The ST gets a name.

The ST now has a name. A motor cop inspired it. No, it's not "speedy"!

I've been thinking about naming the bike. I mentioned in an earlier post that it didn't seem right. The bike has been with me for a few years and still doesn't have a name. For me, the name had to be feminine for this bike. Just suits her personality, I guess. I consider myself a Road Warrior. It seemed fitting to name the bike after some Warrior Princess. An internet search revealed a few obscure names. If I gave her one of the names I could picture folks scratching their heads and wondering where THAT came from. The obvious name was Xena after the TV show, which I never watched, by the way. It seemed to be a popular series. A couple of things kept me away from this route. One, there was some sort of connotation to the Xena thing that I didn't care for. If you know what I mean, it will be obvious. If you don't, I'm not going there.

The second thing is that giving the bike a name like that seemed sort of pretentious to me. Kind of like putting on some sort of "exotic air". I may have an ego ( ok, no doubt about it ) but I really try not to take myself too seriously. So the name thing kind of simmered on a back burner.

Yesterday at lunch time I rode over to a park to stretch my legs. I spotted Brian on his bike up ahead. After a little "aggressive" riding I caught up to him. You have to be careful about this. One time I was mistaken about which officer it was on the bike and did some questionable things from a legal standpoint to catch up. The officer was not amused. Fortunately I ended up with just a stern verbal warning.

Anyway, I catch up to Brian and we are side by side at a stoplight. I give him a bad time about trying to run away from me.

"What do you expect?", Brian says. "I thought a giant sofa was chasing me!"

Brian's a cruiser guy and thinks all bikes should have motor parts and chrome hanging out. Visions of the sofa thing stuck with me for the afternoon. On the ride home the thing all sorted itself out and I decided to name the bike......drum roll, please:

Sophie

It's down-to-earth like me and the name has good vibes in my life.

The time is 4:15 AM as I finish this up to post. Today is one of those days a two-wheeled commuter drools over. We are doing a project in Richland, Washington. Friday is the drop-dead completion date. A supplier has made a machining mistake. There's no time to allow for new material to be sent up. The manufacturer is paying me to go to the site and fix things.

The sweet thing is that the job is 325 miles away. I'm off to an early start. It will be around 10 hours of riding with about two hours on the job. I can carry what I need in Sophie's saddlebags. After the first hour when I get out of the big city of Portland, the majority of the ride will be through the scenic Columbia River Gorge. Tough duty, huh? The weather should be decent today. We are expecting a big rain and wind storm to move in tomorrow and stay for the weekend.

Once I'm home it will be a three day weekend. My Welsh boss is Catholic and Good Friday is a paid holiday for me. I was supposed to teach this weekend. We have a class called Rider Skill Practise which is about 5 hours long. It's sort of a clinic to brush up on cornering and accident avoidance skills. I was scheduled to teach with Laurie, my dear friend, so I was really looking forward to it. This group is a special interest women's group of some sort. They have requested women instructors so I was politely asked to withdraw. The nerve!

I shall console myself by stating that the real reason they didn't want me to teach was the distraction factor. After all, with a ruggedly handsome motorcycling stud like me teaching, how could they pay attention to their riding?

Gotta go. Time to ride!

Miles and smiles,

Dan