking sort of like this one, only grungier. It was a parallel twin, roughly 100,000 miles on the odometer. I forgot to ask its displacement. What really stood out in my mind was that the mirrors were mounted on the handlebars, but underneath the grips. Looked sort of strange. The owner asked all sorts of questions about my SVS (he marvelled at the thought of riding smoothly and comfortably at 90mph on the freeway), and then he played the kickstarter game with his Triumph and put-putted away. That was a neat bike.

While I was chatting with the Triumph guy, one of my newer co-workers came out of the building and kind of did a double-take when he saw me sitting on my bike. "That's your bike??" I happen to exchange emails pretty frequently with this particular co-worker, and every email he's sent since has included "PS - Nice bike". ;)

I also bumped into a fellow rider (figuratively, not literally) in the same parking lot late last week, who was gearing up as I pulled in. Naturally, we got to chatting, and it turns out that he's from Vancouver and was heading down to San Diego that day (given that San Diego is 490 miles from where we were, and it was already 9:30am, I wonder if he made it in one day). Later, I found out that he was a friend of one of my co-workers, and had spent the previous day with him. Apparently, the rider's company had decided that they didn't really have any new projects for his team to work on after they'd completed their last one, but rather than firing them, they were given 6 months off at 40% of their normal salary. So this guy decided to tour the continent on his Suzuki, and I can't say I blame him. I was pretty jealous when I found that out. I spent the rest of the day trying to get my boss to cut my project and give me 40% of my paycheck (I was willing to compromise for only 3 or 4 months), but seeing as though our project is somewhat crucial to the success of the company, he didn't buy it. Some people just don't have the right priorities.

I just realized that I can't lie about my co-workers anymore since Tony reads this journal now, too. Hi, Tony! Go Danger!

upcoming bike goodness.
It's going to be one of those wondrous "chock full o' bike" weekends, thankfully. On Saturday, Kim and I are going over to Peter's to borrow his driveway and garage. She ordered some new brake pads and a new rotor, and we're going to replace her warped front rotor. It's about time, too. :) The SVS is also due for its 4000-mile service, so I'll be doing as much of that as I can. The carbs need to be synced like nobody's business (under 4000rpms I get these "aye can' take mooch moor o' tis" surges like it's going to stall, though the bike and I both know damn well that it won't and it's just looking for attention), and I have to do the usual oil change and random part inspection.

On Sunday, Peter and I are finally taking a ride somewhere together! No, really! We are! I'll wait here while everyone picks themselves back up off the floor. OK, everyone back? Considering it's been, oh, four months since we rode together last, I figured we were due now that Peter's bike is, well, almost working more or less adequately. There are a couple of little wiring issues that I'm not even going to mention for fear of jinxing anything, but I'm sure they're just piddly things and hardly worth even a thought. I hardly even notice anymore when Peter leaves his turn signal on for blocks after his last turn because the indicator lights on the panel don't light up. And besides, it sounded like the policeman was very understanding of the broken headlight.

So, we're going up to Calistoga! I'm very excited. This'll be my third time there, if you count the stop on the way home from Redding (which I do, since, well, I rode there), and every time I go through that area, I love it more and more. Interesting roads, pretty scenery, twisties. We'll be heading up in the morning, having lunch in the downtown area, and then heading to the spa to hang out in the Jacuzzi before our hour-long massages. Sucks to be us, doesn't it? Life is hard. One of the things that I love the most about motorcycling is that while I'd hardly consider a 300-mile round-trip car ride to be desirable or even considerable for any reason other than the spectacular, it's worth it just for the ride on the bike. I think I'm the luckiest person ever that I can take a Sunday, ride for 150 miles over foothills, across the Golden Gate Bridge, through some of the most famous vineyards in the world, end up in a world-famous spa resort, have a massage, and be back home for dinner. I'm so spoiled. Doubly so since I can do it with my sweetie. :) I'm so glad to be riding with him again (the eternal blinker notwithstanding).

i'm sure it's a character building experience.
Peter said an interesting thing to me during dinner tonight. I was half-heartedly complaining about my mortal fear of U-turns (brought on by my disturbing tendancy to drop the bike when doing low speed turns), and he insinuated that it was probably a good thing that I still had something that I needed to practice and work on so much. He brought up, as I have before, that I've always tended to reach plateaus (plateaux?) in my learning curves for things. Historically, I haven't really been passionate about whatever activity was in question, so I'd just get frustrated and say some variation of "screw it," and continue on forever on that plateau. I just couldn't find it within myself to care enough to put the extra effort forth needed to scale that plateau. In some activities, I'd hit the plateau much sooner or much later than in others, but sooner or later, I'd always hit it. For motorcycling, those low speed turns, U-turns in particular since they're the most common, are that plateau.

Anyway, Peter's point was that finally, I've come up against a hurdle while doing an activity that I do care about passionately. We both know that even though I bitch about the U-turns, I'll keep practicing, and will eventually figure them out. I love riding. I love it so much that I will keep pushing ahead, until I hit the next plateau, and then the next one. I have an infinite amount of reserved energy to draw from, to find that extra needed effort. It's really the first time ever that this has happened, and I haven't just resigned myself to hearing "you're not living up to your potential" until I want to kill someone.

I was pretty amazed that Peter managed to come up with that (over Round Table pizza, no less!). It was probably one of the most insightful things that anyone's ever said to me, and he was right on the money. it made me feel really good, and really confident about continuing to learn to ride. Thanks, babe. :)