The First Sip and the Second Tip: Proper Center Stand Use

This last Friday we finally moved to our new home in out new city and after a three day flurry of activity Anne and I (and baby de-facto as she is still in utero) are settling in nicely.

The Tuesday before we moved I took the opportunity to transport my motorcycle to the new place as the previous owners had already moved out and it would help things run more smoothly on the day of the move. Anne was already going to be in town teaching Violin lessons but would not be done for a few hours after I got done with work, so I left work on the motorcycle and decided to sample the one of the many local coffee shops: Barista Brew Cafe.

I must say Vacaville is NOT the city to be in if you enjoy local coffee shops, you've got Peet's, Starbucks and Pure Grain Cafe... at least the latter is not a chain, and when it comes to the chains the people who frequent them would sometimes really make me pause and wonder if we should just call off this whole human race thing. After a year plus in a caffeine desert and even at one point skewing too far to the ritzy on a trip to San Francisco; I have finally had a good cup of coffee in a place that was not pretentious, was locally owned, and had what appeared to be a good customer base of a caliber that I enjoyed being around. If that makes me an elitist, so be it.  I walked in the door and it was like I was home it was the perfect balance and the cup the house blend that I ordered... Outstanding. It was definitely a good first time experience in our soon to be new city!

But this update can't just be coffee related, I do have a motorcycle related top tip that I'd like to share with you if you have a motorcycle with a center-stand.  I have been riding my 2001 Yamaha FZ1 for a little over two years and for the most part have been using the center stand exclusively, and and apparently the wrong way!  Even though out of the hundreds probably thousands of times I have executed my incorrect procedure properly twice now I it has ended with the bike laying on it's side.  The most recent of which was this last Tuesday after my coffee shop experience.  Before I would stand next to the bike and with the bike in neutral put pressure on the center stand lever and rock the bike rearwards to pop it up on the stand.  This works most of the time except for when you forget to put the bike in neutral.  I have forgotten this a few times in parking lots and for the most part it does not make it onto the rear stand and the bike kind of springs forward and down off of the stand as the engine compression resists the motion.  I did this exact thing when I was parking the bike in our covered parking. While I don't have a good excuse having made this mistake in the past, I am going to blame it on being a little paranoid about the tighter confines; a parked car on one side and a wall on the other.  When the bike rolled forward I lost my the balance of the bike and it tipped over into the wall away from the side I was standing on and I was unable to counter the momentum as it started to tip.

Nothing too major happened but I did crack my windshield which I mended yesterday using some snazzy blue zip ties.  I may eventually replace it with a new taller one but I will see how it performs before hitting up the online cycle vendors.  The other time I tipped my bike over when trying to put it on the center stand was when it was raining and I had my waterproof boots on which have a pretty smooth sole. I leveraged my foot on the stand and as I was rocking the bike back my foot slipped off the lever and I fell to my knee and the bike fell over once again away from me but that time there was no wall so the soft bags and the handlebars cushioned the fall and no damage was sustained in that event.  But here's the thing after having this happen the second time I did a little searching on the internet and found out that I had been doing it wrong all along:

   

 So there's my little PSA on motorcycle center stand safety.

The Death of Solo-moto

Everyone who has been to this site in the past knows that the purpose of this blog was to document my attempt at conducting day-to-day life, "with only a motorcycle." The last 6 moths I haven't done a very good job of documenting my efforts.  I cruised past the year mark (April 26th) without even  post to mark the anniversary.  In past posts I've lamented the fact that I haven't been able to go out for "real rides" as much once the fact that my motorcycle is my only means for transportation really hit home.  I think that in the last year that was the one thing that I really missed, for getting around efficiently, especially in California (love the lane splitting) a moto can't be beat and I love that utter efficiency of the commute.  However one thing that was hanging over my consciousness like the sword of Damacles was the memory of the hottest days in the valley and how much that sucked.  I don't mind riding the motorcycle in the cold or in the wet but as a safety-minded rider it is near impossible to dress safely and ride in triple digit heat and be comfortable and that was the one thing that I wasn’t looking forward to doing again this coming summer.

