Day 2

Up and out the door this morning, gotta roll up some more miles. Weather says rain moving in from the west, so what else to do? Head west! Go until I hit rain, then turn around and hightail it back home (that was the plan, anyways). So I shot up 495, picked up Rte 2 and headed west. It was pretty chilly out, and eventually my toes were beginning to yell at me, so I figured it was time to find a place to get a hot chocolate and maybe a breakfast sandwich. Hey, look at that; Dunkin Donuts, next exit. Cool, that'll work. Ok, took the exit...sign says DD is to the left. Ok, headed left. Another sign; DD is up a side road, to the right. Ok, took the right. Another sign; DD is to the right, one more time. Ok, took that right...and found myself on an on-ramp, sending me back onto Rte 2, but headed east now. WTF? What just happened? What happened to DD? Did I just fall victim to some kind of sick joke? Because if I did... Actually, if it was a joke, it was a damn good one and I totally fell for it. Oh well. I guess I'll head East for a while. (I did manage to find a DD a short time later, got myself a hot chocolate and sandwich, and was back on the road in no time.)

I wound my way back to 495 and opted to head back down south. What the heck, I'll go check out the Cape. Made it all the way to the Cape, crossed over the bridge and thought; I might as well go all the way out to the end - all the way to P-town. Seemed like a good idea, but when I made it to Rte 28, the speed limit was only 50 and I soon realized I wasn't going to be able to roll up the miles as fast as I'd be able to on a real highway. So, it was a u-turn and a return to 495 to head back north again. I got back to my neck of the woods at noontime and realized that I needed to catch up with Zig, as he was letting me use his truck to grab my new water heater. Grabbed the truck, picked up the water heater, dropped the heater off at my house, dropped Zig's truck back off to him, rode to the gym to make up for the workout I missed this morning, then it was back home to meet my buddy the plumber so we could get the water heater installed - which we just finished up at 8 tonight. Whew. Long day.

So it was only a half day of riding, but another 250 miles for the day. Not bad (450 miles in the first 24 hours of ownership) but I'm not where I wanted to be , either. We've got snow showers overnight tonight, with cold rain all day tomorrow. Saturday and Sunday are supposed to be better so I'm going to have to make up some real mileage on those days before the work week starts. Wednesday night is drop-off time for the 1k service!

While riding today, I came up with a list of things that I like about the new bike, and things I don't like. First, let's go over the stuff I don't like;



Ok, now let's mention the stuff I do like;
- It has a top gear indicator to let you know when to stop trying to shift up (for those of us who have trouble counting up to 6).
- The automatic volume control which increases/decreases the volume depending on your speed. (Sure, this has been standard on some things for a while now, but it's new to me and I really like it.)
- When my low-gas indicator light comes on, the tripometer automatically switches over to a display which shows how many more miles I can travel before I go bone dry.

Oh yeah; I took the rear tour pack off the bike and wow, what a difference in handling. The center of gravity is brought way back down now, and things are nicey-nice. I don't know how you guys (King, Joe Patch, Danny Lau, etc.) can ride with those things on there all the time.

I'm going to have to look into getting a thinner seat - the stock seat is too thick and it puts me up too high (or maybe my legs are too short). Sometimes I can't put both feet flat on the ground so that's something that needs resolving.

I guess that's enough for now. I'm tired, and I'm starting to ramble, so I'll wrap things here. I hope everyone is having a good week and that the warmer weather is working its way towards you. Tomorrow will be a not-pleasant riding day, so I think the time will be better spent working in the cellar some more. Fun, fun. (I know you're jealous.)

More updates over the weekend.
Ride Hard, Take Chances