A beautiful night for a motorcycle ride

We finally have insurance on our motorcycles, so Dena and I went for a short ride. This is the first time we've ridden the motorcycles. We just shoved them in the back of the van when we bought them, without riding them. First impressions are that the Ducati rides wonderfully. The suspension and brakes are top notch. The motor is very torquey and does not like to be revved. It's taking Dena a little bit to get used to, and I need to lower it so she is more comfortable on it. The automatically retracting kick stand is taking a little getting used to. I think it's a great bike, but needs one immediate change. The clip-on handlebars are mismatched. I have no idea why, but they are different, which means that your left hand and wrist are in a noticeabley different position than your right hand. The Kawasaki is less refined, but I can just tell it's going to be crazy fast. It's geared tall, so I will probably get a smaller front sprocket for it. I think I rode around most of last night in first gear only. You just finally shift to second at 40 mph. The front brakes are only OK, compared to the Ducati. They need to be bled, and could really use different brake pads and braided stainless steel brake lines. The seat is hard, but I don't notice all that much due to all the movement during riding around roundabouts. We both had a lot of fun even if the ride lasted less than an hour.

Roses and a Newel Post

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Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

Dena snapped some pictures of the roses in our front yard. Our roses are red, pink, yellow, and orange. They add some much needed color to the gray and green of Aberdeen. The grass in the backyard is growing quickly due to all the rain.
We finally have an internet connection at home! We streamed some KRVS on Saturday. It was so nice to have a some Cajun music and DJs to listen to. If anyone has some other streaming radio stations they listen to, drop me an email with the address. I got an update from our BMW salesman. He said the car should be arriving in August, but I didn't get a date. I'm getting really excited.
We're making decent progress unpacking all our boxes. Our master bedroom is still on pause due to needing a decent amount of repair work. In the lease negotiations, the owners agreed to let us paint various rooms, but it's kind of disappointing that they left one of the rooms that we wanted to paint is such bad condition. There is literally a large hole in one of the walls. The property manager is sending someone this coming week, so maybe we'll get to paint the room next weekend? We're not in too big of a hurry, as we ordered some bedroom furniture. It'll be a couple weeks before it comes in.
If you didn't know, a newel post is the post that is at the top or bottom of a staircase. The newel post in our house in Aberdeen is not special, but it's causing a lot of special problems. Things are just different here, and for whatever reason, the newel post is 33 inches from the wall instead of 36 inches. Why does three inches matter? Well, it's the distance that would be needed to let our queen size box spring up stairs. It's also what is preventing our new bedroom furniture from going up the stairs. We just fell in love with some solid teak pieces that have marble inlays. After much discussion of possibly having our bedroom downstairs, we decided against it. Upstairs, there is a very large window that swings open to the side in the room that will be Dena's art studio. We've figured that the furniture pieces will go through the window. After a few days of talking over different options, we're pretty sure we can buy a couple of extension ladders and drag and push the pieces up the extension ladders, with a lot of help from my coworkers. It's not the most delicate option, but due to the position of the newel post at the bottom of our stairs, it's the best option we could come up with. If we had bought the house, a saws-all would have been the quickest option. :)

Finally moved into new house, and used the hovermower.

We finally moved into our new house in Aberdeen. The lease was written that we have the house for a year and then it goes in to month-by-month payments. Hopefully the owners, who moved to London, will be there for 2-3 years also, so that we don't have to move a second time while we're in Scotland.
The house is really nice, and we love it more and more as we spend time in it. It really was the best choice for our needs. The house is so much bigger than our little temporary Skene Apartment that Dena and I have to call out and ask where the other person is in the house when we want to talk.
My head just barely clear the doorways, as long as I slouch a little as I walk through them. The fridge is tiny, so it's taking a little getting used to. We've definately be shopping weekly. We met our neighbors that we share a driveway with. Very nice couple.
Our back lawn needed serious mowing, but the lawnmower that was left in the garage didn't have a cord. I borrowed one from our new neighbor, and got to learn the obvious lesson that one should know when using an electric lawn mower, which is: Don't run over the cord. Well, I did, so I got to splice it back together and finished the yard. The lawnmower is best described as a hover mower. It's a bit weird, but works. When you grab the safety handles and push the on button, the motor spins to lift, and slightly lifts the mower off the ground.

