Gummiente's Blog!

[BuzZz]

Your gonna end up having to buy another Ural for Angie to stave off the winter wait and her new Soft tail.

[Gummiente]

Your gonna end up having to buy another Ural for Angie to stave off the winter wait and her new Soft tail.

Her tolerance to cold weather riding is significantly less than mine.... but I'm hiding the key to my Ural just in case.

[BuzZz]

Very prudent.... temptation can raise cold-tolerance to an amazing degree.

[Mckenzie223]

it POURED down on me and got my bike all dirty again.

"POURED" is a lot more reasonable than what the others suggested.

[Gummiente]

Another great winter ride today! Read all about it here.

This will probably be my last entry in this blog... unless some Harley-basher gets the better of me and I let loose with a rant here ...as most of my ramblings are now contained in the Ural Blog on my website. In the spring when I get the Harley back on the road I'll be setting up a blog for it on my website as well, so there's not much point in duplicating all the entries here. Thanks to all who have read my entries and I hope you'll continue check my website for further updates.

[Gummiente]

Had my first close call of the year today, courtesy of some airhead in a Ford Expedition. Hector and I went for a ride to Kingston this morning and as we were leaving the city to head back home, we came up to the main intersection by the Army base. We had the green and there were a few cars lined up on our right, waiting to exit the base and turn left. The Expedition was first in line and for some reason decided to jump the light as we entered the intersection, pulling right out in front of us. I hammered the brakes and the Ural nosed down, front tire howling. I could see the driver look towards me and immediately stop, giving me an escape route around the front. As I passed by the grille of that huge SUV, I saw her whack the gearshift up into park and go for the ignition, obviously having stalled it (how the hell do you stall an automatic, anyway?). She looked up and saw my face, then started flapping her hands about and mouthing "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" over and over.

I must be getting soft now that I'm in my mid-40's, because I just shook my head and rode away. Normally a stunt like that would have been grounds for a least a one-fingered salute and several choice epithets, but I guess I was in just too good of a mood despite her trying to kill me. Hector wasn't too amused with the sudden panic braking, as he had slid right up into the nose of the hack and had to wiggle himself back after we had resumed speed.

So: Ural 1, Cagers 0. The game continues...

Later on we went for a ride with Angie following on her Harley. We stopped by an old farmhouse where she took this photo of Hector and I on the Ural:

[jstark47]

Thanks to all who have read my entries and I hope you'll continue check my website for further updates.

Mike- the only problem with this plan is I check in at TMW 'most every day. You have a great website and all, but I might check it out maybe once every 2 or 3 months. I'm just more likely to read your blog if you post it here than elsewhere.

Just a suggestion, and I don't know if it will pass muster with the people in charge at TMW, but when you put a new entry on your site, at least post a note or reminder in your blog here?

Jonathan

[Gummiente]

Thanks J, I appreciate the comment about my website. The reason I stopped posting here was because my blog entries were mostly Ural related, so I thought it better to just ramble on about them on my own website. Didn't seem right or fair to the TMW crew for me to post a link here whenever it was updated there and I wasn't keen on doing a "cut and paste" every time, either.

I made the post about this close call because I figured it was relevant to all motorcycles, even though it happened on the Ural. But now that spring is here and the Harley is finally getting equal attention I might post tidbits from my daily adventures on it here instead of making another blog page for it on my website.

[Gummiente]

Well, this will be a crappy weekend. Nothing but heavy rain in the forecast for today and Sunday and if that isn't bad enough, I'm also on-call for work. If something breaks, I'll have to go in and fix it and will have to take the "procreating" cage because the rain is too heavy for even the Ural.

Guess I'll just stay at home and putter about doing updates to my blog and website.

[jstark47]

Same down here. Been raining for almost 24 hours non-stop. Gotta rain sometime, I suppose...