out for a ride...

went out for a ride yesterday. well, more like running some errands, but it was a chance to get out on the bike... two things stood out on my short journey.

first, i love where i live. where else can you get stuck behind farm equipment chugging down the road at twenty and not really care?? i had considered passing on a double yellow. but then i thought why?? all that would accomplish is i'd get where i was going sooner. and since i was running errands "in town," why would i want to get there sooner. i just followed behind, thinking about how farming seems to be a dieing lifestyle.

second, i'm glad i don't live "in town"... the traffic and the people all up in themselves while they're driving, thinking they're the only ones on the road. or maybe just that they're privileged on the road and everyone else should bend to their wishes.

specifically, almost getting run off the road. or into oncoming traffic. as the road merges left from two lanes to one, some bozo in a lexus, nc plate sva-1091, just pulls into my space. any chance of them using a signal?? no. any change of them checking for other traffic before they change lanes?? no.

luckily i was expecting that behavior from the driver. maybe it it was being able to observe them for a mile or two and noticing they didn't have any regard for traffic around them. maybe it was the cell phone crammed in their ear.

i followed them, not by choice, for a couple more miles. all i can say it that my stereotyping was confirmed, at least in my mind, as they turned into wakefield.

once i got out from behind them, my ride improved. maybe because i was getting out of traffic and getting closer to home.

25k...

hit the 25k mark yesterday...

seems like a big milestone when you're a new rider and have a new bike - something to shoot for. now that i'm there, it doesn't seem like much. the longer i ride, the more i want to ride. i realize it's not about the miles, it's about where you've been, who you've met during those miles.

i look at future miles not so much in numbers, but journies... adventures i can share with my wife. the trips we'll take to get fish sammiches, to the beach or mountains, to see the world's largest whatever, or just to cruise around the back roads, spending time together and building more memories...

check out the ride map to see where i was when i hit the mark....

captial city bike fest...

next 'big' event on the calendar is the captial city bike fest... it's usually a good time... i take friday off and make a day of it. there's a charity ride friday during the day with festivities beginning in the evening. i've volunteered in the past and will probably again this year.

saturday's are fun to take the family - see the sites and sounds. normally we plan on heading down there for a short period of time and end up spending most of the day.

the event is getting bigger and bigger each year. i believe the rally has been a win-win between ray price and the city of raleigh. with the revitalization of the city, raleigh has been open to more events to help bring people in, the rally being one of those events. and the rally has certainly brought people into raleigh that normally might not have shown up.

looking forward to it...

restoring confidence...

i received a call this evening from randy, the service manager at ray price... he read my previous post and had some concerns about what i said.

first, i'm impressed he took the time to call - it shows he's very concerned about his customers and the service his department provides. through our discussion, i got more of an appreciation of the passion randy has for his job and motorcycling.

randy was concerned that i posted my comments and he never had a chance to address the "problems". i have to give him that - it's hard for them to make things right when they don't know about them... i should have talked to him and given him a chance to get things straight.

randy isn't only interested in maintaining a positive image for ray price, he's interested in the safety of his customers. when i complained about the brake rotors being on backwards, he saw a bigger potential issue of the front wheel being on backwards. he asked if i would go out to the garage and check to ensure the wheel was on correctly. once we established that is was mounted correctly, he said if the rotors were wrong, they would be more than happy to swap them the next time i was in.

we started talking more about why i thought the rotors were on backwards. randy educated me a bit further on the instance of when they might swap brake rotors or take other measures to reduce the noise when the brakes are used... i guess i was making a bigger issue than was really there...

we talked about the clutch not being set properly. he asked if a tech had informed me that the clutch would take about five hundred miles to get seated. unfortunately a tech hadn't told me that. now, knowing it was properly adjusted, it just needed time to to set it, makes me realize the tech didn't overlook something...

as far as the leak, they happen - probably more often than we'd like as owners... but it was unrelated to the clutch being replaced, as i first thought. randy took the time to explain what was done to fix the leak and how replacing the clutch wouldn't have caused the leak...

and the muffler bolt being loose... who knows when that happened. i don't know if they removed the muffler to replace the clutch or not. that bolt could have been loose for a long time and i just noticed it. do i expect them to check every single bolt on the bike each time it's in there for service?? no, that would be unreasonable. so maybe my comment about the bolt being loose was a bit unfair...

i do believe the techs working on the bikes are thorough. not only that, they do look over the bike for any safety issues any time a bike is in for service and will address those concerns if found.

what did i take away from randy's phone call today?? first, i think he restored my confidence in the service department. i say i think because maybe i was just making some assumptions. had i taken the time to talk to him or someone in the service department, maybe i would have understood better and not felt like i was losing confidence...

second, i do believe the guys in the service department at ray price take their jobs seriously and put their customers and their customer's safety first...

third, i'm a preferred customer at ray price... i paid a little extra for the plan but feel i got a lot in return. the service departments gets me in quickly, gets my bike fixed and back to me. while it's nice to feel like they bend over backwards to do what they can, i think they take all their customers as seriously... and that's a good thing.

in the four years i've been taking my bike to ray price, i have been very satisfied with their service. while i can't compare them to other service departments, because i've never had to deal with other service departments, i do believe they would be hard to beat...

who says harleys don't leak??

well, i'm starting to lose confidence in the service department at ray price...

after my last service and having the clutch replaced, while getting ready for the york trip, i noticed a couple things wrong with the bike. the clutch wasn't adjusted properly, one of muffler clamps bolts was loose and the rotors on the front wheel are on backwards... these are things i think the dealership should have fixed - maybe with the exception of the muffler clamp bolt...

when i got back from the smoke out, i was unpacking my bike and noticed a leak...

closer inspection found the primary drain plug was loose, almost to the point of being completely out. good thing i got home before that fell off!! so i tightened the drain plug and the other bolts around the primary...

a couple weeks later, i'm riding around and notice it leaking again... this time i take it back in to have them check it out and replace the gaskets - there's something more serious going on here than loose bolts.

while it was in, i had them do the 25000k service as well, a few hundred miles short, but close enough... while it was in, i got to tool around on a buell lightning... fun on the twisty country roads but wouldn't want it as my full-time bike...