I’m trying really hard to concentrate on the work I need to get done today, but it’s not happening.  I’ve got two problems.  First I’m having problems with this blog again.  Nope, it’s not the comments this time, but it is a problem I’m having after upgrading finally (I know I’m slack) to the latest version of Wordpress.

Now whenever I try to login my dashboard is blank, and the only way I can get to the dashboard is to login, see the blank screen, go to my homepage, then click “edit” on one of my posts.  Then I can continue through the sidebar options to add a new post.  I have a few ideas of what might be going on, so I’ll work on that today.

Other than that, I’m just itching to ride today, but I know all work has to be done first.  The awesome 70 and 80 degree weather is gone for now, and it’s dropped back down to 58.  That’s okay with me as long as we can get a ride in before the rain hits since I know tomorrow it’s going to be in the 40s with lots of rain.  Actually it’s supposed to be cold and wet all weekend.

I’m just glad I went ahead and started working on restoring the old metal patio furniture we have around back while the weather was still nice. I’ve got about 10 layers of old nasty baby diaper brown paint to scrape off so I can repaint everything to look nice by summer.

I guess I’m off to work on this blank dashboard issue, then I’m going to try my best to get all my work done so we can go ride!

Listen up all you people who spend each warm weekend hitting US 178.  You need to be a little bit more careful this year because law enforcement is cracking down on wreckless motorcycle riders.  Hubby called me to tell me he bought a newspaper this morning, and I knew there had to be something related to motorcycles in it if he bought it.  Front page of the Greenville News confirms what we’ve all been hearing for awhile.  There are far too many complaints and too many motorcyclists acting stupid.

Personally I chose to stop riding 178 last year because there was a lot of wreckless activity going on, and I was tired of it.  It’s hard to enjoy the ride when you’re worrying about what some idiot is doing passing in a blind curve and stuff like that.  There have been numerous deaths on 178 in the past few years, and most of them have been caused by people just not riding right.

If you want to push the limits of yourself and your bike, go for it, but do it at a trackday where you’re on a closed course.  Remember when you’re out there opening up the throttle and pushing yourself to the limits on a mountain road, you’ve got other innocent drivers and bikers all around you.  Think smart, and think safe.

One thing that irks me about the article is there is definitely a stereotyping going on.

Emily said he has seen some examples of reckless driving during the group’s frequent outings along State 11. “You’ll see some young people” driving recklessly, he said. “But we’re not into that.” Story here

Well guess what? We’re not exactly into that either, and we’re some of those young people. Heck I could take you to 178 on any given Sunday morning and show you a very large group of riders in their 40s and 50s who are up there pushing it harder than any of the “young people” out there. As a note to you journalists out there, stop stereotyping already. Choose your quotes carefully, and don’t make it sound like you’re lumping us all into one group because I promise we’re not all these hooligans you try to make us out to be.

Man I’m going to be so sad when this nice weather ends.  Of course it’s supposed to end right about the time the weekend gets here.  For now I’ll enjoy every minute of it though.  This morning the weather report said it’d be 79 today.  It’s already 83 here at 2:22pm.  I can’t wait to go riding this evening.

We were going to do a little riding yesterday, but the bike was only firing on 3 cylinders when Hubby cranked it up.  Yep it’s the plugs, but we couldn’t get any on a Sunday.  Our bike mechanic friend picked some up today to get us going again, so we spent yesterday having a bike movie marathon.

Hubby had never watched On Any Sunday, so I cued it up on Netflix along with Troy’s Story: Legend of Superbike Champion Troy Bayliss, On Any Sunday Revisited, and The Motorcycle Diaries.  It was a nice way to waste a day, and if you’ve never seen On Any Sunday you seriously should.  It is definitely the best motorcycle documentary out there, and it’s interesting to see how AMA ran in the 70s.

Our movies ended right about the time a few friends came over.  I really wish we could have gone to The Gap this weekend because it turns out a ton of our friends went.  These guys stopped by our house on the way back, and “E” was asking me to help him check out a few wireless security systems for his bike. They stopped for dinner on the way home, and when he walked out he found a teenage kid sitting on his bike.  Now he wants to install an alarm system that will go off as soon as someone touches it, so I promised I’d checkout a few for him this week.

I don’t blame him one bit.  One thing that really pisses me off is seeing someone who has no business touching it sitting on someone else’s bike.  The kids around here like to try to hop on bikes and take pics while the owner isn’t around, and it’s happened to us before.  We’ve seen quite a few bikes get knocked over because someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing tries to play on it while the owner isn’t around, so I’m all for alarm systems.  If we weren’t totally rocking a rat bike now I’d probably consider one, and I just may after we’ve got the new paint job.

It turns out my good news wasn’t exactly good news after all.  We discovered it wasn’t the distributor cap at all.  Instead it was the actual distributor moving around and grinding away.  We’re lucky it didn’t do some serious damage to the camshaft.  I swear when it rains it pours.  We know this could contribute to the issue with the transmission, but it’s most likely not causing it.  It’s just yet another expensive part we have to replace now before we can drive the truck again at all.  Follow this with the $60 fluid cleaning and the $150 torque converter as worst case scenario.

At least this week happens to be one of those weeks when I do have a little extra cash to spend to get everything fixed.  Hubby’s trying his best to get it all done today so we won’t be without the truck any longer.  We’ve been lucky enough to borrow vehicles from my Dad all week, but we can’t do that forever.

I’m just glad the bike’s back together now, so that’s one less thing to worry about.  It’s a means of transportation when we absolutely have no other way, but it won’t help me out today at all.  I’ll probably be missing the baby shower I’m supposed to go to, and there’s no way I can fit the present I wanted to get on the bike.

Oh well.  I’m going to go do some research on how to get the best term life insurance rates then I’m going to head outside to enjoy some of this mid 70s weather we’re having.

BTW, Alli, I hate you. :-p You suck for going to The Gap this weekend!

We took the truck to my cousin’s shop today, and I finally got a bit of good news. We rode down the road for all of 5 minutes before he diagnosed the noise we’ve been hearing for a few weeks now. It’s the distributor cap, and that could very well be the whole tranny issue as well. I knew that most tranny problems aren’t actually caused by the tranny but rather by an engine issue that the tranny is trying to compensate for.

If the distributor cap is bad the transmission could be screwing up because the computer is trying to fix what’s wrong. We can’t be absolutely sure that’s what’s going on until we replace the cap, so Hubby’s outside doing that right now.

If that doesn’t fix it our next option is to have the transmission completely flushed. $60 for a flush is better than spending hundreds we don’t have to rebuild it right now if we don’t have to, so I’m willing to try it. If that doesn’t fix it, we have to replace the torque converter because the whole issue is that the torque converter locking mechanism isn’t working correctly. It’s causing the rpm to jump because it’s locking and unlocking randomly at cruising speed.

Worst case scenario we’ll be buying a $163 torque converter, plus the $30 for the distributor cap that has to be replaced anyway, and another $60 for the flush. I’d much rather put $250 into it than a rebuild, and since Hubby’s a shade tree mechanic my cousin didn’t charge us to diagnose the problem and said he won’t charge us for any help we may need with it.

The way I see it that’s about the cost of one night in one of the luxury hotel rooms we’d thought about staying at when we go to Washington, DC and Jersey in May. We wanted to splurge and do something we really never do on a trip, but I’ll give up a night of luxury I don’t need to fix my truck!