Road Presence

One of the reasons I wanted the highway bar was to help protect myself and my baby in the case of a fall. I haven't dropped her in ages now but I still feel there's the possibility it will happen and I also am aware that I'm at the mercy of the cagers around me. I'm feeling impressed with myself lately in that I think I'm pretty aware of whats going on around me and I know when there's a car that has the potential to do something to put me in danger. I also have taken on board a lot of the things I've read about making life safer for myself by putting myself in a safe position on the road, and generally trying to make myself visible. So this is, I hope, just an extra bonus, just-in-case measure.

The other reason I like the look of the highway bar is that I thought it might make my profile on the road larger. Besides it being wider than my bike, making it bigger looking, there was also the fact that there's just a little bit more shiny stuff there now to attract attention.

We went for a quick ride round town today, went for lunch at my favourite cafe, then a quick ride round the outskirts of town. Yep you can ride round the whole town in bout 15 minutes! Terry didn't take his bike, his reason ... he wanted to get some pics of me on the bike. Again with the excuse that he doesn't have many pics of me on Roxy. Well he's certainly starting to get a collection now.

Can you see me?

Getting closer and I start to have presence.

Terry took a ton of pics, this is my favourite.

It was nice day for a ride today, so even though I didn't go anywhere I still enjoyed myself. I'm finding myself amazed at the things I find easy to do now, like U-turns, yes I feel a lot better with those finally, I don't avoid them anymore but actually like to challenge myself to do them. Don't get me wrong I'm still not graceful at them, but I am doing them and I think I'm getting better each time I succeed. I've also nearly mastered keeping a foot up while stopped, that actually hasn't been as hard a habit to break as I thought it would be, I do it automatically now. Wow!!

There was one other thing that happened today that I just have to tell. It's got nothing to do with bikes so if you are only here for the bike talk you don't need to scroll down :) Yesterday I bought the amazing Staffy, Gizmo, a new toy. She gets bored so I get her something new as often as I think of it, the other thing she's been doing since we got home from the holiday is standing in the kitchen when ever we are there begging for snacks. We probably encourage that a bit cause the snacks are in the kitchen. Well I thought I'd kill two birds by getting her a toy that makes her work for a snack. The Kong Wobbler is just the thing. You put snacks in this thing and she has to knock it a certain way to get them out a hole in the side of it. I didn't think at first that she would get it, we showed her how it worked then she just sat in front of it waiting for one of us to tip it up to dispense a snack for her. Then only bout an hour after giving it to her I told her to go get her toy, and she bounded at it knocking a snack out. You could almost hear things click in her head as she worked out how to do it. Today she had the time of her life knocking this thing around the lounge room and had it emptied in bout 10 minutes flat! So I took a video. It's the first video I've done so will be interesting to see how it turns out.

The way she kept looking at me to get approval was just too cute. That tail didnt stop wagging!!