You won't see another post from me until at least next week; I'm off tomorrow morning to Santa Barbara for a buddy's wedding. I've known Scotty since Jr. High, with one brief and forgotten meeting in 2nd grade, so we've been buddies for a damn long time.

Here's to a long and happy married life for you, Scotty.

I pretty much spent the entirety of my California trip missing my bike. All that nice, warm sunshine - in November! - and the twisty little roads up in the hills above Santa Barbara were really calling to me. Especially when I thought of Zoë, shivering under her gray tarp in the cold and wet of a Northwest winter. Surprisingly I didn't see many bikers at all in SB; a couple Harley riders and one fellow on a Gixxer, but other than that it was big BMW X5s and Escalades, all the time. I guess the demographics of Santa Barbara are basically older, wealthy folks, not exactly the target audience of the sportbike market. Ah well. That means more road for me.

I'm starting to think about a longer trip; I've realized I'm sitting on a good chunk of vacation time at my work, and if I don't start using it, it'll start to disappear. Next May, the S-T.n folks on the Left Coast are planning a meet-up somewhere in Northern California, and I've been toying with the idea of cruising on down for that, and then just keeping going all the way down the coast. I've been offered places to stay as far south as San Diego, and I think that would be a hell of a trip. Probably worth at least two weeks on the road, getting there and back without spending the whole ride on the slab. If I can plan it right, the trip down should be with some of the other S-T.n'ers; Seattle to the meetup with the northwest folks, and then maybe I'll tag along with some Californians for the rest of the run south. The return would almost certainly be solo, though, and might be a lot more slab time... We'll see whether I can actually make it work. I'm not certain I've got the chops for a 1300-mile (one way!) ride just yet, but maybe in six months I'll be ready.

On the plus side, the ski resorts around Seattle are starting to open. Time to break out the snowboard...

Tonight a bunch of the S-T.n folks are gathering at a sushi place down in the International District. I'm looking forward to the food, but am a bit apprehensive about the quality of the roads down there; nasty pavement full of potholes, and too damn many cars.

Ah well. Another learning experience for Req. And with spider rolls as a reward, I'm in. After dinner it's off to the house of another S-T.n'er to watch the video of the Mt St Helens ride - maybe I'll finally get to see whether I bother to move my upper body properly in a corner.

I finally bit the bullet and picked up a carb synchronization tool. True to form, I stuck with the cheapest one I could find - for the uninitiated, this is a quartet of long, thin rigid plastic cylinders fixed to a backplate marked in centimeters, a reservior of mercury in which the tubes sit, and a set of flexible tubes to connect each cylinder to a carb vaccum port. Basically, it's four really long thermometers that you hook up to your engine. The suction generated by the vacuum port on the carb draws the mercury up the cylinder, and the goal is to even out the suction on each carb such that each mercury column is the same height. Apparently this is important for fuel economy, power, and idle performance.

This was a bit of a more in-depth operation than, say, changing the oil (open oil port, drain oil, close oil port, fill with new oil). To expose the carbs enough to hook all this good stuff up, you need to remove the seat (easy), and then the rear bodywork panels (a bit fiddly, but not too bad), followed by the fuel tank. Getting the tank off isn't a problem, but figuring out where to put it afterwards such that you can get to the carbs but the tank can still feed them fuel is a challenge. Suzukis also feature fuel petcocks that connect to the vacuum port on one of the carbs, and won't properly feed without that connection unless you remember to set the petcock to the PRIME position - which, naturally, I forgot until well into the operation, after I'd removed the handle from the petcock. I also stuck a box fan in front of the bike to help cool the engine, since it would be running yet stationary for some time.

Once everything's hooked up properly, one starts the engine and lets it come up to normal operating temperature. Then it's time for the actual synch procedure, which - like most maintenance I've tried my hand at - isn't hard, per se, but is a bit of a learning experience the first time through. Carbs 3 and 4 are first synched to each other, than 1 and 2, and then finally the individual pairs are synched.

They were, of course, grossly out of tune when I first started Zoë up. After about 15 minutes of examining the mercury, making a small change to one of the set-screws, and repeating, I had them at a pretty even keel across the board. I'd like to think that the engine sounded smoother when I was finished than I had before, but honestly I don't have the slightest idea if I accomplished anything. Strangely, I did find that when at idle the carbs were each drawing exactly the same, but when I throttled up to ~3500 RPM, carbs 1 and 4 looked to be drawing harder than 2 and 3. I tried adjusting 1 and 4 down so that they'd synch up at speed, but couldn't seem to get it just right, so in the end I just stuck with the instructions and dialed everything for an even idle. Hopefully that's the correct approach.

