SV-Wolf's Bike Blog

[sv-wolf]

Hey! Never, ever tempt the gods!

What did I say?

I really believed that December (the first half of it anyway) would be a cheap month this year.

I have to weigh up the occasional hour spent fiddling with the bike against the many dismal hours I would have undoubtedly had to spend listening to the wind whistling round the bleak platforms of Stevenage station if I'd come in by train. And I cannot tell you what a miserable experience that is.

While I've been standing back in horror watching the repair bill for the SV1000 mounting daily, the powers that be have been busy planning another (very costly) little surprise for me. They chose to spring it this morning.

This morning I decked the Daytona on a patch of black ice 300 yards from my front door, smashing her offside fairing to bits, breaking the indicator and twisting the front end - just the yoke I hope, not the forks. I dropped her right in the middle of the road. I asked a guy from a nearby garage to help me get her up (the Daytona's a big bugger - and I'm not). He helped me push her back up the hill to my house as well. She was stuck in first gear and wanting to go in circles, so it wasn't easy.

I had to hurry into work after that and didn't have the heart to check her over carefully. I'll have a good look at her in decent light first thing tomorrow morning.

Oh! Me? I'm OK; just a little bruised on my right shoulder, but nothing significant. I have a slightly dented ego to go with it, of course, but that will mend. There is nothing wrong with me that a little self-administered TLC won't cure. And, come to think of it, there is also that unopened bottle of whisky in the cupboard...! (I'm not going to be riding for a while, after all.) But, my first and persistent thought has been the state of my bank balance. I'll mend for free; the Daytona won't.

With the fairing gone to hell it will be an expensive job. I'll have to get her done on my insurance. That means I'll lose my no-claims bonus and have to pay the excess, etc, etc, etc. Why the hell didn't I put crash bungs on her like I've been meaning to?

Oh Lord!

It was frosty this morning, but it didn't look that frosty when I wheeled her onto the road. I didn't realise how bad it was until I got her rolling. Apparently, it was -3C; not particularly cold but cold enough for black ice to form. My road is narrow and runs north-south. In winter, the morning sun doesn't start warming the tarmac till nearly noon. This morning there was a thick frost over the whole road - which I guess the passing traffic had begun to compress into ice. When I hit it, there was no chance to save the bike; she just went straight down. I was only doing about 10 mph and not making any inputs at all at that point. The weight distribution must have been a little off centre; maybe I was shifting around in the saddle. All it took to lay her low were a very few, very simple laws of physics.

I had to get a taxi ride at lunchtime and the driver told me that coming along the Barton road this morning (that's a country road near Hitchin with a lot of twists and hummocks along it's length) he saw three cars lying upside-down in the fields on either side. He told me that people were taking corners at 40 and 50 mph, even in these conditions. Some people seem to have no appreciation of the risks of driving in this weather. (Oh! Errr... Well, yes! Hmmmmmm!)

[Edit: I rang the insurance company Friday morning and they told me they had been inundated with calls all day Thursday - I'm not at all surprised.]

The adrenalin shock saw me through the first couple of hours, but I became a bit shakey after that. That phase has passed now and left me feeling just a litle blue. On the other hand a chuckle surfaces from time to time. What's that about? The slide and all the events of the last few days have knocked me out of my increasingly deadening routine - and I think that is no bad thing. Life's for living, after all, and I could do with a change. Sometimes we need something like this to wake us up.

So, I keep thinking what I will do if the insurers write her off. With all that plastic way beyond repair, they might just. Would I buy her back and get her done up? I'm still deep in the honeymoon period with the Daytona. She's a beautiful road bike. I'd hate to lose her. On the other hand, I could use the cash to buy a cheap off-roader to see me through the winter? About half the Himalaya trip I'm going on next September will be off road, so I need to get a little more experience of that kind of riding. There are a couple of training courses near here and I've been itching to have a go at one of them. Maybe this is the excuse I need.

I'm also thinking I would like to take part in the Enduro India again in 2009. That would mean doing a lot more fundraising. My first reaction to that was 'no way!' I don't have the energy for raising the required £4,300 for charity again. But then I thought, It might be fun to see if I could busk the money by doing some story-telling and street theatre at the weekends. I've not done that for years and wonder if I could still manage it.

Decisions! Decisions!


If you've been reading my posts, you'll know I bought a pair of used SV1000S forks on Ebay from a guy who lives in Surrey - the other side of London. As I don't drive, and I needed them quickly, my mate Ron had offered to pick them up for me. He took the car down this morning. On the way he had to slog it through the London traffic - which was (understandably) not a good experience he says. That's made me feel bad on his behalf. But feeling bad seems to be what is required of me right now, so that's par for the course, then.

