my new love.
Isn't she gorgeous?

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I spent most of the time at Cycle Gear in San Jose. They had a really large selection of helmets, and the salespeople were actually friendly and helpful. I had intended to go there to try on an Arai Quantum XS and then mess with the cheek pads, but once I put the XS on, it felt too big, and I realized that I really meant to try on the XXS...which, naturally, they didn't have in stock. They had quite a few smaller sized Shoeis, though, so I tried on a bunch of those as long as I was there. The RF-900 seemed to fit the best, though that's the one that I think I fit exactly halfway between an XS and an XXS. Luckily, they only had either size in nasty colors, so I wasn't tempted to buy one just to be done with it. Unfortunately, while trying on an XXS RF-800 (not to be confused with the XXS RF-900), I decided to see if I could fit my sunglasses on with the helmet on. Ha ha! I couldn't! The left ear piece snapped right in half. See, now, there's a good test of whether you're trying on a helmet that's too small -- your eyes pop out of your head, or your accessories commit suicide.

Naturally, the style of the last sunglasses I bought (and then lost a few months ago) have been discontinued, but I liked this pair too, so I ended up with those. They're polarized, but I didn't notice any distortion through my helmet -- if I notice any over the weekend, I'll return them. The sunglasses store was having a promo, so I also got a second pair for free, which look more or less like this. So that's all good.

a great spring weekend.
On Sunday, I spent the afternoon over at Peter's, idly mucking around with our bikes. We considered going for a short ride after breakfast, but decided that neither of us was really feeling up to it (both of us are in allergy hell). I had a short moment of utter bliss at breakfast, though, as we pondered a map of the area while waiting for our food. I am a very strange person indeed, and can honestly say that sitting in a restaurant -- either alone or with someone -- and poring over a huge unwieldy map which never quite shows you exactly what you're looking for, makes me really insanely happy. I think it's because I love to travel so amazingly much, and even though we were at the Pancake House two miles from his house, looking at a map of our own neighborhoods....well, we could have been anywhere, looking at cities and street names we'd never heard of before. This is probably one of those "smile and nod at the crazy lady" moments for everyone else, but it made me happy, at any rate.

Speaking of travel, which I wasn't really, I'm idling considering riding up to Seattle sometime this summer. I've got a few days of vacation time coming, and heaven knows I'm always drawn north for my rides thus far. I have this nagging itch to ride to Arizona, which is not north, but I'll need more than 5 days off to do that. At any rate, I have to go welcome Zeke into the world eventually -- and get him hooked on motorcycles early. Jan still claims that at 2 months old, he's still a bit short for riding, but we'll prove her wrong. Jan doesn't actually know that I'm thinking of coming up and disrupting her life yet, so this plan may in fact get the smack down. But it does sound like the ideal road trip for me this summer -- not too long, a nice destination with a purpose, and lots of Pacific Northwest. Maybe I should put raingear on my birthday list.

Anyway, back to me mucking around on bikes on Sunday. We cleaned up Peter's chain, and attempted to adjust it, which really failed quite spectacularly due to his apparent need to replace said chain. I've read about it happening, but I'd never before seen a chain with 25mm of slack in one place and about 3mm of slack in another. So, it looks like a chain and sprocket replacement write-up will show up on the site before too terribly long. Aside from Peter's chain, we didn't really do much. We did the carb sync on my bike, which was helped along tremendously by Peter dropping the sync tool partway through and getting it all out of whack -- I only mention this publicly because he was videotaping me doing the sync and it must have slipped his mind to keep the camera rolling while he shamefacedly recalibrated the tool after he made gravity happen. I'm sure this was just a terrible oversight, and that he really did want everyone to know about it. ;) (I really shouldn't tease a man who has keys to my apartment. I'm going to find snakes in my bathtub now.)

I should especially not tease Peter, because on Sunday night, he earned his keep by scoring big at a neighborhood garage sale. We were driving by on our way to a movie, and he noticed that there was one of those big red upright toolchests out in the front yard. Naturally, we stopped, and discovered that it was full of old tools (of varying stages of usefulness) and was only $75 for the whole thing. We went up to buy it, and Peter noticed that the guy running the sale was cleaning off a large air compressor, which turned out to be from 1929. They had a moment of male bonding over this air compressor, and the guy knocked the toolchest price down to $50. After the movie, we wheeled the chest back to Peter's house, and cleaned off all the tools. I snagged a couple of them -- a side cutter, for example, since Peter already has like 10 of them -- but he kept the rest and offered to pay for them too. So, the end of the story is that I now have a slightly rusty in places but otherwise gorgeous and 100% useable big red upright toolchest, for barely any cost at all. I'm so happy it's unbelieveable. I spent all afternoon today cleaning my garage and organizing the storage area and etc in preparation for the toolchest's happy arrival.

etc.
Still no word from the bike rental place in Wisconsin. I may call them tomorrow and ask what's up. I haven't heard anything back from them since their initial email, so I'm a bit concerned that the whole "renting Ducatis" thing was just a joke by the parts guys or something. "Sure, we rent Ducatis. Here's a nice Hailwood replica for you, lady."

I still need to plan a weekend trip to the Art of the Motorcycle exhibit in Las Vegas. Tony and his wife went this weekend, and I'm really looking forward to being amazingly jealous when he tells me about it. :) I should get my butt in gear about that, since the exhibit is only open through the end of June, and here it is April already. Yikes.