blast from the past.
The first picture I ever took of the Nighthawk. I had borrowed a 1980s Polaroid camera from the HR director at the company I was working for at the time, and brought it down to the underground parking lot, where the bike was. Old school, man.

back | next
back to archives | bluepoof.com
email me

the nighthawk's new home.
I rode the Nighthawk in yesterday, and my coworker Ceej took it home. Since she got her SVS, her husband David has been looking to learn to ride, so I'm loaning them the Nighthawk for him to learn on. He's got his learner's permit, and will be taking the MSF course as soon as there's an opening, so I'm all in favor of helping him learn to ride. The Nighthawk does an unfair amount of just sitting around when it's in my possession, anyway.

Email from David last night:

Subject: Only dropped it once so far!
From: David 
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 23:02:05 -0800 (PST)

Don't worry, it's perfectly fine--Ceej's bike cushioned the fall!

Apparently they were in the garage, and he was moving it off the centerstand, and it just lost balance and tipped over, right on top of the SVS. :) Ceej and I both got a pretty big kick out of this (especially, in Ceej's case, because nothing was scratched or otherwise harmed), since, well, everyone does it. It's never the big crash or the exciting mess-up that makes for a newbie's first downed bike -- it's the garage or driveway "oops". :)

Ceej and I spent some time this morning laughing over the huge differences between the Nighthawk and the SVS. She seemed to feel the same way I do about the Nighthawk -- it's a great little punky bike, fun to toss around and rev high, and the brakes are definitely the weakest part. Amazing the difference between a drum brake and a single-piston caliper disc brake. Once I remember that I just have to squeeze the NH's front brake about three times harder than I do on the SVS, I'm fine, and the NH is great for city riding. In fact, I almost prefer it to commute on, since it's so easy to toss around and maneuver. Yesterday, though, I had to take the freeway for about 15 miles from a doctor's appointment in San Jose into work in Palo Alto. The ambiant speed on highway 280 is around 80mph, and the Nighthawk was having some issues. Right around Los Altos, I was going maybe 82mph, hanging onto the handlebars for dear life, and having the conscious thought that I would have paid money to have been on the SVS instead. Maybe it was more windy than normal, or maybe I'm just spoiled by the fairing on the SVS (probably a little of both), but I don't remember having had that many issues with going freeway speeds on the Nighthawk. It was an interesting 15 miles.

etc.
Not much else to report, really. We'll do the little daily random, and then leave it at that.

• There will be Legend issues at the bike show. I can tell already.
• The SVS will hit 6300 miles tomorrow. For the first time, I feel that 10k is in sight. That's pretty weird, in a good way. 10k miles is, like, real mileage.
• Another Wind Dancer, Jodie, was in an accident last weekend. She's fine, other than some road rash, but I guess the bike isn't doing as well. Apparently her throttle lock didn't disengage when she tried to slow down on the freeway. She lost control of the bike and bailed, and the bike continued on, somersaulting (literally) down the freeway for a while. Yikes. Here's her bike in better days, and another. I guess all of the stuff from the windscreen back to the gas tank is all gone now.
• On a happy note, Cat just got engaged! For those that don't know her, Cat is the list admin for the Short Biker's List, and, along with Kim and Diana, helps make up our little gang of South Bay dyed hair biker grrls. So I'm very happy for her. We'll have to have a Bachelorette Ride. :)