Break in ride! South Chicagoland

[Watcher]

My bike went back together yesterday, and I haven't ridden since the winter last year, so I'm in need of a spirited break in ride sometime soon so I can put the motor, as well as myself, through the paces.

If anyone in the south chicagoland area wants to go for a cruise and/or knows some good riding terrain in the area, please hit me up!  I'd love to meet some other local riders, as well as have a buddy to help me turn a wrench in case things go sour.

I'd like to go sometime this weekend.  I'll be doing some local scooting around during the week to make sure the bike is trustworthy before heading on a longer ride, but I know a longer ride will help the engine more than stop and go will.

[DoktoroKiu]

I'd be down for that shoot'n'scoot sometime in the near future.  I couldn't do it this weekend though, as I'm (likely) going to be riding down to Indy to have lunch with another Esperantist who's traveling through the Hoosier state.  And you're looking for someone to ride with (not to) anyway.

Hope your work holds up.  I'm still wary after my valve shim job that something will go wrong (still haven't put my fairings back on yet).

[BockinBboy]

Esperantist as in legit speaking Esperanto?  Its a bit an odd culture from what I've heard, but I always thought I'd be good at it lol.  Took 5 years of Latin, and can speak that fairly well though no one speaks it other than Latin teachers/professors haha... and it has a lot of root words same as other common European languages - which is the idea of Esperanto from what I've read.... I'm unsure if knowing Latin would help or hurt learning such a thing as Esperanto, but Latin has certainly aided my English vocabulary, and I do well deciphering parts of other languages too...

More of a side note, since I doubt I'd have time for anything extra but:
I'm riding through Indy this weekend as well, so long as I can find the time to get the oil change done - otherwise I'll be taking the truck... my truck doesn't have A/C and gets 22mpgs - so if I'm not gonna have A/C I'd rather take the bike and get 60mpgs!  So there some extra motivation to find the time LOL

@Watcher - If you are ever a little further South let me know, I get a lot of riding in around East-Central Illinois and Indiana (read East of Champaign), but I hardly ever go North though    All my friends and folks are East and South I guess... and I try to keep within a few hours of good friends or family should I need a close contact for anything - partly my wife's rule, but I'm not in much opposition to it anyway.
Been trying to get a good excuse to ride around in that direction - Comic Con is coming up in that area, but my wife has already told me no    

- Bboy

- Bboy

[Watcher]

Well, champaign is about 2 hours from me, so that's a trip in itself...


Looks like it might rain most of this weekend anyway.

[DoktoroKiu]

Sorry for the partial thread jack; but yep, legit speaking Esperanto.  I randomly started picking it up about 4 years ago (used it as a report subject in a class), but I've only been very consistent in studying it over the last year or so.  I suppose it's like Latin since there are (relatively) few speakers in the States and we're all spread out.  I was planning on going to Russia for a meetup in August, but then the whole Ukraine thing happened and I figured it was better if I didn't test my luck.  On that note I probably wouldn't have bought a motorcycle this year if that didn't fall through, so I guess it's a good thing.  This would be my first in-person meeting with another Esperantist.

I'd describe Esperanto as a VERY simplified form of a Latin-descended language (with several other interesting features as well).  The idea is actually to have fewer roots but to add the ability to use affixes or to combine the roots themselves to make new words.  For example, the word for good is bona and the word for bad is malbona, where mal- makes any word into its opposite meaning.  You can also change the function of a word where it makes sense: rapido is speed, rapida is quick/fast, and rapide is quickly.  This might give you a hint that (in almost every case) words ending in -o are nouns, -a are adjectives, and -e are adverbs.  Verbs have different endings like in Spanish/Latin, but they are all regular and do not conjugate differently for I/you/he/they.  I better stop here before I make a whole lesson, lol.

I had several years of Spanish in high school and a lot of that transferred over, but there are some points of confusion between the two.  A big help is that a lot of Esperanto words are cognates in either English or Spanish, so my vocab started out decent.  It does mess with my Spanish skills somewhat, but I started studying Esperanto because I wanted to learn something I won't forget 90% of because I never use it.  I also get a kick out of talking on forums with people from another country who don't speak a lick of English.  And while there are a lot of oddball Esperantists there is a silent majority of more-or-less regular folk who took it up as a hobby.

I'd consider myself a regular person, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't believe that the Fina Venko would be a good thing for the world (final victory; Esperanto as an official international auxiliary language for everyone).  I do have a penchant for idealistic thinking, though.

Man, that will suck if I have to spend the 1-2 hour drive in the ol' cage.  Hopefully the thunderstorms stay away.