Les Bonnes Choses

I feel compelled to apologize for my week-long absence. I promise I haven't been sitting idly by in some deliberate attempt to provoke a riot of anticipation -- mostly because, deep down, I know that what I have to say isn't really that important. However, there may have been a few people out there with, say, H1N1, and with nothing to do other than read my blog or else read old Marmaduke comics. It is for their sakes that I am truly sorry.

In the last week, I have been scrambling to piece together enough of a really long project to determine whether I could submit a poster for a conference in Montreal next spring. As if that weren't enough, I have also been trying to problem solve for a local motorcycle shop tasked with repairing my motorcycle. There are slight but nonetheless very real differences between the US and Canadian models of my motorcycle, and Kawasaki doesn't make it easy for US dealers to obtain parts for Canadian models, and, for whatever reason, I had to solve their distribution chain problem.

I didn't mention that I smashed motorcycle into a tree, did I? Yeah, that happened to me too. I live in a neighbourhood with alot of really old trees. It's like a deciduous forest with sidewalks. This being fall, all these trees are shedding their leaves. This being Chicago, it seems to rain almost every night. When the road is covered with slimy wet leaves, you might as well be driving on banana peels. I was completely aware of this hazard, and yet still managed to have my tire slip out from under me as I turned off of my street, sending me careening into a large tree just at a neighbour's curbside. I was irritated at the damage done to my motorcycle, but walked away otherwise uninjured. That's right, I drove a motorcycle into a fifty-year-old tree, and was irritated. I told you I was hardcore. You had best keep that in mind before you get all up in my grill.

Update: federal laws governing how news is reported require me to note that the collision with the tree was at about the speed of a brisk walk, making my lack of injuries actually rather unsurprising.