Philip Fibiger

Motorcycle Mechanics Institute, here I come!

My cousin Randy and I spent the better part of Saturday afternoon working on my motorcycle, in an attempt to clear up the coughing/hesitation it’s been experiencing, as well as the way it’s been running rough, especially when wound up to over 7,000 rpm. Replacing the inline fuel filter was the plan of attack. A couple hours later, covered with grease and having dumped at least a quart of gas from the tank onto the ground and onto me while taking it off and putting it back on, it was immensely satisfying to thumb the starter and have the engine come back to life, running better than it ever has. As Randy said, “For a couple of amateur hacks, we did ok.”

Of course, every job like this needs a victory ride, so we took off from his house in the Hollywood Hills, up Mullholland and down into Bel Air (my they have big houses), down into the Valley (it’s pretty frickin’ hot there in the summer), through topanga canyon (it dropped about 20 degrees when we dipped into the canyon) to the PCH. The last quarter mile of Topanga is amazing, you come out of some blind turns, rise a bit, and all the sudden the Pacific comes into view, sparkling blue, and you drop back down to the ocean. Los Angeles can be a really beautiful and amazing place to live.

Yum. Right now it is just a dream, but some day it will be mine! I wish dealers gave test rides, but it’s just the bike I rode out in the desert, a few generations evolved. That bike was a blast, and I imagine this will be even more impressive.

I will learn to trust the weatherman. Yesterday, he said that it would rain that day. I looked out my sliding glass door to my patio and saw no rain coming down. It looked like it had sprinkled a bit, but nothing too bad and had definitely passed. I put on my dress clothes for work, threw on my leather jacket, grabbed my helmet and messenger bag and left my apartment. About 1 minute into my ride to work, it started to rain. Then it started to rain harder. My pants were soaked, the rain made it through my jacket and soaked my shirt. Even when a rain doesn’t feel very cold when you’re standing in it, it’s awfully cold at 40 miles per hour. To top off the experience, L.A. traffic gets absolutely treacherous after a rain. All of the road grime, bits of tire, and oil sit on the roads for months, and then when the occasional rain shows up, it forms one of the slickest substances known to man. It will suffice to say that yesterday when I made it to work i was uncomfortable and unhappy. It took almost four hours for me to fully dry. Here’s hoping the next rain will be months away. When it does happen, I’m taking the car!

Spent the morning riding through the canyons just north of Malibu with my cousin Randy. We stopped at the Rock Store, which had an interesting visitor. Take a look at the pictures I took here.