So in my head I started to make my peace with the idea that after a year of not having a car I would buy one to drive when it was too damn hot and if was too cold or rainy.  In my head I rationalize this by   the fact that I will have completed a whole year of riding just the moto.  These ideas were still marinating in my mind when the last considerations of remaining solo-moto were wiped from the realm of possibility when my Wife told me that she was pregnant (we now know that we're having a little girl)!  I was definitely going to need something to shuttle the little one around once she arrived so I in the end the decision was an easy one to make.  I still plan on riding the motorcycle most of the time, if it's just me because it really is the best way to get around most of the time.

The next question I needed to answer was what kind of car would I get.  California is an expensive state for insurance so the leading criteria  was going to be that that it was inexpensive enough that I could just buy it outright to avoid the cost of full coverage as well as a car payment being added onto our expenses.  I had no idea what I wanted but I knew that chronological age didn’t really matter that much to me, I did want it to have low miles (but did not want a car that had been idle for a bunch of years either), and it needed documentation to prove that it had been well taken care of.  Before the baby news I was thinking that it would be a rear wheel drive possibly two seat sporty car from the early 1970s to the early 1990s.  I wasn’t too concerned about steadfast reliability because I was planning on it being my second mode of transportation after the motorcycle so it could afford to be something that needed to be tinkered with from time to time.  Now, knowing there was a baby on the way the criteria changed a bit.  I knew that I would need whatever car I chose to be dependable now in case I needed to pick the baby up from day care, take it to the doctor, to school or out for a day at the park without leaving us stranded and it needed to be able to do those things safely.  That immediately pushed me towards a newer car the top end of my model year became the bottom end of the range.  I wasn’t particularly convinced that I needed to get a four door car because I am a strong guy but there was no arguing that a four door would be easier.  These little changes threw off my search a little bit but I still thought I could find something that fit those criteria and interested me, until  I realized something.

I would be choosing the car that my daughter may potentially have it's first memories of me driving you around in.  That got me thinking about what I remember about my mom and dad and my first memories of the cars.  For my mom I remember being driven around in the back of a Ford Maverick that had stick shift, I could always see the shift knob vibrating as we drove along in a higher gear and I remember thinking that it was a person peeking around the seat at me.  For my dad, I don’t remember a particular driving experience as my first car memory so much as it was a memory of him under the hood working on the cars to keep them running.  A few years later I would start collecting memories of sitting out in the driveway with him handing him tools, asking him a million questions about what he was doing and why, and depending on his mood… sometimes ignoring a choice word or two if he hit his hand on something or touched something hot. My dad had to work on his cars out of necessity.  We were poor when I was growing up and we couldn’t afford new, reliable cars or even to take the unreliable cars that we had to get fixed at a shop.  He didn’t have any formal education on how to fix cars, all he knew was that the car is broken and if he was going to be able drive to work instead of walking.

Barring unforeseen misfortune our daughter won’t know what it’s like to be poor growing up, but thinking back on those days I believe that the those experiences growing up had a big effect on the person I grew up to be.  Seeing my dad take something that wasn’t working and fix it gave me a great admiration for him.  It also instilled in me a belief that just because something was broken or didn’t work, that didn’t mean that it was useless or didn’t have value.  It gave me the interest I have in all mechanical things and I hope that I will be able to instill some of that understanding and interest in my own daughter.  I want her to remember me  having a car that I cared for/about, that was more than just a conveyance that took me from point to point, something that I looked forward to driving.

It turns out that it wasn’t as easy to find a car that would fit these criteria as I had thought it would been Anne suggested Saab at one point.  My initial reactions to this suggestion were to laugh it off.  Four years earlier the brand had received it's final death-blow it appeared and while there are rumblings of a resurrection as a maker of electric vehicles and they have started to make some of the last generation 9-5 at the factory in Sweden the marque for the most part considered a dead brand.  So my Wife gets the credit/blame for planting the Saab “seed” in my mind.  The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea.  Saabs were made in Sweden and from the outset they did things their own way.  They thought outside the box they were known for their high quality/longevity when properly maintained and like their Swedish counterpart Volvo, were legendary for safety.  So after a few months of searching I found the Saab I wanted.  A 1996 Saab 900 SE 2.0 Turbo Sedan.  It is slightly worn, but I know it’s history, I know that the previous owner cared for it and saw value in proper maintenance.  I like that in a day and age where it is becoming harder and harder to find cars with proper manual transmissions that my child could possible imagine that there is a little “person” peeking between the seats at you just like I did.  I like that when she sees me open the hood to check the fluids that she’ll be able to see the at least some of the inner workings of the car instead of just a big plastic cover.

