Monday production

December 14, 2007 - Friday

I doubt that phrase is an idiom in English. In German it means a product that's flawed and has a tendency to break or malfunction. Specifically in this case, it's my beloved Beastie. On Tuesday, over my midday break, I drove it down to the service station on the Müllerstrasse. After the mech fixed and resealed the clutch component that had been leaking, he said I should swing by at some convenient time and let the thing be checked, just for safety's sake. Also, I'd ordered a pair of blue foot rests, and they'd arrived, so I needed to pick them up. That morning, on my way into work, the ventilator quit working. It had done this the week before, when the Beastie was doing double duty because Löchen's Kawa was out of commission. The red warning light on the display lit up, and took a while before Löchen realized the problem was with the ventilator, since usually after a city drive, it's whirring away like a hornet, and in this case it wasn't. He quickly fixed the problem by replacing the fried fuse with the extra - smart, technically-adept brother that he is. But then, Tuesday morning, the light came on again and the ventilator stopped cooling the engine. I asked about it when I brought the bike to the garage. The mech - this time it was the German whose Swiss speech still gives away his ancestry - good guy though; knows his stuff - hooked the Beastie up to a laptop and had it talk to him and short-circuited the ventilator to find that it still worked fine and therefore the problem would lie in the ECM, which he would have to dig to get to, and dig he did, and cussed it something fierce... I love that garage. It's fun to watch hands-on work. The whole repair thing - again, under warranty; it doesn't cost me a dime - took a good hour, and I spent some of the time on the second floor, admiring the various customized Buells and checking out what elements they had in stock ad making a mental list of what to get when. Mirrors are next. They also have the luggage gear in stock, so I don't have to order that special. Around 1300 hours the other two mechs returned. The American, whose name I found out afterwards was Jim, said hi and we fell to chatting a bit as he fondled the big cream-colored boxer/pit bull mix who'd been wandering around the whole time. (Neo is a big baby. All fighter-looking and just wanting pats.) Jim and I discussed the lousy biking weather, and I mentioned that Monday had been horrible, with the rain coming down like out of buckets. He grinned and said I was hardcore to drive in that; I said I was too lazy to take the train. I commented on how my bike seemed to be fussy; one thing got fixed and something else went wrong. He said it was probably disappointing - nice newbike, should run perfectly, and then I have to keep bringing it in. I shrugged it off. I'm not frustrated. It's not a beginner's bike, but it's putting up with this beginner very well. Stuff that goes wrong now gets fixed under warranty. If it waited another year, I'd have normal riding for twelve months and then get slapped with huge bills later. I'm very happy with my Buell, and if this one ever gives out on me, I'm buying the XB12. I'm so glad the Buell was available and the Ninja wasn't. On Wednesday, Löchen and I went to the bike outfitter Polo after work. I got a pair of water-proof boots - my MA1s let the water in over the laces - and a pair of small LED blinkers. Florian got himself a new helmet. The blinkers aren't mounted yet; I'm hoping they'll look decent. They're triangular instead of round, and clear instead of black-tinted orange, like the originals. Florian will mount them this evening. Achim, the boss at the Harley garage, said that once you start spending on your bike, you can't stop. He got that right.