Today was a pretty good day. I had sev­eral things I wanted/needed to do, and noth­ing but time. I’ve updated my blog that you read now. I also did a valve job on my bike. It’s only been about 3K since my last valve job, which is too soon. I know how to do them, but I’m not good at it. There is an art too it — minor adjust­ments you have to make (mov­ing your wrench just enough to get .030mm, but not .031mm or .029mm, and make sure it’s the same after you tighten down the lock­nut) — a “feel” that has to be just right for it to work. This is one of the things I wish Dewey (my father — a long time biker and excel­lent mechanic) was able to come to Seat­tle while I was pre­ping my bike. I still don’t know if it’s right or not, but it’s right now. If it goes out of align­ment, I’ll just do it again in a cou­ple thou­sand miles. I’ll get it right sooner or later. One thing I really like about rid­ing a motor­cy­cle

is the feel you get for the bike. I can tell when my valves need adjust­ing, when I’m run­ning a lit­tle low on oil, tires need air or I’m car­ry­ing too much weight and I have to adjust my shocks. It’s almost like an exten­sion of my body. An exten­sion that will let me go 120MPH or get run over by some soc­cer mom more con­cerned about her child hav­ing enough soda than keep­ing another human alive. But I rant.

Before my valve job, I went for a walk in the gen­eral area where I am stay­ing, look­ing for a few items to help with my valve job (latex gloves, met­ric wrenches, size 10 and 16mm.) Walk­ing down the street this woman handed me a card. Nor­mally I don’t take these, but I did out of suprise and shock, and well, she was kind of cute. The card said “SMART CARD — place your thumb firmly on the red box for 15 sec­onds. If you are a “good” per­son, it will turn greenish-blue.” Even­tu­ally I found out the fuck­ing thing doesn’t ever change col­ors. It’s always red. God damned woman gave me card whose sole pur­pose was to make me feel like I’m a bad per­son. It’s like my child­hood all over again. And just like my child­hood, it’s not very nice.

As luck would have it, Jay and Chris sold their house today. I hap­pened to be sit­ting around the hacienda, work­ing on my bike, and they hap­pened to be gone most of the day. I got to take care of the dogs. About 5 p.m., I noticed that the pack was look­ing at me like I was the sec­ond com­ing of Jesus or a big side of beef. About the time I fig­ured out they were hun­gry, Jay called and gave me the code on how to feed them. There was an order, dif­fer­ent amounts, and even a lit­tle bit of pro­tec­tion for the lit­tle dog. I also promised to scoop poop from the lit­tle dog (don’t ask.) Thanks to luck and a bit of duct tape, I didn’t have to. These lit­tle guys wor­shipped me like a god. Fol­low­ing me every­where, shiv­er­ing when I bend down to pet ‘em, try­ing to remove the duct tape. It made me feel like a big man.

I also got to hook up a wire­less router for these guys. I guess it was really more for me than them, since it let me be a bit of a geek, a fix I always need. I’m hop­ing I can talk them into let­ting me turn their only PC into a linux server with a T1 line. Just because.

Jay and Chris were doing there house thing for most of the day and long into the night. I grilled a nice rib­eye for myself — prob­a­bly the last meal I’ll cook for myself for a long time. Jay works for DirecTV, so he’s got every chan­nel they make. Lets see — big rib­eye, lot’s of cable chan­nels and wire­less inter­net con­nec­tion. I’m plan­ning to stay for the next two months — that is, unless Jay and Chris start hang­ing around.