Of course with everything, timing is important and when I found the Saab I wanted it was at a time where My wife wasn't going to be able to drive me down to the small dealership in Redwood City where the car was located for at least a week.  The reality was that a one owner low mileage 1996 Saab with a full history, a clean Carfax report and a fresh smog certificate in hand would probably not remain unsold by the time I could get a ride down there to see it.  I could find similar cars from private parties for the same price maybe less almost any day but they all seemed to have interiors in much worse shape than this one and they all seemed to be 2nd or third owner and in the end I would end up hoping that the car would pass smog and that the proper maintenance had been done to it.  This seemed like the best opportunity.

 

 

So I decided to ride the FZ down to Redwood City to take a look at the car.  The route was about 90 miles via Interstate 80 west, to 680 south, to 580 west, to 880 south to Hwy 84 across the Dumbarton Bridge and north a bit on 101 into Redwood City to a tiny dealership called "Caspian Hi Line Cars" in talking to the owner "Nas" he struck me as a shrewd salesman who had been around the block a time or two but he was non intrusive and opened up the car and left me to go through the pile of documents that were in the folder.

The picture the records painted were of a car that had been maintained at a dealer through the extent of the warranty and then went to one private shop after the warranty was up.  The maintenance was kept up in normal intervals and there were some high dollar repairs done recently (steering rack, direct injection cassette) and in most of the receipts in the last 15,000 miles mentioned the noisy throw-out bearing which really doesn't affect the daily driving of the car and I could see why the previous owner hadn't replaced it yet as the clutch still has life in it and basically if you were going to replace the throw-out bearing it's as big of a job as replacing the clutch so you might as well wait made sense to me.

I would characterize my first impressions of the Saab as a slight reality check the photos lead you to believe that the car is in near new condition but I would cay that it is an honest 18 year old car. It's a 20/20 car it looks good at 20 feet or 20 miles an hour.  Closer inspection finds minor dents and dings with a few spots of touch-up paint, the windshield has a couple of chips in it.  The engine bay was very clean in my opinion and leather seats while slightly cracked only had one worn through spot in the drivers seat side bolster.  Things seemed to be in good enough nick that I had Nas come out to take the car for a test drive.  Everything worked as is should though there was a little stickiness in the rear window switches that were in the center console.

On the test drive I asked Nas about his business and it turns out that he has been selling cars in Redwood City for over twenty years.  I mentioned to him that for having Hi Line Cars in the business name it didn't really seem like he had very many expensive cars.  In fact he only had a couple of other European cars on the lot and none were near $10k.  He said that in the early days he exclusively sold second owner expensive European cars and had built up a reputation for being able to get cars that looked near-new for a good price.  Then the recession hit and his business hasn't been the same since.  He now mostly sells service vehicles, box trucks and vans and once in a while the odd car here and there.  The Saab came to him from one of his former Hi Line days customers.

He told me that the car, if measured by the fact that it he was asking $1995 for it was about as good of a car that you could find for safe reliable A to B transportation and I agreed with him.  Which didn't put me in the best negotiating point and I paid the price he was asking for the car.  The next issue was that I now had a motorcycle and a car in Redwood City.

He said that I could keep the cycle in his fenced in area for the night if I wanted to take the car home and come back for the bike.  So I elected to drive The Saab home.  Upon stopping to top off the tank it turned out that it only needed 2 gallons (its an 18 gallon tank) of gas to fill it up and I found out that the 6-disc CD changer in the trunk still had CD's in it and it also came with a tape!  Double bonus!!  I got 30 miles per  gallon home driving the speed limit with the cruise on which was a good sign.

The issue that we still had to deal with was that my wife still had a full weekend planned and I still needed to get back to Redwood City to get the FZ.  That evening we took The Saab to Davis, CA for dinner and a movie and while we were eating dinner I heard a train go by and a light bulb went off in my head.  I could take the train!  The initial plan was to take the Amtrak from Davis south to the bottom of the peninsula and then take the CalTrain north to Redwood City.  The problem then would be that The Saab would have been left in Davis and I would still have to wait a number of days to get both vehicles back home.

As it turned out part of Anne's plans had her in Oakland that day so I realized that I could drive The Saab to Oakland...

Take the Bart from there to the Caltrain station on the peninsula...

