Last ride for a week or so...

I went out riding yesterday for the first day in almost a week because of cold nasty weather. It was 44 degrees out, the last day we may see like that for a while. It's supposed to be rainy, then colder with ice and snow. Look's bad for the next week!

I went out and pulled the underseat storage compartment before I went riding, to take some pictures of some mods I've done to the StradaVariator while I still had a reasonably warm day for it. Then before I went out riding, I checked things over and discovered that one of the MRP 35 watt bulbs I recently installed already burned out on the high side. I thought that bulb was extremely bright on high beam for a 35 watt bulb. I bought three from Stan at Oregon Vintage, and I only had only used it an hour or two with it on high beam. Hope they don't all burn out like that. I also checked the nut on the back axle, because the back wheel had a slightly 'vague' feeling last time I rode it. Glad I did, because it had backed off about a turn. It shouldn't now because I took my air impact wrench to it and tightened it down until it wouldn't turn anymore.

I rode in town, and ended up riding quite a bit of the time at the speed(about 45 mph) where there is some vibration in the front wheel, and it's still rather annoying, even after the balancing beads. I'm starting to suspect a defect in the chinese Kenda tire on the front.
I got a couple of chances to try out something my wife got me for Christmas, a Signal Sorceror. It's a fairly good sized powerful magnet that attaches to a frame crossmember on the bottom of the scooter. It's supposed to trip the magnetic sensors under the pavement in turn lanes, so the left turn signal will change during the next stoplight sequence. The Strada hadn't been tripping the sensors at all in left turn lanes, so I had to wait til a car pulled up behind me in the turn lane before the turn signal light would activate. With it installed, yesterday, it tripped one sensor thad had never worked with the scooter before, but failed to trip another one. I suppose there might be slight differences in sensitivity at different locations. As I have more time to check it, I'll also try to figure out if approach speed or positioning within the lane has anything to do with it. At any rate, it promises to be better than without it, even if it doesn't trip all of them. The one it didn't trip is one that a Geo Storm car that I recently had would never trip either, so the sensor there must have pretty poor sensitivity.

I was pretty comfortable actually, with insulated boots, long underwear drawers under jeans, sweatshirt under my leather jacket, leather neck warmer, and thinsulate lined gloves. I didn't have too much time though, as it was cloudy and windy, and warmed up very late in the day. So after close to an hour of riding, it was getting dusky and colder, and I headed home to just beat my wife home from work.