After three months of unquestionable reliability, my motorcycle suddenly started acting finicky last week, being hesitant to start (though it would start eventually). Finally, last Saturday, I was riding down a two-lane, unlit, hilly, windy road with no emergency lanes (at night), when suddenly the bike lost about half its power and all the lights became dim. A second later it sprung back to life, but a few seconds after that it died completely, and this time it didn't come back. Finding a safe place to coast off the road in the dark with no headlight (nor other lights of any kind to warn other cars of your existence) is a fun challenge.

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Last month I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's Basic RiderCourse. It's a two-day course aimed at teaching absolute beginners how to ride a motorcycle. It runs a Saturday and a Sunday, and you spend about 9 hours each day in a parking lot and in a classroom, learning not only how to stay upright on a bike but how to handle emergency situations — they teach you to swerve at 20 mph, how to perform a quick stop in a turn, etc. It went well, and while I certainly didn't take to motorcycling like Mozart to music, I did feel pretty comfortable and made good progress (unlike some of the other students, unfortunately). We were unlucky (or lucky?) enough to have our course take place on a weekend where the weather was rainy, so we got to perform some of our exercises (and, indeed, the test itself at the end of the second day) in the rain.

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Ugh, the one night I was too lazy to bring food to work, it turns out it's Noche De San Juan and the streets are completely clogged with cars. It took me an hour to get to work, whereas normally it takes about 10 minutes. If I go out to get food, I might be gone for hours.

And dammit do I hate those little scooter motorcycles that have gotten so popular all of a sudden. These people are kind of like the motorcycling equivalent of the "new rich," who suddenly suddenly find themselves on a motorcycle and havent had time to learn how to use one. They just know that when they are in a car they always see motorcycles driving between the stopped cars at stoplights, so they've decided that now that they have a motorcycle they never have to wait in line.

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