Squidley's Home on the Web

Bike on Ebay

2006-02-11T21:00:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally took the plunge and put the zx6 on ebay....hopefully I'll get a little bit more than I need to do the trade for the zx11, but I don't know. I've already got a bid on it and a lurking bidder(maybe). I guess in about 6 days 10 hrs I'll know where I stand on the zx11.

I was on the fence for a while about the zx6, but I decided that I wanted the zx11 even though it's probably not a great financial decision. I don't guess that a motorcycle should ever be a logical decision though. Hopefully Terri and Mikey will at least give riding on the back a try this year. I am hoping that this year I can get in a lot of miles on the bike and maybe even a few all day rides to nowhere in particular.

I went into work for about 5 hrs today and managed to get enough pictures of the zx6 for the ebay listing and get the oven reinsulated for burning out armatures. We're still working on getting proper offices finished up before the month is out...or at least all the walls up and getting a start on the electrical.

Tomorrow I'm picking up yet another snowblower to tinker around with and hopefully get running good enough to put over at my sister in laws. Probably gonna do some spring cleaning around the house too. On the way home from work the alternator in the work truck took a dump on me, but I'm not that worried about it...gonna pull the battery out and charge it up good and try to get it back to the shop to fix it on monday. Anyways that's my life this week in a nutshell :)

Nonsense Post

2006-01-23T18:27:00.000-08:00

Well, I thought I would get around to posting something on my blog, but don't have anything in particular to talk about. Winter started coming back a little bit this week and I'm having a hard time with wanting to ride a motorcycle again. I realize that usually in this area we don't get to ride until April, but I've been reading about riding a lot lately and the weather isn't the usual freezing cold that takes the desire out of my blood.

As far as what bike I'm going to be riding this season that's still in the air. I haven't gotten a yes or a no from the prospective buyer yet, so I can't commit on buying the zx11. I can't stop thinking about it a lot because I'm getting the itch to do a little tinkering with the bike that I'm gonna be riding before the season starts. I'm notorious for letting things go during the season so that I can get more seat time, so an early start with the little tinkering would be a good thing.

I walk by the zx6 and see the bubbled paint on the footpegs and I want to take them off and polish them up for hours and look at maybe setting them back a little bit to give the bike a little bit more aggressive riding position. I look at the scratched side of the bike and I want to take a buffer and some rubbing compound to it and try to remove most of the little ones and see just how much work it would be to make it look new. I've priced the broken inner fairing pieces and there really not that expensive. I think I could make the bike look good enough with just a little bit of elbow grease, but I don't wanna start attacking stuff until I know whether it's gonna stay mine or not.

I walk by the zx11 and I want to get the rear tire up in the air and flip over the axle so that it sits higher in the back. I also want to start looking at the sidestand to see if I can get it tightened up enough so that it doesn't interfere with the shifter linkage causing it to be hard to downshift. I got some bulbs for the instrument panel so that I can see them at night. I wanna take a good look at the oil pressure sending unit to see if I can keep the oil light and fuel lights from blinking sporadically on deceleration. I also want to get the rear tire changed out with one that the current owner had laying around( the one on there now is flat and down to the cords in the center of the tire). Basically I just want to get acquainted with the zx11 if it becomes mine so that I can feel pretty good riding it this season.

Work has started picking up which is actually pretty ironic seeing as how half of our work force is out on a combination of vacation and medical leaves. One guy is back in cuba with his sons, one guy had all his teeth pulled and will show up with dentures the next time that we see him, and one guy managed to drop his vehicle off a jackstand so that it landed on his leg a bit. We have a lot of little projects that we've been working on including new offices that take a lot of time away from production. I'm gonna try to get at least one thing a day done so that they don't all pile up on us.

Home is pretty good actually, though I wouldn't mind it if the yards would dry up so that we could do a little straightening up when the weather is above freezing. I want to go through some of our packrat belongings over the spring and summer to cut down the clutter around the house a little at a time. I want to try and get the shed moved back up on it's blocks and the doors fixed up a bit over the spring and summer. I might have to put a new floor in it to make it stable enough to stay up on the blocks, but it would still be cheaper than building a new one. I also want to get the bathroom floor fixed permanently...right now I have some plywood over the floor that got ruined with plumbing problems, but I would like to fix it up properly if money and time permit.

Hmmmm....I guess that's pretty much it for now.....guess I should get off the computer so that maybe I could get some of this stuff done instead of talking about it :)

January Ride

2006-01-15T16:46:00.000-08:00

Well, against all odds I was able to shake the dust off my motorcycle and get a short little ride in on Friday. We just went about a mile or so down the road to a deli for lunch. I was with my buddy from work that has the zx11 that I am trying to buy off him. He was riding his zx10r and he basically took my bike away for the trip back and I was left with the zx10. My leg barely cleared the tail of the bike and I had to go searching for the footpegs and reassure myself that I could actually reach those clip ons way down there.

