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The parts keep falling off...
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Don's comments about the HD situation reminded me to post this,
I've had yet another spontaneous total product failure with the
KLR250.
I drove to a buddy's house, his nephew was there and said, 'great
dual sport, always wanted one. Doesn't it need a plate?'
NY state changed their plates recently, they're just cheap pieces
of tin. So when I first registered that bike the vibration fractured
the plate into small bits and I had to a search and recover mission
on the taconic parkway one morning.
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Must have been on a Hardly, huh ? :-)
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So I guess the crack in my bikes tail is not unique to my riding style
(something like a squid apparently).
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So I put a mounting plate on the back for the plate, and put some
plexiglass on to hold all the bits in place. A year later
on the way home, over a bump and the bracket from the fender
comes apart and this time I hear the plate going *boing* and
see it bounce down the road behind me in the mirror. So I built
a new stronger bracket.
Which lasted until recently. Now the bottom of the fender is
torn away and the plate is still MIA after spending the entire day
tooling along every rode I've driven on with that bike for the
past week.
And I really hate the NY DMV. Hate it.
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Retro bikes are very in this year. Think of it as self optimizing.
If the part's really important, the bike'll stop running. If it's not,
it'll keep going. Obviously, the plate was non-essential.
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I went 59 in a 40 zone on a 1959 bmw, and a cop found that out
in about two microseconds. I drove around on a KLR250 for about
a week, I suspect, and the cops took no notice. I think maybe
it's a stealth bike!
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At age 19 I rode with a friend from Gettysburg to Buffalo in
March, in a near-freezing rain riding a '50s Zundapp and Harley.
We'd left a trail of parts across two states and finally got stopped
by a deputy after loosing a muffler and leaving a trail of stampeded
cows in our wake.
Q: What do you think you're doing ?
A: (teeth chattering) Heading for Buffalo.
Q: "Where's your license plate ?"
A: It fell off about 50 miles back I think.
Q: And where's your muffler ?
A: (brightly) Oh that's strapped right back here on the luggage rack.
At this point, the deputy seemed lost in thought. We suggested that
if he let us keep going, we'd probably never see each other again.
He said that sounded like a pretty good idea and we took off quick
before he changed his mind.
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The NY DMV is right at the top of my list of things I miss
least from the east coast.
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