Taking the black racer to the remote office

Jan­u­ary has been a tough month. Some­times get­ting things accom­plished comes some­what nat­u­ral­ly and oth­er times it is an uphill bat­tle just get­ting through each day. Jan­u­ary has been a whole month of the lat­ter. It has­n’t been a bad month so much as it has been a dif­fi­cult month.

I real­ly mean it when I write that it has­n’t been a bad month. The sit­u­a­tion with my totaled Moto Guzzi has been resolved in what is prob­a­bly the best of all pos­si­ble out­comes: I no longer have the Stone, the motor­cy­cle I’ve been rid­ing for almost six years, but I was able to replace it with a 2004 Moto Guzzi Nero Cor­sa, which is a very nice replace­ment. It cost a bit more than I received for the Stone, but it is an upgrade in many ways.

The motor’s dis­place­ment is exact­ly the same as the Stone’s but it’s rat­ed with a few more hors­es due to the absence of hydraulic valves. It has a much nicer sus­pen­sion sys­tem and bet­ter brakes than the Stone. 

The rid­ing posi­tion is much more advanced—I mean that lit­er­al­ly. It’s a much far­ther for­ward rid­ing posi­tion with the hand­grips low­er and far­ther for­ward and the foot­pegs high­er and far­ther back. The bike rides high­er than the Stone did and the tran­si­tion has not been seam­less. It’s tak­ing some time, effort, and atten­tion to get used to the bike.

One thing that has helped some is chang­ing my work envi­ron­ment. Work­ing at home is con­ve­nient but it can be very dis­tract­ing. Bring­ing the lap­top to a cof­feeshop to use as a remote office has helped jump­start the day more than once. Today, as it got to noon with noth­ing yet to show for the day, I decid­ed to pack up and change envi­ron­ment to get some work done.

To kill two birds with one stone (or should I say one Nero Cor­sa?) I picked a Philz cof­fee that I’d nev­er been to before today: Palo Alto. That gave me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do some rid­ing down Sky­line on the way to my «remote office.» 

I set a down­right sedate pace on Sky­line. It’s a road I’m quite famil­iar with but a bike I’m just get­ting to know. The point was not to push any lim­its, but to get a feel for the bike and how it responds in cor­ners and all sorts of dif­fer­ent situations.

I’m quite pleased to report that the Nero Cor­sa is a great ride. As I already wrote I was­n’t push­ing any lim­its, but every­thing I asked for it gave me. It nev­er threw any sur­pris­es at me. It is a very well-behaved motor­cy­cle in every way that a motor­cy­cle should be well-behaved. (Obvi­ous­ly there are aspects of motor­cy­cling that should nev­er be described that way. Just ignore them for now.)

I took Sky­line to Page Mill Road, which is a much more chal­leng­ing piece of pave­ment, a nar­row road with very tight curves and switch­backs ter­mi­nat­ed by hair­pins. Again, speed was not the goal, but I was quite pleased at how the Nero Cor­sa fell into curves. Even in the hair­pins and cor­ners that felt too sharp I just leaned in a bit and the bike just went where it was sup­posed to. No push­ing, no extreme maneu­ver­ing, just a bit more lean and it fell in line.

I’m hav­ing trou­ble pick­ing a good line going through cor­ners, which I attribute to the steer­ing being so much more respon­sive than the Stone’s steer­ing. It’s been over three years since the Speed Triple was wrecked, so all my rid­ing has been on the Stone. I’m just not used to a quick-han­dling bike. It will take a lit­tle time in the sad­dle to adjust my line. Until then I just have to take it slow.

I’m also pleased to report that the Palo Alto Philz lives up to the expec­ta­tions set its San Fran­cis­co coun­ter­parts. It has a cozy, homey envi­ron­ment like the orig­i­nal Philz on 24^th Street  but with a park­ing lot and ample out­door seat­ing. The cof­fee is exact­ly as good as Philz elsewhere—or at least the Swiss Water Peru­vian is just as good as I’ve had it in SF.

My strat­e­gy of get­ting out of the house to set up office in anoth­er envi­ron­ment has­n’t quite panned out. I haven’t got­ten much work done today. I was count­ing on the iner­tia asso­ci­at­ed with get­ting out of the house and going for a ride to car­ry through into my pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and abil­i­ty to focus, but my focus this after­noon has been pret­ty poor and as a result the num­ber of items checked off my to-do list is pret­ty low. There’s still more time this evening, but no mat­ter what I’m still going to have to catch up tomorrow.