December 30, 2000


happy holidays!
Hope everyone had a great holiday, be it Yule or Christmas or Hannukah or Kwanzaa or whatever else. :) I had a really wonderful holiday; Peter and I went to Columbus, Ohio to spend xmas with his family. It ended up being a pretty bike-tastic week, which was a pretty pleasant surprise.

the goods.
The bike scored pretty well as far as xmas presents this year. Peter's parents got me a 126-piece set of Craftsman tools, which made me extremely happy and also extremely anxious to start working on replacing my front bearings. It really needs to start raining so that I don't miss any riding time by tearing the bike apart. Grrr. This toolset is awesome. It has ratchet wrenches (I love ratchet wrenches, oh yes I do) and socket wrenches and screwdrivers and allen wrenches, all in overly abundant quantities. I will never again want for a ratchet wrench. *happy sigh*.

Peter's parents also got me a Brookstone dial pressure gauge, which I've yet to really use. Well, I did try it out once, but I was lazy and didn't unlock the disc brake lock, so I couldn't really roll the tire around to an optimal location. In other words, the air nozzle was like behind the chain, so I couldn't really fit the gauge in right and it told me the tires were only at 20psi. I suppose this could be the case, but I'd be more willing to believe it after I'd rolled the tire to be able to get to the nozzle correctly. Hrm. It's a nice gauge, though.

Peter got me a pair of Throttle Rockers, which I'd been wanting to try out because my thumb kept cramping up. I put one on the other day and tried it out -- it works really well on the freeway (I rode about 15 miles to wherever it was I was going, and my thumb wasn't cramped when I got there), but it does take some getting used to. Since I was accelerating by pressing down with my palm instead of rotating my wrist, it was easy to start speeding up unintentionally (for example, if I hit a big bump in the road, my wrist would sink a little, which would cause the bike to accelerate). This caused some concern when I was in traffic on side streets, so I took it off for my rides to work. I think it's just one of those things that I'll need to get used to. The fact that my brake lever is still bent into a U isn't helping either (I ordered that lever finally, by the way, I just need to wait until after New Year's when the shop is open to go pick it up).

My sweetie also found me a 2001 calendar from the American Motorcycle Association Motorcycle Hall of Fame. This was especially cool, since Peter and his parents and I ended up going to the museum while we were in Ohio, but I'll talk about that later. It's a neat calendar; it shows all different kinds of old bikes and little tidbits about each one. It's really fun since we personally saw most of the bikes shown on the calendar. :)

Peter got a little red bungee net (from me!), which I hope he likes. He has a big tank bag, but I'm a real bungee net lover, and he'd mentioned that he wanted a nice red one to match the bike. ;) 'Course, first thing he does with it once we get home? He puts it in the tankbag. "I don't want it to get stolen!" he said. I suppose that makes sense, but it just seems odd to me, since my bungee net is always strapped over the pillion seat of my Nighthawk. I don't like having a lot of crap in my tankbag though (funny, since there always seems to be a lot of crap in there anyways...). *shrug* :)

Peter's kickass bike present this year, though, was from his parents -- they got him a brand new Fieldsheer jacket! It's the jacket shown in the picture at that link (er, the guy's jacket, not the women's. Though that woman's outfit *does* look pretty damn nice....), and it looks really great on him. It's leather, with armored shoulders, elbows, and a padded back, and has a few vents. It also has a nice lining, which is good for the colder weather we've had at nights around here (he'd been riding in just a long-sleeved T-shirt and his leather jacket -- I don't know how he kept warm enough). It'll be awesome for when we ride this summer; I know that I loved my vented jacket last summer. :) Yay! I'm very excited for him. When we left his house this afternoon, he took his bike back to work (I had the cage since I had brought boxes of crap to his house), and I can personally verify that the jacket looks damn good. Mmmm. Cute boy in armored leather on a sportsbike, mmrrow. :)

pictures, in case anyone cares.
Here's a couple of random pictures from xmas.

the motorcycle museum
See? I did get off my butt tonight and add these. Wow. They're in the order in which we saw the bikes.

OK, that's it. :) Have a happy new year!


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