In Bellingham

Last Friday, right after chemo, I headed up to Bellingham to take pictures of Kelsey for acting jobs. Unfortunatly, I haven't really been able to take any pictures because I had a whole roll of fast slidefilm in my camera, and I needed to use some slow B&W. I managed to finish that roll last night, but the weather's been crappy today, so I don't know if it's going to happen. Hopefully, it will be nicer tomorrow when she isn't working.

What I have been doing is hanging out with friends. On Saturday I had dinner with Risa and her boyfriend, who is looking for a job in Tokyo starting around July. We sat in Boundary Bay having a beer and talking about teaching and my quest to not teach. The anwser? Beer. (It may just be the answer to everything) Later than night, I met up with Louise and Michael, who's house I'm staying at, and went to the Chicken House for more beer, a big fire, and music. On Sunday, I went to Eyone and Jessie's where we had a BBQ. On Monday, I spend the day scanning negatives on campus, and wondering if someone wanted to come play. Just on time, Jenn called, and we agreed to meet up at her place, where I made some pizza for her and Dave from scratch. Scratch scratch. She was scared of that, but I assured her that it was easy (it really is). We had happy full stomachs. Today, I weent out for lunch with Susan and Rick from my old job at Western. I think there's something going tonight, but I don't know what yet. I'll be taking the train home Thursday morning.

Bellingham is great.

Here's Frankenbike

Here's my bike. The orange and white on the head light look out of place, but it's actually everything else that's out of place. The tan tank and side covers are from the other CL, and are on this bike until we strip everything and repaint.

Thanks to some helpful posts on USENET, I tore apart the carbs again last night to squirt some cleaner into some of the smaller holes, and realized that there was something not lined up right. This is what was causing it not to run right. So this morning I fired it up, and dad fiddled with the mixture a bit, and took off on a ride. He got it up to 80 going up the 410 hill, so it's running pretty good.

So today I've been riding around, getting the hang of it on some back roads. I'm not going to take it anywhere too far or fast until I get some new tires on it.

Bike

"Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like"
-Queen

I've been fiddling with the bike for a while, and it's running pretty good at slow engine speeds, but I've been having trouble getting it to rev as high as it should. I've posted in USENET and gotten some good tips though, and I think my problems can be mostly fixed with some carb adjustments. It kind of looks like franken-bike right now because it has parts off of two different CLs, and it hasn't been cleaned up at all. Probably I'll trip it all down again once the weather gets nicer so that he frame can be blasted and powdercoated and the tank and headlight housing repainted. I'll post a picture of franken-bike once I find where the digital camera has wandered off to.

On friday, dad and I went to the DOL and got the bike licensed, then stopped at the DMV and picked up a motorcycle endorsement hand book. By 3:30 I had read the whole book, and was ready to take the test, so I went down the the DMV again and passed the written test to get a 90 day permit. I think that mom and I are going to take the rider corse together to get out endorsements. It costs $100, and includes one full day of classroom instruction, and a day and a half of riding. After passing the class, you receive a certificate that will get you an endorsement without having to take the riding test at the DMV.

On Thursday I went to meet Kay Jones, my highschool Japanese teacher, at Starbucks. We had a nice chat about everything, and she invited me to join the Japanese classes that she goes to once a week. Her class is taught by a UPS Japanese professor, and the students include some other area Japanese teachers. Kay and I are actually at about the same level of Japanese now, so her class should be a good fit. I will start at the end of March after she gets back from her trip to Osaka.

Car Crash Bonsai

I haven't done anything with bonsai since mom killed mine a few years ago, but this is inspiring. Who thinks of these things?


In the chemo realm, I've got only two more (again). Everything is going fine with that, and I still expect to be done with everything and free to leave the country again in July.


Two weeks ago I started tearing about the carbs on one of the CL350s. I cleaned them all out in Simple Green (so much less toxic than carb cleaner, and seemed to work just a well), and put them back on the bike, got a battery, cleaned out and put new gas in the tank, and fired it up. There was a mysterious electrical problem for a while, but I've got that solved, so now all I have to do is get it and me licenced. I think I'll sign up for a motorcycle class pretty soon.