it was still raining when i drove to belmont in the late morning, but the forecast said it'd stop by this afternoon. so during the halftime break of the patriots-jets game, i went to the garage to unhook the battery desulfating charger, reassemble the motorcycle, and finally took it out of the garage. it was still wet outside and a little unpleasant, though not terribly cold with temperature in the low 40's.

i haven't ridden since mid-october, more than a month ago. the weather turned colder and i needed the car to get supplies (whether it'd be for the cafe or for painting). plus it wouldn't stop raining. i could've called it quits and put the bike away for the season, but i still believe there are a few more weeks of riding left to do this year. we've had our snow but the big winter snowstorm hasn't arrived just yet.

i brought the little drummer girl for my parents to watch along with chinese subtitles (only for the first 4 episodes). i downloaded all 6 episodes yesterday after i realized they'd already aired last week on AMC. i watched the first episode last night and found it good enough that i wanted to keep on watching but it was getting late. i could only show them one episode before i had to change the channel for football. after the game, i played a few more episodes for them and i left in the evening with them watching the final episodes.

patriots were playing at the jets. though new england was supposed to win, it was still stressful watching the game. even after the bye week, the patriots seemed off, their offense not really inspiring confidence despite a touchdown catch by gronkowski. this was against a new york team without their starting quarterback (not that it made much difference since the jets had a 3-7 record coming into the game). the first half ended in a tie, 10-10. patriots played better in the second half, putting up 17 points while the jets only scored a 3-point field goal kick. final score 27-13. next week: minnesota vikings.

after some ip webcam research last night, i decided to get a few wyze cameras for my sister. webcams have come a long way since my days of fiddling around with the foscams. the wyze camera - the pan and tilt version - is only $30 through their website (with an additional $4/camera for shipping & handling). (the non-pan static version is just $20) it has an unconventional square cylinder shape, but what sold me was the free 14 days of cloud storage in addition to local storage on a microSD card. the foscam can also record locally but i've tried it a few times and never got it to work. i planned on getting one for the cafe (to replace a broken webcam that will now only show solarized images) and 2 for my sister. i ended up ordering 4, so my sister could have 3 to place around the various windows of her house.

the main event was the motorcycle ride back to cambridge. i've hardly done any cold weather riding yet, and was looking to see how well the shorter windshield performed. temperature was hovering between the upper 30's and lower 40's. it'd stopped raining but there was slight fog and the roads were still slick. i wore my long underwear underneath my jeans and a wool cap beneath my open-face helmet. i didn't feel that cold. the shorter windshield still blocked most of the wind from hitting my chest. maybe my forehead felt a bit colder, but if i lowered my head a bit i could hide my whole face behind the windshield. one thing i wasn't used to was the unobstructed visibility when i don't have to look through the shield but over it instead. i rode very careful, afraid of slipping on black ice. it actually felt pretty good to be back on the bike again.

i found a parking spot in front of my house wedged between two cars. i might move it in the morning (before the rain that's supposed to come later) for defensive reasons. 20 minutes later i went back outside to put on the rain cover.