mileage of the beast!

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Our coworkers pass silently around our huddled conversations with the respectful distance that one usually gives the mentally unsound. Sometimes, if the conversation reaches a fever pitch as someone passes by, the innocent bystander will look up nervously at the sound of "Damn! I really wished for some HotGrips on the way in today! Woo, Nellie!" and throw a glance as if to say, "it was bad enough when they were all just suicidal on those death machines; now they've gone mad, too."

Some understand. As I waited for a red light while walking from the office to our parking lot on my way home, I heard a "hey!" shouted from the first car also waiting at the light. It was our friend and Facilities Goddess, Elisa. "Have a fun ride home!" she shouted from the car. "Yer gonna freeze your balls off! Hee hee!" and with that, the light changed, and she waved and drove off in the boring comfort of her heated car. I, of course, like to believe that at least I had more fun while riding to Apple for dinner than she did on her way home. Besides, once you really get going on the freeway, you get numb pretty quickly, and then you don't even really notice the hypothermia.

[Note: I actually wrote the above section last night, and then became too tired to finish the entry. As I was getting ready for bed, I thought that maybe I'd been exaggerating a tad, that maybe we're not really that bad. Then, this afternoon, I went into Tony's office to ask him work-related question...and he was sitting at his desk, just staring at the big moving satellite image of the west coast on weather.com. "Ooh! The big moving satellite image! I love that!" said I, and we proceeded to talk about said big moving satellite image for like five minutes. This is a true story. Ask Tony.]

riding updates.
To use a term I don't particularly like very much, I've been feeling "in the groove" while riding lately. I feel like my turns are better, my shifting has definitely improved, and I just feel comfortable on the bike in general. I find that when things are going well in my life overall, I feel much more "in tune" with the bike, and my riding feels much smoother. I'm not sure I really want to delve into the psychological cause and effect of that, but there you go.

One thing that I've been working on lately is improving my body position. Not necessarily my ergonomics (though god knows that always needs work), but the actual position of my body relative to the bike. I suppose that what I'm doing is placing my center of gravity in the correct place. The two things that I'm actively working on are leaning into a turn with my shoulder, and practicing hanging off.

So far, I've mainly been practicing these maneuvers at speed, for the simple reason that it's easier. I'm already worried about fifteen thousand things while doing a U-turn, so tacking two more thoughts on isn't going to be very productive. It is, however, amazingly fun to practice hanging off the bike a little bit in a nice swooping turn on the freeway when you're going 80mph. It gives you that ego-inflating "look at me!" sort of feeling (when in reality, the drivers around you are probabaly just thinking "stupid show-off motorcyclist", but, y'know, whatever). The practical application of hanging off is when you've entered a turn too quickly -- shifting your body over moves your effective lean angle (the angle between vertical and the combined centers of gravity of the rider and motorcycle) in the same way that leaning the entire bike over would. So, if you're in a turn and aren't comfortable with leaning the bike over more, try shifting to the inside of your seat a little bit while leaving the bike angle where it is. This doesn't magically win you any extra traction, though, so use other measures in gravel or other places where traction is reduced (in other words, if you don't think there's enough traction to lean the bike over, hanging off isn't going to help your problem either).

Leaning into the turn with my shoulder mainly forces me to keep the leading shoulder low and relaxed, which helps me countersteer with that arm. I've also heard this maneuver referred to as "kissing the mirror", but for the life of me, I can't figure out which mirror I'm supposed to be kissing. So I don't worry about that, and just stick to thinking about my shoulder. *shrug*

That's about it in my world. The California BMW/Triumph dealer near me is having a gear and accessories sale on Saturday, so I'm thinking of going over there and checking out their Held gloves. Other than that, I've just been enjoying the recent sunny weather and trying to keep warm out there. :)