And take the Caltrain south along the Peninsula to Redwood City...

After that I could then ride my motorcycle home and then catch a ride back to Oakland with Anne to get my car so that became the plan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,  I had plenty of time while driving The Saab, then riding on those trains and then riding the motorcycle and then back to Oakland in my Wife's car and then back to Vacaville in the Saab again to kick myself for not just taking the trains down to Redwood City in the first place.  This was a seat of the pants operation by all means.  But I was able to watch the MotoGP race on my phone on the train which was kind of cool.

For some reason (tolls maybe?) Siri, who I take directions from via headphones took me over the San Mateo Hayward Bridge which was an epic/chilly experience to say the least.  I think that this may be bridge at the widest point of the bay (it's seven miles long!) and it is not very far above the water save for one point where it is raised in order to allow ships through.  I only had my mesh jacket and the wind and being in the middle of the bay was darn cold!  but being on two wheels in the middle of the San Francisco Bay so close to the water was awe inspiring!  The rest of the ride went smoothly but for some reason (like the ride back from Laguna Seca) once I was traveling from south to north the wind kicked my butt and by the time I got home I felt like I had been in another boxing match!

Now as I am writing this now very long, now two month old story I still do not know what I should do with this blog.  Surely it's at the least hypocritical to be running a blog called "With Only A Motorcycle" when I am no longer solo-moto.  I am kicking around the idea of tracking the mileage of both the car and the bike and adding a percent usage report to each update as a way to keep myself on a moto-bias.  We'll see what happens, but thanks for reading my updates and please come back to see what the future holds for this space.

The 6-month Report

October 26 was the six month marker from when my motorcycle arrived in California and I commenced my solo-moto experience.  I don’t know why the first half a year of anything is an event to be marked, when I had ticked off significantly less minutes on my clock there was a point where six months seemed like an eternity, but after having been with my wife for more than seven years, owning the same motorcycle for more than ten years and working at the same place for 12 years, six months seems pretty insignificant now.  Still, when that day ticked past and I realized that I had reached six month mark since the start of life without a car I knew that inevitably I would have to sit down and take stock of how how things have gone thus far.  Am I where I thought I would be in six months?  Is it all that I hoped it would be and more?  Am I regretting the decision?  Am I having second thoughts?

Maybe that is why the first six months of anything can be such a significant event, especially in important undertakings.  In reality you are still in the middle of great upheaval but you desperately need to seek self assurance that you made the right call, that you are on track to great things.  Even through the self-professed insignificance of the moment for some reason there is still a desire to make it known that I have hit the six month milestone.  Part of that is because I am sure that there are some that feel that this is some sort of lark and that once I get it out of my system I'll be back in the "cage."  The six month mark is definitely my first real opportunity to wave the fact that I am still solo-moto and doing fine in their face.  It also provides the opportunity to solicit acknowledgement from people that do get the what living without a car which is more valuable to me than the opportunity to throw it in the face any detractors.

So what has it really been like thus far?  Frankly, I thought I would have been going on more long rides and and having more adventures than I have been.  A glance back on what I have written thus far shows that I have spent a healthy bit of my free time wrenching and not riding.  Part of that I am sure has to do with facing the reality of being stranded out in the middle of nowhere quite early on.  I think that gave me a laser focus on maintenance and impressed a real desire for everything to be right with the bike before going off and riding just for kicks.  Consequently most of the miles I have put on thus far have been commuting to and from work with the exceptions of a ride to Sterling Winery, my Clear Lake Ride, a couple of rides to SanFrancisco and my adventure to the Laguna Seca MotoGP Race.  I do feel that the FZ1 is now at a place where I have all the major mechanical issues addressed and hopefully that will mean more trips.

The truth is that there are still a number of things that I I would like to address when time permits that aren't keeping me for going on a long ride.  There are tell-tale cracks on exterior of the carb boots, I know that they are not leaking because I know what a bike with actual leaky carb boots runs like.  I'd like to have a project where I replace those and install some remote vacuum lines for easier carb syncing.  I need to get some brake pads to have on hand for the inevitable moment where the current ones wear out and truthfully the rear disc could stand to be replaced too.  I have ordered a new seat cover when I discovered that even more seams are starting to pull apart.  Eventually the rear tire will need to be replaced.  After servicing the front forks the thought that the rear shock probably needs a service or replacement with an acceptable spec low mileage rear shock off of a different model bike (which would probably the cheaper option) is in the back of my head all the time as well as the thought of replacing the swing arm bearings.  And then there is the never-ending cycle of drive chain maintenance (more on that later).