Other minor tasks today: setting the appropriate chain tension again and actually getting the right torque on the axle nut, now that I've got a torque wrench. I wanted to really go hardcore and adjust the valves, but I'm lacking feeler gauges, and I guess there's some O-rings that need to be replaced if one takes off the valve cover. All in all, given the terrible conditions in which I do my wrenching (no garage, for starters), I think this was enough for today.

Some pics:

Here's as close as I come to a garage. It's mighty cold out there, but at least it's dry. Of course, one of these days, the wind's going to blow real hard, and my garage is going to fly off into the neighbors' yard, but what can ya do?

There's Zoë with her tank all cockeyed, looking like some strange superbike. The white thing hanging from the left handlebar is the synch tool, and you can see the vacuum hoses leading from it to the engine. Also note that the rear bodywork is all removed.

More of the same, from above. See how well-organized my tools are? :)

And that, right there, is some fine, fine carb-synchronizin', my friends.

In and out of Seattle twice today on the bike. Cold, but no rain, which is a step up, and enough space on the freeway to have a good time. It's amazing just how slow 65 feels these days.

Thursday night some of the ST-n folks got together to watch a video from our Mt St Helens ride a few weeks back. I've now finally gotten a chance to examine the riding style of the other, skilled folks who were along, and to compare it with the footage that was taken of yours truly. While I'm pretty happy with my current skill level, given the amount of time I've been riding, it's clear that I've got a long way still to go. The most startling thing to me is my perception of lean angle. I remember tearing around some of those corners, feeling like I was leaned over 45 degrees, and seeing myself on the tape barely 10 degrees off vertical is a good wake-up call. Also, I notice that I tend to keep my body somewhat vertical in the turns, rather than leaning with the bike. This is something I need to address, especially as my speed picks up. Hopefully a track day will be of use in the future; Sound RIDER! had an article on track days in this week's issue, so I finally have an idea where to look for more info.

It's high time for another longer ride, but I don't know if the weather's going to cooperate with me. Next weekend is snowboard time, anyway. Which is also very nice.

I guess Jen caught one of the myriad strains of cold that run rampant through every elementary school in the world, and brought it on home to yours truly. I am currently a seething hotbed of bacteria from my throat up to the tippy-tops of my sinuses. It is very sad for me. Hopefully it will be a weak and easily-defeated cold, but I've already missed one day of work...to say nothing of the distinct lack of riding.

Lots of good, healing thoughts my way, if you'd be so kind.

Sigh. Still sick, actually, though now I've entered the annoying stage rather than the unable to move stage. Mostly better, at least. I spent all of last week off the bike, which was probably for the best - if the coughin' didn't do me in, the Sudafed surely would have.

The last few days have been amazingly foggy here in Seattle, which is extremely unusual. Visibility is a pretty consistant "short" and it lends a new challenge to riding in the city. Actually, to be honest, it's a lot less of a challenge than the usual rain 'round here; at least your visor is clear. It's odd, though, to see vehicles just appear out of the fog. Headlights really don't penetrate it well at all, and my ghetto fog lights don't seem to do much either...

In other news, I've acquired a pair of Dual Star heated grips for Zoë. This weekend's project, when I'm not feasting at one of the several Thanksgiving parties Jen has arranged.

This weekend, Zoë was the lucky recipient of a variety of mods, installed in traditional ghetto style by your humble narrator. In brief, I added heated grips, a standard 12v accessory socket, and a small XM Radio head unit. The XM was just something I wanted to try out, but the heated grips have been more and more necessary over the last few weeks. Today there was snow on the ground when I woke up. It was gone by noon, but still, it's getting quite a bit colder here than I like, and every little bit against hypothermia is a good thing.

Anyway. The heated grips (from Dual-Star) were the first to go on. I wired them up the boring normal way, with a three-position switch for HI-OFF-LOW, as described in the installation manual that came with them. The more swanky among you would no doubt use their Heat-Troller for fully adjustable grips, but I figured I'd try it the simple way first, and it should be an easy matter to wire a Heat-Troller in if I decide I need it.

