Home office

[elizilla]

I took the door off the bedroom closet, took the clothes bar down, and added three shelves. The shelf at desk height is the whole depth of the closet and sticks out the doorway, and I moved my desk over to nudge right up against it. Now I am sitting much closer to the window and can see out a lot more. I lined up all my little toy motorcycles on the windowsill. And I am sitting a few feet farther away from the noisy vent. The room still needs a lot more work but it is coming together.

I got a new wireless router that is supposed to be faster and better than the old one. I set it up and it worked nicely when I plugged into the ethernet port, and D's computer says the signal strength is far better. But for some reason she cannot connect to it. It doesn't give any errors; it just sits and spins and eventually times out. I couldn't figure out why; I went through all the settings. Curt says he will come over and fix it for me, and in the meantime I put the old one back in service.

The garage is the next biggest mess. I need to figure out what goes where, in some more organized way, instead of just stuffing things into cupboards to make room to fling more things around. I put the BMW sidecar rig up on Craigslist last night. Yes, I just got it in May; I am fickle. It is a nice machine and well set up, and I want another similar Hannigan sidecar in the future. But this is not the bike I want, and I've decided that moving this sidecar to a different bike would not be worth the cost and trouble. It's late in the season so I may not be able to sell it, and if it doesn't sell that's ok. But if I do manage to sell it, I'll free up space in the garage for the winter. I have already received the 419 scam email that every motorcycle on craigslist gets, and the scammers have their turf sorted out so you only get one per sale motorcycle, so at least that part's taken care of.

Comments

[pi3832.livejournal.com]

It's weird how one grows attached to some motorcycles, but not others. And even odder that the chances of attachment seem to be completely independent of the utility, function or even the reliability of a bike. And cost? Not even worth mentioning.

Presumably there's some sort of web of emotional reasoning that exists in our brains to keep us from killing (or at least abandoning) family members, and somehow it can get applied to motorcycles. Kind of the same way we can end up loving a pet that pees on the rug on a far-too-regular basis.

(It just occurred to me: cats hack our parenting response! Sneaky little bastards.)

[elizilla]

I always say that a practical person would just get a Honda Civic and be done with it. Motorcycles are an emotional choice.

As for cats hacking us, have you seen some of the toxoplasmosis stories? They say it's a virus that makes you like cats. And also, makes you more risk tolerant - supposedly toxoplasmosis is more common in motorcyclists than in the general population. Cats carry it, you can catch it from changing the cat litter. But the cats don't get it that way - they get infected with it from eating infected prey. The virus has to get you eaten by a cat, to complete its life cycle.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

Got a Craigslist link? Buddy of mine in Belleville might want a sidecar for his bike...

[elizilla]

Well, this is the whole rig, not just the sidecar. And it's very well set-up. My thought when I bought it, was that once I played with it for a while, I could move the sidecar to a bike I liked better, but this outfit works so seamlessly I decided it would be a shame to split them up.

But the ad is here:

http://annarbor.craigslist.org/mcy/4042501308.html

[xtatic1.livejournal.com]

Do you think the bike is short enough for me to fit on it?

[elizilla]

Definitely. Are you interested in learning to drive sidecar? It's very different.

[xtatic1.livejournal.com]

Not sure. Probably not soon enough to matter in this case.

[elizilla]

If you look at the pictures in my craigslist ad you can see how low it is. I feel like I am sitting in a hole. The fact that the suspension is lowered is actually a positive good for a sidecar outfit, since they don't lean and having the weight low improves the handling. But the low seat is terrible for me because I am all folded up. I tried to source a normal height seat but it turns out that it's not just the seat, it's a kit that replaces all the latches and hardware underneath, and changes the side covers for a shroud that wraps around the tank. And the high seat hardware turns out to be scarce on the used market - I guess the low seat was the more popular factory option.

[motomuffin.livejournal.com]

I know the no-love feeling when  it comes to bikes. Some worm their way into your heart and you put up with their neediness; heck you love working on them! And some can't do anything right and you are just never attached. It's always OK to sell a bike you don't love. :-)