The Bike as Catalyst

I've pretty much always loved motorcycles. I haven't, however, always owned motorcycles. Prior to last year, I only rode when the opportunity presented itself.

Then, last year I purchased a motorcycle of my very own (the VX800). Since then I've ridden every day, more or less (time spent broken down is always frustrating).

I've noticed that I've changed quite a bit since getting my bike. I'm more confident, more tolerant of risk and I usually smell like petroleum and exhaust now.

I think that, treated with the appropriate respect and mindfulness, a motorcycle is a powerful catalyst for personal change. Riding requires constant attention to the external world, as well as what your body and mind are telling you. It only stands to reason that, given enough saddle time, a rider is going to learn a hell of a lot about himself/herself.

When riding, one has to assume complete accountability for one's own ass. If you do something stupid and get killed, it's your fault. With a few exceptions, most wrecks are avoidable.

Once you can accept that your life is entirely in your own hands, it's not a stretch to start changing things about yourself that you don't like. Crappy job? Get out of it. Poor health habits? Change what needs to be changed. Ultimately, your life is always entirely in your own hands. Sometimes, a fella just needs something to remind him of that. I always suggest using motorcycles to remind yourself of your free will.

One also needs self-reliance, especially when riding solo. I personally believe that doing your own wrenching is a vital part of the motorcycling experience. One also needs to be willing to push their bike a mile or two when it needs to be done. After you've done a roadside repair in bad weather, suddenly most other problems in your day-to-day life seem pretty easy to deal with (not to mention how much more you'll like your garage once you get home), not to mention your awareness of what you are capable of.

Life and motorcycles can be thrilling, scary, frustrating, glorious and beautiful. Ultimately, it's your choice whether you grab on to the bars and take control, or get in line with the rest of the cagers.

A Drag

Sneezing in a full-face helmet sucks.

Nonno's Pizza - Official Review!!

Fresh off the disappointment of Classic Italian Pizza, our intrepid Pizza Posse made our way to Nonno's Pizza.

The Place: Nonno's Pizza
1245 W. Baseline #103
Mesa, AZ 85202
(480) 897-2333

I have to admit that I was a little jaded when we arrived, fresh from our disastrous prior review attempt. Thankfully, Nonno's cured what ailed us.

The Posse: The usual band of misfits and malcontents.

The Ride: Again, better than no ride at all. Just off of Baseline Rd. and Alma School Rd. in beautiful Mesa, AZ. 2 Crying Luckies

The Pie: The Sicilian Cheese pizza. This is what I would call a deep dish pizza. Dear God, it was beautiful. It's said that the true test of a chef's ability is how well they can make a simple dish. This pizza was nearly flawless. 4 Crying Luckies

The Crust: Thick and fluffy and good! It doesn't have a strong flavor, but it is an extremely good topping conveyance, and it does taste good enough to eat on it's own. 4 Crying Luckies.

The Topping: Granted, it was just cheese. They use good cheese. You must try it! 4 Crying Luckies

The Sauce: Finally, a place that understands the importance of sauce in the overall integrity of a pizza. Their sauce is good. It's not my ideal sauce (I believe it could have used a bit more black pepper.), but it is very, very good. 4 Crying Luckies

The Ambiance: Nonno's Pizza is a pizza joint. They're clean, and nice enough, but not fancy. Their staff, however, is fabulous. They were closing early when we arrived, and they were more than happy to fire up the oven, set a table and generally treat us as welcome guests. Between you and me, I was flabbergasted by their hospitality. 5 Crying Luckies

Overall: I will be going back to Nonno's Pizza a lot. It's obviously a family run restaurant, and they truly made sure we were having as good a time as possible. If you can get there, by all means go! They've only been in business a couple of months, and can use (and deserve) your patronage. 4.5 Crying Luckies

Nonno's simply rocked. I sincerely hope that they do very well, because they have a quality product and an excellent staff.

Classic Italian Pizza - Official Review!!

I have heard very good things about Classic Italian Pizza. Unfortunately, I have some very bad things to say about them.

The place: Classic Italian Pizza
1054 E Baseline Rd
Tempe, AZ 85283
(480) 345-8681

The Posse: Lady Luck, Baldy-Beard, Bo, and your humble author.

The Ride: I have to admit that due to the freshness of my new bike, any ride is stupidly fun. Classic Italian Pizza is just off of Rural Rd. and Baseline Rd. here in scenic Mesa, AZ. It's not exactly a twisty or scenic ride, but any ride is better than no ride, right? 2 Crying Luckies

The Pie: What pie? We sat there for 20 minutes and didn't get so much as our drink order taken. WTF? 0 Crying Luckies

The Toppings: No pizza = No toppings = Absolute crap. 0 Crying Luckies

The Ambiance: Pretty cute, especially for a strip mall. Of course, that was negated by the fact that NO ONE TOOK OUR FREAKIN' ORDER. The waitstaff walked past our table (where we were sitting with menus closed and attempting to make eye contact) FOUR TIMES. They were not busy. Five tables, four of whom are currently eating does not equal a dinner rush. Furthermore, we didn't even get a "sorry about the wait, I'll be right with you." 0.00001 Crying Luckies

Overall: When I go out to eat, it's because I want to have a good time. I'm not so desperate for food that I'll put up with crap service to get it. We left after 20 minutes. I probably COULD have gone to the bar and complained, but after 20 minutes of sitting at a table, it's not really going to be possible for me to lighten up, or excuse the staff. Someone could have made a token effort to acknowledge us. If they'd been elbow-deep in customers, I'd feel differently. A solid 0.000000047 Crying Luckies.