My first impression with the bike was how precise that the throttle is. This was the first fuel injected motorcycle that I have ridden and it took me a little to get used to how precise you needed to be on the throttle. Before he took off he told me to twist the throttle and get a feel for the power of the bike. Once underway I was impressed with how immediate that the steering was on the bike and how easily it moved from side to side. I took it easy around a traffic circle and noticed that you couldn't see anything in the mirrors, but then again with that much power on tap you really only had to look way far ahead of you :) I stopped at a light and when it went green I rolled into the throttle and snicked it into 2nd and whacked open the throttle and was rewarded with a burst of speed. Before long I was back at the shop and left with a feeling that I would like to taste the throttle on that bike some more on some less traveled roads farther away from the police.

Friday was also pretty good because I have a prospective buyer for the zx6, which takes a load off my mind about coming up with a way to pay for the zx11 I've mentioned before. I'll find out soon if they are interested(a guy that started last week wants a bike for his wife to ride). It's kind of hard to think of the bike that gave me almost 15k miles of enjoyment as a perfect starter bike for a female, but in reality it is well suited to that task. The seating height is low enough so that she won't be tippy toeing at traffic lights, the power is located in the upper rpm range with a rider friendly midrange that doesn't hold any surprises. One of the things that I liked about the bike the most was that it doesn't do anything to shake your confidence no matter how close to the limit that you are.

Of course today the weather is really cold (the usual cny weather for this time of year)....right now it's 9 degrees outside which makes the 60 degrees that it was on friday seem like a distant memory. I am hoping the spring gets here fairly early so that I can get more riding in this season before winter comes back to ruin the fun. Last season I only got a few hundred miles in because of my back problems which I hopefully can keep at bay this season. To make the longing a little more urgent I picked up a copy of Leanings at Barnes and Noble friday night. I love Peter Egan's articles and he is the reason that I subscribe to Cycle World. I'm almost halfway through the book already and will probably be 2/3 done by later tonight.

Come on spring I wanna ride darnit :)

Holiday and Stuff

2005-11-27T13:50:00.000-08:00

Well, this year we got to celebrate Thanksgiving with just the 3 of us which was a good thing. My wife's birthday was on thanksgiving this year(that must be a pain in the butt)...happy birthday to you. We spent the weekend break kind of like a vacation would be like if I ever took one.

I'm pretty sure that I'm gonna be riding the zx11 next season and selling off my zx6 to pay for it. It's the bike that I've wanted since they built the first one in 1990...as luck would have it it's a 1991 model just like the one that I rode in 94 that a friend of mine had. I guess some things are just meant to be.

As for my back problems I've decided to stop with the physical therapy and just try going to a gym to keep from falling apart again. I was just seeing less and less benefit from going and spending 20 bucks a visit for the privilege. I'm thinking if I keep my weight in check and keep stretching I'll be ok for a while. I guess time will tell huh :)

Anyways that is pretty much all I am thinking about at the moment...course I do have to get my tranny ready for a spring install, and there's always the what do we get for who for the holidays...dang I hate that stuff :(

A Weekend of the 11

2005-11-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

Well, I brought the zx11 home to show the family and get some miles under my butt with it. I think the bike is made for the way that I ride, though I'm not sure that I need a bike with that much power, but since when is riding a motorcycle a logical thing. For those of you who don't know what a zx11 is it's a motorcycle that is capable of going 176 mph and running the 1/4 mile in mid the mid 10's. The previous owner "pimped" it a bit, but nothing some goo gone won't take care of. It has a few problems right now, but I don't think that they are that serious. Here's another shot of the back of the bike:

Notice how the exhaust system on it is raised up from the stock location and the tips point directly to the rear.... I think it gives the bike a nice clean look in the rear and it helps with ground clearance.

I thoroughly enjoyed riding the zx11 and if I can find a buyer for my current bike come this spring I'll be riding this bike all the time.

It's a Pain in the......well, actually....

2005-10-16T20:31:00.000-07:00

I've been doing Physical Therapy for a couple of weeks now...I think 4 visits so far. My back is feeling a bit better, but not sure how much has to do with PT and how much has to do with time passing. I'm back to walking around at a slow crawl at work instead of having to catch a ride on a forklift to get from one side of the shop to the other. I just started the stretching of my legs at my saturday PT, which has actually made me feel a little bit more sure about my legs going to stay under me. I will be getting on the traction table tomorrow..so hopefully that will make me feel even better.

