So, after my Thursday riding plans were cancelled by a database crash, and my group scheduled an all-hands meeting for Friday afternoon, I decided to take the bike into work to show it off. Officially, I’m on vacation, so I was really just riding 70 miles, hanging out for an hour, and riding back. Hopefully getting past San Jose before the southbound traffic got too heavy.

It worked, too, but I didn’t get away quite soon enough to avoid the slowdown around Morgan Hill. Coincidentally, I needed to stop for gas, so I figured I’d cut over to Monterey Road for a few miles, then get back on 101. This worked out reasonably well, but when it came time to get back on the highway, I went into the turn too fast on the on-ramp, and the bike started edging closer to the yellow line and the end of the pavement.

Suddenly, I heard the voice of one of my MSF instructors, Jim Pereyra:

"What do you do? Lean more!"

I pushed on the low grip, the bike leaned over farther, and my turning radius tightened up. One of the many reasons I’m glad I got professional training before I bought my motorcycle.

…screwed-up high school students will attack their peers with crossbows and Molotov cocktails.

…only clever high-school seniors will have guns (scroll to bottom of story). Designing and building your own AR-15; now that’s a class project!

Pity he didn’t make an M-1, though.

Update: the local newspaper doesn’t have online archives, so the story is already toast. Google does have a link to the school board minutes covering his project plan, so I’ve replaced it with that (scroll to the bottom). He has since finished the project, although he was unable to bring anything but a photo-essay to school to show off.

Short version: his name is David Bartlemay, and he’s headed into the Marines after graduation, with a goal of working presidential security.

Number Watch has a real howler this month, with this scary quote from The Times:

The average 11-year-old girl now has a waist that is 2 inches bigger than that of a typical adult women 60 years ago.

The goal, of course, is to support a ban on junk-food ads in the UK, as part of the War on The Concept of Personal Responsibility Obesity. The problem?

2004 - 60 = 1944

Yes, it’s true. Families in the UK today are not faced with the severe food rationing of World War II, so their children will not grow up scrawny and malnourished. Hey, some of them might even be fat, but at least they can be, now.

I put 150 miles on my new motorcycle today. No pictures, yet, because I was too busy improving my skills.

Kind of embarrassing, really. I made it through the MSF Basic RiderCourse with no problems, and a bunch of test rides on different bikes, but when I rode out into traffic on my own bike, I stalled it at least a dozen times trying to get into first gear. That’s why yesterday’s ride primarily took place in a parking lot down the street.

Today was fine, though. Drove around the neighborhood for a few minutes to convince myself that I was past that little shifting problem, then headed up to BMW of Santa Cruz County in Watsonville, to pick up a Wunderlicht rear-seat bag. The F650CS comes with a decent-sized tank bag, but I wanted a little more storage while I figure out what sort of hard luggage I’m going to install (BMW has a top case, but it’s been delayed; Riderhaus has a very sturdy-looking mount for Krauser side and top cases, but they’re ugly; Happy Trails seems to be the best of the bunch, with a custom mount for Givi side and top cases).

Next stop, the Borders in Seaside, which was an uneventful trip down Highway 1. Picked up the obligatory copy of the Return of the King DVD, then decided to find out if I was up for something a bit more twisty, Carmel Valley Road. Early on, some clown in a pickup truck decided that the van ahead of me was moving too darn slow, so he passed us both on a double yellow. Never saw him again, and the van turned off soon, so I pretty much had the road to myself. I went a little wide on one turn, the sure sign of a novice rider, but it wasn’t until about a minute later that a Miata came zooming along in the other direction, so I got the lesson without the adrenalin or the damage.

Around 3pm, the wind really picked up, so I decided to cut over to 101 at Greenfield. Same wind, and faster traffic, but on a road that I know well, with no surprises. Besides, it gave me an excuse to see how fast I could go without exceeding the 5000rpm limit recommended for the break-in period. The bike claimed 80mph, but my GPS insisted I was only going 75. Top speed is supposed to be in the 110 range, but I think I’ll wait a bit to test that.

Tomorrow? Well, I sort of took half the week as vacation, so I can do whatever I want. There’s an MSF course layout painted on a parking lot down at the rodeo grounds, so I’ll stop there for some quick-stop and tight turn practice, and then I think Point Lobos would make a nice backdrop for pictures of the bike.

Oh, yeah; my throttle hand is cramped, my butt is sore, my left calf is hurting from the effort of keeping the bike upright when I tried to walk it through a tight u-turn on a dead-end street at the top of a hill (novice, remember?), and I really need to pack the earplugs next time, but I can fill the gas tank for less than $9, and I had fun. Guess there was something to that dream after all.

There’s a new teaser trailer for Constantine, the extremely loose adaptation of Hellblazer that stars Keanu Reeves as an American occult investigator in Atlanta. Who carries some kind of gold cross-shaped shotgun-thingy with a rotary magazine, that he occasionally lights with an eldritch Zippo.

I’m going by the teaser here, because I refuse to have anything to do with this turkey. It’s not a question of “will it suck?”, but “precisely how much will it suck?”. Based on the sub-Keanu-grade acting in the teaser, I think it’s going to be the worst comic-book movie yet. And it may hold the title for several years.

You know, I’d be a lot more comfortable with people who argue for the legality and ethical purity of sharing your CDs with thousands of anonymous strangers, if they didn’t also think it was cool to scam free copies at Kinko’s. Guess that EFF gig doesn’t pay much…

Spanky The Clown arrested for kiddie porn.