So there's a lot on the maintenance to-do list and I guess that brings me to the major overall conclusion that if I had it to do all over again I would have though long and hard about getting a brand new motorcycle or one just a few years old with very few miles on it.  I think about how much better it would be to be know the bikes entire history and have a clean slate to start with maintenance wise.  It would have been a much more fun first six months had I been able to just walk out to a brand new bike and just thumb the starter and be ready to go with the confidence that I know everything about this bike and not wonder what unknown issue might pop up.  Lets be honest; most motorcycles are garage queens that get taken out for weekend rides and trips to the local bike night.  When that is a bikes main use it's easier to ignore the little maintenance issues that pop up over time and start to pile up.  Now my bike was a 2001 with 30,000 miles on it.  Imagine if I had bought that same year bike with even less miles it probably would have been in much worse shape!  Now as far as the 2001-05 FZ1 as an all-around do-it-all bike I couldn't ask for more.  Obviously there are more refined versions available now; the 2014 Kawasaki Ninja 1000 ABS comes to mind but the design thesis is pretty much the same between the two bikes.

As far as the actual act of riding goes I have now ridden in 112 degree temperatures and am currently riding in low 50s - high 40s at night time now.  Riding in high heat sucks there's no way around it and my riding motivation pretty much shrank to heading out only for the essentials on those days.  Cold weather is another set of challenges I have the proper gear to be comfortable riding in cool weather but with it still getting up into the 70's mid-day you end up trying to find the right spot of the fence to sit on.  Right now I am working swing shifts so I only wear jeans and the heavier riding jacket (vents open) with the non gauntlet gloves.  I still get a little warm in traffic and if I have to stop off in a store it can get pretty hot in the jacket and then when I am heading home at 10pm (jacket vents closed) it's quite nippy but that is the best balance.  When I was working nights last week I actually busted out the insulated over-pants, full gauntlet gloves and riding boots because the sun is gone and the temps are pretty consistent.  But then you get into the deal where it's taking me almost as long to get ready to ride to work as it does riding there.  The one thing that I haven't had to contend with yet is rain, so far I think we are still at 4 days with noticeable rainfall since moving to California with the rainiest (of course) being the day I decided to rebuild the forks for the FZ1 on the porch.  If I can make it through the winter which I am told will be much wetter I will be able to safely say that I can stand to live the solo-moto lifestyle, yes the biggest challenge is yet to come.

 

 

There are other little idiosyncrasies that I have picked up on since I started riding in here in California maybe they exist everywhere and the awareness comes from commuting full time on a motorcycle.  Probably the most frequent annoyance is at intersections with stop signs; I can roll up on one and the car will already be sitting there stopped and they will wait until they see me stop and actually put my foot down before they go.  When I was learning to ride back in Wisconsin one of the skills they taught us was called (literally) the "California Stop." Where you basically stop and balance without putting your foot down on the ground.  Well I've gotten pretty good at it now that I am in California but it would seem that no matter how good I am at balancing the person at the intersection is not going to go until they see that foot on the ground.  If they would just go after their car had stopped and they saw me stopping they would be through the intersection and I would be on my way without needing to put my foot down, it's petty but it's really annoying.

Another thing that is definitely a California thing, possibly a product of the higher volume of cars and the 4-5 lane highways (the HOV lane doesn't make it any easier either) is that basically any lane can be the "fast" lane at any given time or at all times.  In the Midwest there was a general rule that the faster traffic stays to the left and then the speeds get progressively slower as you move further right.  I can't figure out if I like this or not; at times it's maddening and I feel like I am inhabiting the same space with a bunch of self-entitled pricks who think their time is more important than others, other times I revel in the mêlée that is the California Highway System.  There haven't been too many times that I haven't felt 100% safe while riding on the Highways mainly because at any given them there is a good chance that I am the quickest, most agile thing that is in the general vicinity.

