it's been good riding lately.
The main reason I've been really poor about updating is that right after the
last entry, it rained solid for a good week
or so. Since I still don't have any rain gear, that meant that the bike was
sitting lonely in the parking lot, smooshed into its too-small thin little
cover, shivering sadly in the rain. :( But then, last weekend, it got
sunny again! Huzzah! The cover came off, the disc lock came off the wheel,
it was filled up with gas, and I've been riding all week. Each and every
single time I've ridden, whether it was a 6-block or 20-mile trip, I've
thought to myself, "it just doesn't get any better riding than this." The
sky is blue, the leaves are gold and red and purple, there's a crisp breeze,
and it just makes me smile all the time. There's this one tree, on one of
the intersections along Central Expressway (home of most that is evil),
that I pass every day going to work; I should take a picture of it this
week. It's huge and orange and bright magenta. So good. I wonder if the
commuters in their cars notice the trees as much. In a way, I hope so; I'd
really hate for anyone to be so utterly oblivious.
new stuff! new stuff!
I'm trying to hold off on buying stuff for myself lately, because Peter and I
both fall into this annoying rut where we just buy ourselves the stuff we
need, and then no one else can get any Christmas presents for us. But after
riding home last Friday after orchestra rehearsal at 10pm on the freeway at
75mph [oops, I mean 65mph, the safe and legal posted speed limit], I could stand
it no more. I needed new, warmer, gloves. The gloves I have, Olympia with
Kevlar, are wonderful, broken-in, soft, comfy, beautiful gloves, but they're
just too thin for fall/winter riding, especially at night when it's colder.
If you're spending 5 minutes at your destination warming your hands up against
your engine, you need warmer gloves. Seriously.
So today, Peter and I hopped on our bikes and rode the 16 miles to Road Rider Accessories in southern San Jose. Road Rider is a great little store, I highly recommend it if you're in the southern Bay Area (here's a map). We pull up into their motorcycle parking, I enjoy showing the half-dozen or so late-teens/early-twenties punk-as-phuck boys sitting outside the store that yes, that's a girl riding up on her own bike, and we go inside. To our credit, we went straight to the glove section, instead of dumbly wandering aimlessly throughout the store muttering "I need this...I need this...I need this..." like we normally do. We both tried on a bunch of gloves that we liked, and I finally chose a pair of Tour Master Gloves-in-a-Bag; they're rain-resistant gauntlets with reinforced knuckles and a little zippered pocket on the front which holds a water-resistant nylon mitten that fits over each glove. They're pretty nice, and only $40 (Here's a product description for them). Peter found a nice pair of gloves that he liked, too, but he didn't need them right away, so he jotted down the details to ask for them for Christmas.
Later this evening, we rode from Peter's house in San Jose to our friend Alan's house in Palo Alto (another 15 miles or so), and it was kind of chilly out, so I wore the new gloves. They were really odd at first; they're thicker, so I had to handle the throttle differently, which threw me for the first block or so (I over-revved the engine when I first started out), but I got used to them fairly quickly. Because they're new, they're not broken in yet, so it took more muscle to get to the clutch/brakes quickly; the base of my right thumb hurt pretty badly by the time we got to Alan's. It didn't really bother me on the way home, though. All in all, I'm really happy. My fingers were definitely warmer than they would have been with my other gloves (and definitely warmer than Peter's fingers were! Brr!). Huzzah!
so, i'll try to keep updating again.
OK, time for bed. I'll try to be better about updating now, though I have
a sneaking suspicion that the rains are going to return this week. Oh!
But there's a
bike show in San Mateo next weekend that Peter and I are going to. So if anyone is
with red hair with a tall long-haired blond boy, say hi! :)