The warm-weather-driving season kicked off this weekend! I've decided
to make sure that Norton is completely taken care of in the next month
or two with a plan to give him a new shell by this time next year!
I
took care of a bunch of small stuff like changing the headlights from
UK style Wipacs to Hella DOT lenses, new wipers, tightened the drop arm
(damn thing won't stay!), and pulled out all the damp carpet.
The
one big thing that I took care of is rewiring the starter. The PO had
used some #1 copper that I could barely bend by hand and kept the
battery box from shutting completely. I had previously used some #1
welding wire for the winch which worked out GREAT - and took an
afternoon to rerun all of the ground/starter wires in #2 welding wire.
What a difference. Everything is so much more tidy now.
Another
big item that I'm really looking forward to is swapping out the Sparco
Evos for some standard Defender items. The Sparcos served me well, but
I think my butt's getting a little big for them.
In other news,
I have to say that I was totally surprised to hear about Bloomberg's
plan to increase the number of bike lanes as part of his plan to reduce
emissions. I can't say that I believe that the conjestion charge will
do more than make more money for the city, but the
rest of it is great.
Also
- I rode in to work this morning and saw two things that I've never
seen before. First, a traffic cop signaling traffic yelled at a guy in
a van to watch the bikers (who were, admittedly, running a red light).
Then a couple of blocks further, a patrol car had pulled over a guy on
a Vespa for buzzing along in the bike lane!
It’s probably just some earth-day overrun and will revert back to standard operations soon enough, but I thought I’d share.