For incomprehensible and therefore inexplicable reasons at work, it made sense to take a week of vacation in February. Course, it is February and, being winter, there's nothing fun to do.

The thing to do, then, is to catch up on vehicle maintenance ... and I need a whole week for that. To Do: Brakes on the two cars; install new Plexifairing 3 on the Virago (includes cutting to height) and adjust valves on the Virago. (Also throw in replacing the basin, faucet, tail and trap in the downstairs toilet and also changing the oil in the Gravely and Aerostar).

This all went quite well. The weather was just warm enough that I didn't have to cobble up heat in the garage. But the weather wasn't quite good enough to be missing any fun opportunity. 

I generally like mechanic work fine, but I have never liked adjusting valves. I guess this goes back to my old CB550. You could do a perfect valve adjustment on that bike and the valves would be silent and the bike would run its very best ... for 500 miles. Then it went back to "normal".

So, the Virago. I've put 25K miles on it and never even thought about an adjustment. My old CB1000C with shim and bucket valves I never touched. The valves were only making a little noise when the big oil leak between the head and crankcase started. At 115K I think the valves were way down the list of things that needed attention.

But, the cap gasket on the Virago's rear cylinder exhaust valve started leaking. Logic says all the cap gaskets need replacing and, since you're already there, may as well adjust the valves too. I did the preparatory reading, assembled the tools and had at it. Turns out to not be as bad as I thought. Still a pain, but not all that bad.

And the Virago is a tough ol' girl. This is probably the first time the valves have been checked (almost 50K). And they are perfectly in spec. Not on the edge, dead in the middle of spec.

So yesterday, everything being finished, it was warm enough for a good ride. I headed east on my "short" ride to Watertown and kept going east and north: 96 to 70N to 53 to 290 to 56 to 53 and then headed back. A little over 200 mi. 99% sweet two lane; 30% super fun curvy two lane.

Well, I did need some good fun riding before heading back to work!