May Day
Its been really nice out here in NoCal, with temperatures in the 80s and even a little bit of surprise rain. The rain caused a small "SuperBloom" (click on the link) at Folsom Lake which, in turn, caused a lot of traffic and look-e-loos.
We're still low for rain which raises the spectre of Wildfires. Last year was pretty bad not just here but throughout the West, and there's a lot of fear over a repeat not just for the destruction, but for the constant smoke the hangs in the valley and messes up the air quality, visibility, and causes general gloominess.
Therefore, I was not *too* surprised to encounter a Wildfire this last Saturday, despite how incredibly early it is in the year.
I had decided to go for a Motorcycle ride (I have a 2008 Boulevard). I have gotten a little more into motorcycling as the weather has improved. I changed the oil on the bike and got new tires put on(**1), so I was anxious to do a little riding.
While riding up Salmon Falls Road, a scenic but short road, I got turned around by the firefighters who were fighting a wildfire on the hillsides. The fire was pretty much **right there** and I got to see a Helicopter dump a bunch of water on the hillside. I wasn't close enough to feel the heat or the water dump, but it seemed like I should! Anyway, I turned around and proceeded down some other roads before coming home.
There are some Motorcycle Demo Days coming up that I'm somewhat excited to attend, we'll see how that goes! **2
**1 The motorcycle shop was new to me but was pretty cool. While there I saw a 2015 Aprilia Caponord with only 600 miles. Man, I fell in love with this bike, mostly with how it looks. I had never heard of its exitance before. So much want-lust. But my brain won out over my heart and I went home and just read about the bike. It has some positives, and some negatives, and generally most people feel BMW makes a better motorcycle than this. I had to dial back my impulses quite a bit though.
**2 BMW has one on 5/7 and 5/8, where they let you ride their motorcycles. Their showcasing the R-18, a cruiser-ish bike to compete with Harley-Davidson, but I think its pretty ugly. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder though. More interesting to me is the Harley Davidson Pan-America, which HD is creating to compete with BMW. HD's Demo is May 28th here. To be honest, I'm not the kind of unicorn that buys brand new motorcycles as there are so many used motorcycles at drastic discounts with only ~500 miles on them, so its hard for me to swallow $17-20k for that Harley or a BMW 1250. Still, the demo is rumored to be "Fun" to attend :)