Even though I haven’t had a chance to grab any sleep yet (yes it really is 7:05am), I’ve got so much to do today before I have a chance to nap. A friend of ours from the bike shop is coming over this evening to help Hubby sync the carbs. While they were talking about it yesterday his wife mentioned that she’d like to come, too, and that’s when Hubby opened his big mouth.

He thought it would be a great idea if I cooked dinner and we all had a fun evening of hanging out and working on the bike. Just great. Now I have to cook, clean the house spotless (dude’s wife is a neat freak, I am not), and figure out what I’m going to do with the dog tonight while they’re here. I can put him in our bedroom because our weird house has 1 bathroom which is accessed only through our bedroom. I can’t put him in the guest room because the bike’s in there. Dude’s wife is terrified of dogs, even my sweet innocent but will lick you to death bulldog.

At least she said she’ll bring the wine and dessert. The dessert I’ll go for (especially if it’s cheesecake), but Hubby never drinks wine, and I hardly ever do. The stuff gives me a headache, but every time we go to this woman’s house she pulls out a bottle of wine. I seriously wonder if she has one of those wine of the month memberships. I might pick up some beer for the boys, but do they really need to be drinking when they’re doing something as important and delicate as syncing the carbs?

Yes I just used delicate and a bike part in the same sentence.

At least dinner will be easy. When pressed for time pull out the crock pot and make a roast. Luckily I made roasts so often in this house (hey it’s the best thing I make) I almost always have one in the freezer, and right now I do. I’m going to throw my roast in the crock pot and scrub the house as much as I can before I lose what little energy I have left and pass out. If I don’t get everything as spotless as little miss neat freak would like, I’ll just smear some grease around and blame it on the bike parts scattered across my living room right now.

For once I didn’t spend all my extra cash this week on bike parts. Instead I went to Walmart to pickup a few office supplies, and we ended up walking out with another installment of Guitar Hero. We got the Aerosmith edition this time, and I can honestly say I’m not as pleased with it as I thought I’d be. You can read the mini review I wrote about it here.

I’m not saying we didn’t buy any bike parts, we just didn’t buy a whole lot this week. We’ve been waiting to get the front forks back, and we picked those up yesterday. Getting the blocks welded to the subframe has taken longer because Hubby keeps rescheduling. That should be done next weekend though.

Overall things are coming together nicely. Hopefully in a week or two I’ll be able to take photos of it pre-paint stage. Oh yeah, we’ll be rockin’ a rat bike for awhile, but it’ll be our unique rat bike finally customized the way we want it.

I’ve got an update tonight on the wrecked GSXR as well. Insurance did total it out, but that actually worked out for the better. He’s already found another new 08 GSXR that actually cost less than the first one, so even have to pay a little off on the wrecked one, it still comes out cheaper than the first one did.

I’m happy for him because he really needs the bike for transportation. Just like us he can’t afford the costs of commuting back and forth to work, and the bike has drastically changed that.

CA I hope you get to feeling better real soon, and I’m glad everything worked out for you.

Now he just has to wait 2 weeks for his arm to heal. He had his surgery yesterday, and everything went well. He’ll be in a cast for 2 weeks, and then he’ll be all good again. Thank goodness he’s smart and wears his gear at all times!

Yay. For once I have good news. So when the so called friend/ family member wrecked out bike he mentioned that he thought something was wrong with the throttle. He said it didn’t feel right to him, and Hubby agreed it was an excuse because the bike was in the best shape it had ever been in. He tried to say the throttle hung up on him and wouldn’t roll back, and that’s why he hit the rear brakes locking up the rear tire. No, you hit the rear brakes because you’re an idiot who was going too fast and reacted wrong.

Anywho, one of our friends at the bike shop offered to send the right clip-on off to Yamaha for testing. Two weeks ago I handed it over to him for the testing. He got it back today and just called me with the news. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the right clip-on. Besides from the actual metal clip-on part being busted during the wreck and the handle bar getting bent back, the clip-on is in perfect working order. It rolls smoothly, and they had no problems with it working properly even after the wreck and the damage to it.

The only issue we’ve ever had with the throttle is when we’re using the canyon dancer when hauling the bike. Sometimes it will pull the grip down over the bar end, and you have to put it back into place. That had happened the day before the wreck at Deal’s Gap, but not only was it fixed, the entire grip was replaced when Hubby went to Wheeler’s shop. Then Wheeler greased it up properly and made sure it worked. I mentioned I even had all the paperwork from the work Wheeler done.

Even though the accident wasn’t reported, I did take pictures of everything including the scene. An eye witness (not Hubby) gave an account to a cop friend of ours who checked it out for us. After seeing the photos and talking to the witness our cop friend (who not only investigates most bike accidents in the county but also rides) confirmed the accident was a cut and dry case of going way too fast for conditions and not handling the bike properly.

I love it when I’m right.

I finally have decent photos to share of the wrecked GSXR. The photos don’t show half the damage, but now that we’ve inspected it we’re not sure if it’ll be totaled out or not. You can see the new photos here. The reason we’re not sure if it’ll be totaled out is because we made a list of everything that’s damaged.

It doesn’t look like the damage costs more than the bike, but we’ll see. The subframe is damaged, but it’s a bolt on. The main frame isn’t warped or twisted. It’ll really just depend on the insurance adjuster they send. We know of bikes that haven’t been totaled out that had a little frame warping where as other bikes that had no warping, but were totaled out because the frame was scratched. Well the frame is scratched on this one, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

A lot of us were talking about how he’s lucky he wasn’t wearing his backpack. This guy almost always wears a backpack when he rides full of his normal commuting stuff sometimes including a laptop. If he’d had his laptop this time it would be trashed. Hubby has been wanting to take my laptop to work with him some so he can use it on his lunch break, but now I’m not so sure I’m going to let him. Awhile back I saw a laptop that was a protective hard shell case. It looked kind of like this Rimowa luggage. If I could find something like that, and if I knew it would hold up during a crash I might let him take it, but for now my laptop is staying at home.