Gary's new bike

Gary got a new Buell Ulysses XB12-something. Cool bike, looks like it could climb a building. We took brief advantage of the prettiest day of the year so far and went for a ride.

Test drive

Ron came over and test drove the new Ninja. He liked its quickness & agility.

Bill Q gets himself a Harley

Not to be outdone by my recent Ninja 25o acquisition, Bill Q has gone and gotten himself a big ol' Harley Heritage Softail. I'll dig up a more recent picture later.

New bike: Ninja 250

So, I found a bargain on Craig's List and am now the owner of a virtually brand new 2007 Kawasaki Ninja 250.

It's still in the break-in period, so I'm taking it really easy for a while.

Reversed polarity

A couple of weeks ago, I turned on the key (81 6-volt Passport), and I have dash lights but the starter wouldn't crank. This is typical after the bike sits a while. So I kick start it, it runs great and I ride around for about 2 hours, thinking that I'm doing the battery some good.

The bike sits for a couple of weeks again until today, I turn on the key and I have NO dash lights. I don't want to start it and blow out bulbs with a dead battery, so I immediately remove the battery and hook it up to a meter which shows zero volts/amps. The electrolyte level is good. I figure the battery is probably shot, but with nothing to lose, I hook the leads up to my wall-wart trickle charger, and while looking for an outlet to plug it in, I notice the charger getting really warm really quickly and look down and see smoke coming out of the little charger, and by now it's really hot! So I disconnect it, but now I'm wondering where it got enough energy from the battery to do such a thing.

So, I hook up the meter again, and it still shows zero volts/amps. So I reverse the connectors, hooking negative to positive, etc., and now the battery shows fully charged, and tests good except for the polarity being reversed.

What caused this? I assume that both the battery and charger are trash, but I'm wondering what I might have done to cause this.

Couple of Ninja 250 stories

Here's a 52 yr old guy who rode his 2006 Ninja 250 from Key West Florida to Prudhoe Bay Alaska.

And here is a "minimalist's" ride through Mexico on a Ninja 250.