8/18/09 A good, slow, easy day.

365 Group (f)

These last few days have been more Bikin than Ridin, but, to quote a friend, "it's all good".
For the last couple of weeks I have been working on getting my Yamaha back on the road. I had high hopes in having this old bike back on the road fairly quickly but that hope has sort of fallen by the way side with a Gremlin living in the Carburetors. That and chasing down parts here and there with no real luck.
What riding I have been getting to do has been just locally, dodging the rain that seems to have made a come back.
This morning the rain woke me from a real nice deep sleep. From the sound of it coming down I figured I'd have at the very least a soggy ride into work. However, when I got out to pack up the bike, it looked more like a real heavy dew than rain.
Firing up I looked around for the newest addition to my "tribe", Radar. As of late he'd been splitting his time between being, almost too comfortable looking beside a big rock in the yard and roaming the country side. This morning he was roaming. I sat out a few crunchies for him and headed down the drive.
Out on the street and no traffic I opened the bike up. Having several errands to run before checking on work is always a good way to start the day. If I time it right all the places I need to stop at will have just opened and I'll not have to wait around.
My timing was good except for one small business. I was still ahead so it wasn't all that bad. While I sat on my bike in the parking lot waiting for them to open I heard the unmistakable sound of a Harley chugging my way. Looking out at the street I saw an old fire truck red Shovel head lumber into the parking lot. As it pulled up beside me I noticed that it had been well taken care of but not polished as most of the Harley's around my area are. The rider turned out to be the "lady of the shop" and the person I was looking for. I introduced myself and told her what I needed. We tended to do more bike talk than business. She was a real rider at heart. Her shovel belonged to her late husband. After he died she sold her bike and started riding his to kind of keep him around. Made sense to me. We chatted until I was dangerously close on time. In parting she asked if I went to either of the bike nights in the area. I explained that they had gotten sort of stale to me and told her of how my bunch used to pick a different place to eat and ride there once a week. She seemed to like the idea and I left promising to let her know when we started doing it again. Nice lady.
Pulling out in a gap in morning rush traffic I got up to speed and made work with about ten minutes to spare. Due to the early morning rains only two of us had ridden in. Through out the day you could see that a lot of em had wished they'd bit the bullet and rode. It turned out to be a great day. Work drug by as it usually does. Pulling out I fell in a line of quick moving traffic and was forced by my turn off. I decided to just go with the flow and we made all the lights all the way out of town.
As I left Springdale traffic thinned out and it was fun to jam down 412. I was having such a good ride that I took the long way and added 37 miles to my daily commute.
Pulling into the house Radar was back beside his rock. As I pulled past him he looked up like he was going to "bust a move". I guess he thought it over and decided to just settle back down. After my own heart.
It was an average day, by some standards not much of a day. But...the weather was great, the bike ran smoothly and I was riding it. I had a good ride. By my calculations it was a keeper
Hope to catch ya on the road