My Riding Season Ends

Rode the motorcycle over to Chuck’s tonight, because he is being so kind as to allow me to store it at his house this year. While there I had him take a look at, and confirm, an issue with it, as it turns out it appears that my handle bars may be bent. I am not sure how I will handle this yet, I will need to think about it. I guess I should explain… A few days back I got a call while I was at work from Melissa. She told me she had looked out the window and saw my motorcycle lying on its side, someone had knocked it over, most likely by backing into it. Some guys came along and were nice enough to pick it up for her/me and I checked it when I came home. Everything looked fine, but after riding it something felt odd. After having Chuck look at it tonight turns out I was right. I am pretty sure I have a $500 deductible on it, but I also think that to fix it will cost more than that. I guess I will have to see.

An Evening Ride

I was able to get a short ride in tonight. It was rather nice riding at just about 70 degrees, although I do need to stop riding west while the sun is going down, as it can get difficult to see. I have decided that I rather enjoy using Map My Run to create these little maps of my motorcycle rides. Not only does it help me keep track of where I have ridden, but it also helps me keep track of miles that I have ridden. I have been thinking lately about getting a GPS system for the motorcycle for multiple reasons. One is that it would allow me to go on longer rides through more scenic back roads without having to worry about getting lost, and two, and this one is more recent, it will allow me to upload the GPS information to the site and create even more accurate maps. I really do enjoy seeing where I went. Perhaps I will start looking into the GPS and try to save for one for next season.

Title: Motorcycle Ride
Description: 08/31/2008

Another Motorcycle Ride

Got to go on a short ride again today, wish it could have been longer. But at least I got to ride!

Title: Motorcycle Ride
Description: 08/26/2008

Motorcycle Ride

I got to go on a nice little motorcycle ride today. First one in quite a while. It was real nice to be able to go for a ride again. Unfortunately I can already feel the seasons starting to change, so it will soon be time to put it away for the season. I think I might have been able to put more miles on it this summer than I did last summer, but just barely and thanks in large part to a few long rides with some friends from work. Hopefully I will be able to get a few more rides in before I have to store it again. I think this year I may end up storing it at the dealership, that way before I take it out for the season I can have them perform the needed maintenance for me.  I still need to look into the cost of that though.

Here was today’s trip:

Title: Motorcycle Ride
Description: 08/23/2008

On The Road Again

The weather has finally started to break and the last few days have been really nice. I have really been itching to get my motorcycle out and start riding again, so that’s what I did today. I went over to Al’s this morning and got the motorcycle all situated. At the end of last season we had moved the handlebars so today we had to compensate and adjust all my forward controls. In addition we also adjusted the alignment on my headlight, as I felt it was aiming to low, I will need to check this out by heading out one evening for a ride and seeing if the alignment is any better. Today’s ride, however, was pretty short as I needed to take the bike into the shop. After I put the bike away at the end of last season I received a recall on the ECM module. Basically it could cause the bike to stall out during deceleration, potentially causing an accident. I also received a recall for the fuel line leading to the fuel injector, a small fastener could be defective. In addition to the two recalls, while driving to the shop I realized my speedometer isn’t working either. *sigh* So now the bike is at the show and will have to have, at the very least, the ECM module replaced, the fuel line inspected, and possibly the speedometer replaced. I guess it will be at least a week before I get to ride again. Oh well, it was still great to be back riding again! The rest of the season should be a blast.

Pictures, and lots of them

I finally have gotten all of the pictures that I have laying around up and into the site. This includes all of Kylie’s Year 3 pictures to date, the images of Bethlehem Cemetery, and pictures of my Vulcan. I am currently going through images that I have found to see if they are up on the site already or not, and I think most of them if not all of them are, so this update should now bring everything fully up to date. It’s about time too!

Rider Down

Well I guess that didn’t take too long. Tonight I had my first wipe out on my motorcycle, I wasn’t injured beyond a bruise on the inside of my left leg near my shin, and in fact I did not even go down. When all was said and done the bike went down under me and I ended up standing, straddling the bike.

I was pulling out of Nie Funeral home leaving Hayes’ wake and entering Carpenter Road when my back wheel spun out from under me and the bike went down on its right side and spun so it was horizontal in the road. I guess I should explain what happened.

When I left to go to the funeral home the weather was nice, and though I knew there was a chance of rain I saw no clouds and so opted to ride the motorcycle. After the viewing when I went outside I found that it had started to drizzle and the ground was now wet. I had actually made a comment to Tiffany that this was the worse time for me to be riding the bike, for multiple reasons. One reason is that I had never ridden in wet conditions before. Another is that I remember my instructor in the training class telling us that when it first starts to rain is a bad time to ride, this is because the initial rain just causes oils to be brought to the surface along with loose dirt causing slick conditions. With these things going through my mind and knowing it has only been raining for a few minutes I got ready to ride.

When I had pulled into the funeral home I noticed that the driveway entered the road at a fairly steep angle and that the blacktop of the driveway was of the shiny black slick type. Keeping all of this in mind, coupled with the wet surface, I proceeded very slowly and cautiously to the end of the driveway and waited until there was a very large gap between oncoming traffic for me to turn right into the road. Unfortunately all my precautions were not enough and my lack of experience won out.

When I attempted to turn right into the road my back tire was still on an incline coming out of the driveway, and when I started to make the turn it simply slid down the hill and spun out from under me, thus causing the fall. As I have previously mentioned I received very little damage, no more than a bruise. Thankfully the bike received little damage as well, nothing more than a small dent and some scraps on the tail pipe.

I was able to pick the bike back up on my own and then ride it home. I am hoping that this will be my last and only incident, and that I have learned this lesson well. I think this could have been avoided if I had simply held in the clutch and simply allowed the bike to roll into the road completely and then tried to make the turn, as I think I had plenty of time to do that. I guess we will see next time.

100 Miles Down

Tonight while riding home from work I broke the 100 mile mark on my motorcycle. It took me a little over a week to do, which isn’t that bad considering I haven’t been able to ride as much as I want to. I did get out this past Sunday (my birthday) and ride for about an hour, that ride put the majority of the miles on the bike. I was hoping to be able to ride more, but as of yet I really don’t have a way to carry my laptop with me for work, so when I am on call I can’t ride to work. I am hoping to save up for some saddle bags, but that may not be until next season as they are really expensive. I might be going on a ride next month with some guys from work, we are currently trying to work out the details, I hope that works out as it should be a long fun ride. The planning is currently for a weekend trip, possibly out to the other side of the state, up north and back. we will have to see how that pans out.