A Shadow Falls On Miss America

I took the bike in to get it inspected today for a long trip to Augusta on Saturday. It was only supposed to take an hour or so but I ended up hanging out at the dealership for 4 hours. Bad news. Something funky is going on in the transmission. It's odd because the bike runs fine and shifts smooth enough but there is an odd rolling noise in the transmission, which isn't so obvious at speed. I'm told this is bad, but the severity of it depends on what inside the transmission is making the noise. If its a shift fork, not so bad. If its the bearings, not good. The cost, compared to the cost of the bike, is astronomical. But worse than that, they can't look at it again until the 24th, then they would take it apart, find the problem and order parts from Germany. That will take 2 weeks, "due to customs" they tell me. That's a month or more of no riding. I've become accustomed to using the bike for all but grocery trips. It means I can't use the HOV lane for awhile, I can't zip down the half-lane when people are parked on the street, or squeeze by cars to get in the turn lane when there's a long line. It means I can't park on the sidewalk at Borders and I'll be back to a measly 20-something miles per gallon (saving all this money on gas is costing me a fortune). Such a long hiatus could mean Miss America's days are numbered, that a younger, sexier replacement could be in the works...

I guess the silver lining to this is that while I was waiting, an older model bike pulled up and a small figure hobbled into the showroom. Removing her helmet was the oldest lady I have ever seen riding a bike. I think her name was Artis. She's 76 years old and has been riding for a few decades. In that time she's had 15 BMW bikes and 2 others. At least 3 of those were in accidents of one form or another, the worst of which she wouldn't talk about. But she's ridden hundreds of thousands of miles, putting 60, 70, 80k on many of her bikes. Not too long ago she rode from Atlanta to Texas in a day. And she's done the coast to coast ride, a ride from Alaska down south, and she's ridden in Mexico at least once. She talked for a long time and had a lot of interesting stories and information from her years riding. I told her I knew a guy about her age who still rides. Tall, kinda gangly, rides one of them fancy Japanese bikes...

Oh and I got a great deal on some replacement Touratech wind/hand guards... not that it really matters now...