If you did sell your house for $379, I'd guess that it was a bit of a fix'er-upper special, eh?
Without the red hood, of course. ;)
I went on yet another Pachaug loop ride this weekend (Saturday only, and I'll tell you why there was no Sunday ride), and it was pretty good.
I felt good with no hints of feeling sick or tired or suffering from any pesky bug or illness that saps energy and concentration, so, things went well.
I rode a total of 50 miles and had a very good time, making some good moves on the bike and feeling as if I was riding as well as I typically can, and that's due to feeling in good shape in both body and mind, something you can't put a price on, folks.
If I feel that I'm riding well, that's a sure recipe for a good ride.
Period.
Why can't I just feel at or near 100% every time I go out there?
Well, well, well, if only I had control over my body and mind on some kind of microscopic level, huh, Bucky?
Maybe it has something to do with me being 46 years old, and maybe it has to do with my working for a living where retail sales are made to people off the street, and who knows what kinds of sickly microbes they're carting around as they come into the store and breathe on other people.
The reason I didn't ride on Sunday was because I took the bike apart Sunday morning in order to bring the forks and rear shock absorber from the CRF-450X9 to my ol' friend Tom at Nasin Machine, just up the road from jerk.
If you remember, early this year I had Tom perform a couple of front fork modifications to the damping valving inside the fork (called a "revalve" by most riders) on the ol' sorely-missed-and-now-it-has-been-proven-that-I-shouldn't-have-sold-it WR-250FY.
Well, I'm dropping the suspension components off to Nasin Machine this (Monday) morning so that he can do a bit of a revalve on the forks and shock.
Why do I need that?
Simple, Simon.
The suspension on the CRF-450X9 is setup off the showroom floor for riding terrain where you can keep some speed up as opposed to 1st gear rock gardens like we have a lot of out here in Connecticut, and that includes the ol' Pachaug rock n' roll pile.
If you can get the bike into 3rd or 4th gear and sail along at a good clip, that means the terrain ain't slow and rock gardenish, but more like the kind of bumps you find on a motocross track, which, basically, means the ground probably isn't littered with pesky rocks sticking up out of the ground and forcing you to slow down.
So, since the suspension on the CRF-450X9 prefers higher speeds and the less rocky terrain that come with it, it doesn't work well in the slower rocky section because it has firm valving meant for higher speeds and it simply feels too stiff and unyielding over that slower stuff, bouncing me around and making an already heavy-feeling bike in the tight stuff even more so.
So, after seven months of riding this bike every weekend over the rocky sections and having the clear feeling the suspension set-up isn't intended for that rocky trash, I feel it's high time that it be modified with a valving setup that IS intended for that stuff.
I should have the bike put back together by Saturday afternoon, and I'll report back with how it feels after this coming weekend.
-John
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