Happy News biker buddies!
My bike collection grew by one today when my shiny new Suzuki SV650A arrived from the dealer.
Yeah, I know it isn’t a Yamaha XS650 - but I’ve got two of those and I have no intention of selling either.
The problem is that my other modern ride is a Honda ST1300 which is a fantastic long distance mile-eater (kilometres in Canada, I guess) but it’s a bit much for commuting to work (6 miles each way). A friend suggested that it’s like taking a B52 to go drop off your drycleaning.
My Yamahas (a ‘76 Standard - the infamous Lucille and a yet-to-be named 1981 Special which is becoming a Cafe bike) are a ball to ride, but the el-cheapo vintage bike insurance I have on them prohibits me from commuting on them and my usage is limited to 3000 km/year - which is nowhere near enough for me. The other thing is that the Yamahas seem to require a fair bit of maintenance and fiddling and while I enjoy doing that, I don’t like having to count on them when I really need to get to work.
Sooooo.....obviously, I needed a modern, mid-sized bike for commuting and general booting around - that doesn’t require much daily fiddling.....
Ok, ok, ok - that all sounds like a bunch of bovine excrement to rationalize / disguise the fact that I simply wanted another bike - and if that’s what you think .....well, you’re right on baby!
The Suzuki’s journey to my garage is quite the tale of woe. Its about a 2-beer story, but in short, I actually agreed to buy the bike in (I think) late October and planned to pay for it over 3-4 months to spread the pain - but then to get the 5-year warranty, they decided that I need to pay all of it by the end of 2017. I argued that successfully and it seemed that all was well until a couple of days after Christmas when they moved my bike from the showroom to the storage barn for the rest of the winter.
That night - the frickin’ barn burnt to the ground...... (check out “Hully Gully fire”)....
...and not one of the more than 150 bikes survived (including some bikes still in crates, some new customer bikes, some older ones in winter storage and a few valuable vintage bikes plus a whole whackload of snowmobiles and waterski boats). My beautiful blue SV650 was gone - just a puddle of melted aluminium and plastic. It really was a terrible fire and a lot of people came out much worse than me - although there were no fatalities and even the watch-dog got out OK. For example, the paper reported that one guy had bought a brand new Yamaha 900 sport bike and had fully paid for it - but had not yet arranged his own insurance coverage - and now he has nothing to show for his $17,000 purchase except the 2017 Yamaha brochure.
My bike hadn’t been fully paid for and so it wasn’t in my name at the time of the fire. The dealer offered me a matte black bike for the same money, but I really wanted the blue and so I held out till they found one. The (second) new blue bike turned out to not be a demo unit and so there were freight and PDI charges on it. I pointed out that I hadn’t known that my original bike was a demo (it had 0.4 km on it when I agreed to buy it), it wasn’t my choice to move the bike to the barn, nor did I burn the barn down. Anyhow, we see-sawed back and forth on that issue and I wound up with big discount on the freight and PDI plus a $500 gas card and free delivery today (the dealer is about 220 km away) - so I’m happy.
Anyhow, that’s my latest motorcycle adventure - in the cold dead of a crappy long winter (am I a disloyal Canadian?) - I hate this weather.
Anybody else want to describe the other bikes in their fleet?
Cheers,
Pete
My bike collection grew by one today when my shiny new Suzuki SV650A arrived from the dealer.
Yeah, I know it isn’t a Yamaha XS650 - but I’ve got two of those and I have no intention of selling either.
The problem is that my other modern ride is a Honda ST1300 which is a fantastic long distance mile-eater (kilometres in Canada, I guess) but it’s a bit much for commuting to work (6 miles each way). A friend suggested that it’s like taking a B52 to go drop off your drycleaning.
My Yamahas (a ‘76 Standard - the infamous Lucille and a yet-to-be named 1981 Special which is becoming a Cafe bike) are a ball to ride, but the el-cheapo vintage bike insurance I have on them prohibits me from commuting on them and my usage is limited to 3000 km/year - which is nowhere near enough for me. The other thing is that the Yamahas seem to require a fair bit of maintenance and fiddling and while I enjoy doing that, I don’t like having to count on them when I really need to get to work.
Sooooo.....obviously, I needed a modern, mid-sized bike for commuting and general booting around - that doesn’t require much daily fiddling.....
Ok, ok, ok - that all sounds like a bunch of bovine excrement to rationalize / disguise the fact that I simply wanted another bike - and if that’s what you think .....well, you’re right on baby!
The Suzuki’s journey to my garage is quite the tale of woe. Its about a 2-beer story, but in short, I actually agreed to buy the bike in (I think) late October and planned to pay for it over 3-4 months to spread the pain - but then to get the 5-year warranty, they decided that I need to pay all of it by the end of 2017. I argued that successfully and it seemed that all was well until a couple of days after Christmas when they moved my bike from the showroom to the storage barn for the rest of the winter.
That night - the frickin’ barn burnt to the ground...... (check out “Hully Gully fire”)....
...and not one of the more than 150 bikes survived (including some bikes still in crates, some new customer bikes, some older ones in winter storage and a few valuable vintage bikes plus a whole whackload of snowmobiles and waterski boats). My beautiful blue SV650 was gone - just a puddle of melted aluminium and plastic. It really was a terrible fire and a lot of people came out much worse than me - although there were no fatalities and even the watch-dog got out OK. For example, the paper reported that one guy had bought a brand new Yamaha 900 sport bike and had fully paid for it - but had not yet arranged his own insurance coverage - and now he has nothing to show for his $17,000 purchase except the 2017 Yamaha brochure.
My bike hadn’t been fully paid for and so it wasn’t in my name at the time of the fire. The dealer offered me a matte black bike for the same money, but I really wanted the blue and so I held out till they found one. The (second) new blue bike turned out to not be a demo unit and so there were freight and PDI charges on it. I pointed out that I hadn’t known that my original bike was a demo (it had 0.4 km on it when I agreed to buy it), it wasn’t my choice to move the bike to the barn, nor did I burn the barn down. Anyhow, we see-sawed back and forth on that issue and I wound up with big discount on the freight and PDI plus a $500 gas card and free delivery today (the dealer is about 220 km away) - so I’m happy.
Anyhow, that’s my latest motorcycle adventure - in the cold dead of a crappy long winter (am I a disloyal Canadian?) - I hate this weather.
Anybody else want to describe the other bikes in their fleet?
Cheers,
Pete
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