I've been sort of re-living my recent little ride while doing maintenance on my scoot. It helps divert my mind away from the extreme desire to ride up to Milwaukee and kill every single Harley-Davidson engineer. It's just maddening (and there's no way it's accidental) that every task, even the simplest, requires about a dozen different tools. SAE and metric sockets and wrenches, SAE and metric Allen wrenches, regular screwdrivers and Torx drivers. The only thing certain is that every bolt or nut or fastener will require another trip to the tool box. As I was saying, it helps to think about something else while working on the bike instead of dwelling on the frustrations. So as I've been tearing the skin off my knuckles and cursing like the ex-sailor that I am, I've also been reflecting on the trip and the general re-booting of the spirit it provided me. To say it was a pretty good trip overall is like saying the sex I had yesterday afternoon was pretty good. There's really no such thing as bad sex, is there? As a good friend of mine always says, the worst I ever had was wonderful. It's pretty much the same with motorcycle trips. As long as you keep the shiny side up, you've had a good ride. I'm posting the stats on this one and looking forward to the next.

1700 - miles ridden
4 - states visited
3 - close encounters with cages and not coincidentally
4007 - number of people seen driving poorly because they were talking on a fucking cell phone...ARRGHH!
3 - old friends visited
2 - wicked hangovers suffered
50 - dollars lost playing poker
3 - days before my ass stopped hurting
41 - percent of Americans who believe "Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001,” according to a new Newsweek poll. The number is up 5 points from Sept. 2004.

I threw that last one in there because it just fucking blows me away. 41% and rising. Sometimes I have to laugh to keep my own sanity. Is it just me or is something seriously wrong with our country when going on half of it's citizens don't have a clue what's going on?

On the bright side though, Pearl is good for another 5000 miles, so I'll be contemplating the problem with my knees in the breeze.