impending new baby
My coworker Travis just poked his head in my office to let me know he was on his way to Honda of Milpitas to get a new Honda 919. Yum!

I'm afraid they're going to say that there's nothing that they can do, that the eye just needs rest in order to re-focus, and that I just have to wait until my eyes get bad enough for bifocals. In the meantime, I've gotten pretty good at pattern matching. That's how I knew that my eyes really were bad -- while riding in Arizona, I didn't recognize any of the freeway exit names, so I couldn't read any of them.

more broken bits.
I've started going to a chiropractor for my myriad of upper body issues. Her name is Anne, and she's a self-proclaimed "non-traditional chiropractor" in that she'll work on extremities. I found out about her from fellow Wind Dancer Akili -- while riding down to Arizona, Akili told Jenny and I about how Dr. Anne has really helped her with a shoulder injury. Sounded good enough to me.

I like Anne a lot, because she chats about motorcycles to me while twisting my arms around and never suggests that I should stop riding. She thinks that my recent arm problems are most likely unrelated to my wrists, and are instead due to problems in my neck and shoulders. This makes sense to me, since my wrists themselves haven't hurt in a while -- it's all been centralized in my right elbow and forearms. So, she gave me some Biofreeze topical muscle relaxant for my forearms (like Ben-Gay, but it doesn't smell quite as nasty) and some self-adhesive bandages to wrap around my forearms if they hurt. I look like a boxer with my wrist braces and forearms wrapped up. Boooya.

Anne also endeared herself to me forever by saying that I had very strong shoulders. She, on the other hand, has the most impressive forearm muscles that I've ever seen on anyone, much less on a petite Asian woman. Damn. I'm jealous.

The other nice thing about Anne's office is that there's a massage therapist that works with the chiropractic patients. I'm thinking of scheduling a session when I'm in next week for my next chiropractic appointment.

mentoring.
Because I have monstrous amounts of copious free time, I've signed up to mentor some other Wind Dancers members. I'm hoping I can be of some use to some of the newer members; if nothing else, I have a huge library of motorcycling books that they can borrow. ;)

I'm pretty reluctant to teach, which is a large part of why I'm doing it. I always sort of assume that other people know more about [insert subject here] than I do -- my knowledge base is pretty wide but shallow. Motorcycling is really the one area of expertise I have (well, work has been getting there lately, too, but this isn't my Danger journal), so I figure it's time I take advantage of that.

The funny thing is that I was inspired to do this because of an event born out of my usual incompetence. The first time I went to the chiropractor, I wrote down the wrong address and ended up being utterly lost. I finally pulled over into an arbitrary parking lot to call the office and get some help. While I was hanging out sweating to death in this parking lot, digging through the tank bag to find my phone, a woman walked up to me and asked me about my Helimot suit. I told her about Helimot and wrote their website URL on a piece of scrap paper for her. We talked for another minute, and she said that she wanted to learn to ride, and was researching gear and bikes and etc. To make a long story short (too late!), I also gave her the MSF's URL and told her about our Wind Dancers chapter. She grinned and thanked me, saying I was a "fountain of information". It was funny, because I don't even look at it that way -- disseminating motorcycle information, especially to fellow female riders, is just sort of What I Do.

So, anyway, that incident got me thinking about information and how we get it. I never had a mentor in the Wind Dancers group -- I joined the chapter after I'd already been riding for a few thousand miles. Peter was really my "mentor" in the sense that the Wind Dancers use it -- he'd block intersections for me while I teetered around the block, rode behind me to watch for bad habits, put up with my hysterics when I couldn't shift smoothly/turn tightly/ride in the twisties/do a U-turn/change the oil/trace a wire etc. I was really lucky.

So I've been researching how to help people. I've talked to the two women who are going to be my first "mentorees", to get an idea about what sorts of things they're nervous about or are having trouble with. I've asked them how they learn best (books, videos, repetition, watching others, something else?) and how they prefer to hear criticism. Fortunately for me, at least one of the women seems to learn a lot like I do, through repetition and practical application. That should be easy for me to start out with, since I can relate to her learning style.

The tricky part for me as a mentor (in general, not specifically related to the two women I'll be working with first) is that I get impatient when I don't feel as though people are being pro-active enough. This tends to cause problems when dealing with someone who analyzes a lot. Peter and I fight about this a lot -- he likes to research and inspect and mull over, and I'd rather just get up and do. It drives me batshit to sit around after I've made a decision. I know that there are Wind Dancers members who overanalyze things like downshifting when, really, they just need to stop thinking so much and just try it; I need to find that fine line between rejecting excuses and being gently "tough love" and, well, being a raging asshole. I'm not so good with that line.

I haven't actually met with either of the gals yet; I want to make sure it's OK with them if I talk about our progress in the journal. I don't think they'll care, but I want to double-check.

speaking of wind dancers.
Diana and I are leading a Shop Ride on Saturday; should be fun. We're starting at Helimot at 9am, and will hang out there for a while, eating donuts and spending too much money. After that, we'll be heading to Road Rider to check out the clothes and accessories. Next is Hare Racing, where Lance and Linda Keigwin will show us their shop and talk to us about their Keigwin track days. Our last stop is Cal BMW, for the obligatory bike drooling.

That's it for now; must go get some Actual Work done. ;)