Ridin on my Yamaha Chromed out 1100...

Okay, so it's a Honda, not a Yamaha. Come to think of it, does Yamaha make an 1100 sportbike? I don't think so. Well, anyways, that jumps us into todays post. How I spent my free weekend...

I went home Friday night and a few friends came by to have a few beers and watch some TV. We went to Los Tios for dinner which was lovely. They left around 12:30 that night and I crashed very soon afterwards. Not a very exciting Friday at all.

Saturday morning I got up at the crack of noon. It was raining outside so I knew it would make for a pretty boring day. Little did I know what was about to unfold. Surprises, bad news, big mistakes, the whole nine yards. All this unfolds from a gloomy, rainy, day. It wasn't raining hard, and I noticed a while back that my chain is in desperate need of tightening, so I called the bike shop to see if I could bring it by that day. They told me the sooner I got there the better, so I toughed it out and rode it to the bike shop. As I was waiting for the work to be done, I looked around and couldn't believe my eyes. I had to go take a closer look. Could it be? No. But wait, indeed it was. My exact same bike. Same paint job as was originally on mine, solid black muffeler, the works. Even the same year. I couldn't believe it. (Here's a pic of what it would look like, but imagine the blue is actually dark purple. Come on people, use that imagination. Oh yeah, and the plastics aren't missing on one side either. Ok, use a LOT of imagination).

While I was still drooling over (almost) my bike, they came out with the bad news. Apparently my chain is about to give way. They said I have about 300 miles left on it, then I need a new sprocket and chain. Parts and labor come to the low low price of just $280. Niiiiicccccceeeeee. 300 miles huh? Well considering I put 250 miles on it just going to and from work 1 week I was not impressed. But you gotta do what you gotta do. Since 99% of my drive is highway, I decided not to push it for that last 300 miles. I don't think it's be a lot of fun (for me anyways, watching it may be fun) to be doing 100mph (did I say 100? I meant 65.) on the highway and have the chain snap on me. Not to mention I don't have a chain guard anymore so it would most likely take off my leg too. That's be great, one minute I'm riding along trying not to get squashed by crazy Houston motorists, and the next minute my back tire is skidding down the road while I do my best SuperMan impression over the handle bars. So I rode it home and parked it.

Due to the fact that I will be bikeless this week, and I will have to drive the truck every day, it brought up another issue. My freezing cold A/C is not all that cold anymore after not using it for like 5 months. And if I was going to drive it all week, I may want to do something about that. So I headed to Wal Mart for some 134a A/C coolant. I picked up a 12oz can at the rock bottom price of $10 and headed home. I already had the hose and was ready to go. I popped the hood and turned the A/C to max as the directions stated. Then I hooked up the hose. It took me a few seconds to figure out where the hissing was coming from. I finally realized, I needed to hook the can to the other end before hooking the hose to the engine. I wonder how much I let out before I realized that one. So I unhooked it, hooked up the can, then rehooked the hose to the car. This time, "success". Well, somewhat. When I was done I checked and it still wasn't very cold. So I must have let too much out originally. This time I headed to Auto Zone. I bought another can, but this time it was $5.99. Not too shabby. I decided to put it in once I got home. As I was leaving I decided I should at least turn the A/C on while I drove. About half way home it got cold. I just hadn't run it long enough. So I bought another can for nothing. Well, at least I have a spare if it gets low again. That pretty much ended my Saturday Adventures. The rest of the night I spent drinking wine and surfing the web.

Sunday Morning I woke up around 10:00 when a co-worker called looking for another co-workers phone number. I decided since i was already up I might as well stay up. Plus W1 was coming home that day so I was really happy. I decided I was in the mood for Crawfish (since some of the NOLA peeps were going to a boil that day too). I went to Ragin Cajuns right by our house. I ordered 1/2 bucket, and it comes with 1 potato(e) and 1 corn cob. The corn was very sweet, but neither were spicy. Then I dug into the crawfish. They were actually pretty good, but I noticed they put the spices on the outside of them after they are boiled. I found that odd. Anyway, 1/2 bucket is 1.75lbs. For only $11.99. They were rather large so it essentially worked out to about $1 a crawfish. With drink and tip I got out of there for about $18 and still hungry. It was nice out so I headed to the "stunt area" to see if anyone was out. They weren't. A few hours later I went to McDonalds. Not all that great. We haven't ate a lot of fast food lately so it sat pretty heavy. Which meant it was nap time. After walking up I passed by the stunt area again, this time on the bike. Still nothing. So once again, home again home again jiggity jigg. All in all I passed by there 4 times and the parking lot was totally empty. I wonder where they were.

I finally settled down around 7:00 pm to some good old fashioned Lego Star Wars II. That pretty much occupied the rest of my evening until W1 returned from NOLA. Then we went out to eat at House of Pies and I had a Monte Cristo. Delicious! Went home and prepared for the next work week. As you can tell by the length of this blog entry todays work consists of long (3 1/2 hour) installs, then 30 minutes of testing. And that's how it goes...