working on a couple of mods

not performance mods (I'm not using the bike to anywhere near it's fullest yet anyway). These are all appearance style mods.

I bought a rear seat cowl. It came with little plastic pieces to fill the holes created when I removed the grab bar. So, I removed the grab bar, put those little plastics in, and popped the cowl on. All I can say is, DAMN, that's a huge improvement.

I'm also painting my radiator guard with some "rustoleum" brand paint. It was starting to rust, and I wasn't going to have that, so I took it off and brushed the rust off and put some primer on it last night.

My camera mount also came off and is getting a coat of paint.

Both items are going flat black because it's the coolest color evar.

My passenger pegs are coming off because I won't have a passenger seat, so why have pegs!? But the exhaust hangs from the passenger peg on the right side. So, I bought another bracket ans shaved it. Hacksaw and dremel did pretty good, but I broke down and bought a grinder so I would be able to finish it nicely without spending many hours on it.

This is also going flat black.

My other flat black mod has nothing to do with painting, but rather something that came flat black: my tires. I recommend keeping proper air pressure in them. Holy crap. I was running about 5lbs low and it was only affecting my parking lot/intersection speed left turns, or so I thought. Bike feels MUCH better now at all speeds (that I have tried since) and all turning radii.




So, on Sunday, I went on a ride with some friends down to Tacoma to visit another friend's house. We spent some time riding highway 7, which is a nice road, with some lovely curves, and an Acura that thinks he's fast, among tons of other traffic. Me being mostly slow, and scared of illegal passes (I wait until there is about twice as much room as I need before attempting to pass anyone because I'm a chicken.....this is a logic induced fright, so I'm ok with it), I ended up chilling in the back and they waited for me at the end and had a good nap before I got there (ok, it was only a couple minutes). But, it was fun. Those guys have both been riding much longer than I have, and are smaller guys on bigger bikes...I couldn't have kept up with them if there was no traffic.

But, we got back to Tacoma and spent some time BS'ing with people, made a trip to Cycle Gear, and Taco Bell, and then did some work on one of the guy's bikes.

As we were leaving, I picked up a front stand to carry home, and we all jumped on our bikes and only 2 of the 4 of us actually left. The other 2 stayed and talked for a few minutes. Grant and I left and jumped on the freeway and may or may not have obeyed the posted speed (10-20 over the entire time....as was the rest of traffic....we weren't being assholes). We were in the express lanes just chillin when out of no where, the other 2 guys, who had stopped for gas, and left 5 minutes later than us, BLEW past us. It was all I could do to keep it on the road, I was laughing so hard.

But, it was a good day, and I just thought I should share.



Tuesday, Bike Night, at the Deluxe. I recommend going there! They serve comfort type food, and gave us an entire room (probably 40 people). I had meatloaf, Jessica had a sandwich, and they were excellent, but the Mac and Cheese looked DELICIOUS too. That was good times. Good people there, and I got to meet more people from the forum and put more faces to names. It was great.



That's all for now.



see you on the flip side!