Well, after over three years of motorcycling, I finally dropped a bike.

My R1150R doesn’t have a choke, but it has an ignition helper doo-dad that is used to help the motorcycle start on cold days like today. You pull that doo-dad up and start the bike. I always leave my bikes in first gear when they are on the side stand to prevent rolling. One should not have the bike in gear when using said doo-dad because the bike will lurch forward.

I engaged the clutch and toed the shifter into neutral — just in time to feel the bike roll slightly forward. The side stand folded up, and the bike started to tip over on its left side. I held Raider up for a heartbeat and remembered how much I’d hurt myself keeping my K1200LTE upright. My calf is still damaged, over six months later. I tried to lower the bike as gently as possible, but the 600-pound bike got the best of me and dropped the last two inches or so.

“Fuck,” I muttered, and immediately looked around to see if my neighbors saw me. Whew, no one was outside. I took my helmet off and snuggled my butt up against the seat, hoping to use my legs to push the bike upright. It seemed so easy in the YouTube videos I saw of people doing it with the (much) larger K bikes.

The R1150R, even with the side cases and engine guard, was too low to the ground for me to get squared away. I could push the bike sideways across the ground, but that wasn’t going to help me lift it. I was going to be late for work if I didn’t act fast. I called upon the spirit of P90 fitness guru Tony Horton. I bent my knees low, squared my back, and pulled the bike upright with a deadlift. I got the bike up high enough to extend the sidestand. I was still for just a moment to make sure I hadn’t pulled something. I seemed okay, so I put my helmet back on, started the bike, and got the fuck on the road.

Total damage: not much. Raider’s first master had dropped the bike in his driveway, too, so there were some pre-existing scuffs on the left side case and engine crash guard. I know for sure I added a new abrasion to the left mirror and the left hand guard. I doubt people would notice the damage unless I pointed it out, and it is all cosmetic.

Apparently I didn’t extend the side stand all the way after getting home from my trip to Tybee Island. I was cold and wet and ready to get off of the bike, and was probably careless. This is how most low/no-speed accidents happen. People get sloppy and forget to put the side stand down at a gas station, or don’t watch where they put their feet and slip on wet leaves.

My life’s motto is “it could always be worse,” and today that was certainly true. My friend Bond said this morning, “you got that out of the way for another three years.”

Here’s to hoping he’s right.

I saw this on TeamXbox today. A new iteration of Call of Duty, a first person shooter video game franchise, is due out later this year. This particular version of the game is set in World War II.

Question: Given the glut of WWII-themed games, how do you keep the excitement level high?

Answer: Zombies.

Bonus points: Nazi zombies.
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Here’s a fun little quiz to break up my motorcycling gibber-jabber: How many miles per gallon does your body get?
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The first half of my ride home from Georgia was great. I was moving along at a good clip, and the sun was bright and shining.

That is, until I got to Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Fayetteville seems to be the tipping point for bad motorcycle weather. On my trip down, my route south of Fayetteville was completely covered by rain. I guess the northern part of my return trip got jealous and wanted to get in on the “fun.”

It rained non-stop, and hard, all the way home. It wasn’t as bad as my trip down, but it was a soaking rain. Paranoid (and hopefully wiser) from my gear problems on the way down, I adjusted my waterproofing strategy slightly.
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As mentioned earlier, I spent four days on a motorcycle trip to see two of my friends outside of Savannah, Georgia. It’s almost five hundred highway miles, which winds up being between eight to nine hours depending on traffic, weather conditions, and the bike I’m on. My best time was on my first trip on my FZ6 because I had great weather and a very comfortable saddle.

This time I took Raider, my BMW R1150R. In theory, it should have been the best of both of my trips: the comfort of my old K1200LTE touring bike, and the mobility of Cylon. Thanks to the weather and an extremely hard seat, it was really the worst of both worlds.

But I still had a kick ass time. ;)
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The first half of my trip down to Georgia was fantastic. It was cool enough that I wasn’t hot in my Rev’It Cayenne Pro jacket, but not so cold my hands were freezing. It was overcast enough that I didn’t have to squint behind my Native sunglasses, but not so overcast that I had to worry about rain.

That is, until I got to Fayetteville, North Carolina. Then the sky opened up. It didn’t stop until I reached Savannah, some 280 miles later.

What followed was a near total failure of every piece of waterproof motorcycling gear that I owned. Am I being too harsh?
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Yesterday I rode Raider, my BMW R1150R down to Savannah, Georgia to hang out with some friends of mine. I took I-95 for most of the way. Eventually I will take a less-traveled route and enjoy myself, but I like making this trip all in one day.

I have been pleasantly surprised at how courteous cars are on the highway. I think it’s because the majority of drivers this time of year are elderly snowbirds, driving south for the winter. They tend to stick to the right hand lane, and I pass them with ease. Every once in awhile, though, you get an asshole behind the wheel.
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I was supposed to go visit my family up in Syracuse, NY this weekend. I was going to ride Raider up there and then putter around with my stepfather. I quickly encountered two monkey wrenches.

1) The bike my dad owned does not have a state inspection. Neither does Raider, but he won’t ride without a 100% legal bike. So a paired ride is out of the picture.

2) It is supposed to rain the entire time I am there. The thing about Syracuse is that the temperature could drop at any time. I’d go from rain to snow in a hurry. Who wants to be caught in that?

So, tell me what you’d choose:
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I don’t know if it was a seasonal thing. Maybe something about the cooling temperatures that softened my resolve. Maybe the glut of puppies after paw-paws and babymamas got it on in the summer heat. Whatever the reason, I adopted Porter and Rosie almost a year apart from each other.

Happy adopt-a-versary, little Rosie. You’re not the youngest gal in the house any more, but you’re still the princess.

Please don’t let the giant eat me.

I have to moderate posts from new visitors the very first time they make a comment. Once their initial comment is approved, they can post as much as they want. So far, this has worked out okay, and no one has abused the comment functionality.

I use the Akismet plug-in for WordPress, the blogging software Gibberish uses. It blocks most of the automated spam, but I still get about five or six comments a day that I have to manually mark as spam.

Over the last three months, I have been getting a new type of semi-spam comment. A comment will appear for moderation, and it looks like a real comment. In fact, it might be a real comment. The poster will comment about a game I’ve reviewed, or a product, or about riding my motorcycles. I even approved one once, only to find the poster commenting on random things that I wrote months or a year ago.

Then I started looking at the Web site addresses the poster used as part of their identification. It changed from post to post, but it always advertised a gateway for a product. It wasn’t a store or e-tailer. It wasn’t another blog. It was a gateway designed to appear high in search results by keyword bombing popular terms. They also get higher rankings by being linked to by other sites — such as in a blog’s comment section. A search engine like Google searches Gibberish, picks up the gateway Web address via the poster’s name, and boom the gateway site goes up in Google’s rankings.

To a lesser extent, have not approved comments from people who were just out to troll. I don’t mind people who have a different opinion from mine, but a dissenting comment has to at least add value to the post. “You are stupid” may be true, but it does not add anything to the discussion.

So, here are some new policies on comments:
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