Poor Beastie

October 25, 2007 - Thursday

My poor Beastie. On Tuesday Florian and I brought it into the garage for a tire change and a checkup. (Löchen had to come because despite his having shown me once before where the garage was, hidden away in a back alley in a whorl of one-way streets by the Helvetiaplatz, I knew perfectly well I wouldn't find it. I'm too poor a navigator for that.) Anyway, after work, we went to pick it up again. And we heard the bad news. The tires were changed. That was no big deal. But so was the oil, and that was a big deal. The mechanic said he'd gotten mud, slime - he said it looked like whipping cream - out of the... Well, whatever the oil is in. That there was barely any oil left; it was mostly water. That he'd never seen anything like it. Lovely. Why does it have to be my machine that shows him something new? They said said it was like the bike had been ridden and left standing in pouring rain, and I was quick to point out that I'd only owned the thing for about two weeks and had driven it precisely once on wet roads - and it wasn't raining then. It didn't sound like the mixture was due to a problem with the bike. I know the thing's former owners were extreme drivers... But the bad oil was flushed out three or four times, new stuff put in, and that problem has been taken care of. One big one still remains. The mechanic was very pessimistic about the rattling in the engine. It could be fixed in six hours, or it could be something rattling in the fifth gear, a part that needs to be ordered, and the bike might sit around for six weeks - he said. I said no way. The Buell is my set of wheels, and it's got to work. I'll be taking it in again on November 1st, and I hope and pray that it's something the guy can fix by Friday. If not, they'll have to reassemble it, and I'll have to bring it in a third time. I'll be riding a grumbling bike to the last two installments of my obligatory 12 hours of motorcycle instruction. I'd take Florian's, but we'll be doing maneuvers and his Kawa is simply too tall for me. The bit of good news in the whole thing is that this mysterious rattling in the engine is covered by the warranty. Now if it's just something easily accessible and replacable, I'll be extremely grateful, and I'll be darned if I run into any more curbstones. I found other ways to wreck it instead.