Ambling around

I shined up the VFR the other day to take some photos of it. After fussing around posing it and getting the sunlight direction right etc, lavishing all this attention on it, I noticed my other bike peeping into the corner of one of the photos. Well now, I thought, that's not fair is it... that bike serves me faithfully day in and day out and I never even clean it. The least I could do is give it a tributary blog entry.
So here it is - behold the KLX250. This is my commuter bike now, doing only about 16km a day going to work/gym/supermarket, but back when it was my only bike, we sure did some miles together. Since it's not really made for doing many miles on, usually after a couple hours riding I had to start shifting my butt around on the seat every few minutes, only to make it sore in a slightly different spot. In two and a half years, this machine has never let me down, the only problem I've ever had was a gummed up side-stand switch, which was solved by just disabling it.
Although it has a dirt-bike look to it, this is a great bike for the city. It's narrow enough to squeeze through the tightest gaps in traffic, rides up a 10 inch curb with ease, light enough so I can heave the back end around to park it better, economical to run and takes a passenger (in a bind). Since the pedals are so far off the ground I can ride along next to a high curb with my tires grazing it, and the left pedal actually above the curb - can't do that on most road bikes. It has great pickup over short distances to slip through gaps in traffic and put those nassssty taxis behind you, and cruises happily at 100 on the highway. I have to admit that the luggage box on the back is a big part of this bike's everyday usefulness - it used to be that when I wanted to carry something I would give up all the advantages mentioned here and ride another bike that had a box on it. But once I got a box for the KLX the package was complete. These days I can't imagine not having it anymore.
I found some photos from our travels which I put up here too - they are not very picturesque and most of them don't mean much to anyone but me but what the hell, it's a nice trip down memory lane. Probably the dumbest adventure was one I did with a friend to Niigata in the dead of winter, over mountains ranges with 10ft snowdrifts on each side of the road. Luckily the road itself was clear, and the weather was fine too, but I can't remember another time when I have been so cold for so long... The other photos are obviously from summer trips - it's interesting how most of my fondest memories have so much greenery in them eh... must be time to head home soon.