Playing Ketchup...

Last time we chatted, I was bringing you up to speed with how this blog came to be. Now it's time to get you caught up on where things stand with regard to the bike and all. Not that you necessarily cared, but keeping you abreast (a breast? where???) is the polite thing to do.

There I was...coming home from work a little over a week ago...it was a Friday afternoon...the start of the weekend...had a party to go to that night...I was in a great mood and looking forward to getting home and out of the work duds. I got about 800 yards from my driveway and I hit a corner going much faster than I should have been going.

It's a familiar corner - I must have taken it thousands of times...and more often than not, I usually hit it faster than I should be going. And each time, I think to myself "Ya know...I really shouldn't be going this fast around this corner..."

But there I was; same corner, and much faster than ever before. Tried to lay it way over to the right so as to keep the wheels eating blacktop, but quickly lost it. Headed right for a large wooden, leafy object (known to many as a 'tree'). Next to the tree was a rather large remnant from the area’s last volcanic development (known to many as a ‘boulder’). I grabbed as much brake as I could, uttered a “F*** YOU…” (more towards myself than anything else), and braced for impact.

When it was over, I found myself on the other side of the boulder, having connected squarely with the aforementioned tree. The bike and I were both lying on our sides, half covered in dirt. Quickly doing an interal check of things, I didn't detect anything broken (on me), so I stood the bike up and did an inventory on it...it hadn’t exploded and there weren't any liquids pouring out anywhere…so far; much better than it could have been. The bike had stalled, understandably, so I grabbed a handful of clutch and tried firing her up. Amazingly, she came right to life. I eased her down into 1st gear and gave it a try. Nothing – wouldn’t move. One look at the front fender twisted down into front wheel was all the answer I needed. I shut it down, climbed around to the front and twisted the fender free. Pushing back on the bike I found that it would roll, so back I went, fired it up and tried rolling up the embankment. No luck; there was too much loose dirt and old, rotten logs and other debris for the rear tire to gain any purchase. I called a buddy of mine to come down and give me a hand – I figured I could just run up to my driveway (almost within sight of the accident) and get my truck to pull myself out. Just as he arrived, a guy in a box truck stopped. He had some rope so we slapped it on and gently pulled me out. I thanked him and he was on his way. Now having a chance to fully look things over, I tallied the damage; Forks; definitely all done. Fender and gas tank, scratched up pretty good, lower sliders probably bent as well. Right passenger peg had been down, luckily, and it had absorbed most of the scraping damage and kept the valuable/vulnerable side protected. Rim (solid rim; the bike is a Fatboy), bent pretty badly, with an 8” crack near the edge. Luckily, I had a tube inside the tire and it had managed to not burst. So I fired things up and rocketed home as best I could...which, considering it was taking everything I had to keep the front end straight, was a dizzying four mph.

I shut her down in the garage and I set to tearing things apart. Got the front end off and went to work on eBay. Managed to find a tire, rim and rotor assembly for $135. Total steal; priced out at Harley would prob me at least $500 and probably closer to $700. Found an entire front-end that was listed (Buy it Now) for $500. Figured I’d watch it for one day to see how the bidding went. That night, someone dropped the full $500 and grabbed it up. Still kicking myself now, as that was a great deal. I know; buying forks can be tricky and it’s possible they were bent, but the seller had over 15,000 sales and something like 99% positive rating, so I think I could have trusted them. I guess I’ll never know, though. (I even contacted them to see if they had any more FLSTF front ends but they didn't.)

So I put out the word that I needed a new front end and one of my buddies from New York had a friend of a friend who might have a front end for me…but that didn’t pan out so I’ll have to head to the stealership (and bring my Vaseline with me) to order what I need. Forks, new axle (gonna play it safe), maybe the lower legs as well. I’ll have to give mine a good looking over to see if they made it through ok.

Gotta get the bike up and running because me and a few of the guys are heading to Philly in two weeks, for a 4-day bike trip. But I’ll get into that in a subsequent post.

And there have been recent developments with one of the guys going with us. Seems he won’t be able to ride, so I might have his bike available if mine isn’t fully operational by the time we roll out. And that’s also a story for a subsequent post. I've rambled enough for one post.

Until next time; catch you down the road…