yay dialogue!
So there's been a really great conversation going on on the mailing list. Go subscribe if you're interested. I'm really thrilled how people have been writing to it, even though I'm a big lazy sinus-face and have barely posted anything to it myself. *sniffle* I love you guys. Seriously, go check it out. Peter even let me sign him up for it, so you know you'll love it too.

my riding updates
Not too many. It was a gorgeous weekend, so I tried to spend as much time on the bike as possible. Friday night and yesterday were warm and sunny -- I still swear it's hard to get excited about Xmas when it's 65 degrees out -- and I happily rode around to Peter's and to get my allergy shot and back home and to play pool and etc and etc. I didn't even wear the scarf that Kim so kindly gave me, it was so warm. Huzzah!

Tonight, I rode to Alan's, since it was relatively warm when I left; we watched A Christmas Story, and somewhere between Ralphie seeing the BB gun in the store and getting his Ovaltine Li'l Orphan Annie magic decoder ring, it turned butt-cold out. So I froze on the way home, and, of course, had forgotten to tuck my scarf into my helmet, so I lost my chin about a third of the way home. I decided that if I was going to be cold, I might as well make the most of it, and so I spent the whole way home belting out Xmas songs at the top of my voice. Like all motorcycle riders, I have the best voice ever inside my helmet. Unfortunately, I can never remember all of the words to the songs, so it was more like "blah blah blah la la, blah la la dee dah, blah da da da DA DA DA DA dee dum da da da....OH... JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE ALL THE WAY! OH WHAT FUN IT IS TO RIDE IN A ONE-HORSE OPEN SLEIGH! OH! uh....blah de blah blah blah..." etc. Oh well. And Peter still thinks he wants to get voice-activated walkie-talkies for us. ;)

peter makes a friend.
So we're out playing pool on Friday night, and we're standing in line to pay for the table, and we end up standing next to this guy who's waiting for a table. He notices Peter's helmet, and asks what he rides. Peter tells him, and it turns out that this guy used to race a VF750 in Florida at some point. So they start yakking it up about the VF and the VFR and the guy's telling Peter very emphatically that he needs to make sure that he changes the oil on time, otherwise the crankshaft will get all messed up. Peter mentions that his starter sounds like a cat in a blender, and the guy offers to come outside and hear it when we leave.

On our way out, Peter mentions something about my bike to the guy, who turns to me like he finally noticed that I was there, and basically asks me what Peter's talking about. I tell him that I ride a Nighthawk 450, and he says something along the lines of, "oh, wow, that's great! I love it when women ride!" I said, "yeah, me too, thanks". Like all men everywhere, he starts telling me "so for your next bike, you should get the blah blah blah" (I think he said the Suzuki GS500E) and I say, "well, actually, I'm really looking at the SV650S." This seems to make him happy ("oh, that's a *great* bike!") and he goes back to chatting with Peter about the VF750.

He listens to Peter start the bike, and says that the blendered-cat noise is normal for the VF. I guess we have no reason not to believe him; it's made the noise as long as Peter's had the bike, and other than the time the wiring caught on fire, he's never had any problems with any part of the ignition system. *shrug* Personally, I thought it was sort of weird that this guy just started telling us how much he knew about bikes and stuff, but Peter says that he was just happy to find another VF750 rider, and that's why he was so enthusiastic. I'm sure that's absolutely it. He was certainly nice enough. Huh.

Everyone loves Peter's bike more than mine. ;)

hee!
So Peter and I are watching...er...."adult entertainment" (is my mom reading this?) on Friday night, and one of the little things is that these three people are going to ride scooters to a beach to, er, *ahem*. So two of 'em hop on these scooters that look like the Evil, only red, and they're not wearing helmets, and the chick is wearing like a bikini top and short jean shorts. Peter and I both comment on this. Then they show the third person, a woman, who's like, "you *have* to be kidding me. I'm not getting on that thing. I'm not wearing a helmet. Look at what I'm wearing. If I crash, I can't work again, I'll have road burn. Nope." and assumedly she got one of the crew guys to drive her to the beach instead. I thought that just kicked all kinds of ass.

it's probably in poor taste to bring up the petcock right after the porno story.
Sorry.

Anyways, so the Short Biker's List is teaching me about petcocks now. Ann and some people were discussing turning the petcock to "off" versus leaving it "on" when you turn the bike off, and so I asked some of the questions that I had about it. Here's what I learned:

• ON-OFF-RES: This is the type of petcock that my Nighthawk has. When it's set to ON, fuel flows from the tank to the carbs underneath it via gravity. Turning it to OFF blocks the pipe to the carb so that no fuel can accidentally leak into them when the bike is off (this is why it's generally good to turn the petcock to OFF when the bike's off, though most people say that the odds of this happening are far lower than the odds of forgetting to turn it back to ON when you start the bike). The fuel tank has two pipes leading up into it; a longer main one, and the shorter reserve one. When the fuel level in the tank drops below the level of the first pipe, you switch the petcock to RES, and now the shorter reserve pipe into the tank supplies the gas into the carbs. Again, this is how my bike works.
• ON-RES-PRI: On a lot of newer, larger, bikes, a vacuum-operated petcock is used instead of the gravity-operated one described above. When the petcock is set to ON, and the bike is running, a vacuum from the engine causes a little diaphragm to pull away from the housing, and fuel is then able to flow into the carbs. There's no OFF switch, because when the bike is off, there's no way for a vacuum to be created, and so no fuel can accidentally leak past the diaphragm and into the carbs. RES works the same way as in the model described above. PRI stands for "prime," and it's the part that confuses me the most. I think what happens is that when the petcock is set to PRI, the diaphragm arrangement is bypassed, and the fuel flows to the carbs via gravity just like above. This is used after the carbs have been run dry, most likely because the rider ran it completely out of gas, or the bike had been sitting for a long time.

So there's your mechanics lesson for the day, boys and girls. I love learning how my bike works. :)

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