Fried Clams

There comes a time when a stupid and futile gesture is require, and I'm just the man for the job. With my better half working on Mother's Day, and with it being the nicest day we've had since early last October, I thought it made sense to ride the bike to New Brunswick for some fried clams.

I mounted the beast and joined my buddy Duane for an excursion into Atlantic Canada. We headed east across "The Airline", state route 9. Except for a few stretches with some horrendous frost heaves and potholes, the road was good. It seemed that the 55 mph speeds limit signs were just there for looks as the rate of travel was a pretty good pace.

Few people were using the border crossing into Canada which made things easy. Thirty minutes later we were ordering our lunch.
The clams were just as good as the last time I was there, perhaps a decade ago. We zipped back to Bangor across the Airline rather than exploring other routes. All in all a very good day!

Bangor Motor Sports

.... hosted a group ride on Thursday after they got out of work at 6PM. The route was Bangor to Etna to Stetson to Levant and back to a light dinner at Nicky's Diner on Union Street. Aside from a few horrendous frost heaves on 222 near Stetson it was a pretty good ride.

Only ten bikes participated, two two-up. As the sun got lower in the sky a few participants buggered off as they were getting chilly. It was there loss. The owner of BMS picked up the tab for the dinner of all participants. Class act right there!

I look forward to another one in two weeks.

Snatchy Throttle

That's the term used by Triumph Bonneville's, Thruxtons, and Scamblers use to describe the uneven throttle response, particularly in low gears, unique to all of these models. It's said to be the result of an air injection system required but the EU. Supposedly it  makes a minuscule improvement engine emissions but is extremely annoying to the rider. In addition to the snatchy response, it causes extreme bluing of the exhaust pipes and back fires on down shifts.

I just got my Bonnie back from Bluin Performance Center where they removed the air injection system and remapped the electronic fuel injections. The results are amazing. No throttle snatch! No backfiring! The bike is definitely more responsive, I hope I don't get a ticket! To top it all off it produces a more pleasant exhaust note!