2007 Motegi MotoGP Race Day

Today was a rainy miserable day for the race. While the rain did stop about a 1/2 hour before the race, the track was wet and the damage was done. Our favorite riders starting together on the front row were only able to generate 1 top ten finish with Hayden getting 9th. Pedrosa crashed out right in front of us with a nasty highside and Rossi had issues with the tires on his 2nd bike forcing him from first place to 13th. Tony Elias did manage to put one Honda on the podium with a 3rd so all was not lost. Caparossi took 1st and Depuniet was 2nd, sure glad LCR Honda signed RDP for next year, Ive always said he was going to be a great one ;). With 2 races remaining the championship is over with Australian Casey Stoner winning the 2007 championship. Even with the crappy weather the Japanese fans turned out in droves and it was a pretty lively crowd cheering on several Japanese riders put on as wild card riders. We do hope the weather is a little nicer to us next year.

The 2007 Jspec XR250 has arrived!

Picked up the new machine today. I must say that it’s not a bad looking ride in the Japan only black and gold rim trim. As expected the engine is a tad on the anemic side but we can live with that. Unlike the US XRs it does have electric start and just like all XRs it is also super lightweight(not)and you can see Heather throwing it all around in these pics. :)
It is nice to have a bike again and I got out for a little break-in trip towards the mountains north of town. It took me about 20 minutes to figure out there is no better mode of personal transportation available than the motorcycle for this country.
A manager at the Dream Honda shop was nice enough to break out a map for me and detail several hundred miles of offroad trails between here and the Nikko mountain area. I'll have to wait another month or so to explore those, as they are still snow and ice covered in some sections. In the meantime I plan to use it for the daily commute as weather permits and will maybe hit the Kinugawa river bed a little for fun.

The Fit.

Here's Heather pulling our sweet looking 2006 Bright Blue Honda Fit 1.3S out of the "garage".

Obviously, I wasnt offered a lot of choices in color. So I took Blue over Pink, and Copper. In a country where 90 percent of the cars on the road are black, white, or silver, this one is easy to find in the parking lot, and moderately visible to the nutcase drivers here who will pull out in front of you on a daily basis. One note on the "garage", is that we really have underground parking, meaning we have to raise one of these car racks/elevators up and down to get our car out from under the one on top each time we come and go. Very inconvenient for the person underneath as you have to do all the raising and lowering. Currently we are "borrowing" one topside from an empty apartment while we wait on one to hopefully become permanently available.