Huh. I started an entry yesterday, but I don’t know where it got to. No matter. I hadn’t written much.

The new Guy Gavriel Kay book is out! I picked it up yesterday. I’ve only read a few pages. I’m debating whether to take it to Mexico. The downsides are that (a) he doesn’t write the type of books that can be read in small, quick chunks, and (b) I’ll want to hole up in a room and read and do nothing else. The upsides are obvious.

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So, Sunday turned into one of our adventures. We went for a ride, up to the Santa Maria area, so Ken could trade bike seats with a guy from Monterey. See, previous versions of the K12 LT had special cushy seats; later version (as ours) do not. The regular seats are a bit lower, and this guy has short legs, so he wanted to trade. Ken prefers the cushy seats. I can’t tell a whit of difference (well, my butt can’t), but it’s not my bike. :-)

It was a beautiful, sunny day, and cool: perfect riding weather. The trip took about 3 hours, with a brief stop at a BMW dealer in LA to see if they had a book we’re looking for. We took the 101 partway and then cut across the 154 past the Black Oak Lodge event site, and would have stopped in Solvang at the weaving store if we’d had more time, but no matter.

We met up with said guy and two other guys in Guadalupe, where there is this famed steak restaurant. Sadly, I was seriously unimpressed. The Sunday menu consisted of four cuts of steak as “open-faced sandwiches” (translation: plopped on a piece of toasted sourdough bread), one regular steak, and a sirloin burger. I had the burger with cheese and sliced Chile; everyone else had a sandwich. I ordered tea because I’d gotten a bit chilled (it was windy near the end of the ride, and the restaurant didn’t know the concept of heating—more on that later). The tea was lukewarm. Ugh. Our salads nearly didn’t arrive—when we finally got our main courses, we asked about them, and then they showed up. The ranch dressing was watery. My burger was fine, but nothing special in the long run. Then, when I went to the bathroom, the back of the building was freezing: I swear I saw my breath.

I sat outside and chatted with the guys while they changed the seats, which took less than an hour, and then we headed out. Only to stop a few blocks later. On the way into town, Ken had noticed a bit of bumpiness, but chalked it up to a bad road. As we were leaving, he realised the road wasn’t really that bad. He checked the brake pads, and we continued on. We stopped a few miles later at a gas station…where, ironically, the other guys had just stopped. Definitely something wrong—the same thing that went wrong on the last bike (same model) when we were in the Czech Republic. Rear-end failure (something to do with bearings. That’s the sum total of my understanding of the situation.).

Sigh. This is a known problem with the K12 LTs, although BMW still isn’t acknowledging that. We crossed the street to a Jack-in-the-Box and proceeded to make some calls. I bought us an Oreo cookie shake, because we needed one. We have roadside assistance up to $100, but the closest BMW dealership was Fresno—100 miles in the wrong direction, and given that bike shops aren’t open on Mondays, this wasn’t very feasible. So we managed to get through to our friend Kelvin, who has a car trailer (he restores British cars). It was a roundabout thing; eventually we got hold of his wife, Debbie, who drove to where she knew he was to give him our message, etc. Apparently when he got home to pick up the trailer, she came out of the house and said, “Would they move bodies for us?” They both contemplated for a moment and agreed that yes, we would, and therefore we were good people and worthy of rescue. The mental image of that scene still makes me giggle.

All told, we were in Jack’s for about 3.5 hours. Luckily I’d brought a book with me—Writing the Blockbuster Novel. I read for a little bit, then was overwhelmed with sleepiness. I put my head down on the table for a moment…and woke up 45 minutes later. I was astonished. I can’t sleep on planes, generally can’t sleep unless I’m horizontal. This is certainly not a comment about the interestingness of the book, though. I eventually read a good chunk of it, and it’s quite good (I’m not sure I agree with everything he says, but it’s certainly making me think). Ken held my hand the entire time I was out; his hand fell asleep, poor thing, but he never let go.

Finally Kelvin arrived, and we strapped the bike into the trailer, and headed south. He suggested we take the truck and trailer (and thus the bike) home, and then return the truck and trailer later. Damn, we have cool friends. Despite the annoyance of the overall situation,
it was lovely to have some quality time with Kelvin! Debbie met us in a parking lot so she could drive him home, and we continued south. We discovered how hard it is to find gas stations with diesel fuel, and had to stop one more time because Ken was so sleepy. We arrived home just before 1 a.m. Argh.

Another adventure. Ken’s a good enough rider that he realised there was a problem before it could become even close to serious. And this happened this week, as opposed to next week, when we’ll be in Mexico.

I don’t remember much of Monday. I worked on the Black Oak Lodge booklet more. This is the event steward’s first event, and she’s not as organised or communicative as would be ideal, so this has taken far longer than it should have. I also bought the new Kay book (see above), and we hosted sewing night. Ken made me a cover for the loom! He’s so impossibly wonderful. It’s ugly fabric, but not horribly obtrusive (stuff that was donated, that we had in a giveaway pile anyway).

Today we got up and took the bike to a shop to be repaired, then headed north. On the way up and back, we read each other a kid’s book about Beowulf (Beowulf being the theme of Black Oak Lodge). After we dropped the truck and trailer off, we stopped at the event steward’s house and got the final information from her, then headed home. We ate at Olga’s for lunch. There’s only one Olga’s in California. One in Ohio. Two in Illinois. And something like 26 in Michigan. This is supremely unfair.

We got home by about 4, and I was almost asleep, but I forced myself to stay awake rather than nap. The booklet is done and out; I’m just dealing with people who can’t handle .pdf files at this point. I’m semi-packed for the trip—meaning that I’ve piled things on the bed. Ken is a good packer, and prefers to do the job, and I don’t have issue with that. We had dinner (bbq, mozzarella, and pineapple chicken) and watched an ep of “Joan of Arcadia”, which is a brilliant show, although this ep seemed random and unfocused. I’ve showered, etc. Laundry is laundering away.

Tomorrow I have a chiro appt (because I wasn’t getting up Monday morning for my original appt) and Ken’s stopping at our financial guy, and then we’ll pop down and pick up the bike. After that, it’s final packing and then we should be on our way. Cat’s leaving earlier, so we’ll meet her down there.

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Ken installed OS X.3 on all the computers. In some ways, it’s fantastic: things are much faster, I love the new Finder. But it took over my F keys, and I learned Word with F keys. In the System Prefs, I was able to turn off some of the F key functions, but F9-12 weren’t there. F11 is, and probably always will be, Italic in my little world. Anyone know how to circumvent this X.3 “feature”?

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So, Baja California. I’m taking the laptop, largely so we can dump photos from the digital camera onto it (we haven’t gotten around to buying a bigger card). I hope to get a bit of writing done, and I’ll keep up on the journal. We’re largely going to the BajaProg Festival to see Forever Twelve; while I’m sure I’ll enjoy the other bands, I’m not as much into concerts where I don’t know the music or lyrics. So I’ll have some room time, or maybe lounge-by-the-pool time, if there’s a pool. Hm, maybe I should take the Kay book after all!

Speaking of which, it’s about the Welsh, Vikings, and Anglo-Saxons. (Insofar as any Kay books are “about” a particular culture.) How perfect is that?

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Rejection from _Argosy_ today. I have a couple of stories to re-send, but I’ll do that after we get back.

I got a little work done on a short erotica story tonight, for a contest. Mostly feeling out the setting and the main character. The plot isn’t quite there yet, but it’ll come.

Must sleep now…