A DOWNED BIKE IS LIKE A BEACHED WHALE..

And Thats What It Looked Like

It was Thursday night; I was enjoying my ritual weekly Chinese take out while I settled in for CSI and Without A Trace, when the doorbell rang. I had just pulled the 800 out of the winter storage the previous Saturday. Tuned and cleaned, with new plugs, fresh oil, only a thousand miles on the rubber I put on last fall, I was ready to roll. I had an inaugural three day weekend trip planned, a run up through the Hudson Valley that was to be the inaugural ride report post on this blog. I was so pleased with myself I had even polished the chrome. That’s when the doorbell rang.

It was my neighbor.

“Warren, is your motorcycle in the parking lot?” she asked. I acknowledged that I had. “Well, I think I heard a crash”. I almost ran her down going down the steps, across the lawn and into the parking lot. Barefoot.

There it was.

Now, there is something absolutely viscerally sickening about seeing a proud, powerful, reliable, and did I say, fast, motorcycle laying on the pavement; wounded badly, it’s cover torn, windshield cracked, kickstand ripped out of its mooring, the left side controls broken off or bent completely beyond usefulness.

It had been upright in the four-foot wide niche I had claimed for my own four years ago. Everyone in the complex knows it, knows it’s mine, and knows when I’ve been gone for a few days. They may not know me, but they know the bike. Hell, on Halloween, the kids stand outside my window and call out “Hey, Mr. Motorcycle Man, Trick or Treat” It’s given me a sort of panache among the locals.

And now my claim to fame was down, its front end under the rear end of some nondescript delivery car.

The cop was there, his ticket-writing presence for one a fortunate presence.

“What Happened?” I asked him. . I knew what, but HOW, f’cripe’s sakes? No one could fit in there on their best day, but this idiot had managed it.

“He backed in at about thirty miles an hour” the cop told me. Must be true, he threw it back ten feet. “Goshdarnnit” is not the word I used. The driver, older, grayer, shorter, fatter and yes, dumber than dirt, was sitting on some nearby steps. I started walking to him, asking “gently” what had caused this unfortunate turn of events. Until the cop got between us. Then came the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“--Expletive deleted--YOU” he yelled at me. I sped up. The cop moved a little more quickly. “He’s an old man”, the cop told me. Turns out that he is fourteen months younger than me, so I would have been completely guiltless putting his lights out. Missed opportunities abound.

Not to be outdone, he put a four thousand dollar hit on the car next to my space trying to get away..

I missed Without A Trace, the lo mein got cold, the egg rolls got tossed , and the trip got cancelled. I’ve done the insurance dance, and told them to replace the rusting Cobras with V&H Straightshots, and now I just wait until the line moves up. That’s why there is no ride report.

Positive thinker that I am, the upside to this whole episode is that with an idiot like that on the road, I could have been on it when he hit me. Then I would not be writing this.



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And come back Sunday, I've got two nice stories on the boards (or screen. whatever)