Doug Reese

New Pazzo brake and clutch levers for my Z750S

A couple months ago I had to move my Kawasaki Z750S motorcycle out of the garage so a water pressure regulator in our house could be replaced. Like I’ve done hundreds of times before, I pushed the bike out of the garage and leaned it on the kickstand in the driveway. As I turned around to talk to the guy replacing the regulator, I heard what any motorcycle owner should never hear — the unmistakable sound of a full size motorcycle hitting pavement. I’m still not sure what happened, but since the bike was facing down the mild slope of our driveway, I’m assuming I had not extended the kickstand fully which allowed the bike to roll forward off the stand and, well, crunch…

Broken clutch lever

The damage was minimal — slightly scuffed left handlebar weight, a few scratches on the alternator cover, and a broken clutch lever. Ah, to be able to go back in time even 10 seconds. First ding on an otherwise clean bike; It’s not new any more; Why didn’t I double check the kickstand, I don’t have time to fix this; etc.

Continue reading New Pazzo brake and clutch levers for my Z750S

Another small quake

Like I said before, little earthquakes happen all the time around here, but it does seem like I’m noticing more of these small tremors than I have in the past.

The red square indicates a magnitude 3.7 event that occurred 3 km (2 miles) SE of Lake Henshaw, CA just after 11pm PDT on May 4, 2008.

Map courtesy of USGS.

New MP3tunes Web Player

Check out the beta version of our new web player over at MP3tunes. There are some known issues with Internet Explorer, but I’ve been using it in Firefox (both Mac and Windows) and Safari with no problems. Hit the feedback link at the top of the page and help make it better.

Earthquake near Ramona, just a small one

It is not unusual to feel the occasional quake where we live just north east of San Diego. Usually the epicenter is far to the east, near or in the desert. In fact there are small quakes all over California and Nevada all the time. So when I heard the rumble and felt a little shudder about an hour ago, I was quite surprised to find out how close to home this one was.

Red indicates an event in the last hour. This one was a magnatude 2.8 event — pretty mild. I would have slept through it had I been asleep.

Map courtesy of USGS.

Live video of So What

I’ve been digging around on a desktop machine that I don’t use much these days, and came across a bunch of video from So What performances. It will take a while, but eventually all the stuff that doesn’t make us cringe will be online.

Head on over the to Video page and check them out. Let me know what you think. Here’s one to get things started.