Saturday morning, I was planning on going for a long ride because I was going over to Orlando in the evening for the Parrotheadfest. Instead, I decided to clean Saki's chain and lube it up. I had a new chain cleaner by Motul, and I've been waiting to use it. Chain maintenance is pretty important to performance as well as the well being of your bike. If you don't do it, you will be sorry. The picture to the right was after I had the chain good and clean. I wanted to let all the cleaner evaporate before putting the lube on. I had ordered a new chain lube by Motul, but the sender accidentally sent me another can of the chain cleaner. Good thing the cleaner worked out really well. You can see that the chain is a nice silver color as opposed to its usual black. Eventually I will get a new chain. I'm going to go with red of course. I don't see any reason to do it right now. New chains run a little over $100 dollars, so I can wait it out. I have a few more things that are a little higher on the priority list. Oh, this actually gets us to the reason for the title. See that white monstrosity holding Saki up. That's the old tire stand that my ukulele teacher gave me. Don't get me wrong by calling it monstrosity. I am truly grateful for it. It has been one of the most useful tools in my arsenal. I have used it countless times already, and will use it countless times more. That being said, it needed a bit of a facelift, so Saturday became Project Day.
After I was done with Saki's chain maintenance. I started to disassemble the tire stand. That's it to the left in all it's barren glory. Since it was going to have a place in the Ultimate Motorcycle Lounge, it needed to look the part. Oh, did I mention that I changed the name of the ultimate motorcycle garage to UML? Well, I did. Since it's going to be more than just a garage, I needed a proper name for it. It will still be a working garage, but it's also going to be an area to watch TV, do things on the computer, and play ukulele and guitar. Seating will be limited, but it will be comfortable. Anyway, back to the project. I made a run to my local Lowe's to pick up some rattle can paint. I didn't need anything professional grade, I simply needed something to freshen up the old stand while it did it's work until retirement. That will be the day that I finally break down and get a Pitbull rear tire stand.After I got home, I made my old shed in the backyard a makeshift paint booth. I hung the stand from the rafters and got ready to paint. I'll post all the pictures of the process below, but I'll explain what I did right here. I started with the red, and used it as a kind of base coat, and accent color. I managed to get just about a full two coats out of the one can. I didn't need it perfect, because I was going to paint black over top of most of it. I let that red sit over night to dry. It didn't' really need that long, but I had to get ready to head over to Orlando.
I got up this morning bright eyed and bushy tailed. I made a good breakfast because I made yesterday my "fast day". Worked out well. I headed out to the shed after and started taping off areas that I wanted to leave red. Once I had that done, and failed miserably at trying a little design element on it, I broke out the black paint. I got the first coat of black on, and got full coverage on it. I let that set for a few hours, and then hit it once again, and checked over everything to make sure I had no red peaking through. Once again, I let that sit for a couple of hours and ran my errands. After my errands and lunch I headed out to see how it looked. I don't think I could have improved on it any with my limited skills as a painter, and started stripping off the tape. I think it ended up looking pretty good.
You can see from the last picture, that I put the swingarm lifts back on as well as the wheels. Now for the piece de resistance. I got a shot of it next to Saki, and was pretty pleased with how well it matched up color wise with Saki. See for yourself.
Looks pretty good right? It's not exact but close enough that it now belongs in the Ultimate Motorcycle Lounge. Saki was pretty pleased with it, and so was I. It felt good to take something at do a little artistic magic to it, and put some new life into it.
Now for Parrotheadfest. I was meeting my friend at her house at 7, but since I had a little extra time to kill, I headed over to Cycle Gear. The closest one to me is in Orlando, and it is only a few miles from her house. I wanted to look for a couple of things. First on my list was a dark smoked visor for my Arai Helmet. I've noticed lately that when I ride in the middle of the day, that I was starting to get a little bit of an odd sun tan on my face because of the clear visor. I really wasn't expecting them to have one, but I'd take a shot. I walked in and a worker came up to me asking if I needed any help. Of course I do. I asked about the visor, and he took me straight to one. I was a little shocked. The next thing had a better chance of being there, and since my luck was pretty freaking good with the visor, I shot for the moon. I wanted a pair of gloves that had touch tech so that I could use the gloves on my phone. Sure enough, they had some. They are in black, which I don't really prefer, but I can't be too picky with something like this. I can use all my other gear to stand out and be seen by motorists. The guy was very helpful and definitely made me want to go back if I ever need anything else. I do have my eyes on an Alpinestars perforated jacket. Oh, I forgot to tell you what the gloves are. They are Alpinestars SMX-2 Air Carbon Gloves. I've always only worn Icon, and I do love my Icon gloves, but these Alpinestars are a different level. They are unbelievably comfortable, and even helped alleviate hand fatigue. I put them and the new visor through their paces today.
