So, today was another rough day in the office, and to be completely fair, because of several issues that are publicly happening right now, I am pretty sure I will be staying up past midnight, expecting a phone call. First, in case you aren’t aware, I work for KXAN, where I manage the website. Most of what exists there are the changes that myself and my team have been able to make to the site since we have begun there. It is a massive improvement over where it was before we were working on it. And, when I say that, I mean no disrespect to the people who owned the site before us, only that we are trying to move it more to the fore-front rather than just subsisting. Anyway, rant aside, if you go there, you will quickly become painfully aware that there is a retransmission contract that is about to expire tonight between LinTV, the parent company for KXAN, and Time Warner Cable. This disagreement has compounded with at least two other factors to keep myself and my team completely consumed at the office, and to some degree outside of the office.
I have been trying to make it home in time to ride the bike every night this week, but I haven’t really been able to. However, looking at my schedule over the next few weeks, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get away from work, so I got up this morning, and went to the county tax assessor and changed the title and registration of the motorcycle to myself. And, after leaving work a half hour late (I got in about 10 minutes late), I made it home before the sun set, and said hello to Kelly before I pulled out the bike and started it up. I worried that it would not start, because when I saw my neighbor last night, I invited him over to see it as he is a rider, and we had talked about it before I got a bike. Well, when he came over he asked if I would start it up, which I said sure, but I must have been nervous, because I ended up pushing the choke too far, and it wouldn’t quite catch. So they went back home, not having heard it.
When I realized today that the reason it wouldn’t start last night was my choke control, it kicked right up and rumbled like it should. After I knew it was going to start, I put on my protective gear, and went for a ride. I rode over to 45, the toll road, and circled on an unused section of the feeder road because its an empty straight road with a wide sweeping turn-around where the speed limit is 45mph, which gave me an opportunity to work it into the gears. After a couple of loops there, I went down a few other roads, and had to wait on a train to pass. This gave me a good chance to stop and analyze the driving I had already done. After the train, I took a turn and meandered through a neighborhood that dropped me out onto McNeil, which I took all the way around to Howard Lane, which is a long uninterrupted two lane road with a speed limit of 50 mph. This gave me my first opportunity to kick the bike up into 6th gear, which I really need to get more accustomed to. It pretty much felt like it came too soon. Although, now that I have had the opportunity to make it that far, and to push into 6th gear, I think I have a better understanding of how to rev the engine now, especially because that was really the first ride I have taken where the tach was really working. I now feel like I can tell from listening to the bike where in the RPM range it is. This was about a 20 mile ride tonight, and I enjoyed it.
I have to admit though, I slowed down and pulled into the driveway, and hit the kill switch, and walked it up to the garage door, then tried to turn it around, so I could back it into the garage, because I prefer to have it ready to ride out of the garage. Well, I still need some experience pivoting the bike, and I need to start parking further down the driveway, because as I backed it up towards the front door, I rolled the rear tire onto a different slab, and caught myself off balance and dropped my bike. Luckily it fell onto the side that a previous owner had dropped it onto, and it fell into the front yard, which made it land in the grass. It caught me off guard, and it was a little of a wake up, but it gave me the opportunity to see how to pick it up on my own. Which was no problem. No damage was done, though apparently the carbs were overfilled, because as my neighbor came back over, the bike was idling around 4k rpm instead of 1.2k rpm as it had been. After we finished talking, I pushed it back into the garage, and gave it a quick start, and it idled just fine. I just have to remember to use the choke correctly.
