So now I'm re-saving each and every picture without the Photoshop header so that your broken ass browser can deal with the resized pictures. Cash donations can be sent to....oh, nevermind. Just think happy thoughts. ;)

the bandit continues to hate me.
So, I've got the Bandit reassembled, but now it won't start. It doesn't seem to be getting spark on all cylinders, but I can't really tell, since the battery isn't providing enough juice to test the spark. *sigh* It's been sitting on Mark's battery tender for a week now, and it seems to be a crap shoot whether cranking the engine will stay around 10v or drop down to 6v or 7v.

I did get it to start once last week, but it quickly overheated since there was no coolant in the radiator. Naturally, once I put coolant in, it refused to start again. Whee!

Mark did find me some good gixxer parts for the Bandit, so now I have forks and a new (well, to me) steering column waiting to be put on. I found a couple of late-80s gixxer front axles on Ebay, so now I just need to remember to check the auctions again before they end (I have a nasty habit of "watching" auctions and then utterly forgetting about them). Then all I'll need is a wheel, and the front end of the Bandit will be in business. 'Course, it doesn't run, but it'll look fast sitting in my garage.

a sad short biker story.
I had the second most embarrassing Short Biker Incident That Didn't Result In The SVS Being On The Ground(tm) over the weekend (I have enough embarrassing incidents that I need to sub-classify them).

Peter and I rode up to our friend Chris's house, which is up in the nearby foothills. Once you get off of Highway 9 and into his general area, the roads become one-lane mazes of twisty passages, all alike. Whenever the bike needed to be turned around, I made Peter do it for me -- after having dropped the bike on a rutted gravel turnout in the middle of Nevada, I had no desire to duplicate this on steep rutted gravel roads up in the hills.

To make things even more fun, I decided it would be a good idea to start having an allergy attack. So, when Peter, who was riding ahead of me, made the last sharp left-hand turn onto Chris's street, my eyes were all teared up and I completely boffed the turn. I just gave up and parked the bike on the side of the road, and after he parked the Superhawk, Peter walked back down the slope to my bike and rode it the rest of the way up while I blew my nose and sneezed a bazillion times.

I was a little bit frustrated by the last turn -- I usually don't mind swallowing my pride and letting Peter move the SVS around on gravel (heck, his 34" inseam has to be good for something!), but to have him bail me out because I messed up a turn was another story. I pouted for a while.

The sad part of this story comes from the "Does Not Learn From Past Experiences" department. As we left Chris's place, I remembered that there was a tight now-righthand turn coming up, and so I set myself up to enter the turn wide. I did not, however, remember that the inside of the corner was really cambered. As I mentioned earlier, all of these roads are one-lane wide and really steep. I paused at the cross-street to check for cross traffic.....and couldn't get my right foot down. The road just wasn't there. I did what any normal, non-34" inseamed, person would do: I totally panicked.

Somehow I managed to get the sidestand down and crawl off of the bike. I proceeded to walk the bike all the way down around the turn, lurching frantically the whole way, since the road was so steep that I couldn't let go of the front brake at all. By this point, Peter had parked his bike and had walked back up to me to see what he could do to help. I had already burst into frustrated tears by this point, so I'm pretty sure all I really said to him was "baaaaaaaa!". I eventually got the bike walked down to a spot that was flat enough to get back on again (the whole road was cambered -- I could have put the bike on the stand at any point, but I wouldn't have been able to stand it back up again) and then I was fine for the rest of the ride down.

Peter thinks I'm making too big a deal about the whole situation, but I wanted to bring it up as a good "short biker" story. I laugh about it already (I was 10 minutes later, in fact), and every short biker has dorky stories like that. He thinks that I'm being self-deprecating when I tell "let me tell you about the retarded thing I did" stories, but hey, I'm a writer. Stories are what I do, and I'd be the most boring person ever if I only told stories about things I did perfectly. ;)

Someday I'll tell the story of the Most Embarrassing Short Biker Incident That Didn't Result In The SVS Being On The Ground, but I have to save something for future entries. ;)

the rest of saturday's ride.
Aside from making an ass of myself, I was really happy with the ride yesterday. We took Page Mill up the hill, and I'm happy to report that I'm doing pretty well on that road now. It's been sort of an informal goal of mine for a while now to "master" that stupid road, and I feel I'm coming close. The recent rains have helped to wash some of the gravel and sand out of the corners, which makes me happy.

I also did well coming down 9 after the aforementioned "why ride the bike when you can push it?" episode. Sadly, Peter wasn't doing as well, since he was cold and his arms were hurting. I hope the Superhawk is going to work out for him in the long run. We put the Helibars on it last weekend, which really seemed to help, but I guess his arms are back to hurting. I've told him before that I won't be hurt or offended if he wants to sell the Superhawk and get something that fits him better; I guess we'll just wait and see how his arms do into the summer. Poor boy.

the requisite alice's trip.
After throwing a bridal shower this afternoon, I was a little restless, so Mark and I took a quick jaunt up in the hills. Again, we took Page Mill up, then continued along 35 to Alice's. By the time we got to the restaurant, it was getting chilly and starting to drizzle, so we went inside for garlic fries and hot chocolate (after writing that, it occurs to me that that really sounds like a disgusting combination. It wasn't, I promise.).

It was full-on raining when we left, so we decided to take Highway 84 down, since it's paved much better than Page Mill. Naturally, I hadn't brought my rain suit, so I was a bit chilly, but I stayed dry. I took 84 at a much slower speed than I would have on dry roads, obviously, but it ended up being a really fun ride. There was very little other traffic (no other bikes), and the rain was steady -- hard enough to keep the visor mostly clear, but not so hard that the rain itself reduced visibility. The tires stuck well; I never lost traction once. I'd read many times that wet roads really aren't that much more slippery than dry ones (the danger is in litter on the road, or the white arrows and other plastic signage), so I didn't worry too much about taking the twisties in the rain.

It ended up being really peaceful. It made me very happy. Maybe next time I'll remember the rain suit.