Southern Exposure

Saturday, November 15

Today was our final stop for bike maintenance. I had ordered some parts to my friend Steve’s house in Fontana, where we were staying. The bike have new chains and sprockets. We went shopping at the Chaparral motorcycle store and I’ve never seen anything like it before. It was as big as a WalMart but entirely dedicated to motorcycle parts.

Despite the thousands of tires on hand, I couldn’t find a satisfactory matching pair of tires. In the end I decided to put Continental TKC-80s on the rear and Bridgestone Trailways 42s on the front. I already had one TCK-80 on the rear of my blue bike, and have been very happy with it. I bought two extra TKC-80s to take with us on the trip, which should allow us quite some range before we have to find a new rear tire.

Running these errands took most of the day. My friend Adam drove in from LA so we had dinner at Steve’s and then spent the night playing Rock Band with a full set of instruments. We even had Inna singing the songs she knew. I’ll have to get this setup when we get back to Seattle.