Testing Testing

Well we're nearly ready to go. Just a few last minute things to do now like packing. I have to admit to being a bit slack these last few days, normally by now I'd be all packed with just the toiletries left to go into the bags. But today I still have all my packing to do, plus Terry's stuff to sort so he can pack. Terry never packs til the morning we are leaving, which kinda frustrates me, being the kind of person who is ready days before any trip and gets everywhere at least half an hour early. He keeps life interesting for me!

I've been busy getting well. I've had another bout of serial migraines, not even getting over one when the next one hits me. In my endeavour to work out why this was happening to me I have been avoiding computer screens as much as possible, and I also noticed that my neck felt sore and very tense. So I took myself off for a massage. Yep, she said my neck was extremely tense and gave it a good work over. It's taken me three days to get over the pain from the massage, but at least the migraines have stopped now and my neck isn't as tense anymore. My ankle that was hurt at work about three weeks ago is just a bit niggly, gonna take my ankle support thingy with me though to be safe. Now all I had to do was test out the new screen on my baby.

We went for a ride yesterday. The idea being to see what the screen is like, and for Terry to get a bit more used to his baby. He had it serviced last week, I was thinking that sheesh he bought it from a dealer, surely they would have done the basics, fluids and tires and you know that stuff. Oh no, they had done nothing! The guy we take our bikes to said he was disgusted at the state of the bike and would have been ashamed to have sold a bike in that condition. That was a shock to hear, but at least now we know someone we trust has looked at it and given him some TLC. Even so, no sooner had we started our ride than Terry pulled over. 'It's not running right' he said. Hmm not good, he decided to go on a bit further and see what happened. We were going for a bit of a ride round some of the back roads just out of town but Terry's bike just didn't seem to want to run right, so we turned back after only about 15km's.

I'd wanted to get some pics of all the new stuff, screen, highway bars and Terry's bike, in some nice little country scene but we just didn't get anywhere and wanted to get home before something really bad went wrong. I did get to feel the screen at about 90km/h and wheeeee, I love it. I can still feel a bit of breeze but no more gripping the handlebars like death so I don't get blown off the back of the bike. It's noisy, well noisier than without it, but not terribly loud. I also love the new highway bars ..

They're much more streamlined than the old ones were, so I don't feel like there are a couple of weights hanging off the sides of the bike counter balancing everything. I guess I hadn't noticed it with the old ones, but having ridden with the new ones on yesterday, I could feel the difference and cornering felt so much better. I had spotted these bars on a bike of one of the Shadow Riders who came to visit us last year, and I also saw his bike go over onto the bar when he forgot to put his stand down .. I know that these bars also catch the bike nicely. Unlike my old bars that actually seemed to roll the bike further over. Don't get me wrong they protected everything they were supposed to protect, but there was once when I dropped the bike on a cambered road and I thought it was just going to keep rolling on those bars til she ended up on her handlebars.



So today, the first thing we did was take Terry's bike to our mechanic. We had a good talk to him about what it was doing, he thinks it might be something to do with the manual choke and reckons that will be an easy fix. Yay! He's also going to check out a noise that the bike only makes when we first start it in the morning. To do this he has to wait til the bike cools down, so we'll go back this afternoon to pick him up, here's hoping we'll get good news all round.

Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be packing right now! I'm not. I'm going shopping in a minute, there's stuff I need. Then I might spend the afternoon procrastinating a little bit more. It just feels so nice to be pain free at the moment, and I still have two more days to pack .. plenty of time :)