First snow for the season, still no Natasha....but I did ride.

Yesterday's rain/snow mix resulted in about an inch of snow accumulation on the grassy areas of the neighborhood and not much of anything that I could see from my garage door.  That is, a nice icy cover of frozen snow on my driveway.

Normally, I would have laughed it off and fired up Natasha, my Ural Sidecar rig and ridden off to work at the normal time.

Sadly, she's still in the shop, waiting for some part.  I am told it's inbound (again) and maybe they'll even send the right part.  I am not so confident anymore and refuse to have my hopes dashed once again.

So, I decided to work from home, doing a bit of telecommuting.  But before the day started for me, a little bit of shovel work, along with a special tool for chipping away at ice and finally a bit of snow melt salt, and I had me a path out to the dry cul-de-sac:

As expected, the roads in the neighborhood and the main roads were dry though there was the occassional wet looking spot in the shade that made one wonder.  These I managed to avoid, for the most part, or made sure to just cross while making no turning maneuvers.  It was a short ride as the sun had barely been up an hour and had not done its magic.

As I worked the rest of the morning, dutifully I might add, I could hear the snow melting off the roof and making noises as it fell off the roof edges.

Lunch time came about and I headed out once more to truly dry roads and bright sunshine.  It was a balmy 29°F as I rode to the Beemer dealer to have my battery checked out.  You see, as I went to start the R80 Beemer I call Brigitta yesterday afternoon, she balked.  Mind you, it was hailing lightly and the clouds were fearsomely dark and the wind was waiting to snatch me up into the sky.  No pressure.

Oscar, my co-worker friend came to the rescue with jumper cables, I got Brigitta going and got home only mildly wet and slight chilled.  I thought my battery was just too old.

So there I am at the dealer and they graciously broke out the tester and hooked it up to Brigitta, the battery was pronouced "good".   Hmmmm.  They did suggest that I change out the oil as I was still running the 20W50 oil for the summer.  I had been planning to do this in about 1000 miles but elected to do it this afternoon.

It's good that I did!  I found the rubber donut seal had been slightly damaged by the metal o-ring type disk and hence the slight oil leakage I'd been trying to figure out lately.

The oil has now been changed, the battery is all charged up.  So of course we're expected to wake up to 1-2 inches of snow tomorrow, Thursday, Veteran's Day.  Sigh, I really miss Natasha.