July 20, 2000


i suck.
Do you like how, in my last entry, I'm all "real people who aren't personal friends of mine are actually reading my journal without being threatened! I'll do updates now for sure!" and then I go away for a month? My bad.

oh fate, how you mock me.
So the reason why I haven't been riding, and ergo, not posting anything to this journal, is that my place of employment moved. If you recall from the last entry, I'd been driving my car from my apartment to Peter's, then taking the bike from Peter's to work. Well, work moved to the middle of downtown San Jose, and there wasn't any way on god's green earth that I was going to (a) get up early enough to stop at Peter's first, or (b) take the bike on the freeway in rush hour traffic yet. So, yes, I'm a weenie, and you didn't get any entries for a month.

However! Luck is on our side! For I have a new job now, which I start on August 1, which is *not* located in the middle of downtown San Jose. So I'll be taking the bike again. It's actually right off of a divided highway that runs near my apartment, so I'll probably finally be keeping the bike at my place. Course, I need to move within the next couple of weeks, so who knows. I'm looking for a place near my current one (and therefore near said divided highway), but, christ, it's hard to find a cheap apartment that takes cats out here. We'll see.

isn't this a bike journal? who cares where you live?
So, I have ridden a few times lately, let's see if I can come up with anything remotely interesting to talk about. A few nights ago, I took the bike to get gas (after the "running out of gas incident" that I forgot to write about. I'll do it later. The incident in question was like July 7 -- yes, it took me that long to fill up the bike again) at, oh, about 10:30pm. It rocked. I love riding at night. It was a beautiful night, the breeze felt wonderful, and there weren't many cars on the road. It was perfect. I pulled into the gas station behind a young man with bleached hair, driving a white convertible with some weird white-boy rap music blaring (you all know what I'm talking about). He gave me a funny look when I got off the bike and removed my helmet; I guess that short women with blue hair who ride motorcycles had not previously existed in his world view. Anyways, after filling up the bike, I rode over to the nearby video store. There was a cute girl, around 14 years old, who chatted with me while we were in line; she said that blue was her favorite color. I lifted up my helmet and said, "the motorcycle's blue, too!" and she got a big grin. Maybe we'll have a new female biker in our midst soon. :)

this entry is really boring. i can't believe i waited a whole month.
It gets worse. So tonight I took the bike out for a spin, no particular direction in mind. Just took it out on some residential streets, a couple of major roads, and even a cobblestone cul-de-sac once when I needed to turn around. That one was funny; I had just picked a random street to turn around in. I had no idea it was a cul-de-sac, much less a *cobblestone* one. Who the hell makes cobblestone streets anymore? It was a good lesson in driving on alternate terrain. And then the lame-ass people who built the street didn't build real curbs, they just made the street slant sharply down and then sharply back up again. So when I got off the bike to push it backwards, the wheel got stuck in the ditch. I had to get on the bike and start it and ride partially over someone's lawn to get it back on the street. It was like a street from a Stephan King novel. Bertini Court: every biker's nightmare.

So anyways, after I got home from the ride around town, I actually did one of those "routine checks" on the bike (yes, yes, I know you're supposed to do the check *before* your ride; I'm lucky I remember to do it at all). I checked both turn signals, the brake light, the high/low beam headlight, the oil, the brake fluid, the drive chain, the tire pressure, and the brake pads. Everything looks fine. Wow, the fun and excitement never ends, huh. Bet you're all so glad I finally updated again. ;)


back | next | home