Weekend Excitement

There never seems to be a dull moment for my wife and I. On Sunday we were driving home from visiting my relatives up at beautiful Seymour Lake and we were involved in a car collision. A young lady driving her blue Subaru, was attempting to make a left from a sidestreet onto the road we were traveling, right in front of us, mind you, and a "crunch!" was the result. My wife was piloting the car, and made an attempt to stop before hitting the Subaru, and even tried steering around the car, but the girl in the other car saw us coming, and panicked, and instead of getting out of the way, she tried backing up... that didn't work too well! The car we collided with had a very good dent on the drivers door, and it probably trashed the rocker panel as well. It was a pretty low speed impact, probably less than ten miles per hour at the impact.. My wife can panic stop with the best of them! The damage to our golf wasn't too bad, it is still driveable, but the fender, hood, bumper, headlight and radiator support will all need to be repaired, or replaced.

The most important thing is that nobody was injured. We drove away with a little damage and the the other car drove away with some damage and a traffic ticket for violating the stop sign. We will see how the whole insurance claims go... but in the meantime the car still works, it just looks a little rough.
It's just a car, anyway!

Saturdays are for napping!

Well, While my wife was super productive all day, I rediscovered the art of napping.
I accomplished nothing, and it felt pretty good. For some reason I am unable to tolerate temperatures above 80. I get whiny and lethargic.. it's a real pleasure to be around.
Today seems to be much cooler and I am up at 8am and ready to attack the day!

This morning we are heading up to visit my Aunt and Uncle on beautiful Seymour Lake.
It has been ages since I have been up in that area. We are excited to spend time with my Aunt and Uncle especially since they barely know my wife at all, only having met her once.
I was hoping we would have sunny skies so we could take my bike up there, but the weather looks iffy, so we will be jumping in the car any minute now and heading out.

catch y'all later!

House Sitting is like Vacation!

So it turns out we won't be traveling to pick up the motorcycle after all. We almost forgot that we will be taking care of lucy the dog for the weekend for one of my wife's colleagues. That's fine, since arrangements are already in the works to pick it up sometime next week. My wife seems to be the go to girl if you need somebody to watch your house and pets while you are on vacation. This works out great for us. We have a very tiny apartment. Seriously, it is really small. Don't get me wrong, we love it, and it has everything we need and more, and our yard is HUGE, so we don't mind, but when we get the opportunity to watch pets and sprawl out in bigger living spaces, we take it!

Another bonus is that the folks who's homes we watch all have pets, and cable television!
for those of you who have never visited us, we don't have cable or an antenna for our tv, so we rely on Netflix for video entertainment. We both love pets! Our place is too small to have a dog or cat, so we have fish! They don't like you to touch them, though...

So we are packing a weekend's worth of clothing, and my allergy pills. I am allergic to cats, but I love them, so I just take drugs to deal with the sneezing.

Another exciting thing is happening this weekend. We are going to visit my Aunt and Uncle up in the Northeast Kingdom. We are hoping to hop on my bike and cruise up there for a few hours to catch up with them at their home on Seymour Lake. They have not yet had a chance to get to know my wife, so i have to bring her up there to show her off!

Wow, now that i am thinking about the weekend I realized that there is another exiting thing going on..... MotoGP! for those of you who are not familiar with it, MotoGP is to motorcycle racing what Formula 1 is to automotive racing. The race on Sunday takes place at Laguna Seca, home of the "corkscrew" This race is a big deal for American fans because it takes place on US soil, and the track is spectacular! The man to watch is Nicky Hayden. He has a history of winning races at this venue. He stands 8th in points right now, and has very tough competition from Rossi, and Pedrosa who are 1st and 2nd right now. You can't count out Edwards either. He is another US rider who's familiarity with the track may help.

So, the weekend is shaping up very nicely, and with any luck, my wife will tell me to go climbing with my coworkers Saturday morning instead of helping out with our part time weekend cleaning job...

New gear for the wife!

Everyone knows that women love clothing. I am slightly guilty of exploiting this known fact in an effort to get my wife to be more enthusiastic about motorcycles. I planned it out carefully. First I monitored the funds in the bank account. Seeing that there was a bit of extra cash that could be spent I selected items that I thought my wife would find to be cool and fit with her style. My goal was to accomplish several things... get her into some protective motorcycle gear, make her more comfortable when going on rides, and satisfy her desire to look fashionable.

The helmet she has been using is of unknown age and condition. It smells kinda funny, and has to be well past the recommended 5 year replacement interval for motorcycle helmets. We both agreed that she was going to get a new helmet some time ago... This was easy to get approval to purchase. She has also been wearing her casual leather jacket, and a pair of my snowboarding gloves. This is not ideal protection in the event of hitting the pavement. I surfed over to newenough.com, which sells brand new clearance and sale motorcycle gear. I located a very stylish baby blue helmet, a white and baby blue leather jacket and some white leather gloves. I feel I did a good job finding gear that she would like wearing, that I knew would provide her with a great level of comfort and protection.

I waited until she had just fallen asleep, and went into the bedroom, speaking softly to her, I mentioned that I found some motorcycle stuff that I wanted to buy for her. When she is sleeping, she agrees to anything, and usually doesn't remember it in the morning. She said "mmm.. okay" and promptly fell back into a deep slumber. I bounced back over to the computer with our debit card, and ordered up!

The next day she figured out what I had done, and I showed her what I ordered for her. She didn't seem that excited.. I was a little dissapointed, but still hopeful that once the items arrived, she would try them on and like them.

The order came in three different boxes on different days. The helmet came first. It is an HJC CL-SP Type O helmet in flat powder blue. Her reaction was good. She seemed to be happy, and immediately wanted to go for a ride to test it out.

The Gloves arrived yesterday. They are the Joe Rocket Trixie gloves in white. They are nice, supple, yet thick leather, and have padding, and knuckle armor. They fit pretty well, and she seemed pleased, wanting to go for a ride again to test them out.

Today is when it all paid off. The Cortech LNX Jacket in white and powder blue, matched both the helmet and the gloves rather well. It has a very sporty fit, excellent features, and all the armor that any sport riding jacket usually comes with. She tried it on, and it fit well, so she cut off the tags and grabbed her new helmet and gloves, so we could go for a ride...

This has all worked out very nicely since after I ordered her gear, I found out that her brother got her the KZ200 for her birthday!

She still needs some leather riding pants... She went to bed about 30 minutes ago. This is probably the perfect time to ask her if I can get her some pants.

1978 Kawasaki KZ200

My fantastic brother in law recently gave my wife an amazing birthday gift! I already know that I am going to enjoy her gift as much as she will. We have yet to see it in person, but have received photos of a very good condition Kawasaki KZ200. This small single cylinder motorcycle has both electric and kick start, a mechanical front disk brake, and a whopping 18 horsepower! My wife has never piloted a motorcycle before, so this small 200cc machine, weighing in around 300 pounds is a perfect way to learn.
I spoke to him on the phone and it sounds like it is going to need a bit of electrical work as far as the signals and lights are concerned, and it will also need to have the ignition attended to. I promptly located a service manual online, and have already started dreaming of how we can make this bike perfect for my wife. We are both going to cut out of work early on Friday to drive over and pick up the new ride!
In the meantime I will be busy organizing tools and making space to work on the bike when we get it home. My goal is to have it in safe, legal, riding condition before the end of the month.