Looks like the weather is going to be pretty crappy this week...rain every day of the week....at least it's not snow I guess. I'm still hoping that I'll be able to catch a day that I feel good enough to ride my bike before the winter really sets in. I doubt that's going to happen, but you never know.

As for the title of this installment....it actually hurts at the top of my backside when my back catches....so it's litterally a pain in the butt :) The MRI showed 2 herniated discs on top of and below L4 vertebrae and some signs of spinal stenosis. Kind of makes my PT a little weird because they try to bend you one way for herniated discs and the other way for spinal stenosis. go figure that I would have two things going on at the same time that you treat by doing opposite things. Anyway I guess I better get to bed soon or I'll feel like garbage all day tomorrow.

Doctor Visit and Weekly Recap

2005-09-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I took off half a day today and went to the doctor's office for a consultation about my back problem. Looks like my nerves in my legs are getting pinched a bit, but hopefully with a little physical therapy I'll be able to get back to being mobile again. I've been slowly but surely getting worse with my mobility...getting into the shop is a pain in the butt because I have a heck of a time with stairs now. I've fallen twice in a slow mo kind of way this week going up the stairs. One time was just me putting my knee down on the step so that I could regain my balance. The second time the limb of the bush that I was holding onto came loose and threw me off balance.

In the shop I've been taking over the forklift for my travel. I drive it into the office to within a few feet of my desk and out to the shop to talk to the guys. Most steps that I've taken at any one time this week was about 150 ft. I'm good for about 20-30 ft as long as the ground is even under my feet because I can't use my ankles to balance my weight. I'm basically walking like a 90 year old man right now. Hopefully they'll get me into the MRI soon next week so that I can find out exactly what's going on with my back and I can try and start physical therapy.

Speaking of 90 year olds, there was a nice older lady in the doctors office that had a great saying for how she was feeling when the nurse asked her, "Well, I'm still above the grass..." thought that was a really good way of describing a week that evidently included a trip to the hospital for some stitches after a fall.....That would pretty much describe my week to a T, but then it could be worse...I could have had something more serious wrong with me.

Anyways, I am gonna get going....talk to ya later

Sherman

Back Pain, Sore Legs, and Stuff

2005-09-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

Well, my back still hurts, my legs don't seem able to hold me up when I'm walking, and I get tired just walking down the hall. I actually feel better than I did on Friday, but I still get frustrated pretty easy. I worked on one of the many lawn mowers that my wife has collected over the weekend and I had to sit on a cooler beside my truck box with my tools in it just to do that. It's a real pain in the butt knowing that the tool you need is sitting in the truck and you don't want to spend 10 minutes getting up and walking over to the truck to get it. Instead I made due with what I had :) I'm still trying to decide whether to see a doctor, a chiropractor, or a physical therapist. My back pain is different this time because it doesn't hurt all the time, but both of my legs are really weak and I have very limited control over my ankles. I want to rule out anything "really bad" being wrong with my back which requires a doctor, but I think that a physical therapy or chiropractor would be quicker to make me feel better(that is if something bad isn't wrong with my back :)

I guess this coming week will see me making an appointment with my primary doctor who hopefully I can get a copy of some recent x rays so that he can get a good idea of what my back problem looks like. That's going to be my primary mission for the first part of the week....to get a copy of my xrays from a few years ago. If that happens then I'll try and get in to see my doctor by the middle of the week to see what he might recommend. Hopefully by seeing the doc and deciding what to do I'll feel better by the end of the week. I'd love to be able to walk again comfortably by the end of the week or even after the weekend. That might be a little too much to ask for, but might as well have a worthwhile goal.

I finally made the decision on the zx11. Amazingly enough I'm gonna pass on it. My zx6 is enough bike for me at the moment. It's not the best or fastest bike around, but as many people have said " it's not the bike that makes the difference it's the rider" I still have some rust to get off my riding skills, so I might as well use a nice comfortable bike to do it with. Besides, I can't even get on or off my zx6 at the moment so it's kind of a moot point about getting something faster. Anyways, as Forrest Gump said "That's good! One less thing to worry about......"

Talk at ya Later

Thought I'd check in after a weird week

2005-09-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't posted in a little while....mainly because my back has been acting up again....doesn't feel too bad right now, but my right leg is just about useless. I seem to have lost the use of my right angle so I have to flop my foot into position to accept the weight when I walk...I'm assuming that I've overworked the right leg trying to keep moving while my back is acting up so I'm gonnna try to limit how many steps that take for the weekend to see if rest will do it some good.

Probably the worst part of the back problems is that I haven't been able to ride my bike the last few days. I struggled to get my right leg over the bike and didn't use my rear brake for 2 days, but after having to try 3 times to get my leg over the bike on Wednesday morning I had to leave the bike at work and drive the company truck for the last part of the week. Luckily my boss understands me leaving the bike inside the building.