Wonderful weekend in a crapy van

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Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

What a long and crazy weekend! One week ago, Dena and I were simply looking at bikes online, and a week later we now own two of them. Dena wanted a Ducati, and after a few searches of Ebay and Bike Trader, we found a nice '98 Ducati 600 SuperSport in yellow that she liked, but it was 350 miles away. I bid on a '98 Kawasaki ZX-9R on Ebay and won the auction, and it's about 400 miles away. So, Dena and I start making plans to get the bikes in one trip. After several phone calls to van rental agencies without any vans, we finally find a place that will rent us a van. Dena finds a cute hotel in a town about half way between both bikes. I email the owner of the ZX-9R to let him know I'm coming to get the bike, but someone else has already picked up my bike from the owner! So, back on Ebay, and luckily I found a second blue '98 ZX-9R, and after a quick phone call to the owner because he posted his mobile number, I go for the Buy It Now. Even better is that it's closer to the Ducati. I pull cash out on Thursday, and we're driving South in a terribly uncomfortable van on Saturday morning. The weather is fairly nice with mostly sunny skies, and the occasional shower that passes quickly. After driving 350 miles, and taking a wrong turn after I confuse right with left, we arrive at the Ducati's home. The Duck looks OK, so exchange money for bike, and load it into the back of the van. Away we go to find the hotel. It's dark, I'm not wearing sun glasses, we have a full tank, no smokes, so we hit it. Roll into Sheffield at around 11:30 PM, find hotel, check in, quick shower, check out for the night.
We wake up Sunday morning, and have a quick continential breakfast for the first time together in England! The hotel has been converted from three old houses, so it's a fun maze of short stairs up, down, left, and right. I get a text from the Kawi owner, so I call him back and give him an ETA. We check out and hit the road. Once again, get lost, but find the Kawi. Looks good, so load it into the van, and start the drive back to Aberdeen.
Heading south, we went through Glasgow following Google maps directions. Dena picks a more direct path on the way back North, and we end up driving through Edinburgh on a back road. The drive was really beautiful. It was nice to be off the main motorway and checking out England and Scotland. We arrived back in Aberdeen around 9:00 PM, and unloaded the bikes at our new house and parked them in the garage for the first time!

When it rains, it pours

It's been a crazy week. Suddenly, after a few weeks of not much happening, everything is now happening at once. I bid on a motorcycle on E-bay and won it, but someone else picked up the bike. So, I bid on another bike and won it, and talked to the seller personally so that he wouldn't sell it to another person. Then, we've also spotted a motorcycle for Dena. So, we've been planning a road trip this weekend. It was also a little madness to try to rent a van, after the first place we called didn't have any vans for rent in all of Scotland. To make matters more stressful, it's been a pain in the ass to get our money from our US bank transferred to our UK account. We did figure out an alternative, so we're going to buy a Kawasaki ZX-9r and a Ducati 600 SS this weekend.
The lease was FINALLY approved, so we picked up the keys this afternoon to our house! Dena worked on arranging for the movers to bring our stuff. Luckily, they had a cancellation, so our stuff will be at our house on Tuesday. Otherwise, we would have had to wait until the end of July to move in.
Oh, and it's the rainiest summer in Scotland in the last 50 years. Happy, happy, joy, joy. :)

BMW 1-series coupe coming to America

It's official that the BMW 1-series is coming to the US. The US version will be a coupe, not a hatchback, and it will have the 2 biggest gasoline engines, not the diesels. An Autoblog article covers the release pretty well. Apparently the 3-series was getting too big, and there was a need for a little sports coupe reminent of the 2002. So, bring over the 1-series, and hopefully it'll be a big hit. I'm really hopeful that BMW will be bringing over diesel engine choices soon. A second introduction of cars with diesel engines has begun, and hopefully Americans latch onto them as hard as they have in their big pick-ups. Bring on the 50 mpg clean diesel cars!
I'm getting really excited about taking delivery of our 120d. We finally placed the order and it should be coming in toward the end of July. :)

iWait for iPhone

iAdmit that the iPhone is cool. I couldn't help but share a little happiness with the guy in the photo from a Forbes article. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I think it's the best one I've seen regarding the iPhone mania. I do hope Apple has a lot of success. I think this huge reaction to a mobile phone points to a turning point in mobile technology. Do I want one? Simple answer is no. I finally got my new HTC S710 smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.0 and am really happy with it. No, it doesn't have a touchscreen, but it does have a sweet slide out keyboard.