Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Riding buddies

With the early arrival of spring this year, I've been able to go riding with a few friends already (Evan, Andrew, and now Prashant). Until this past weekend, Prashant had yet to dig his Katana out of his garage. Last Saturday morning he installed the battery but wasn't able to get the bike started. He had removed the battery last fall and stored it inside the house, charging it a few times over the winter months. He called me for help, so I went straight over to his cookie-cutter home in Suburbia (I actually got lost for a few minutes because all the homes and all the streets look the same). Fortunately, it only took a minute to discover the problem: he didn't tighten the battery terminals properly -- finger tight only! We had the engine running 30 seconds later. Then we put on our gear and went for an hour-long ride. It was sunny, but with strong gusting winds. We rode south of town for about 1/2 hour and we decided to swap bikes for the ride back from North Gower. That little Katana has an extremely smooth revving engine, and Prashant likes the instant arm-straightening thrust of torque my big single provides. We went back to Prashant's place in Barrhaven (commonly called Farrhaven by us downtown city folk) for a nice feed of home cooked curried beef and chicken. It's nice when your riding friends are back on the road.


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