Recovery
After a relaxing weekend, I had a terrible night last night. All of the pets are in ‘spring-mode.’ The dog wouldn’t lay down. The kitten was racing through the bedroom and the pushiest of our cats decided that I was paying enough attention to her… at 4 am. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep last night.
The day dragged as Monday’s usually do. I’m currently researching MVC and Prism V2 so I’m twisting my noodle a bit. Today, I wrote some really smelly code. My current work item is to write a UI that steps through an automated validation sequence. There is already code in the app to do the data validation, but it is ugly and inflexible. So I dumped everything into the WinForm UI as a starting point for refactoring. The next part will be pulling apart the separate components and getting some manageable structure around the logical sequence. A to B to C and so on. If any fail, eject from the sequence and do X, Y and Z. Plus, I need to add unit tests. I know I should be writing tests first, but as I said the code already exists and I needed to start somewhere.
Finally the work day ended and I saddled up on the SuperDuke. It was 80 and sunny. Mmm…
Instead of heading straight home or even semi-straight home (that would be East from the office), I headed Northwest through Helvetica and up to the western section of Skyline.
I’m finally getting used to the SD’s handling and I started to push it a bit more. The front brakes are very strong. I have not learned much about their limits. The rear is fine. I was braking hard enough at one point to get the rear-end to wiggle a little. I need to re-up the suspension preloads and increase the resistence in the steering damper. As I ramp up my pace, these settings need to ramp up as well. I had dropped the pre-loads on both ends in the beginning as I struggled to come to terms with the performance of the entire system. Adding the steering damper made a huge difference in my comfort level. I don’t like headshakes. Now, the front end isn’t tracking because the fork is moving too much or maybe it is the front tire, which is still the OEM Dunlop. Bumps are always going to be harsh, but maybe I could tweak the slow speed damping to even it out. There is a bad fork dive when I’m braking hard. More to learn. I’m still not wheeling the thing, but then I’m not into wheelies. Running down Skyline was fairly easy. As I said, I need to adjust the suspension and let the bike be what it is, a naked superbike. If I want a more plush ride, then I should be on the FJR. It is coming together, even after my non-stellar day I found a nice rhythm and flowed through the corners on my 75 minute commute home.
My current wish list:
- New handlebar. The sweep of the current one is too much for my wrists. I prefer a minimal sweep. I guess that comes from years on mountain bikes.
- I’d like to get new levers. Pazzo doesn’t have levers for the SD yet. We’ll see.
- I think I’ll switch back to the OEM saddle. The gel saddle makes my ass hot. Too much friction through my jeans. Plus, I can’t move around as easily, which makes sense.
Tomorrow’s forecast is for sun and temps in the upper 70s, so I expect I’ll be back up on Skyline before I get home. I suppose I should adjust those settings and get some sleep. The cats will be exiled from the bedroom tonight. After all, I need to recover from last night. 
