Bikerscum - Patrick St. Jean

A bunch of friends came over today to help me bottle the mead batches. It was hard work but with all the help it went well.

The good: The batch of the sweet made with the Wyeast Sweet. It's really yummy already! The second batch is a little rough and a lot sweeter but I'm thinking a little aging will help.

The bad: The batch of the medium/dry. It's not sweet at all, the yeast ate every last bit of sugar.

The ugly: Removing labels from wine bottles.

I've got a good bunch of friends and I really appreciate all of the help getting the bottles filled.

My mobile let me down again yesterday, stubbornly refusing to alert me to calls, even though it was happily buzzing away that I'd missed them. Piece of junk.

The Southlake Apple Store had iPhones in stock and now I've got one. The number ported over in about 15 minutes, which was a big surprise as I was expecting days of waiting.

I'm definitely not going to give a review of the phone here, there's plenty of people who do that for a living who have beaten that dead horse into a pulp. But for me it's excellent. I've found just about every app I used regularly on the Palm except for a few games, but I'll track down time wasters, have no fear. The only big one missing right now is a PalmDOC reader. Mobi doesn't have one out yet and I'm looking for alternatives.

It is nice to be able to read my email anywhere though...

It's rare in north Texas to be able to turn off the air conditioning and open the windows to air the house out some time in the first week in September but thanks to Gustav, that's exactly what I've done.

The cats are a bit perplexed at the breezes coming in from said open windows, but even the sound of the automatic feeder dropping its bounty of kibble couldn't budge Ms. Freya from her perch.

Thanks, G.

I hit the road a little earlier than I would have because Gustav had come on-shore and was heading our way. I went back up TX-6 to I-35 instead of playing on nice roads because I didn't want to get backed up in evacuee traffic, especially on I-45. The ride went well, averaging 47 mpg over the trip. The seat really needs to go. I'm looking at a Corbin, but I'm going to be saving my pennies for a while for that one! I'm going to check with the club members to see their opinion, and barring any any negative feedback or advice on something better, I'll have one before the long road trip.

Other than my sore rear end, I don't have a single complaint about the bike's performance. It's a great mile eater!

I packed the bike up for the first somewhat decent distance ride, from Lewisville to Houston. The ride was great, if a little on the hot side. There is a disadvantage to that full fairing in that I don't have the airflow I did with the Sportster, so the heat was an issue. Other than that the bike performed wonderfully. I averaged about 48 mpg over the entire trip, with most of the cruising in the 80 - 85 mph range. In fact, lets call that a second disadvantage to this bike, if I'm not careful I'm going to be spending a lot on speeding tickets!

I went down I-45 to Madisonville and then hopped on TX90 over to Anderson where I picked up FM149 which goes through the Sam Houston National Forest. The road was suitably twisty, which made the ride through the forest a lot of fun.

I got stuck in a little traffic in Magnolia and Waller, but after that no problems.

I think that the first upgrade is going to be a better seat though. This one was good for about 300 miles, and the last 50 or so were not as much fun as they could have been. Definitely going to have to get a long distance seat!

I went down to MotoLiberty this evening to look for a tank bag for the Beemer. I did find one, a nice black Cortech Mini. It's got everything I needed, including a non-magnetic mounting system for a bike with no ferrous metal in the gas tank or fairings.

After that I decided to look at helmets and jackets. Thanks to some great help and advice from the staff I came home with a Dainese Air-flux tex jacket and an Arai Vector helmet.

The jacket is amazingly light and comfortable, even with the spine armor in it. And best of all it's got pockets all over the place.

The helmet is nice and comfy with great air flow for hot Texas days so we'll see how they perform on the Houston ride...

After work today I headed out to the Cathedral of the Most Holy Theotokos for vespers and to pray at St. John's tomb. I'd forgotten that they're on the old calendar and so it turns out that I was there for the Procession of the Cross. It was really interesting to see and participate in it in Russian, even though I couldn't follow much...

Afterwards I got a couple bottles of oil from the lamp at St. John's tomb and a book of sayings of the Desert Fathers.

I just mailed off the last check for the Jeep. It's now paid for. One less bit of debt hanging over my head, and there's a bunch more to go, but I'm making progress. Just had to brag.