Now, I'm not one to let a little thing like massive disappointment because of lousy, lousy service get in the way of my good time. That's why the pizza posse immediately chose a new pizza destination: Nonno's Pizza.

Stay outta the blindspots dude!

On my way home this evening I got a good scare when I nearly broadsided a bicyclist at a stoplight. I was turning right, and dude came up from behind me and kinda lingered just out of sight until I nearly hit him. We were close enough to rub elbows.

Thankfully I was able to avoid wrecking his (and my) ride. He gave me a peace sign, which I interpreted as either a "sorry to be a dumbass" or a "it's ok that you were a dumbass." I hollered "Sorry dude!" but I don't think he heard me (the crazy iPod-wearin-in-traffic guy).

One of the weird things about being on a bike is that when you're inches away from hitting something, you become perfectly aware of just how close you are. Had my brain been screaming "DANGER! DANGER!" a little softer, I probably could have figured out what he was listening to.

A brief thought

Regardless of my past rant, California Pizza Kitchen's frozen pizzas are pretty good. At least, the 5 cheese and tomato pizza is good. I haven't bothered with the other ones. They probably suck.

I still stand by what I said in that rant, though. That particular pizza was terrible. And corporate pizza chains still suck.

I want to meet this guy

...but only if he's got his tuba.

And A Dumb Time Was Had By All

Lady Luck and I went to Rocky Point in Mexico this weekend. We had a reasonably good time. We rolled into Rocky Point at about 8:30pm on Friday night, had a couple of warm-up drinks and then hit the bars.

Rocky Point is primarily a place for affluent-in-comparison Americans to get trashed, misbehave, and generally have a minimally threatening, low-budget good time.

Personally, I'm not a party person. I like to have a few drinks in a dark corner of a quiet bar and that's about it. As such, there are a number of things that I haven't experienced before. One of these is the "foam party." For those of you not in the know, once everyone in your group is good and thoroughly lit, you all go to a club with a foam machine and get all covered in baby shampoo foam and dance. Definitely an experience best saved until you're drunk enough to think that getting covered in soap and dancing to awful music would be fun.

Incidentally, once you're that drunk, it is fun.

Saturday we bummed around town, sat on the beach, and had a terrible lunch. One of our chums got the stereo stolen from his truck, and someone actually came up to the house and swiped $100 from another friend's purse. I also discovered the doors on our Mustang were unlocked. Odd, I always lock those. There was nothing in the car to steal though.

That night we went on a "Booze Cruise," which is a 3 hour floating keg party with a couple hundred of your previously-unknown friends. Hilarity ensued, as you might expect on a boat full of drunks. Some guys actually had a "dance-off," straight out of "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo." Some lady got barfed on from the upper deck. She was pissed!

Then on Sunday morning we woke up and learned that our car had been broken into the stupid way. Unlike all the other cars in the lot (everyone got broken into) that had a window busted out, they knifed the convertible top of our car in two places. They stole a folder of cds, including my Canasta cd, and a porcelin frog Lady Luck bought.

Getting our stuff stolen sucks, but what really sucks is that now we have to find a place to get our top repaired. Why couldn't they just break the damn window? Getting a window replaced is easy and we'd get a box of steaks too! That would almost make up for the stuff that got stolen.

Anyway, all our cars got broken into, just about everyone had something stolen and for the most part the food wasn't good (there was one taco stand with great food, though). Personally, I don't think it was enough fun to make all the hassle worthwhile. I could have gotten drunk and ripped off in San Diego or Las Vegas, and not had to deal with crossing the border.

Getting Better All The Time

Just some randomish thoughts for you today.

• New pizza review sooner than later. Within the next couple weeks, ok? I'm going out of town (without the bike), so no review this weekend. Probably next weekend. Hang in there.
• I finally figured out how I can combine my love of photography, motorcycles, and not working for someone else. No it isn't a photography business. Details will be forthcoming as I get things planned out.
• School is back in, and with classes came loads of dumbass drivers. Seriously, where do all these people come from? Is there a special Summer Asshat camp they all go to, and then come back when school gets in?
• I don't want to talk about my process of blogging (I think too many people do that), but I do want to say that I was a little annoyed at bloggers beta-version "I'll try it later" link not working. All I wanted to do was get in here and do a post. Instead I had to futz around getting my blog transferred to the new version. Verily, forced participation doth suck ass!
• I haven't had a good pizza in far too long. The last one I had wasn't good enough to make up for how ill Lady Luck and I felt afterward. Seriously, if your pizza makes people sick, you gotta make sure it's worth it.
• For a long time, I've wanted to have a project bike. All of a sudden I've got one. I believe the VX is due for some major wrenching. Once the weather is a bit cooler.
  