It was a fun ride today. I hit my favorite twisty spot to keep working on my ride position. The first time through was great. I hit the corners just right, and everything felt good. On the way back through though, I got in my head, and really messed up a couple of corners. I tired to hit the apex way too soon, and then got a case of target fixation. I was too busy looking at the danger area and not where I wanted to be. I blew it, but that is everything in learning.
On my way home, I made one last detour and hit a small twisty area near my work. The last corner is very tight and has a recommended speed limit of 15 MPH. I even think that speed may be a little too fast for cars.. That is how tight a corner it is. I made my final approach to the corner, and started my line. I didn't get into a good ride position because I was thrown off by a bike rider that was near the mouth of the corner. I had to hit my line a little tighter and didn't leave myself enough time to move over on the seat. I just threw the bike over and went for it. It was the deepest lean that I've ever gotten. If I had been in a good riding position. I would have been dragging my knee on the ground. It felt incredible. Despite my ride position, everything felt right. The only way I could describe the feeling is what a surfer says being in the tube feels like. Everything just slowed down. There was no sound, just a white noise that surrounded me. I cam out of the corner and the bike shot up ready for the next turn. I can't wait for that feeling again.
One last picture before I talk about Parrotheadfest. I know I've gotten out of order on this, but it's just the way it fell across the keys. I christened the new visor coming around one of the really fast corners in the twisties. I don't think you can really see it in the picture though. Whatever it was, it was big. I think by the contents that it might have been a water buffalo. Eveything that came out of it was clear, and it was right in my line of sight. Now that I'm looking at it there, you really can't see it. If you blow it up, you can see it to the bottom right. It came off pretty easy with my patented warm wet paper towel on the visor for about 5 minutes. That helps rehydrate all the crispy parts, so that it comes of nice and easy. I do like the looks of the helmet with the dark visor, I will find out tomorrow if it affects me when I ride into work in the morning. My HJC with the amber visor actually helps my vision at night, so maybe this will do the same. I'll let you know.
On to Parrotheadfest. As I mentioned before on here. Jimmy Buffett was going to be in Orlando. We were going to get tickets, but they were just too expensive. That didn't matter though. We were going to have our own party and listen to the show On Radio Margaritaville. That is one of the reasons why I got the JBL Charge 3 speaker. On Thursday I got an email from Youtube saying that JImmy's concert in North Carolina was being broadcast on Youtube. This was looking better and better. After my trek to Cycle Gear I headed over to her house. We got everything ready to go, and then checked the margaritaville website to see if it was going to be on Youtube. Sure enough it was. We set everything up. We had the TV warmed up, and the speaker paired up, and were ready to go.
My friend wanted to learn a little bit about Instagram stories, so she talked me into doing one last night. If you follow me, you had a chance to see it. This did some double duty, because I wanted her to learn about it, and I was also attempting her to start vlogging. The Instagram stories is a good springboard for it. It gives you the feel of being in front of the camera, and I think this will benefit her work with wildlife photography. I think it will be very interesting to see her tell the story about her hikes to where she takes all her pictures, and her followers will get a behind the scened view of the whole thing. I've promoted her here before, but if you hadn't seen her work, you can go here. She is very talented, and if she does start vlogging on her Youtube channel, I'm sure she will announce it there. Give her a follow, you won't regret it.
We weren't at the show, but we had a lot of fun. She has these two wonderful dogs, that I love to pieces, and we all sat around watching the show. I was a bit of a party pooper though, because I was only drinking my oversized bottle of water. I did decide one thing though, and it's going to sound odd with the whole no drinking thing. I am on the search for a neon sign that says "It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere". Now why would I do that. For one thing, I think it will look perfect in the Ultimate Motorcycle Lounge. For the other. that phrase doesn't have to be about drinking. It can be a philosophy. It's all about that attitude of just cutting loose and getting away from it all. Have a little fun every once and a while. That's what it means to me, so that is why the search is on. The UML will not be complete until I find that sign.
I have one more thing for you tonight. I mentioned on Thursday about enneagrams, and that I would announce my type tonight. Here is the link to the descriptions of the types. When I first read through all the different types and the short descriptions, I figured I would come out as either a 2 or a 6. I wasn't wrong, well not completely. I came out as 9. 9 takes on traits from all the other types. If you click on each small description of each type, you will get a more in-depth description, that will tell you little hints on how to deal with the bad side of each type. It turns out, that I have been doing those things. They have made a big difference on how I deal with depression and anxiety. I still have small panic attacks from time to time, but as for the depression, I hanse't gone down the rabbit hole in some time. In the past, I would think that that meant I was in for a big fall. In the past that was right, but I feel different about that now. I don't feel like that big fall is coming, and that is a fantastic feeling. Give it a chance and find a test to take. As I said on Thursday, in order to take the test on that site, you have to pay for it. There are several free tests out there, just find one that you like. It may change the way you see yourself.
I just remembered one more thing I wanted to take about, but I will save that for Tuesday. It's about the future of my Instagram, and where I'm planning on going with it, but I've given you enough for thought tonight. Peace in and goodnight.
It was a great Parrotheadfest! :-)
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