no picture today.
I'm lazy.

As I was telling Peter earlier tonight, it was both a good and bad week to have the plague, motorcycle-wise, as this is bike porn week. Monday, it was the Women on Wheels magazine, Motorcyclist came yesterday, and today found Motorcycle Tour and Cruiser in my mailbox. This is good news, as it gave me something new to read every day, but bad in the sense that I'll have all my bike porn done with and read by the first week of the month. Feh. At least Motorcycle Consumer News comes mid-month. ;)

I continue to be impressed with RiDE magazine (which bucked the system and arrived late last week). It's expensive, since it's a British import, but I really recommend it. Most of the magazine is geared towards actual normal human people riding their day to day bikes (as opposed to nothing but brand-new-bike tests aimed at the prospective buyer). Their product reviews are relevant and informative (this month, they tested 15 different slip on exhaust cans; last month was bike alarms), their staff go on interesting weekend trips and write humourous tongue-in-cheek reports about them, they have columns answering interesting legal questions sent in by readers (though most of the advice won't apply to us over here across the pond)...the list goes on and on. One of my favorite things about RiDE is that one of their main staff testers/reporters is female, and even better, they don't make any fuss about that whatsoever. There's nothing in the text about "and we gave Liisa the smaller bike" or "Liisa's small hands this" or "Liisa had trouble with that", unless it was general relevant information. You could substitute "Liisa" for "Joe" in any of the tests, and the info would still be just as accurate. I really appreciate this, since so many American publications either just plain don't have women on staff, or they use the token woman to model the "short" bikes or (more frequently) to comment on the comfort of the pillion seat.

I should point out that Motorcycle Tour and Cruiser is another example of a magazine who's gotten this right -- Laura Brengelman is the editor and main tester, and does a great job with the magazine. I frequently see women writing and photographing the "how to customize your bike" columns, and Laura herself writes a darn fine gender-neutral article. She's nice, too -- she personally answered my email when I wrote in with a question once, and we had a nice email chat about the SVS, and people who toured on "sportier" bikes.

in other news.
I replaced the brake fluid in the Nighthawk last week, and was surprised at the difference that it made in the braking. Now, instead of grabbing the brakes, thinking the bike'll never stop in time, and feeling like the forks are going to bottom out and send me flying over the handlebars...well, I only feel like the forks are going to bottom out and send me flying over the handlebars. Perhaps I'll change that fork oil, too. Peter was amused by listening to me work on the Nighthawk over the weekend, as I was talking about stainless steel brake lines and new fork oil for it. This man, who has no less than ten computers in various stages of usefulness, not to mention a garage full of other peoples' ancient machines, and who has a tendancy to buy every strange electronic gizmo known to man so that he can wire things up from scratch and build remote control light switches so that he doesn't have to get out of bed to turn on a light...this man said to me, "so, I don't get it, why exactly do you put this much effort into this bike?"

My getting into motorcycling has been wonderful for our relationship -- now he can not understand why I spend all my time and effort on my bikes, just as I don't understand why he spends all his time and effort on his computers. :)

We made the horrible mistake of going to the BMW/Triumph dealership last weekend, where we not only discovered that Held gloves, do, in fact fit and look nice and feel nice (and, oh, cost $180), but also that I do, in fact, fit on a Triumph Sprint ST. This was a rather unfortunate discovery, tempered only by the fact that their one remaining Legend was in red, not green. If they'd had a green Legend, there might have been Issues. Going to the Triumph dealership is always a traumatic experience for me, and luckily, I almost instantly got sick with the flu, preventing me from spending all week at work looking at classifieds and specs for yet another bike I can't afford.

And that segues nicely into.....The Bike Show! Nine days and counting. I can't wait. I have this huge mental list of bikes that I Must Sit On, and a surprising amount of them are cruisers. I'm really interested in seeing if the Kawasaki Mean Streak looks as neat in person, or if the color looks gaudy. I really like that golden color. See, this is bad, people. Given the money, I would buy that motorcycle simply because, hey, that gold color's pretty cool. I'd buy the Legend just because, well, I like British Racing Green. It's a good thing I'm still paying off my last bike, or this year's bike show could get ugly.

On that note, I'm off to bed. Hopefully I'll feel well enough to ride in to work tomorrow, but that's probably pushing my luck. Grr! Sitting on the couch all week reading motorcycle magazines makes me want to get out and ride, durnit! The flu stinks. :(