Category: Life News

In the wee early hours of the morning [well, “wee early” to us at least], Laura and I will head to New York City where we will get to stay for free at the Waldorf=Astoria hotel [which I’ve mentioned before, I believe].

We’re hoping that it doesn’t rain too much due to that tropical storm off the coast, but we’ll drive through anyway. It will really only affect where we stop and visit along the way. Which reminds me: I will get to add a new state to my list of states visited: Delaware. Can’t think of any other reason I’d want to go there except as a stop along the way to somewhere else… Some people like it, I suppose…

Today, we are down from our “scorching” heat and into a much more pleasant temperature. This morning’s ride took me up into the mountains where the fog was still hanging and the temperature was in the low 70s. After riding up here in the high 90s a couple of days ago, I have to say that the cool weather was a much welcome relief.

As for the bike, it seems to be working okay – no more stalls or failure to start. In fact, it seems to run better than it ever has. I’ll have to keep an eye on it, though.

I forgot to tell you all that my bike is back – and running fine. As soon as it arrived back at the shop, it started up fine and hasn’t had a problem since. I’m a little concerned that it might happen again since they didn’t fix it. It is most likely electrical, but for now, I’m riding to work on it.

I forgot to say anything because my site has been unavailable for posting for many days… It’s good to be back!

Some of you may have noticed a six-day lag in the posts to my web site. Well, that’s because the weblog software no longer functions like it should so I have been in the process of migrating all of my posts to WordPress. This has taken longer than it should because the regular “import” feature is not working like it should. It could be the fact that I’m on Windows and IIS, but… I have no clue.

Anyway: I have been hand-copying all the entries and comments over from the old site to the new site and here it is. You’ll notice it looks very different. It will continue to be different, but I will not keep it like this. I have to find a good template and then make it mine by changing it…

You’ll see…

I’m not feeling well today – I don’t think I’ve been getting enough sleep lately. So, I stayed home. Not that I’m staying away from work… I’m on a conference call right now, in fact.

What I need to do is actually get used to going to sleep at a decent hour…

Maybe that’s not the word, but the shop that did the service last week on my bike will send out a driver to come pick up the bike and take it to the shop. That will be a big help and they even offered to pay for the tow if the problem was something they caused. If not, it still helps me get the bike to where someone can do something about it – which is much better than leaving it in a parking lot where anyone else can tow it away.

I’ve been reading about some common electrical problems that these bikes have, and it seems that mine has fallen to the inherent weakness of the wiring harness. Maybe. I’ll know more later when they look at it.

I may have been “back on the bike” this morning, but the bike stayed at the office. I had trouble starting it, and after an hour or so of removing cowlings and parts I had thought that I had removed the offending circuits [which I thought ran the headlights]. I took off out the gate, but got about 20 feet before the bike died. At work it stayed.

Seems the parts I removed were starter relays and maybe there’s some kind of short in there. Now, I have an out-of-commision bike with a shiny new chain and rear tire…

Tomorrow, I’ll be calling around to the closest dealers to see if they have the parts and if this is a common problem. I hope it’s something I can fix easilly…

Today, I’m back on my bike after it went through an expensive service interval. It normally isn’t expensive to service the bike, but my back tire was almost bald and my chain was so stretched out, that it could be just lifted off the sprockett. Well – glad I told them to change it. While the bike was there, they also changed the back brake pads, so we have severely depleated our “emergency fund”, which is supposed to eventually hold 3-6 months of living expenses. Of course, we had just started it, so we didn’t have much in it.

I will say that it is good to have the bike back in prime shape. There were vibrations caused by the stretched out chain which made riding uncomfortable. The bike feels tight and comfortable. My main concern now is to be careful not to stretch out the chain again. That wil cost me too much in replacement costs.

Now, the journey continues past 16,500 miles [which is quite a lot of miles for a bike – not really, but most idiots buy a bike and keep it for years while putting only 5000 miles on. Not me! I intend to go past 40,000 miles, maybe even 60,000…].

Today, I had a flat in the car. The front right tire went down. Luckily, I only got out of the driveway. I put on the full-size spare [gotta love those] and went to work. Now, we have to get a new spare tire.

This is just as I am staying off the motorcycle this week because its rear tire is so close to gone that I feel uncomfortable riding it. I’m getting a new one on Friday.

There goes the emergency savings…