Posts Tagged ‘motorcycle’
parking snafu resolved
i got the best news i heard in a long time. it came in the form of a voicemail. and the source? my building’s management company. seems they now have a parking spot specifically for my motorcycle within the building’s garage!
so why is this blog worthy? a little background info is necessary to explain why this has made my day. see back when i purchased my first bike, i tried to park it in my car’s spot (along with my car) since the spot is plenty big for both vehicles, but when they found out about this, they weren’t happy. i normally pay $110/month for my car’s spot but it seemed asinine i couldn’t fully use it. so after my first bike got knocked over being street parked (as easy as it is to find parking), i could not have that with my new bike, so i vowed to park my car on the street. what’s worse, my spot is subsidized by the building’s management office since the garage is leased out (and they normally charge like $350 for a car), so the garage company wanted to charge me $160 for a spot a fraction of the size of the one i pay for my car. Fortunately, my building came through and got me a spot for $50.. yipee!
well street parking in my area is a ginormous pain in the ass, so knowing i don’t have to park my car in the street anymore, it seems
- no more getting 8 parking tickets in one month,
- no more getting towed (twice),
- no more having my car get disgustingly dirty on a regular basis,
- no more hesitating whether i should go somewhere by car because i’m giving up a valuable parking spot
- no more worrying about whether the cold weather will mean my car will have trouble starting, and best of all,
- no more circling around the block for an hour or so trying to find a spot that isn’t too far (esp now that it’s winter).
i swear, if i wasn’t sick at the moment, i would have hugged my building manager, he had to settle for a hardy handshake instead but i think he wasn’t too disappointed.
motorcycle upgrade
As much as I love the 250, i thought it’d be time to try something a little zippier 
So i purchased a 2006 Triumph Daytona 675 off craigslist. Sadly, it’s worth more than my car, still I love both equally, maybe the car a little more since I’ve had it longer. And since I don’t have a spot for it, my car will be street parked for the time being 
My ninja got knocked over a few months ago and there’s a big dent in the gas tank, i’ll have to replace that before I can sell it. I don’t want the same thing to happen to the triumph!
foray into motorcycling
After Chris, a porter in my building started talking about motorcycles one day, he showed me his red Yamaha YZF-600, i was like.. damn, this is pretty sweet. So I looked into getting the ability to ride my own sometime soon. I went to the DMV during a lunch break at work took the motorcycle permit exam, which cost $21 and really only took me 45 minutes total (including waiting @ the DMV, ugh). After that I took the MSF (Motorcycle Safety Foundation) BRC (Basic RiderCourse) course, a two or two and a half day course that lets you skip taking the road test. The road test in NYS for getting a motorcycle license is a real hassle (need to have someone drive the instructor down in your own car and you need someone else to bring the motorcycle there who of course is licensed). I’ve heard of people failing the road test before they even got on the bike because the car had expired registration!
So as of late july, I am a licensed motorcycle driver, errr rider.. and so now I purchased a 2006 Kawasaki Ninja 250 (from a cool fella on craigslist). It’s a fun little bike, great beginners bike and really very nice for the city, where you really can’t go over 100 mph, and I don’t think i’ll want to (at least not the first few months).
