The stars at night, are big and bright....

Well, I dont know about the stars yet, and I probably won't have the opportunity tonight.. I've stopped for the night after a measly 200ish miles just outside Houston..
That crappy picture of the bridge was indeed the scariest thing I've ever done.. It wasn't raining at the time, but heavy crosswinds on this bridge that was hundreds of feet tall with barely a guard rail.. the bike was everywhere.. virtually uncontrollable.. in retrospect, I now know why there were turnarounds just before reaching the bridge..It was certainly a white-knuckle experience.. so much so that I had to pull over to calm down once on the other side.. Lesson learned: Turn around.

In other news, Steven Jones at First Turn in Scott, La, is THE MAN. The folks over at Lafayette Powersports had their heads up their asses and were completely incapable of helping me.. thanks guys, for wasting a day of my time! But Steven hooked me up with a chain this morning and got me rollin again.. Thanks again Steven! The motorcycling community is a small one (apparently those dip shits at Lafayette don't realize this) and you can be sure First Turn is on my list of endorsements.

So I had a big plan to check out this cool coastal area of southern Louisiana crossing into Texas at Galveston, but a wrong turn and this storm blowing in prevented that from happening.. oh well.. Tomorrow I'll head to Discount Tire in Houston for some new skins, then figure it out from there,, maybe go back down to Galveston, or continue west(ish) to Austin..

After some new rubber is mounted, that only leaves one problem.. the fuel mixture.. something is going on here and I just can't figure what has changed.. (this is the "rich problem" for those of you in the dark on this one.. "rich" is used to describe the the mixture of air and fuel as it enters the combustion chamber.. the right mix is crucial, and right now, I've got way more fuel than air..) how can I tell? black soot collecting on the muffler.. it's carbon deposit from unburned gas.. that and the occasional choking of the motor.. once in a while it gets sluggish and unresponsive.. it's not a subtle thing..

I cleaned and oiled the air filters back at the Kickstand and believe I over-oiled them (cuz I got the squeeze bottle instead of the squirt-er).. so I re-cleaned them and left them completely un-oiled to look for a change in performance.. maybe a subtle improvement, but not what I was looking for. Of course the other part of this equation is that with the incomplete burn of fuel, I'm wasting a lot of it!
There may be several factors in play here, including additional weight, substantially increased wind drag, high winds, new wind screen etc. etc.. but there are time when I'm only getting 80 miles from full to reserve! (that's a mere 23mpg, folks!)
Not good.
Not good at all.

Ya know, as of late I've even contemplated stopping by a big used bike dealer and trading in El Bandito on a used BMW 1150GS! (rash, I know, but I can't say it hasn't crossed my mind.. it is my dream bike after all) Any financially stable benefactors out there that encourage this idea? (hehehe)

well, I suppose I'll stroll over to the gas station (the only other thing at this exit) for some dinner! MMmmmmMMMMmmmmmm!