I was unable to get the existing grips off without destroying them; luckily, I'd anticipated that and picked up a pair of cheap new grips at Everett Powersports last week. Getting the new grips on over the heat elements was easy; remember to rub the inside of the grips and the outside of the elements with a thin solution of soapy water, and you'll do fine. Then give a good 24 hours for the water to all evaporate away, or you'll have grips that slide around on you. I didn't epoxy them into place, as some would recommend; they seem pretty damn well fixed by friction alone, and the bar ends help to hold them as well.

The control switch was simply zip-tied to a fairing support strut on the left side of the bike; it's well hidden but easy to get to. The power for the grips comes from the wiring I ran for my aux lighting; the total draw of aux lights and heat elements on hi is well under the 10A rating of the inline fuse I used, and the relay was rated to 30A, so no worries. I did have to run another ground line back to the battery, which is starting to look like a snake's nest of wires, but what can ya do?

The grips are amazing. Even just a little heat goes a long way. I've only used them on LOW so far, and they were plenty warm enough for me.

Here you can see the switch for the heated grips. Surprisingly, this mounting method seems very secure and stable. Probably not such a good option on most bikes though.

The 12v socket was a cheap model from my local autoparts store; I chose it because it claimed to be "all-weather" and had a spring-loaded door to cover the socket when not in use. Another very simple mod; I just ziptied the switch to the frame on the right side of the bike, above the engine. When something's plugged into the socket, it does stick out about an inch from the side of the bike, but it's forward of my knee and out of the way. Wires ran along the frame underneath the tank and back to the battery. Since I want to be able to run this socket whether the bike is on or off, I ran it straight to the battery, and of course added an inline fuse on the positive wire. This'll let me run my GPS or XM radio off battery power, and give me a way to top up my cell on longer trips if necessary.

The socket (with the cover closed) is dead center in this picture. You can also see the new front turn signals I installed last week and never wrote about, replacing the stock signals that I cracked in my first-week drop.

The XM is another cheapie; I guess they're clearing out obsolete models to make room for shiny new ones, so I managed to find a Roady2 reciever for $14 at Staples. It's pretty much a self-contained unit, about 4"x2.5", with external ports for an antenna, headphones, and a power jack. It's an elegant little thing; there are, of course, some design elements that can be improved (and have been, in the updated model) but for my purposes, it's more than enough.

I thought about picking up a Hoon Hardware RoadyHolder to mount the thing, but felt a little squeamish about paying three times as much for the mounting hardware as for the radio itself. It seemed like a good mounting scheme, though, and so I decided to hit Home Depot, wander the aisles, and see what I could adapt. It turned out that some braces used for framing were very close to the size I wanted; all I had to do was drill a few holes in one, bend it from its usual 90 degree angle to about 70, and I was good to go.

The bracket is mounted to the top plate of my front brake fluid reservoir; I drilled holes through the bracket to line up with the reservoir securing screws, removed the screws, put the bracket in place, and screwed them back in. I then affixed the car-mounting adaptor that came with the Roady to the bracket, and dropped the Roady in.

The Roady's antenna is a small magnetic thing, about an inch square, on the end of about 15' of antenna wire. I routed it back inside the tail section and affixed it to the frame under the rear end of the seat. It seems that even with the seat in place, and me on the bike, the reception is crystal clear, though the diagnostic menu says I'm really only getting ground reception rather than sat reception. Ah well; long as I get the music, I'm good.

Here's the XM mounted and active. The top plug is the power adaptor, which runs down to the socket on the right side of the frame. The bottom plug is the antenna. In between is the space for my headphones, which will run straight to the unit. I hope to make an inline volume control I can plug the 'phones into, as the unit doesn't really have a volume dial of its own; also, unless I remember to unplug before getting off the bike, I'm apt to pull something off, so having a longer lead on the 'phones might be beneficial.

One thing to keep in mind: the Roady2 is not at all waterproof. When it's raining, I'll have to stick a Ziploc bag over it, or something. Ah well. Ghetto engineering can only take me so far.

Took the cage to work today. The roads would probably have been fine, but there was an inch of snow on the ground up in my 'hood, and I'm still a beginner. An ice-driven spill would hurt me, hurt Zoë, and likely preclude more good riding in the future. So I spent an hour last night driving my car around in circles, trying to get the dead-flat battery to hold a charge, and this morning wedged myself into the horrible Seattle-bound traffic that oppresses all who cannot use the HOV lane. I really missed zooming past all the crawling cages; it took me a good hour to get to the UW.

On the plus side, it was warm. I'm still a bit less cold-tolerant than usual, after the last two weeks' illness. Hopefully the snow will fade - it always does, in this town - and I can be back on the bike tomorrow.