Miscellaneous musings

I had a great time with more of my Florida friends last night over a few pints of ale at Liam's pub. I have made some friends for life in my 4 years here. I hope some of them can come and visit me in Omaha while I am there.

My friends Andrew and Jayne gave me a very nice numbered bottle of Fuller's Vintage Ale. I will save that for a special occasion, maybe Christmas Day. Thank you :=)

Hey Scottie the Canuck. I owe you BIG TIME for last night at Liam's. Man oh man did you come through in the clutch! YOWZA!

I saw my buddy Cap'n Jim blazing across the clear blue Florida sky this morning in his Aeronca Champ airplane. What a cool sound that plane makes. It is instantly recognizable.

My friend "MM" the Enforcer in Omaha sent me a cool picture. He plays a game called Forza 3 on the Xbox360. He bought the force-feedback wheel and built a platform for it out of pvc and some shelving. He uses the new Alfa Romeo 8c as his car in the game and says he always finishes well. Quite fitting that an Alfa does well in the races!

Award winning Guzzi designs

Moto Guzzi was awarded the very prestigious Motorcycle Design Association award at the 2009 EICMA motorcycle show in Europe. The award was for three prototype bikes that Guzzi showed. Certainly a departure from what we are used to seeing from Guzzi and maybe a glimpse into their future.

Link to award article

Kid Guzzi in daycare

Today my friend Andrew and I visited a local daycare. You see this is "transportation week" at the day care. Every day a different mode of transport is featured for the kiddies to see and experience. Yesterday they had a helicopter land in their parking lot! A tough act to follow for certain.

So today was motorcycle day. We showed up, me on my Guzzi and Andrew choosing his Ducati Monster from his stable of bikes. We rode around the parking lot as the younguns watched with glee and perhaps some with terror.

Then we pull up next to the chain link fence they were all safely tucked behind and I ended with a flourish, revving the bike a few times. An unfortunate decision as it sparked a fit of crying by several youngsters, but they recovered eventually.

After that Andrew gave a most intriguing dissertation on his Ducati and the little grublets were spellbound. We passed our helmets over the fence and the bravest of the lot had a go at trying them on their tiny heads. Quite funny and they loved it.

Several of them reached their tiny paws though the fence to feel my leather jacket and give me high fives and handshakes. All in all a very enjoyable visit and the tikes loved it.

After wards we rode down the street for a coffee and were followed into the lot by one of Lake Mary's finest...a policeman. Uh oh, what did we do?! Well it turns out nothing...he was just intrigued by our bikes and we chatted on for about 30 minutes with him. He was a motorcycle officer for Lake Mary for 5 years and is an avid motorcyclist. What a cool way to spend the morning off!

Kinda neat

I thought this was kinda neat on my ride into work today. As I was rolling down I4 on the Guzzi Stelvio, the little red caution triangle appeared on the dash. I was like "oh crap, what is this?!" Quickly thereafter the little symbol in the pic below showed on the LCD display. The bike was telling me that my right front turn signal bulb had burned out. Pretty cool!

IDA heading my way...

Looks like lotsa rain and maybe some wind are heading my way the next couple days as Tropical Storm Ida is forecast to head toward central Florida

Cracked Goose

So a couple weeks ago I was washing my Guzzi Stelvio and I happened to notice that the right fork pinch bolt clamp area at the axle was sheered clean through. Very discouraging. This clamp helps to hold the front fork to the front axle of the bike. I guess it is kind of important :=0

I started to wonder how long had it been like that and what were the consequences of riding the bike in this state. Of course I felt it unsafe to ride. I went back and started looking at pictures I had taken of the bike previously but could not find one which showed the clamp area clearly.

However today I found one that my friend Andrew had taken back in September, when I had organized a ride your bike to work day. After zooming in on the picture he took, I could clearly see that the right fork pinch bolt clamp area at the axle was sheered through as far back as then!

That means that I rode the bike to Birmingham, AL and back and of course to work and back numerous times and weekend rides as well on the broken clamp. I figure probably at least 1500 miles were covered if not more. Indeed the clamp MAY have been broken when I picked up the bike in Ohio, some 3000 miles ago.

Here are a couple pics showing the cracked clamp and a yellow circle highlighting the location of the clamp on the bike.

Since I have made it this far, it is obvious that the good, sweet Lord above has been watching over me so I will resume riding the bike again in its state of disrepair.

Cooped

Getting all this packing done and stuff disassembled has forced me to be stuck indoors for the most part lately. This morning I think I will head out into the beautiful Florida day for a walk and then maybe wash the cars. Then come back inside this afternoon and at least I can watch some NFL while I am working inside.