Another ride on Uvas and I noticed that the front end has a jackhammer effect on power that was not there before I upgraded the front. The front wheel seemed to get air time between a series of small bumps. I read a post by Dave Moss on another forum somewhere where he mentioned one of the things he suspected caused front end chatter on braking was not enough compression damping. Well, I was mostly engine braking, but let's save that tidbit just in case. I also asked a racer friend and, after discussing the changes I made, he decided that the effect was caused by excessive rebound damping. That's interesting, because reading on the internet tells me that there is too little rebound damping. Well, given that a front end chatter caused racer friend to crash a year ago on old santa cruz, I felt that he probably made it a big deal to figure out how to fix the problem. He said that the problem has reoccurred on the track when his fork oil was old and needed to be replaced because it was like...

Link to original page on YouTube.

Link to original page on YouTube.

So yesterday afternoon we headed north to have dinner with my boyfriend's parents. It's about 65 miles from home. I wanted to take the bikes so I mapped out a route that avoided the interstate and most traffic. I'm still a newbie after all.

So we're driving along... I have no speedometer . It's come unhooked at the top end. I tried to communicate my concern to my boyfriend at two different stop lights . I can see the end...and I can see it slipping farther and farther down. I start wondering where all that slack is ending up and is it going to end up in the front wheel or chain or someplace else I really don't want it to be.

So I stop at a gas station (I turn my blinker on well before the upcoming gas station in hopes that he'll notice I'm planning to turn, Mr. oblivious keeps on driving ). I find the cable hanging out the bottom, really probably not terribly safe and pretty close to the top end...

I love my bike, but I think Im good for a bit! After a 2 week long vacation and doing about 500kms a day Im more then happy to take my SUV to work. We rode about 1500kms down to the border... And made it all the way down to San Fran before deciding to start making our way back up towards Canada... What a trip!!! In so many different ways. The Oregon Coast.... Im so going back in a car so I can do all the touristy things like shopping, days at the beach, dune buggys, seal coves... Everything. Cali... Not a fan, mostly because thats where the trip had its worse moments and encounters! 1) its effing HOTT! 2) Ran into so many rude people, minus the cop who helped me find my partner after we got seperated in SF,late at night,and he had my bank cards passport and drivers license. 3) Got seperated from my partner and lost in San Fran 4) Got a speeding ticket... Still thinking about how to deal with that one!! Anyways, after SF we hit up Lk Tahoe, which is beautiful! Then up through Nevada where...

I love farkle!

This evening my boyfriend and I installed shiny, new, blue and black grips on Smurfette.

After much frustration , a hammer (wielded by my boyfriend) , serious concern for the well being of Smurfette (by me of course, he had a HAMMER) , a quick search of NinjetteWiki (him), a heat gun (me) and a little bit more hammer (him) ...voila...new grips.

Time to try them out...oops, the throttle doesn't return to neutral when I release it. Slight modification to the (oh so brilliant) design with a pocket knife...voila (again)...FUNCTIONAL new grips .

This Saturday I dumped all the coolant and flushed out the ethyl glycol green stuff. Repeated the procedure 3 times to get it all out. Don't forget to pop the block drain plug. The water came out clear on the last one so I mixed 13 cap fulls of the water wetter with a gallon of distilled water and added it back into the system. Since the coolant was out I also adjusted the valves with my super duper Kawasaki valve tool. Buttoned everything up and synced the carbs. The manometer cannot use containers made out of plastic because the plastic containers collapse inward under vacuum. Why did Snapple stop making glass bottles? Also plastic turkey basters are not good for moving gas as they are damaged by the gas some how.

Test rode on Uvas and it is pretty good. Front end is a a little too stiff I think so I will need to adjust little more. Uvas seems to have some new bumps.

We went to Burnet for lunch today. Mapquest said the round trip would take 57.39 miles. What does Mapquest know? Wandering around on curvy back roads we managed to turn it into a 84.8 mile trip.

It's a good thing my boyfriend is a very patient man. Of course I stopped to take pictures and he would notice I wasn't behind him anymore, turn around and patiently wait while I took my pictures .

Nothing particularly interesting as far as road side oddities go. There was a neat old bridge...and a llama. Unfortunately the llama wasn't ON the bridge, that would have made for a much more interesting picture. I did get a picture of the giant oatmeal can in Oatmeal, Tx...it's pretty much the only thing in Oatmeal except once a year during Oatmeal Fest.

Next weekend I think I'll head out to Luling, Tx to see the water tower painted to look like a giant watermelon...

Link to original page on YouTube.
Hope my ninjette friends find this video useful

I’ve officially been a motorcycle rider for a grand total of 16 days. I took a motorcycle safety course the weekend of July 27th. Class ended early afternoon on Sunday and that’s when I started looking for a bike. I got my license the following Thursday (August 1st) and bought my Ninja 250, affectionately named Smurfette, on Sunday, August 3rd.
I’ve got about 400 miles in so far. The shifting is getting a little bit smoother, the corners are getting slightly faster. My heart no longer skips a beat when I hit a tiny little bump at 70. All in all, life is good.
I plan to use this blog kind of as a personal diary of my life on a motorcycle. I’ll post pictures, comments and accomplishments. I make no promises as to content or frequency of posts. My thoughts are not life-altering. My posts will not be deep and enlightening dissertations on the meaning of life. My posts will be rife with sarcasm and inane observations. You will find pictures of roadside oddities, bugs...