The guy in Surrey had claimed that he had taken the forks off his SV as soon as he had bought it and replaced them with a pair of GSXR forks. Ron rang me this evening to say that the one's I'd bought are in perfect condition. So that's one piece of good news, anyway. And it's a saving. (Well, no, it's not a saving: at £125 for the pair it's an expense but not as great an expense as the £390 quoted at me by the dealer for a single new fork leg.)

That means the SV should be up and running again soon. Maybe I'll ask the dealer to fit a couple of crash bungs to her while he is at it. I might just do that! At any rate I won't have to put up with windy station platforms for very long...

Nggggrrrrh! I just gotta stop saying things like that!

[jstark47]

This morning I decked the Daytona on a patch of black ice 300 yards from my front door, smashing her offside fairing to bits, breaking the indicator and twisting the front end - just the yoke I hope, not the forks.

With the fairing gone to hell it will be an expensive job, so I'll have to get her done on my insurance. That means I'll lose my no-claims bonus and have to pay the excess, etc, etc, etc. Why the hell didn't I put crash bungs on her like I've been meaning to?

Sorry to hear about that. Fairings are a b*tch. My wife dropped her Trophy 4 weeks ago on its right side (naturally - the left side already had scratches, why not destroy the one pristine fairing remaining??) Aside from the normal sacrifice of Triumph's brilliantly designed "frame slider" (hint- it's made from brittle plastic and incorporates a flashing light.... ) the fairing itself took a beating. Didn't look too bad at first, but when we took it off to replace the "flashing frame slider" (directional if ya haven't guessed) it turned out more trashed than I thought. So I've bought her a new one - $380 US plus tax. Haven't put it on the bike yet - weather here's been abysmal, bikes haven't been out since Dec. 1.

Do you still have the little Hyosung to ride?

[noodlenoggin]

Glad to hear you're all right, Richard.

And...say...um...if you wanted to put one slightly bent-up Triumph in a box and ship it to Michigan for Christmas, I wouldn't mind at all....

[sv-wolf]

Hi Noodle, Hi JS

Fairings are a b*tch. My wife dropped her Trophy 4 weeks ago on its right side (naturally - the left side already had scratches, why not destroy the one pristine fairing remaining??)

To illustrate your point a little further:



and



And yeah, the tiny crack I put in her a couple of months ago is on the other side too.

Do you still have the little Hyosung to ride?

The answer to that is yes and no. I still have the little Hyosung but she is not currently rideable. She's been standing around for over a year now and needs a bit of work to get her on the road. She needs the swingarm replacing too (product recall - the original ones have been disintegrating under the paintwork). One day...!

And...say...um...if you wanted to put one slightly bent-up Triumph in a box and ship it to Michigan for Christmas, I wouldn't mind at all....

No harm in trying, I guess, N.
Get yourself over here, and you can take her for a ride when she's fixed. That's a promise.

(Where's Michigan, by the way? )

When the dealer rang to speak to me at work this afternoon, I was out, and my colleague took the call. Anne (my colleague) told the dealer that I'd gone out to sell my body to raise some cash for the bike. In one respect she was right. I'll leave it to you to decide which.

Happy Christmas (shopping!) from Hitchin.

[dr_bar]

Deep down, you really wanted to get rid of that plastic anyway, right????


Actually, I'm sorry to hear of your spill, glad that it's the ego that took the worst of the tumble.

My insurance runs out tomorrow, decisions, decisions...
Do I reinsure it or take a chance that I won't have a nice sunny day to regret not getting it out on the road????

Well at least the comprehensive coverage is on until mid-January...

[sv-wolf]

Deep down, you really wanted to get rid of that plastic anyway, right????

Actually, I'm sorry to hear of your spill, glad that it's the ego that took the worst of the tumble.

Thanks for the condolences, Doc.

Plastic, yes. And metal too! I have never before been so p1ssed off with the whole idea of owning a motorcycle. Did you see the state of the Daytona? She has a hole in her engine casing for god's sake.

In my present mood I feel like there are only two possibilities. I should either get rid of my two wheelers - all of them - for good - and settle for a peaceful but vegetable existence, or take an NVQ course in motorcycle maintenance (and build a garage.) One is unappealing the other is expensive. But why would I expect anything else?

