Oops!

I am really sorry but the third and last part of the "Stopping quickly in a curve" post will have to wait until tomorrow morning. All I can do is urge you not to ride any corners until the post appears!!

Two things happened today that totally screwed up my plans. The first thing that happened I'm going to blame on Steve. He put an idea into my head. Truth be told, it was a good idea. Something in the execution went horribly wrong. What the heck am I blathering on about?

Somewhere along the line Steve told me he would do some of his posts as Microsoft Word documents. Then he would copy them to the blog post. What a great idea! It works for me. I can work on a post using my laptop. This allows me to write when I can even if there is not Wi-Fi available. Graphics don't always transfer successfully as evidenced by the post just previous to this. No matter what I did on the blog site it would not duplicate what I did in the original document. So I had to perform what I call MSU. In other words, I had to Make Something Up.

I spent an hour at lunch working on the final installment. It was almost done when one of my fingers went some weird place on the laptop's keyboard. The whole document disappeared faster than my paychecks. One second the document was there and literally two seconds later it was gone. I've found that when I'm typing on the laptop the cursor will suddenly move and I'll be typing in the middle of a previous sentence. I've never had a document totally disappear like this. I didn't even get the "Would you like to save changes?" window. I searched everywhere but could not find the document. Maybe someone has a suggestion on how to retrieve it.

The second thing that happened was the need for a headlight replacement on Sophie. This one is my fault, actually. Not that I personally destroyed the headlight. It did that all by itself. The problem was that I got either greedy or lazy. Sophie has two headlights. It seems to be a pretty established pattern that the headlights burn out at 50,000 mile intervals. The last time a headlight burnt out the bike was due for a 48,000 mile valve adjustment. I do a lot of maintenance on the bikes but I don't care to tackle the valve adjustment on Sophie. While the bike was in the shop I had them replace both bulbs.

Now it was time to replace a bulb once again. I bought both bulbs but only replaced the bad one. The service manual shows pictures that make everything look so simple. Yeah, right!! I found myself working in a tight space. What else would you expect on a bike with full bodywork? The Honda ST has this annoying spring clip that holds the bulbs in place. What a pain!! It's a recipe for scraped fingers and frustration. Working by feel is the only way to realistically do it. What's especially frustrating is that if I look down the steering head I can clearly see the clip. There's just not enough room to get my hand in there. I have to reach up under the headlight assembly to actually touch the spring clip. Of course, it's far enough away that I can't look down the forks while reaching under for the clip. Oh bother!!!!

Stupid me. I only replaced the one bulb. I was hoping the other bulb would last a long time more. That was less than three weeks ago. Wouldn't you know it? I usually do a check of the lights as part of a quick pre-ride check. Leaving for home today my spirits dropped. The other bulb is now burnt out. Since I'm riding in the dark in the mornings and am travelling an hour away to teach tomorrow night, the bulb needs replaced today. As you can see, I pulled Sophie under the carport instead of the garage so I could take advantage of the extra daylight. Both bulbs are now brightly burning. I wish I could say the same for me!

Miles and smiles,

Dan