When I have gotten out onto the b-roads it is quite a different story there.  There are so many great roads that it's hard to pick which ones you want to try.  I have from time to time run into the problem of finding myself at the start of a road that looked really great on Google maps but then it turns out that it's unpaved.  But that has happened to me in Wisconsin to and that is all part of the adventure as far as I'm concerned.  But for as many times as that happens there are at least 10X more time you find yourself gnawing away at the last remains of your chicken strips tempted to put a knee down if only you hadn't traded in your leathers for more serviceable textile kit.  You see a lot more motorcycles and if there are cars a lot of them are out for a thrash too.  For some reason I haven't been too keen on checking hitting up the motorcycling must-sees maybe it's because of their proximity now but bing that it's cooler now it might be a good time to hit some up, there will probably be less Ricky road-racer types out there and more die-hard riders to meet.  The next weekend a moto-mecca may need to be checked off.

Have I mentioned how much Lucas Oil Products Inc. Chain Lube sucks?

Well it does, its sloppy and messy, I knew it was a bad purchase after the first 20 miles but I had it and I thought I would just grit my teeth and bear it until I ran through the can but enough was enough.  The product itself is messy and runs all over the place and then once it gets onto your swing-arm sprocket and wheels it acts like a magnet for dust dirt and grime.  The product that I am used to and have been using for years before this is Maxima Racing Oils Chain Wax and that was what I went back to but there was the issue of the shitty mess that they Lucas Oil Chain Lube had left behind.  I also picked up some MaximaRacing Oils Clean Up: Chain Cleaner.  

Getting the whole mess cleaned up meant taking off the counter-shaft sprocket cover and the rear wheel to clean both it and the swing arm.  You can see the gummy sticky globules of build up in there.

It took a lot of elbow grease and my hands and fingernails were dirty for about a week but the end result was worth it.  And a week later the swing-arm chain and sprocket all look pretty much the same as in this picture.

That's about it for now I did receive my seat cover and put it on the seat but this is already a long-winded update so that will have to wait till later.

Thank you to all who stop and read.

Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix: Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca

I woke up at 3am that Sunday morning on only about 4 hours of sleep.  True to form I had only really started thinking about the trek to Monterey the day before departure.  Looking at the weather it was clear that I was going to need to be ready for an array of riding conditions not to mention that I would need to plan for comfort while taking in an entire day of racing. Temperatures for the ride south to the race were going to be in the mid 50s and windy after just four months of living near The Bay Area of California I know that I should be prepared for cold and damp conditions at a moment’s notice any time I go near the coast and looking at the time sheets for the Free Practices and Qualifying Practices on MotoGP.com and comparing that with the forecasts seemed to confirm that it would be a mild day in the mid 70s for the race.  For the trek to the race track I decided to go with the Transition Series 3 jacket with the full sleeved liner installed, the Caliber Pants sans liner as I was going to wear jeans underneath them, Cold-Tex 2.0 gloves and the and the Solution Waterproof 2.0 Road Boots. I planned on bringing a scarf to keep my neck warm on the roughly three hour trip to the will call office in Monterey which opened at 7am (which explains why I was leaving at 3am) but I ended up forgetting it. I packed my normal riding gloves for the much warmer trip back and figured that losing the liner out of the jacket and going vents full open would provide acceptable comfort.  Other than that I threw a pair of shorts in one of the saddle bags along with some regular shoes my old school Rossi Fiat Yamaha pit crew shirt and visor and sunglasses for the race.

This whole trip was a last-minute thing.  I knew the race was coming up but normally going to a MotoGP race is a full weekend camping deal (at the Indianapolis GP) where Anne and I both get to go and take in all the action. We had figured that this year would be a throw away year since she was still in Chicago and I was here.  Never-the-less I found myself looking at the tickets on the Monday before the race.  Monday was the last day before the general admission tickets went up from $60 to $70 for the run up to the race and I hatched the plan to ride down to the race day-of, watch the race and ride back that same day. A blitzkrieg race weekend!  A couple of text messages later just to get the ok from Anne and I had my ticket purchased!

Since my plan was to do this quick, dirty and on the cheap I also prepared and packed up a lunch and snacks and not enough water (it would turn out) so that I didn't end up spending a bunch of money to eat at the track. I strapped the smallest of my folding chairs to the bike which still stuck out farther than my saddlebags but I figured I might want the chair once I decided where I was going to watch the race from.  I laid all of the gear out that I didn't want to sit in the bikes saddlebags overnight so that it would be harder to forget the in the morning.  I hit the hay at 11pm.

