As summer winds down and the anticipated number of “good riding” days dwindles with each passing sunset I’ve found myself spending more and more time on the road instead of on the keyboard.

Yesterday was a good ride. I left work about 2:45, got home about 3:15, hit the starter button at about 3:30, and left the city. Ultimately we ended up in someplace called Merrickville after riding along a whole bunch of twisty secondary roads and passing through some other (very scenic) place named Burritt’s Rapids.

After wandering around the canal (who knew it was so long) locks for a bit, checking out the swinging bridge, helping 3 kids get a hook out of the fish they’d caught, and taking a tour of a historic guard house (built to defend against American invasion - some really cool stuff in there), we walked around until we saw what looked like a good pub and stopped in for a bite to eat. We can report that the service was good, and so were the burgers and fries we had for supper.

The ride back to the city was via a completely different, longer, very twisty, route, and therefore a great deal of fun - by the time I got home I was completely knackered and crashed on the couch.

It’s not what you could call a “sporty ride” by any stretch of the imagination, there’s a few tears on the seat but that’s no big deal, and black duct-tape has worked so far although (money permitting) I’m looking at possibly recovering the seat over the winter.

As you can see I’m also missing a right-side battery cover, apparently so is just about every other XJ750 Maxim rider out there - some sort of design defect, if you come across one let me know, if the price is right I’ll take it.

There’s also a few scratches on the tank (no, I didn’t lay it down, some previous owner did), nothing major, and the expandable magnetic tank bag covers them anyway although I am considering getting the tank repainted over the winter. Kate over at SDA looks like she does good work, and she does ride (a Yamaha even) - suppose she’d help me out even though we’ve pitched our tents on opposite banks of the main stream?

In any event….. the seat on the bike is a heck of a lot more appealing to me these days than this seat - and trust me, this seat is a lot nicer than the one I plunk myself down on in front of the keyboard when I’m on the web in the bunker.

… so for those of you who may be wondering why things have been a tad slow here of late, look at the pictures tell me which seat you would rather be sitting on on a warm sunny afternoon/evening?

What do ya think Kate, wanna put Che Guevara on a mottled olive drab tank for me? I’ll buy the beer and you can try and straighen me out :-)