Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Sat, 09 Aug 2014
Almost exactly a year ago, I heaved a pile of stuff into a taxi and set off on what would become an epic, 10,000 km motorcycle ride through 11 different European countries, spanning 6 weeks.
I went by myself, and ended up writing an email home to a small list of people who'd indicated interest in hearing about my adventures. For each email (which ended up being more or less one a day), I wrote for around an hour each evening, and included some of the photos I'd shot that day.
I knew, when I got back, that I'd want to post those emails as a webpage for those who hadn't known about the email list. I converted them all to HTML quickly enough, but the process of distributing the pictures through the text proved oddly daunting, and I kept putting it off and putting it off.
Finally (yesterday), I realized that it was silly to sit on these things for so long. Thus, without further ado, I give you:
Europe 2013: Six Weeks on a Bike
They're not all perfectly formatted, and there are typos and other errors. But they're all very immediate -- written the day those events happened, with everything very fresh and at the forefront of my mind.
In other Europe-related news, I took the opportunity in Europe to indulge myself in one of my long-held motorcycle fantasies: I bought a Suzuki SV650. It was a 2002, not the 2008 I really wanted, but it was a fine introduction to the bike. I ended up riding it for just shy of 10,000 km, or about 6,000 miles over the course of just under 6 weeks.
I really liked the bike, and encountered no problems other than an intermittent stumble in the rain, which I now know was related to water filling up the forward cylinder's sparkplug well and shorting out that plug. I had investigated the possibility of shipping bikes back and forth, but it was prohibitively expensive, so I couldn't bring my Ninja 250 there, and it didn't make sense to try to bring my Irish SV650 back.
Since then, I've had my eye out for an SV650 here. I had casually looked before, but the experience of riding through Europe was a strong inducement, and my "casual" search became more like "regular." But I never really seemed to find the right thing.
Fast forward (you knew it was coming) to this last Thursday. I loaded up Craigslist, and there at the top of the SV650 list was a grey 2008 affair that looked, at first blush, to be perfect: the unfaired version, with reasonable mileage, basically stock, and for a reasonable price. Intrigued, I contacted the seller, and arranged to look it over.
In person, it was, if anything, even better than the ad had described. There was no corrosion anywhere. The worst problem it had was a dead battery, followed by some dust on some of the frame members and wheels. It didn't look like it had ever been ridden in the rain; it was shockingly clean.
We solved the dead battery (at least temporarily) by jumping the bike from Sam's car. The engine turned over and fired quickly, purring beautifully at idle, and responding crisply to the throttle. Everything seemed to be working, and I ended up making an offer, which he accepted without a counteroffer (but I didn't try to move the price very far).
I tried doing an online payment thing through my bank, which was silly, and would have taken 3 business days to process (of course we were doing this well after the bank closed on a Friday). I set up an elaborate bill of sale to cover the weird condition where the bike was sold, but I couldn't take possession until Wednesday. We both signed, and I went home, deeply wishing that Wednesday would come quickly.
Fortunately, I called the bank today (they have Saturday hours from 9 am to 1 pm), and explained the situation. Sam and I are both part of the same bank, and they were able to do the transfer over the phone instantaneously. I sent Sam a text, and we arranged to meet this afternoon.
Traffic delays aside, all went perfectly smoothly, and a few hours ago I unloaded my brand new (to me) 2008 SV650 into the garage. I picked up a new battery and spare sparkplugs (four total -- I'd forgotten that two plugs per cylinder is awesome, but expensive when tune-up time comes), and spent a few minutes failing to get the new battery installed before I had to run off to attend to theater duties.
The bike is out of registration, so I wouldn't be able to ride it until after I get myself to the licensing office anyway, but it would have been gratifying to have it start up under its own power. Soon.
Still, that's pretty cool. I've been dreaming for something like 8 years of owning an SV650, and it's finally a reality. I'm looking forward to getting it running and licensed, at which point I suspect I'll be finding all kinds of excuses to "need" to take the motorcycle somewhere.
Posted at 20:43 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater