November 8, 2000

you know i have to.
Since there can be no written publications today that don't in some way make reference to our current political circus, I shall state, for the record, how much fun I'm having with this. Seriously! The First Lady wins the senate seat in a state that's not even her home state. A dead man wins the senate seat in Missouri. Florida....confusing ballots, the NAACP in arms over african-american discrimination at the polls, disappearing/reappearing ballot boxes, recounts, Jeb, a sample ballot that didn't match the real one (apparently Gore and Buchanan were switched in the sample)...the damn state's a circus in and of itself! This fucking rocks. South Park couldn't even do a political satire this great. Personally, I'm hoping that it goes to court, so we have extended utter political anarchy. I absolutely love chaos. It's great ammo, too...the next time someone tells you, "I'm not going to vote; my vote doesn't matter," you just say, "yeah, well, in the 2000 election, it got down to TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY votes in Florida. You probably *personally* know more people than that."

I love America.

ok, that's all i'm going to say about that.
I haven't ridden my bike today. This makes me sad. Yesterday, we had a beer bash at work, to celebrate a milestone. "I'll stay for an hour or so," said I, "and I'm certainly not going to drink since I have my bike!"

Uh-huh.

By the time Peter came to pick me up about 3 hours later (and then we stayed for another three hours), I had had four beers and was running around the room pretending to be Charlie's Angels with my coworkers Ficus and Chantilly. We had brought a laptop down (yay AirPort!) and were hitting "reload" on the political websites every 5 seconds and generally running around being obnoxious. The point of this is that I obviously was in no condition to drive home and so I had to drive my car in this morning. Therefore, I had to drive my car home this evening. Therefore, my bike is still at work, and I have to play the dumb "you follow me home in your car and then drive me back to work and then I'll drive my bike home" game with my co-worker/good friend Chris tomorrow. Bleargh.

But you have to admit, we make excellent Angels.

the cb-1 400.
Thanks to Kim, though, I did get to ride tonight! She picked me up at work, and we drove over to AfterShocks in Palo Alto to look at the bike she wanted to buy (this sounds easier than it was; there must be some unwritten law somewhere that all bike shops must be in old warehouses *behind* other warehouses, on back streets that have no lighting in the middle of nowhere.). I had never dealt with the shop before this, but it seemed to be a good place with friendly people. So, I'd give it a thumbs-up. I think the postal address on their website is outdated, though. I think it was 961 Commerical Avenue, or maybe 916. I don't remember; I'd call them first and ask if you were thinking of heading over there.

Anyhoo, we went to see the 1990 Honda CB-1 400, and see we did! It was a great little bike; there was a slight dent in the gas tank, the brake lever was slightly bent out, and a fork seal needed to be replaced, but otherwise it was in great condition. Kim sat on it, and then turned it over to me to test-ride for her. I had fully intended to just ride it around the block, but it being in an aforementioned confusing location, I made a wrong turn and ended up on busy streets headed towards the freeway. This actually turned out to be nice, since I found how it handled in traffic at higher speeds (I U-turned back before the freeway, but still got up to 4th gear on the busy streets), as well as cornering and low speeds. It was a really fun bike to ride; it cornered *really* well, shifted *really* smoothly (and was incredibly forgiving the couple of times I wasn't paying attention and ended up in too low of a gear), and put me in a much more "sportsbike" posture than my standard Nighthawk. My only complaint with the bike was with the turn signals: first off, the turn signal switch is the sort that you push to the left or right to turn the respective signal on, but then you push the button IN to cancel the signal (on my Nighthawk, you push left to turn the left blinker on, and then push right to "center" the switch to cancel it, for example). So I drove around for a while with the turn signal on before I figured out how to cancel it. Also, the console only has one light for "turn" (as opposed to a "left turn signal on" light and a "right turn signal on" light), so I couldn't even tell at all *which* blinker I had on for 6 blocks straight. Once I got used to the "push turn signal button IN to cancel it" deal, though, it wasn't as much of a problem. Oh, and the kickstand was in a really weird place relative to the footpeg (compared to my Nighthawk), so that was kinda funny too -- I had to get Kim to put the kickstand down with her hand when I came back from the test ride because I couldn't find the damn thing with my foot to save my life. :) But those are both things that a rider would quickly grow accustomed to.

All in all, though, I really liked riding it, and I think it'll be a great first bike for Kim. The guy at AfterShocks is going to do an oil change, fix a weirdness with the speedometer, replace the cracked fork seal, and do a general look-over for us, and we're going to go back on Saturday morning so that Kim can buy it and I'll ride it back to her place for her. :) I can't wait to finally go riding with her!!

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