Terry Ogaki.com

I’m really bad at keeping my websites and blogs updated.  I mean, at least it’s not a full year between posts or anything, but still — I mostly rely on quick Twitter updates, but I should really try to focus more on writing up articles and whatnot.

I’ve been riding quite a bit since getting my Ninja 250R back in March.  I absolutely love the bike, and in the 5 months I’ve had it, have put on over 7,200km — and expect to break 10,000km by the end of the season.  Can’t say I’m sure how I put on that much mileage, since I haven’t gone anywhere very far away; Guelph and Lindsay Ontario would be the two furthest destinations out of town, and they’re both less than 120km away.  However, I ride out to Woodbridge/Vaughan a lot to visit my buddy Leo, who got himself a Ninja 650R shortly after I got my own bike, so we ride together regularly.  I’ve also been talking to a few local riders, hoping to go on some trips.  I’ve talked of bike camping, and think it would be a great experience, although it’s getting a bit late in the year now for that.  If nothing else, I want to go for some rides out to places like Niagara Falls, Ottawa, the Kawarthas area, etc — someday it would be great to get a cottage out there and just take off with some buddies on the bikes for the weekends.

I’ve made a few investments into the bike and equipment for it, most recently an alarm system which I installed personally.  I didn’t want to spend the money on one, but after catching people sitting on/messing with my bike on two separate occasions — both times behind my workplace — I realized that if it’s happening there, it’s probably happening when I park the bike at the mall and other places.  While I don’t expect an alarm system to stop a potential thief or vandal, it does give me some peace of mind to know that something is there to hopefully deter idiots from messing with my bike.  I understand people love motorcycles, but I don’t get the “let’s go sit on it and play with it” mentality — I would never randomly hop in some stranger’s car, so why do people think it’s alright to do so with our bikes?  It only takes one mistake to send the bike — or the person sitting on it — crashing to the ground.

Which brings me to my next point: I dropped the bike a few months ago, and it was a purely boneheaded move on my part.  I went to close a door next to me by my parking garage, and stupidly leaned over a bit toward it, not realizing there was loose dirt under my foot.  The bike started to tip over, and I lost my footing, dropping the bike and sending myself face-first into a concrete wall.  Scraped up my helmet a bit, had to replace my visor — no big deal.  The bike landed on its right side, but amazingly only wound up with a few minor scrapes there.  It rolled forward however, bumping into the curb/wall, which resulted in my headlights   getting scuffed and knocked out of alignment, some scuffing of the paint on the front fairing, and — most annoyingly — about a 1.5″ crack on the left side of the bike.  It would cost me over $300 to replace the front fairing (which is where 90% of the damage was, aside from the small scuff on the headlight casing), so I said forget it for now, worse things could have happened.

So my bike has some “character” now, which I’m actually cool with.  Over 7,000km of riding, some stories to tell, and freedom to just get out on the open road and forget about all life’s problems for a few hours — worth every penny.

Maybe if I ever get around to it, I’ll start posting some Vlogs of my trips, not to mention some photos.  Hopefully in something less than half a year…