I woke up two minutes before the 3am alarm was supposed to go off hopped out of bed put the coffee pot on and started to make breakfast.  Once I finished eating I poured the coffee into my trusty
"Contigo AUTOSEAL Stainless Steel Vacuum Insulated Tumbler" I have to mention this thing specifically because it is an item that you can buy for under $20 that will amaze you every time you use it! For instance: I put my coffee in the tumbler,  threw it unceremoniously into a saddlebag, went on a 3 hour motorcycle ride with sub-50 degree temperatures and when I got to my destination the coffer was still hot and none of it had spilled.  It's just one of those things that perform exactly as it is supposed to every time and things like that are rare.  If you're a coffee drinker and a moto-rider I suggest you pick one up!

I could feel the chill in the air as I walked out to the bike and but it felt good I since I had started to warm up as I was walking around the house in the gear grabbing the last few things I needed.  I have been getting pretty good at starting the bike and getting out of the condo complex with minimal irritation to the neighbors (I think).  I turn on the choke, back the bike out of the spot fire the engine, pop the bike in gear and let the clutch out so the bike never really hits the higher RPMs that having the choke on causes, I let the bike idle build as I am heading towards the gate and by the time I grab the clutch to stop for the gate to open I can shut off the choke and let the bike idle normally with minimal time sitting at any one location for too much time to irritate any sleepers.  It's important when you’re leaving for work at around 0520 or thereabouts and even more important when you are leaving for a MotoGP race on Sunday morning at a pinch before 4am!

Once on the road I thoroughly enjoyed the novelty of being on sparsely populated roads that go along with the very early morning.  That enjoyment was tempered with the awareness to give oncoming cars and cars that were coming up on me a wide berth on the outside chance that they be a Saturday night Reveler that finally decided to call it a night and make their way home after one too many beverages.  There was only one person that I suspect may have fallen into that category and I came upon him on 680 a little bit before the Benicia-Martinez Bridge.  The moon loomed large and low in the sky adding an extra helping of light on some of the otherwise sparsely lit expanses of open road.  The cross winds I have come across when traveling by interstate highways here in California still impress and intimidate me a bit with stronger gusts able to move my fully loaded FZ1 and myself almost into an entirely different lane!

I had printed out my directions my and had them in the tank bag but it turns out it was so dark that I couldn't really read them with the way that the tank bag sits on the bike.  I had to take small opportunities when going under an overpass to read the next direction and was able to suss things out pretty well using that method.  Since it was going to be a lonely three hour ride I had brought my old 2nd generation iPod Nano and put earphones in but in the end it turned out I had the volume adjusted too low to really hear the music very well and made myself new game of trying to guess which song was playing next on the shuffle mode.  By the time I had made it to the Gilroy area the FZ was hinting that it may be getting thirsty and my hair had somehow worked its way down so that it was matted into my forehead and the weight of my helmet plus the pressure of the 80mph wind was really irritating me.  It's funny it's just hair but somehow it occupies your subconscious and by the time I had gotten to the Gilroy exits I had convinced myself that I the hair was cutting into the skin on my forehead!  Eff it... I grabbed the first exit that had a gas sign and decided it was time for a stretch.  I stopped at the Gilroy Safeway gas station, filled up stretched my legs adjusted my hair, lost the headphones (they were irritating my ears too) and at about that moment I realized that I was surrounded by a powerful but somewhat familiar stench.  I looked around and the few people that were out and about seemed to be going about their business oblivious to it.  I would later learn that the smell I smelled was Garlic and that the super powerful odor is ALWAYS present in Gilroy because of the garlic farms and processing that goes on there!  I'm sure the people there don't even notice it anymore but man it was a powerful smell!

By the time I got to the point where 156 splits from 101 to take me to 1 the temperature had dropped even more and I was riding through a light mist.  This was when I had really started missing my scarf that I had left on the dining room table.  But other than the small portion of exposed neck skin I was comfortable and warm.  I had only been down that portion of highway 1 once before in a rental car when Anne had come to visit and we went to Santa Cruz.  The one thing I took away from it was that the portion of road was twisty and would probably be fun on a bike but it was definitely not fun for me that morning as the light mist had become a thick fog that was causing beads of water to form on my visor that I had to turn my head intermittently to allow the wind to brush them away.  I couldn't see very far in front of me and took it very easy the rest of the way to Monterey.  Even with the fog I made it to the hotel that had the will-call office a half before they opened and the FZ got to take it's place in the moto-only parking for the fans that were staying at the hotel.  I grabbed my coffee from the saddle bag and as I mentioned before, was pleasantly surprised that it had maintained most of it's temperature along the ride and the warmth and the caffeine helped me shrug off any of the fatigue that the ride and the lack of sleep had brought on.

