I know! I know...I said I was going to stay current with the blogging, and I've been slacking of late. I have been out on the bike, though, so that should garner some leeway? Or not. But here's what's been going on;
I'm back to commuting on the bike, which is a frikkin' huge relief. Love being back in the open air again. The weather gods have seen fit to bless me with an extended summer season, which I am truly thankful for - and for which I'll have to find something worthy to sacrifice...maybe that new Heineken beer-keg that I bought last week? Yeah, maybe I'll have to sacrifice that soon...although, it'll be my liver that actually does the sacrificing... (I don't even drink Heineken, but that beer-keg looked pretty interesting so I picked one up. I guess that's what you call good marketing/advertising.)
I did a memorial run this past Saturday. It was the 2nd annual memorial run for Shayne Cabino. He was a Lance Corporal in the Marines and he made the ultimate sacrifice on October 6th, 2005. (
http://www.shaynesrun.com/) I'll do a write up and post some pics when I have a bit more time. I'll do a quick post now to get things a bit caught up, but I want to take my time when I do the write-up for this run, as it deserves respect and I don't want to just slam through it.
This past Sunday, A few of us went to CT - the weather was plenty warm and the sky was 100% pure blue; not a single cloud to be seen anywhere. (Trust me, I looked for one, too. Being as susceptible to sunburn as I am, clouds are my friend.) Riding around, I found an apple orchard and stopped in.
Our hunting/gathering skills were put to the test as we sought out the red & ripened fruits. The apples didn't put up much of a fight - they were just "hanging" around, anyway (I'm here all week, folks, try the veal!).
The blackberries were a different story; after about an hour of searching (and eating), we'd gathered barely enough berries to cover the bottom of the carton. The decision was made at this point to abandon said orchards and head off down the road again. We found some good roadways, soaked up a ton of sunshine and didn't roll back into the homefront until almost 12 hours later.
Just prior to heading down to CT, however, I noticed that my left-rear directional was loosening up on me and had actually turned downwards a bit. Realizing that my rear tire really didn't need to be kept abreast of any intentions to make a left-hand turn, I knew I would need to set things right.
The next opportunity I had to delve into fixing things, didn't come until a couple of days later. The first thing to do was to remove the duct tape I'd used to secure the directional for the CT trip and ensure that it wouldn't come completely apart and start rapping off of the paint.
Next was to remove the sissy bar frame and the fender-strut bolts to give the fender some play. This would allow me to both; push the fender down a bit, as well as ease the strut out a bit. Between the two, I would have enough room to get at the bolt which was loosening up.
Prior to doing the pushing/pulling, I undid the directional wiring from the clips inside the fender, as this would give me the play I needed so as to not stress the wiring itself.
With all of that taken care of, I was able to sneak the torx wrench in, tighten things up nice and securely and then reassemble everything. (I checked the other directional while I was there and it was plenty tight still.)
The last step was to take a rag and some gas and clean the duct tape residue off of the directional itself (it's the stuff that looks like scratches, in this pic).
And with that, she was good to go.
As I mentioned back at the start of this post, I've still got to do a write-up on the memorial run I attended this past Saturday. Sadly, I need to attend another run this coming Saturday, out in Olean. It's for a great guy who died on the job, back at the end of July. I'll be taking Friday off and heading out that way. I'm kicking around the idea of just riding straight through to Ohio (because I can) and then backtracking to King's house for the night. We'll do the run on Saturday and share some silence, some stories, and some laughter. Then Sunday, it's back home again.
My buddy Paul is actually going to be in my neck of the woods when I get back home, so me, him, and Zig are getting together to discuss our (motorcycle) trip to Scotland next year. That's right - Scotland! No time to get into that now, but rest assured; there will be plenty of info as the time approaches (Aug. '08).
So it should be a lot of miles this weekend - which is just fine with me. I hope the weather cooperates for everyone out there. There's plenty of pavement for everyone - Fall is coming, and Winter isn't far behind - get the miles on while you can!
Ride Hard, Take Chances
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