Busted belt

April 1, 2009 - Wednesday

I've had a bad cold since Monday and it's making it hard for me to think or see straight today. Not that I don't have enough to do; my mind just keeps wandering to outside where it's mild and sunny, and to the fact that I get to leave the office for lunch at Oma's, and that I really ought to run across the Albis half a dozen times before I go driving with some new people on Saturday. Time is dragging; it's just past 0800 hours. Yesterday I got to pick up the Beastie from the mechanic's again. On Monday Florian borrowed it because Aleks had the Tweety Bird for his driving test. (He passed. The good luck of Tweety Bird held for him too.) Florian was at the Escher-Wyss-Platz in Zürich, where they've torn up roads and and are burrowing in the ground again, when the Beastie's belt fell apart on him. Well, maybe fell apart isn't fair. It's made out of Kevlar and pretty tough, but I guess the salt and cold of winter driving weakened it and when a bit of gravel got between it and the drive it snapped. Still, remember the same thing happened on Silver last summer. People think the Buell belt system is great, but I tell you what, Silver's getting a chain drive and as soon as I can pull wheelies and stoppies without hesitation, so's the Beastie. Belts work for summer drivers who do a couple thousand kilometers a year; they don't seem to hold up to well to all-weather and all-terrain riding. Anyway, Löchen had to call Dad to call me, and I had my mechanic fetch him and bring in the bike. The joke of the matter is, late Monday morning I called in to schedule the first big service on April 21; a couple hours later I called to ask Fabio to pick up the bike in Zürich. Fabio advised me to report the incident to the Buell Assistance, a free one-year insurance that comes with a new Buell. I called them yesterday, not specifying that the belt had actually broken the day before, and they agreed to take over the cost of retrieving the bike and bringing it into the workshop. I'm not sure if the belt tear itself falls under warranty, but at least I save a hundreder or two on the retrieval. We were able to pick up the bike again yesterday evening. Fabio chewed me out for letting the thing get so dirty; he said they had to was it twice to get the worst dirt off. I informed him it got washed at least once a week; Florian was supposed to run it through to wash on Monday evening but he never made it that far. Fabio has a bit of a problem with me and Löchen, I think. With me because I don't treat the Beastie like a display piece, and with Löchen because he takes away several thousand franks' worth of business from them a year by doing everything except the big services at home. It's rather amusing to see how he tries to criticize whenever something we did ourselves. But I can always bring up their own shortcomings, first and formost being the Termignoni exhaust that vibrated off its mount after three days. Which keeps the quipping friendly. So, the Beastie brought me in to work again today and all is well.