great riding weather...

these past few days, heck almost a week, have been great for riding. and even better, i've been able to get out riding. mostly small, short trips around town, deciding to take the long way home. as i mentioned earlier, the colors have been beautiful. i'm glad i've been able to take advantage of the weather and ride around during this time of the season. i doubt the leaves will be this beautiful many more days.

friday i took my bike in for its 7500 mile service. in addition to the normal service, i got them to adjust my clutch and replace the brakes. when i take my bike in for service, i usually wait while they do the work. friday i decided to do the same thing - they finished the work is fairly short order - hour and a half, maybe two. they ask if i want the bike washed. what the heck?? they didn't do a great job the last time they "washed" the bike, but it really isn't that dirty, so i figure i don't have much to lose. except time... i waited nearly two hours for them to wash the bike!!! yeah, two hours... after about an hour, they told me that there was only one guy cleaning bikes, something about the other guys had to help unload some bikes... so i waited another hour for them to finally bring the bike around. when they finally did bring it around, the bike was beautiful - all clean and shiny. don't know if it was worth the two hour wait, but it sure did look good.

the brake and clutch work they did on the bike was great too. now the clutch catches at a much more comfortable point than before - i was wondering if it may have slipped a bit. and the brakes were great. i didn't realize how worn they were until i got new ones on. uhhhh, i don't have to pull nearly as far as i used to to stop.

so anyway, i was supposed to be writing about riding around in this wonderful weather we've been having. so for the past several days i've been able to get out for at least a short ride. in fact, i guess they've all been short rides, nothing like the 200+ mile trips i take on some weekends.

so friday i rode to the dealership to get the bike serviced. if i wouldn't have been there so long, i would have taken a longer route home. but, since i had to get back to work, it was pretty much a straight shot back. saturday i got some riding in between smoking out some pork bbq. i cook the pork eight hours, so it pretty much takes up the whole day as i have to tend to it. well, i was able to sneak in about two hours worth of riding - which was nice.

sunday was my usual morning ride to get the paper and other breakfast goodies. i often wonder what other people think when i pull up on my bike, walk in the store with my helmet and pick up a newspaper, juice, eggs, bread... ahhh, the beauty of saddlebags and a tour-pak. although i didn't have the tour-pak this weekend, so i just stuffed everything in the bags. rode home and enjoyed breakfast...

didn't end up doing much more riding on sunday because i've been out the past couple weekends and decided to spend it with the family. told my son that i would help him with his social studies project - building a catapult. told my wife that i would help her around the house - although i guess i didn't really do much of that. she did talk me into putting up the christmas tree, though. i know, i know, it's early. but we've managed to get ourselves into this tradition of putting up the tree before her birthday - which is towards the end of november. since we're booked for the next couple weekends, yesterday was about the only day i had to set it up. i'm always complaining about christmas starting too early anymore, but here i am, part of the problem. oh well - it's our little tradition and i wouldn't change it for anything...

so - that's it... a quick recap of the weekend...

ride safe...