Darrell

Ill take #1. Great looking knife!

entropy

I ride with an Arai full-face helmet. If you have a round punkin like mine, Arai is the best fit. For people with an oval head the Shoei's seem to be better. When I was racing I always wore AGV helmets, which I really like, too. Two things you should never go cheap on: your helmet and your tires. I've had a few KLR's over the years, and they're fantastic bikes! Since you're planning to use it to commute you might consider a pair of hard panniers for it. I see you already have a top-box! Congratulations on the new bike! Be sure to test that ABS so you know how it feels. Start with the rear brake and then work up to getting the front to activate. It'll definitely startle you when it activates unexpectedly, so it's wise to practice with it regularly.

Modern tires are amazingly good in the rain, regardless of which bike they're on. So long as you stay away from track-day oriented tires, and you wouldn't be putting those on a DL anyway, you'll be fine. Just keep in mind that your stopping distances will be higher, and your lean angles will be a limited to a bit less than dry-weather riding. One thing to note about riding in the rain: even though your bike will handle it just fine, people on four wheels are going to have a MUCH tougher time seeing you. I've been stuck riding in some real gully-washers, and while the bike handled everything easily, I was in constant fear of being hit. Cars and trucks throw up a lot of spray from a wet road, and visibility goes way down. Just as bad is if it's raining lightly when the sun is shining brightly. The glare from the road will make you really hard to see. BTW, I'm selling my Ducati 749. Now, it's not exactly a commuter bike, but it'll make the trip a lot faster and a lot more fun than that DL.

I hope you didn't purchase too much, because if it were mine I would pull every bullet, throw away the powder, and reload them with known powder. I would also carefully inspect every case, including running them through a go-no-go gage. 7% is an awful failure rate, and if 7% are failing you may find one that's going to do damage to your firearm or to you. It's been so long since you purchased the ammo that there is virtually no chance of finding the vendor. If it were me I'd cut my losses and not take the risk. Good luck!

There may be a lesson there about selling multiple guns, quite a bit of value, using an unconventional payment means. I don't mean to imply that one shouldn't accept gold, but for a big trade it might be worth the expense of a professional evaluation.

Congratulations on your sale! I'm not sure if I'm happy or sad about it, though, as I was waffling back and forth on whether I should go and take a look. Had I seen the final price drop I'd have that bad boy in my safe now. I hope your buyer enjoys that rifle, one I've always been tempted by.

You're right about that, and the majority of drivers are as safe as anywhere else, but since I moved here five years ago I've been astounded at the number of really bad drivers I encounter as opposed to other places I've been. I like to ride my motorcycles on the very cool, twisty back roads around here, but it seems that on almost every ride I encounter at least one driver coming toward me over the center line. It happens so frequently that I make a point of leaving a good margin to the centerline around any blind corner. I've also noticed that a whole lot of people fail to use turn signals, and there are too many people who think that yellow light on a traffic signal means to hurry on through. AdamB overstated it, but I understand his point of view.

My pet peeve is people tossing trash out of their vehicles onto the side of the road. I pick up about one shopping bag of beer cans and fast-food trash every other week or so along the road that bounders one edge of my property. I'd love to know where one of those litterers live so I could go and dump a load in their yard.

I'm not sure this should go here, or maybe in a public service announcement thread:

When my wife and I moved to TN five years ago we got the REALID licenses. As Krunchnik mentioned, it's a necessity if you're going to fly. I don't see it as an intrusion, but I understand that some folks might.

I'm enthusiastic about AI. Now, I don't believe one should depend upon it but it is a good way to get started on research. I imagine there were plenty of people who pooh-poohed the internet when it began, thinking that the good old library card category was the right tool for research. I still love the library, but..... AI is going to get better and it's going to help us tremendously. I think that medical diagnostics is going to be among the most important uses of AI, and I'm conviced that there will be new fields that open up that I can't imagine today

Try ammo from a few different manufacturers.

I think if it were mine I'd try several different types of ammunition first. Have you done that?