A half an hour of MotoGP banter with some of the other fans waiting in line to get their tickets and I had my ticket in hand and was excited to get to the track.  When I walked back out to the bike it was still in the mid 50's and the fog was still everywhere!  It turns out that the directions that I had printed to get to the free "purple" parking were in conflict with the way that the race-day organizers wanted me to go so I followed signs and some bad directions from some of the volunteers that were directing people around until I made it to the parking lot.  I decided that I did not want to use the gear-check to avoid any possible rush when I decided to leave.  I used my lock and cable to secure my riding pants to the bike, changed out of the riding boots into some regular shoes I had brought along, lost the liner for the jacket and converted my tank bag into backpack mode and headed for the track.  I made the decision to not bring the chair at that point because I didn't want to be lugging it around the whole day.

After some wandering around the early-morning paddock I made the walk up the hill to the corkscrew, it was at that point I realized that I would not be leaving that area for the rest of the day.  There was already an ample amount of spectators setting up there and I had myself a nice spot right next to the track.  I wished I had brought my chair but I came there for the racing not to be comfortable I had my spot and I was not going to relinquish it to anyone.  I had enough food for the day and I while I only had my one bottle of water I figured I could ration it out for the rest of the racing.  After all it was still in the high 50's and the last two days it was on the low to mid 70's as a high.

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I don't want to get too much into the racing as it's been nearly a month since the race happened now and anyone who cares already knows what happened and has overanalyzed it death like I have but I do have a few comments.  The riders that took to the foggy track for their first session had big balls no headlights and cold temps can't be a good combo.  It was irritating that Dorna would not allow the support races to be shown on the big screens even the announcers had no idea what was going on when the racers were out of view. Electric bikes need to be way faster to ever be entertaining.  It got WAAAAY hotter that I had ever anticipated and sunburned the tops of my ear and while I didn't explore the track to the extent I would have like to I definitely enjoyed Laguna Seca and can't wait for next year’s race!!!

The ride back home was a mixed bag.  With all the vents open on the jacket and the riding pants back on over my jeans and the riding boots back on and the lighter gloves on it wasn't too bad at highway speeds.  Once I hit highway 1 traffic was STOPPED!  The same thing had happened when I was in the rental car with Anne on a non-race day so I wasn't too surprised but this time instead of being in a Ford Focus I was on my FZ1 time to split some lanes!!! I was a little nervous because the folding chair stuck out more than my saddlebags and I was afraid that they would take out someone’s mirror or cause me to fall but in the end there was no issues.  Splitting lanes heading back from the race was a trip!  In the really dense stopped traffic of highway 1 there was a point where I swear I was in the middle of a 100+ bike lane splitting train that snaked it's way through all of the stopped cars.  From time to time I a faster bike would come up on the back and I'd get over to let them by but everyone kept things in check for the most part and played nice with the cagers.  It was nice being in a "train" because all the cars were already anticipating more bikes which made things go very smooth.

I made it to San Ramon before I needed to stop for a brake but at that point I REALLY needed a break I was spent.  I stopped at a McDonalds (which I hardly ever do) and ate and then stopped at a shell station for some gas.  When I got back on the road the bike felt like an entirely different animal!  It accelerated much more smoothly and freely and the butt dyno seemed to indicate that it had more power too!  This was something I had not anticipated since I hadn't noticed a drastic drop in performance previously.  Having some time to think about it the only thing that I can deduce is that the Safeway gas I had bought in Gilroy was shite!  The Shell gas made a huge difference!  I've been using it in the FZ1 ever since that day!

I made it home at around 7pm and I was beat but what a day!  I don't think that I could have crammed more into a single day if I tried.  Definitely one of the more epic moto-days I have had since arriving in California.  I hope that you enjoyed my write-up as well as the photos and videos.  Sorry for the delay, I am making a big push before taking shift as a transmission operator so I have been trying to cram as much as possible before that day.  I have more material already in the cue for you guys from a seat repair to replacing the steering stem bearings in the FZ1 so stay tuned!