With the weather so warm, this weekend was perfect for driving Midlana along the Pacific Coast Highway, so I backing it out of the garage and felt something wet drop on my leg. One little voice said “Meh, don’t worry about it.” The other little voice – the engineer – said, “So you’re ignoring the only fluid source above your feet… brake fluid?” Sigh, back into the garage. Apparently, when the cover blew shut last week, it tapped the top of the remote brake reservoirs hard enough to unseat them. Either that, or it was sheer coincidence that the clamps for both reservoirs just happened to loosen at the same time – not likely.
This sort of nickle-and-diming stuff bugs me. If anything, I trust the car less than I did before – it’s supposed to be the other way around. Not much to do other than plow through each problem until Midlana calms down. With the brake reservoirs fixed it was time to try rebuilding the trust: Three laps up and down the coast, and up Palomar Mountain and back, about 200 miles without incident.
As before, Palomar Mountain had a lot of sportbikes zipping up and down it (there was even a photographer part way up the hill). It’s pretty nuts, some of the guys dragging their knees around the turns, which is no problem as long as they stay in their lane. Speaking of that, on the way up I got stuck behind two people on a sportbike. It must have been the driver’s first time at having a passenger onboard because he wasn’t doing so well in the turns, slowing way down (like, slower than 20 mph) and still drifted wide into the other lane around blind turns. Really? And he couldn’t pull over to let the parade of cars pass? Thankfully nothing happened, at least when I was around.
It was interesting the very different reactions I got between sportbike and Harley riders: probably a dozen sportbike riders gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up as we passed each other, versus absolutely nothing from any Harley rider. I guess I don’t have the credentials: not wearing black, no tatoos, no facial hair, the car’s not black, nor is it covered with skulls. Am I stereotyping? Of course, but it’s happened too often to neglect commenting. Harley and sportbike riders make a point to ignore each other, but I didn’t realize that Harley riders have classified me as one of “them”, with the sportbike crowd. I guess they’re right.