i took the bus to belmont in the early afternoon since i figured i'd ride the motorcycle back to cambridge. i put in the fully-charged battery which worked fine, but it took several starts (including pulling out the choke) before i could get the engine running (maybe it took some time for the fuel to trickle into the engine). once the bike was purring it was as good as new. not bad for a machine that'd been in storage for 2 years! when i went inside to get the registration decal, i noticed something was off: it was dated 2014. i must've grabbed last year's decal by accident (when i was still in china). so where was 2015? i probably left it at home. i was tempted to ride the motorcycle back to cambridge, risked getting a ticket for an expired registration sticker. i decided to wait until tomorrow. that meant i couldn't get the bike inspected today (not that i would be doing any riding anyway with an expired sticker).

when my parents came home in the mid-afternoon, we went to the waltham ocean state job lot to do some shopping. i picked up a trio of large tomato cages. back in belmont, we had some pork broth noodles for dinner.

i decided to risk it and take the motorcycle back home to cambridge. if i get stopped, i had a pretty good excuse, that i was just taking the bike out of storage and going home to get my registration decal. if they ran my plate they'd discover it's already registered. my father was worried that i'd forgotten how to ride after such a lengthy hiatus (i did ride when i was in western sichuan though). he noticed the tires were a little flat and pumped them up with the pneumatic pump.

i had no problems riding the motorcycle: it was just like a bicycle, but much faster. fortunately i did not run into any police during the 3 mile trip back to cambridge (not sure if they would've stopped me anyway, those motorcycle plate decals are hard to see from a distance). when i looked inside the house however, i couldn't find the 2015 sticker. which made me think that i once i got it, i might've brought it to belmont and put it together with my motorcycle gear. if i had to guess, i think it's somewhere at my parents' place. the hard part is finding it. i'll go there tomorrow and see if i can locate it, otherwise i have to get a new one from the RMV ($25, which is more expensive than the registration itself).