A High of 84

Just sitting here brushing my teeth before jerk.
I mean work. :)

Days are noticeably shorter, now, which can be a bummer if you think about it.
Sun now sets about 8:05 pm versus about 8:25 pm at it's maximum a month ago.
From here, we lose about a minute a day until the shortest day of the year, December 21st, or there about.

My birthday is December 23, by the way, so be sure to get me something very nice. :)

I haven't been riding my WR-250R back and forth to work in the past few weeks, at first due to either rainy weather of simply feeling too tired to make it fun.
A mid-season riding slump can happen.
The past week, though, is due to me ordering a new fuel pump for the bike, which I believe will arrive today, and I'll be able to bring it home with me tomorrow.
Why a new fuel pump?
Seems that some WR-250R models will have the fuel pump quit working when the weather is at it's hottest and the bike's engine temperature is at it's hottest.
The bike will simply stop running when idling at a stop sign, and it will not start back up until the bike cools down for 45 minutes, where it will start and run as if nothing happened.
I've had this happen twice in 6,500 miles and 13 months of ownership, so I decided to just buy a new pump and have it over with.

I first heard about this situation on one of the message boards devoted to the WR-250R.
Even though that forum is made up of mostly newbies and geeks who wouldn't ride the bike without either heated grips or a big luggage rack installed, first (or both!), I was made aware of the situation.
In typical geek fashion, members there have supposedly narrowed this down to 2008 models built in January or February of 2008.
Mine is and was.

Yeah, luggage racks on a dual-purpose bike.
To lots of riders on these bikes, it's apparently a match made in heaven, like cookies and milk.
Last fall, before I had the fire breather WR-250FY to ride off-road, I was in the middle of the Pachaug trail loop when I came out of the woods onto a dirt road where I met a guy taking a break on his Kawasaki KLX-250S (the Kawasaki version of my WR-250R).
No lie - he looks at my bike and asks how I can ride it without a luggage rack mounted over the rear fender.
I believe my answer was along the lines of:
Why in the world would I need a luggage rack slapping me in the butt while moving around all over the bike riding these off-road trails?
Amazing, really, when you sometime talk to people doing the same activity as you are on similar equipment, yet you can approach it with different intentions and have different ideas on what you're after.
To me, mounting a stupid-looking rack that just gets in the way is like playing a game of darts with a paper bag over your face.
Hmmmm.
That might work if you're really ugly, though, and your friends would probably thank you. :)

On top of that, I got the strong impression the guy was a newbie/geek, himself, when he mistook my dual-purpose WR-250R for a motocross YZ-250F.
Motocross bikes don't come with headlights and turn signal lights, folks, for one thing...

Off to jerk,
-John