What I really need to do is simmer down because, right now, I feel like there is a hole in my own engine casing and I don't want anything to leak out.

Dingbats!

The mood will pass! But I’m not a happy bunny.

Late Monday
I picked up the SV from the dealer, newly serviced and fitted with new forks and a new front tyre. She had cost me £400 plus £125 for the forks. My wallet felt heavily bruised. On the way home she seemed fine – a bit rough, but that’s the way she is these days. I parked, got something to eat and then prepared to go out again. (I was running an evening workshop - it's part of my job - fun time! – not!). I turned the key in the ignition. The dash lit up for all of one second and then popped off. Dead as a doornail. I took the train

No-one had told me that I was going to be running a workshop for a roomful of people to whom my organisation had just sent a huge, unexpected bill. I had every sympathy for them during the meeting, but that didn’t stop me getting a roasting. It took all my available energy keeping the evening on track. I got back late, just wanting to howl out my frustration to someone.

“Howl! Howl! Howl! Howl”

King Lear, Act V Scene something-or-other.

Now I know exactly how the old boy felt.

I was in a wild mood. I haven’t felt so miserable and pissed off like this for a long, long time. It was way too late to ring a friend and there were no blenders in the house, so I did the only thing I could think of. I logged onto TMW intending to vomit up a bit of desperate spleen onto the forum pages. Ha! Or tried to! (OK, I’m getting a message here, loud and clear.) My ISP server had crashed.

Technically, this is what is known as ‘ being stuffed!’ Even cyberspace – and the laws of probability - were giving me the finger. So I went to bed, weary and unconsoled.

Tuesday
I got a call from an insuring agent first thing this morning, to tell me that they had been instructed to assess the Daytona. When could they come? I arranged for them to come Wednesday morning while I was at work.

Tuesday afternoon
I tried the SV. The dash lit up and she fired. I rang the dealer and arranged to take her in. I kitted up. Got her out. Turned her on again and… nothing! Dead as a dodo. I cancelled.

Wednesday morning.
Still dead.

Wednesday evening
She fired up sweetly.

Thursday morning
Made arrangements to get the SV to the dealers one way or another. I got her out onto the road, inserted the key and… dead, dead, dead. I rang my insurers and arranged for a breakdown lorry to get her to the dealer for me. An hour later two large recovery vehicles, each big enough to lift a six wheeler, turned up outside my door, blocking the road for fifteen minutes. Well that’s service for you!

It was explained to me like this. The first vehicle was driven by a youngster who had never uploaded a bike since he had joined the firm and it was company policy that he would have to have help. Hence the presence of the guy in the second vehicle. The guy in the second vehicle had plenty of experience and could have loaded the bike by himeslf, (it was the same guy who had recovered my Daytona a couple of months back) but he’d had an oil spillage all over his flatbed and was therefore unable to use it.

(As I later discovered, the 'youngster' was twenty-six and had worked for five years as a motorcycle mechanic in a local dealers before joining the recovery firm. He'd been through three R1s and a Ducati in his young life and was used to throwing two-wheeled metal about on the workshop floor. But I guess rules is rules. )

The bike was tied down on the back of the first vehicle which then set off for the dealers, escorted all the way by the second. I'm sure it made good sense to someone!

Thursday evening
I had a message on the phone from my broker telling me that the insurer (not the same name) would soon be contacting me to come and assess the bike for damage. So who the f*** was…?

************************************************

If things go on like this, I may just end up believing in extra-terrestials, or some power that has a unique ability to turn functional motorcycles into piles of scrap - and the power also to gently mess around with a motorcyclist's psyche. (Maybe it was extra-terrestrials who put the idea into our heads of mounting an internal combustion engine onto two wheels in the first place! C'mon, the motorcycle is a pretty crazy piece of gear.)

There’s good precedent for this kind of thinking: the Mormons believe that god is an extra-terrestial; the gently loopy Aetherius Society believes he flies around in a Martian space ship; the Scientologists and the 'Heaven's Gate' cult believe that the human spirit is from outer space; heaven knows what the whole gaggle of Roswellians and ufologists believe these days and as for the religious beliefs of George Bush and Tony Blair...! It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Dingbats! I feel so fed up I might sign up to all of them as a protest against any concept of a rational or benign universe!

My insurance runs out tomorrow, decisions, decisions...
Do I reinsure it or take a chance that I won't have a nice sunny day to regret not getting it out on the road????

Well at least the comprehensive coverage is on until mid-January...

