• Mood: what tastes like coolant?
• Music: The Police - Darkness

Motorcycle maintenance and losing my Zen

Holy Shit Balls was replacing my coolant ever harder than I thought it would be. For some reason, almost any kind of work on the KLR requires you to take off the gas tank. Well, I showed them. It weren't pretty, but I done it. I stripped one of the allen screws on my skid plate; they were all thoroughly rusted to hell. I ended up yanking the skid plate and twisting it around the one screw I couldn't remove, and somehow I got it clear of the water pump. I drained the coolant, but didn't bother detaching the reserve tank. I didn't flush the system, either, since the coolant that came out looked clean. Through the clever use of funnels (one of which was improvised with a length of duct tape), I filled both the radiator and the coolant reserve with the tank still on. Fuck you, Kawasaki. As it is, I was working til almost 9:30 on the bike; if I'd removed the seat and the tank, I'd be out there another half hour.

Now I have to hope my bike doesn't explode when I go to ride it tomorrow.

Tomorrow the plan is:

06:30 - Wake up and pack like a motherfucker.
07:30 - Leave the house. Gas up, put air in the tires, hit the ATM.
08:00 - Get breakfast in Waltham with ledhazard.
08:45 - Head to motomuffin's.
10:00 - Arrive in Looneyburg, Outer Canada.
11:00 - Depart for NH with biker skum.

VACATION ENSUES