All broken in.

The Triumph finally hit 1,000 miles today. It therefore makes sense that everywhere I went I was unable to wind it up to 10,000 (or more) rpms.

That said, this bike is very, very quick even below it's optimal operating speed. There's something really weird about hitting freeway speeds in second gear.

Speaking of second gear, that's where I spent most of my ride today. I went out to Tortilla Flats and managed to find the perfect pace where I was able to dig in to the curves, but I didn't ever have to use the brakes. It was beautiful.

After Tortilla Flats I rode down to the South Mountain park and spent some time tooling around those roads as well. South Mountain has enough twisty roads to occupy a guy like me for most of a day, I believe. The view from the summit is pretty amazing, too. I had to take it a lot easier in South Mountain, because just about every turn had a nasty patch of sand and gravel just waiting to free my tires from their hold on the ground. Of course, it was still crazy fun, and I expect I'll go back and explore that park a little more thoroughly in the future.

Now I just need to find a clear road where I can wind the motor way up and fly that baby to the moon.

800 miles - 8,000 rpms - 80,000 stupid grins

On my way home from work today I hit the next milestone in breaking in my Speed Four. At 800 miles I got an extra 1000 rpms to play with.

I knew that I wasn't anywhere near the full potential of this bike, and I know I'm still not, but WOW. I've never had a vehicle that can do 45 mph in first gear before.

I'm beginning to think that perhaps I did not choose wisely when I purchased this motorcycle. It's not that the Triumph isn't a great, great bike. It's not that I'm not 100% happy with this bike. It's that this bike makes me think the bad thoughts. Everyone knows that the only way to get rid of temptation is to give in to it, but giving in to the temptation this bike presents is certain to land me in jail for criminal speeding.

Being a careful sort, I know that I'll behave, but it's going to take a tremendous amount of self-discipline. As I said when I first got the Triumph, this bike wants to go.

Bringing back some old slang

If you've spent much time goofing around on the internet reading motorcycle articles, I have no doubt you've stumbled upon many articles attempting to define the term biker. There are a million different definitions for biker, and what qualifies a person to call him or herself a biker.

Given how much I ride, how much I wrench and how strongly I usually smell of gasoline and exhaust, I think I could call myself a biker without anyone disagreeing with me too strongly (except for some Harley-yuppie-assholes. But who cares what they say?).

The thing is, I don't want to call myself a biker. To me, the term "biker" is associated with a particular lifestyle. A lifestyle that's been co-opted by men who wear leather with fringes, and have accessories on their bike to match.

But the thing is, "motorcyclist" is boring. A "motorcyclist" rides with perfect posture, wearing an open-face helmet with a bubble visor and pressed blue jeans. That's ok too (hey, as long as you're riding, you're ok with me), but again it's not me.

Luckily, there is a variety of old-school slang that can be plundered and brought back to common use. So, until I find a better term, I shall refer to myself as a 'sickle bum.

Lovely Day for a Ride

There's a saying in the Scandinavian countries that goes like this: there is no bad weather, only bad clothing. Of all the people in the world, they'd know. I lived in Sweden for a couple years, and the weather there is bizarre like habanero chiles are hot.

Along the same lines, there is a buddhist teaching (that I'm about to butcher) that says in a rainstorm there are two choices you can make. You can dart from doorway to doorway, or accept the rain and calmly walk through it. You get the same soaking either way, but the second choice is less stressful.

Right now the weather here in Phoenix is hot and humid. Of course, according to the weather channel, you poor saps in the midwest have more heat and humidity than we do. Ha ha, suckers! But back to the topic at hand, it's hot, sticky and generally miserable outside. I can dread the heat, complain about it endlessly and obsess about it while I'm out riding, or I can accept that it's damn hot out, suit up and get out on my bitchin' new Triumph anyway. I assure you that I have a lot more fun when I accept the heat, get out and ride! After all, I can't control the weather, but I can control when I do or don't ride.

Motorcycling is a hobby (obsession, in my case) that can teach a person a lot. Not only does one learn risk-management, various handy and fun mechanical facts, and loads of people skills, but also how to let what you can't control slide.

I have a tendency to worry about things I can't really control. It's something I've worked to get under control, and I'm slowly getting the hang of it. I think that riding has a lot to do with it. Riding has taught me to act when I can, control what I'm able to control and accept (but keep a calm eye on) things I can't control. Endless fretting does nothing except spoil an otherwise enjoyable ride, so why bother with it?

Now then, it's a great day for a ride. Get out there already!