Warning: Technical (i.e boring to some people) info follows.

As W1 mentioned, we went riding this weekend. A LOT! It was a lot of fun. Saturday my friend came up on his bike to go to a shop people have been telling me about. His bike has been overheating and we realized the fan has quit coming on. It should come on when the temperature reaches 240 degrees I have been informed. Well, the only way I noticed is that even after he cuts the engine off his fan continues to run until it has cooled down. And it wasn't.

So we go to the shop and the guy looks at the issue. He was unable to fix it but said if we come back next Saturday, someone who is better with electrical issues will be there. But, luckily for me, when they were bringing my friend's bike out front he saw mine. He came back in and said if I like, he would clean and tighten my chain free of charge. I immediately threw him the key. So once he was finished I was all set.

On the ride back to the house my bike started to stall out. I was at about 95 miles on the tank (I'm usually around 130-140 before I have to hit the reserve) and assumed I had been giving it a little more gas than usual. Once I switched to the reserve it seemed to be better, but still stalled a few times. I immediately thought I really need to turn my idle up, since it only stalls when I came to a stop. After making it home, and putting the bike away, I noticed something didn't look right. And it all made sense to me. Being the genius that I am, I was riding with the choke on. Yep, that'll do it. Ha ha. I usually have to pull the choke when it is cold, and it immediately shoots to about 3500 RPM's. So I back it down to about 1500 RPM's. If I totally close the choke it still dies until the engine warms (about 2 minutes later). Looks like Saturday I forgot to close it. Ooops. LOL

Saturday night I was up until 2:30 in the morning beating F.E.A.R.. But for some strange reason I woke up at 9:30 Sunday morning and was wide awake. This is very unusual for me in case you don't know. I decided to take advantage of this strange occurrence and took the bike to wash it. It's been a while and I've been hit by a few rainstorms since the last washing so it was seriously due. When I got back I couldn't believe how nice it looked being clean and all. So, to take advantage W1 and I rode to lunch. We were craving seafood and there were a few New Orleans Style places in the area (although they don't have the heat like home). A couple were too close, and not worth the trouble of taking the bike, so I found one that was about 15 miles away. It made for a good ride and the food was really good too. The Gumbo was delicious, although I had to douse it with Tabasco to get that true NOLA flavor. Not perfect, but it was close. Then we both had fried catfish and I also had some shrimp. After that we headed home, and realized that I was pretty sun burnt.

We made groceries a little later and came back ready to BBQ. It was interesting to say the least. Since we have a gas grill now, I normally clean the grill portion, then start the fire. I run it on high for 3-5 minutes to burn off any leftover crap that may be on there. Well, this time when I walked back inside I got side tracked. I let it burn on high for about 10-15 minutes. When I walked back out it smelled of burnt plastic and flames were shooting out everywhere. I flipped out (understatement of the year). I cut the gas on the tank but it didn't seem to have any effect. After about 15 minutes with the grill open the fire finally went away. But even then there were still embers. I totally thought #1 The propane tank was going to explode, and / or #2 the flames were going to set our neighbors balcony on fire and in turn burn down our apartment building. Neither of these things happened of course, but I was ready to start grabbing Laptops, TV's, Monitors, and anything else I could get my hands on.

After about 20 minutes the grill was good enough to touch so I went ahead and cleaned all the left over debris from previous BBQ's so we didn't have a repeat. (See previous paragraph). Once all was clean and done, I cautiously (and nervously) relit the grill and tried for round 2. This time I turned it to low immediately. It turned out to be very successful. You live and learn I guess.