trivia time!
One of the popular motorcycling roads around here goes up Mt. Hamilton and past the Lick Observatory. James Lick died in 1876 and bequeathed his fortune to the establishment of the observatory -- his body is still buried beneath a supporting pillar of one of the telescopes.

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So, I putzed around with iMovie a bit and made yet another movie. This one's 15.1 MB, so, you there on the 14.4 modem, consider yourself forewarned. I spliced it a little bit, partially so it'd be less boring ("yes, ok, ok, fine, you're still riding down the same road, lovely") and partially so that I'm not putting exact directions to my apartment up on the web. I put some commentary in places, but I think that the text is a little hard to read. Sorry about that -- I'm still playing around with the software. This movie also has the benefit of sound, or at least a raspy sort of static-y noise in the background, which is our $2 microphone's interpretation of Peter's engine.

A ride around Mountain View, CA.

the bike show!
So last weekend was the bike show. I sat on a wide variety of bikes, and took notes and pictures of most of them; I'm hoping to put the write-up from that in a separate section of the journal. It's been a crazy busy week, though, and I haven't gotten around to it yet. If you'd like to see the pictures, however, they're all up here. Hopefully the filenames are explanatory enough until I get the actual write-up done.

A few people emailed me to ask for writeups on specific bikes; I'll do those quickly here as sort of a teaser (trans. if it takes me forever to get the full write-up done, hopefully this will postpone the hate mail). ;)

• 2002 Honda VFR 800FI Interceptor
  Ah yes. The VFR (Incidentally, I have been told by my darling significant other to please never refer to the VFR as a "viffer" ever again. Apparently it sounds too close to "gixxer" which is, to my dearest love, a bit of a derogatory term. But I digress). The question on everyone's lips is, did it actually look like a constipated wasp? And I have to admit that the answer is a conditional "yes". Yes, it is amazingly pointy (to paraphrase a recent motorcycle magazine, "people will be using their sportsbikes to open letters soon"), but, equally amazingly, it doesn't really look all that bad. I'm not a big fan of their front turn signal placement -- I think they look sort of like big orange buck teeth -- but other than that, I have to admit that it's a darn sexy bike. As is often the case with life, the view from the rear is better than the view from the front. The exhaust system is extremely attractive, though I wonder if soft saddlebags would have problems with the upswept mufflers. Speaking of gorgeous: single-sided swingarm. Mmm.

  My thoughts from the saddle: The bike was fairly large for me -- I was between the balls of my feet and my tiptoes, and the stock reach to the bars was too long (check out how my wrists are bent in the picture -- bar risers would fix this). When I put my knees in place, they were very comfortable, which isn't usually the case for me with large bikes, so that's a definite plus. The bike seemed very light, but the sales rep admitted that the bike in question was a "pre-production" model and didn't have all of its components. He insinuated that these pieces were cosmetic things like grab rails, but I'm still suspending judgement on the lightness of the bike until I sit on one in a dealership.

  Peter's thoughts from the saddle: He didn't like the stock seat; his first comment was that he'd immediately buy a Corbin. His current bike has a Corbin, though, so perhaps he's just spoiled. :) On the other end of the height spectrum, Peter found the VFR to be a bit small for him -- he'd want to rotate the bars out a little more to give him more reach. He didn't complain that his knees didn't fit into the tank molding lines, though (a common complaint for him, just as it is for me), so I'm taking that to mean that his legs were comfortable as well. His only other comment besides incoherent drooling was that the plastic cowling over the pillion seat looked a little cheesy.

  Honda's sepc page for the VFR

  

  

• 2002 Kawasaki ZZ-R1200
  I'd been pleasantly surprised with what I'd read about the ZZ-R1200 in the recent bike rags. I thought it was pretty attractive, though our friend David (who very nicely subjected himself to hanging out with us at the show) had an immediate gut reaction of "eww!". I especially like the front turn indicators, which are the usual amber, but under a clear plastic bubble for a more transparent look. Unlike the big honking orange buck teeth look from another big-name sports-tourer who shall go unmentioned. Mufflers are low, which aren't as sexy as the VFR's, but they'll have no problem accomodating soft or hard luggage.

  My thoughts from the saddle: The ergonomics weren't ideal for me, but realistically, no one makes stock bikes for a 5'0" female. It was taller than I'd hoped -- I was well on my way to tiptoeing, and its large gas tank made it a bit topheavy. Tiptoes and topheavy make for a bad combination, but I'm sure the bike can be lowered. All in all, it felt a little more cumbersome than I'd have liked. I'd be curious to hear commentary from someone closer to the target market -- neither Peter nor David sat on it, so my report on this one is a little skewed.

  Kawasaki's spec page for the ZZ-R1200
  [Note: Kawasaki, since their web team is apparently staffed by developmentally challenged banana slugs, requires Flash in order to even view their spec pages. Because I feel that this goes against all that is good in the world, here's a nice write-up from MotorSports-Network.com. The only spec not listed on the latter is MSRP, which the Kawa site lists as $10,499.]

  

OK, that's all you're getting for tonight. :) The rest will trickle in slowly; I'll make a note when another bike's been added to the review list.