After all that buildup, it turned out that while the wind over Lake Washington was howling away, inshore it was just another breeze. No problems, no worries.

Very little riding this weekend; the winter has officially started. Real rain, rather than the mizzle (mist plus drizzle is mizzle, fo' shizzle!) that we normally get 'round here. Saturday was all housework and a delicious sushi dinner; Sunday, i just took a quick run out to do a few errands. Nothing particularly fun. Instead, I've been boning up on my technical knowledge; I just got a bunch more books to study.

Kevin Cameron's Sportbike Performance Handbook is amazingly technical. I never thought I'd describe a book as being maybe too technical, but this one just might be. It's all very interesting and I know a whole lot more about the engineering challenges behind designing carbs and exhaust systems and the difference between horizontal and vertical fuel mixing inside cylinders and the like, but I don't think most of this is going to affect the way I ride or maintain my bike. If you're looking for a broad understanding of the physics behind cycles and their engines, well, this is a good place to start. The author has a good, sort of subtle sense of humor that pops out surprisingly in the middle of a long and complex technical overview, and clearly knows his stuff. Just don't get discouraged when he spends two pages explaining how spark at 33° BTDC is superior to spark at 25°.

Evans Brasfield's 101 Sportbike Performance Projects is aimed much more squarely at the layman. The "projects" range from checking that your lights work to swapping out your entire brake system for a mad sexy aftermarket package. The pictures are great and the writing is clear, although Brasfield doesn't seem to go into quite as much detail as to why these modifications work as I would like. Nevertheless, this book is a great compilation of modifications and maintenance tasks, and though much of it is aimed at the higher-end tuner set, at least some of the book will be of great use to me. Used in combination with Cameron's book, it's much easier to understand the reasoning behind some of the projects, especially in the engine and exhaust sections.

The final book for this set of mini-reviews is Keith Code's Soft Science of Road Racing Motorcycles and I can't contribute much to this one, just yet. I've only read one page, as I started too late at night to really get into it. Seems to be aimed quite clearly at beginning racers, but hopefully there's enough general riding tips in there that I can get something out of it.