Cheers Doc

Careful Doc, a mere association with bikes these days may be the first sign of a disintegrating mind! You take care, mate.

[fireguzzi]

*sigh*

I'm rooting for you man.

[sv-wolf]

Cheers FG.

I’ve calmed down a bit now. I don’t often lose it these days, but it is Christmas, and that usually encourages a slightly unhinged frame of mind.

***********************************************************

“Waggle it about!” they said. (And why should I to argue?)


If I’m going to get away for Christmas I shall need a useable bike, because all public transport shuts down in the UK over the holiday.

If I’m going to get a useable bike, I shall need to get the SV sorted quickly because the dealer is only open until the end of today and for a short, half-day on Christmas Eve. After that, they shut up shop until the 2nd Jan.

Saturday morning (22nd Dec – the shortest day)

I rang up the dealer for news of my bike.

Steph answered, and then had to go and speak to someone else for the latest info. When he came back to the phone, he told me that the SV had been firing up sweetly ever since it arrived. That meant Simon, the mechanic, hadn’t been able to locate the problem. Of all the possible scenarios, that was the most unwelcome - and also the most ironic. As the SV was driven away from my house last Thursday on the back of the breakdown wagon, she had squealed her little heart out - a sure sign that the electrics were utterly dead. (The siren has a tiny battery of its own but the alarm cannot be turned off when then main power supply is not functioning.)

So that was that, then! The last shreds of hope that I might be able to ride the SV over the Christmas period came crashing down in my head and skidded to a miserable halt somewhere in the region of my stomach. For a few moments, the world felt like a very dark and narrow place indeed.

I could sense Steph waiting silently for my reaction. I took a counscious deep breath - I was getting bored with being angry and depressed: been there, done that, worn the T-shirt - and I buttoned him down for a few more minutes and reviewed my options.

One option was to get a taxi over to Letchworth and take the SV for a ride round the block, in the wild hope that when I got back to the dealers her electrics would cut out again - as they had done on several occasions previously after a short trip. The thought went through my head that this was close to the kind of ‘magical thinking’ that would get many a psychologist salivating automatically for a diagnosis, but I needed to do something and I couldn’t think of anything more constructive. So I said I’d do that.

When I arrived, Steph was looking apologetic. Apparently, the electrics were still dead when the bike had got to the dealer, but had livened up when Simon, the mechanic, had waggled the wiring loom in the general region of the fuse box (sounds very technical!). So he had a rough idea of where the problem lay. However, no amount of further waggling had made the power cut out again, and it had been impossible to isolate the problem further.

As Simon was just about to quit work for the holiday, there was not much point in my carrying out my plan. Steph didn't know and so had not mentioned this significant fact to me earlier. There has usually been some sort of admin or communication muddle when I've taken the SV to this particular dealer, but I can't get very upset or critical about it. I like these guys: they are always very friendly and very straight with me; and Simon is an excellent mechanic - in my experience and by reputation.

We had a long discussion after that. Eventually, I decided to ride the bike away again until after the New Year and take a risk on it cutting out. They did give me a bit of advice, however. They suggested that if the power did fail, I should “just get out the tool kit, and give it a good waggle.”

I guess we all have our own way of coping with distressing situations!

[sv-wolf]

Just a quick burst of positive news this morning.

The insurers did come round last Wednesday. I spoke to them yesterday and they told me the Daytona 'is repairable.' I think I would have preferred a write off, but at least I know things are moving. (And that can't be bad in an industry whose moving parts seem to rust up as soon as you put in a claim.)

Ron offered to lend me his second bike (an SV650) over the Christmas period so that I can get away. I think that is very generous of him (especially as he knows that I crashed my own SV650 three years ago.) Thank you Ron.

And my step-son has offered me a safety net. If I do go down to Brighton on the SV1000 over the holiday and the 'waggle' option fails to work he'll come out to pick me up. Thank you Dan.

Don't know what to say!

Happy Christmas everyone!


Yep, the old moon is up there somewhere among all the neon

[jstark47]

I have never before been so p1ssed off with the whole idea of owning a motorcycle. Did you see the state of the Daytona? She has a hole in her engine casing for god's sake.

Geeze, Richard, I didn't see that first time around.... now I do! All from one low speed drop??? Sheesh!!!

I hate to say this, but I'm starting to wonder if you're right about you and motorcycles. At least large, heavy, high-powered, high-tech motorcycles....... I think you need to go to the other end of the spectrum...... it's time for an Enfield!!!


(you do recognize I'm just be a wise-arse, don't you??)