On the bike change that I've been going through is getting more complicated. I know that I want to get a zx11 and now my buddy at work has 2 that he got a hold of and is willing to let me work a trade with him swapping parts between them to get one that is ready to ride. I will hopefully feel better at the beginning of the week so that I can go and take a gander at the bikes and see if the magic that the zx11 had 12 years ago still is as good as it used to be.

Anyways that's just a little bit of what has been going on since my last post.....don't want to ruin the new reboot for the mrs and tie up the puter because she wants to get her blog ready for fall :) Talk at ya later

Sherman

Decisions Decisions!!! OY!!!!

2005-09-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm still pondering the decision that I have to make on whether or not to trade up to a zx11 or not. I thought that I had pretty much decided that I would go through with the deal, but after riding my bike to work and talking it over with my boss and the friend that has the zx11 he doesn't want. About 90 percent of the decision was made before the ride into work, but after talking it over I'm around 50 percent sure....maybe a little less.

Herein lies the problem.....I've owned my zx6 since it was new and I've covered many a back road with it in the years that I've owned it. I tend to get attached to vehicles over time and I'm having a little bit of trouble letting go of what I have with the zx6. I'm not the typical sport bike jockey in that I don't get that aggressive on the street and usually set my turn entry speed up nice and early and focus instead on being smooth as possible. The zx6 is a very good bike for the 70 percent skill level that I ride at for the most part, but I don't get that scared feeling in the pit of my gut when accelerating that I got out of a zx11 in the past. I can't really describe the feeling to someone who hasn't ridden a bike, but it's an exhilarating feeling controlling something that isn't easily contained. On a twisty enough road me riding my zx6 would ride away from me riding on a zx11.

I keep thinking that I could get a new set of sticky tires and a 1 down 2 up sprocket set to get a little more torque at the wheel to make if feel racier(Kinda like putting a band aid on a gaping chest wound, but oh well). Like I said above I'm having a hard time letting go of my trusty zx6.

Talk at ya later!

Sherman

Gas Prices Oh My!

2005-09-05T16:13:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally couldn't stand what it was costing my employer for gas in the company truck that I drive to and from work. I filled it up last Tuesday on a gas sale at 2.58 a gallon and by Wednesday gas had gone up to 3.09. As it stands right now gas at that same gas station is at 3.29 a gallon, so for the next few weeks I'm going to be riding my zx6 into work to save some money for the company. It will only cost about 10 bucks a week as opposed to almost 80 a week for the truck.

Come winter I'll be stuck driving the company truck anyway, but hopefully some of the ridiculous price gouging that the gas stations are getting away with will calm down by late fall. I can't believe that we as consumers put up with this kind of stuff from the gas companies. We should just take control of Iraq's oil supply until we pay ourselves back for the cost of the war and pump it back home. The hell with OPEC....you want to do a war on terrorism then you should be going after those folks. What other commodity has a group that controls the world's supply and the prices and can drastically affect both in a short amount of time. I guess we just have to put up with it until our government finally gets wise to OPEC and starts messing with their monopoly. If groups like greenpeace and the other tree huggers would just shut the hell up and let us drill oil on our land and water to provide for our own needs.

Don't get me wrong I'm more than happy to ride my bike to and from work. If I could I'd ride my bike everywhere that I can for as long as I can. I just don't like that some group in another country has such control over what I pay for gas. Anyways I guess that's enough raving from me for one day. Talk at ya later!

Sherman

Finally starting a blog

2005-09-04T23:28:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been being pestered for quite some time now by the wife about having a blog and I guess I will give this thing a try. I haven't been able to make a website that I like for very long even cheating and using frontpage to make it. I got involved in the internet in 1991 while going to college, but didn't start with webpages until a few years later.

I might as well introduce myself properly. My name is Sherman and I live in Syracuse, NY where I'm the supervisor at an electric motor remanufacturer. My main hobbies are motorcycles and my 1963 chevy truck....nope I'm not 63 years old I'm just a fan of that year's vintage (both my wife and my truck were born in the same year :) I was born and raised in a small town in northwest arkansas and attended college for a few years in Fayetteville, AR. I moved to Syracuse after I met my wife in a chat room.

My current motorcycle is a 1997 Kawasaki ZX600E5 that I've owned since it was new. I just recently got it back out of storage after finally paying off my house. I'm getting used to it again and am wondering how I ever managed to get through the days without it. The problem I'm facing right now is a friend of mine from work has a ZX11 that he is willing to let me have at a decent price. It needs a little work, but I've wanted one of those bikes since riding one back in 1994 or so.

Anyways, I guess I'll have to figure out this blog thing some more before my next post :) Talk at ya later.

Sherman