Good Morning! 81F @ 4:00AM. Sunshine and a few afternoon clouds. A stray thunderstorm is possible. High around 105F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. There's also a fire weather watch, triggered by low humidity and breezy conditions. The heat peaks on Thursday with a high of 108, dropping into the high 90s by next weekend.
Happy birthday, Ron!
Sore shoulder had me deciding to take the truck to go look at the little Honda Trail 90 last Friday, and it was in good enough condition and rode well enough to end up mine. It does show a fair amount of wear from the 4000 miles on the odometer, and does need tires and a good cleaning, but I'm looking forward to plonking around campgrounds and fire trails with it.
Made it to Reno where I dropped in on a "pop up" store opened for the weekend by Aerotich, a motorcycle clothing store located in Duluth. They had suits for people to try on for sizing the custom sewn one of their very own that would be mailed to them later on, but the staff didn't seem at all knowledgeable about the rest of the outfits product offerings. Since I have four outfits made by these folks I was a little disappointed by the lack of support for existing customers. But as I went to open the door to the place and old friend of mine was emerging, and it was nice to catch up with him. He's heading for Spain next week and a two week motorcycle tour of the northern part. It was supposed to be a group tour, but there wasn't enough interest and he'll be on his own. He's still looking forward to it, as it will be all his own way.:laughing:
Also dropped by a Total Wine and More store, leaving with some favorite beers and a bottle of Whistle Pig Rye to celebrate special occaissions. Also found a jug of Climax whiskey, which uses an electrically driven rapid wood aging process. Instead of waiting 10 years for a charred barrel to work its magic, they use bits of wood and electrods to do the work in a day. The result is pleasing, but I think it will take a few more tastes to arrive at an informed opinion.:laughing:
Another Airhead motorcycle tech day was hosted by a friend in Kings Beach, CA, located on the north shore of Lake Tahoe. I ended up there Friday night, and was treated to a delicious Italian dinner by one of the club's former directors. It was followed up by a slide show of a trip he took across Russia last summer on his modern BMW motorcycle. He found the Russian people very friendly, but the bureaucracy not so much. No real problems with either bike or government, but enough tension and uncertainty to keep him and his three fellow travelers a bit on edge.
The tech day itself was lightly attended by maybe a dozen folks, but some very nice bikes showed up and we were able to sort out a few problems. I helped one fellow install one of the upgraded alternator systems, and helped another guy understand that climbing from 5000 to 8000 feet in elevation would naturally result in loss of power and a bit less throttle response. I think I enjoyed seeing our host's man cave of a house as much as the wrenching: It's a wood beam monster three stories high (if you count the giant garage on the first level) topped by a naturally rusting steel roof and lots of big picture windows. It sits next door to his business shop where he builds docks for folks that live on the lake, and out in the yard was one of his three Lark amphibious vehicles. They're military surplus "duck" style trucks that are equally at home on the road or on the water, and he has outfitted them with outriggers so one can support a crane truck. They do really nice work in a concrete block 2400 square foot shop topped off by a bridge crane. A real first class operation!
Not so nice was awakening Sunday morning to find that someone had made off with his older BMW station wagon. I'd heard a car alarm in the middle of the night, but it wasn't his and thought nothing of it. The California Highway Patrolman that took the report wasn't optimistic about finding the car, and warned my friend to expect trouble with his insurance company since the keys had been left in the ignition.
Easily the highlight of the weekend was dropping in to visit with my buddy that has pancreatic cancer, and finding that he's doing relatively well. Well enough that he was also at the tech day, having made his way over the mountain on his own motorcycle to get there. We talked once again about the old R69S motorcycle basket case he's now sure he won't be able to finish, and during my visit he agreed to sell it to me at a very agreeable price. We're planning the pickup for sometime next month, hopefully after this heat wave has passed.
Not much planned for today other than catching up on a little dirty laundry and perhaps some paperwork, and maybe install a new computer friendly thermostat. Apparently there was a power outage here sometime over the weekend, as the old thermostat had automatically reset itself to 72 degrees, causing the A/C to run continuously since I turned the system back on upon my arrival last evening. I found this out at 2:30AM when the alarm system started beeping to tell me that its battery was low, information I'm sure it thought critical enough to awaken me from a sound sleep. Gotta love those GE engineers for picking a time when the house would be quiet enough that the alarm's owner would be certain to get the message.
Might also be time to see if ADT wants me as a customer badly enough to offer an upgrade to a more polite alarm system.:confused2:
