Skip to main content

Bikers Are Strange, Or At Least This One Is

We are a strange lot, we bikers, we revelers of the open air.  Take a bike, any bike.  Engineers painstakingly build it to ride without vibration from a large mechanized engine straddling its loins.  They consider stress points, weld joints, weight, torques, thrust, braking, centrifugal forces, all the while throwing onto this frame a tank with gasoline, wiring that stretches around the block, and untold bolts, gauges, pads, tires, forks and springs.

Engineers build it and the art department beautifies it.  They do the color coding, matching, accenting, what to chrome, what to black out, what to blink, what to open, what to hide and what is slick or rubberized.  The engineers do their thing, the art department does its thing, then they give it to the sales and ad people to sell it.  

And what do we buyers do when we get them home?  We modify it.  We change it.  We take things off, then replace and tinker with it, tweak it and indirectly say the engineers were a little wrong here, and the art department was aesthetically stupid there.  We tell the ad people that its better if we change the seat, the exhaust and the lights.   Of course the aftermarket parts folks love us.   Millions are spent annually fixing the mistakes of the builders.


And I am just as much to blame.  In the year I've had my Yammie I have changed the handlebar risers,  replaced the license plate bracket and added a bag onto the windshield bracket.

And all this cost money.  Last week I changed from an amber rear turn signal system to a red.  Sounds easy doesn't ti?  Just go replace the bulbs in my turn signal housings.  Nope, no mod ever goes unpunished.  

I stopped at Rossiter's Harley Davidson in Sarasota on one of our outings to see the grandkidlings.  Asked the guy behind the service desk for the Kuryakin bulbs to put in my bike and he reached down and grabbed two red bulbs from a display sign.


Here are the original bulbs I got to start this modification.  The price tag on the right says $21.00 and some change.  Really?  Gee, expensive.  


I get home, all giddy and spend 20 minutes trying to find my short Phillips screwdriver.  The bags prevented a good grip on the screw but I finally get the housing off and, uhhhh ohhhh.  It doesn't fit.  These bulbs don't fit.  Crap.  


I don't have photo shop or I'd circle the side prongs that fit into the electrical socket.  The top bulb is what they sold me but the prongs are opposite each other and do not fit the housing.  The bottom bulb is what I had to buy to replace the original bulbs with.  See how they are offset?

So on a day I had some time I hopped on the bike and drove back to Sarasota to trade them in for what i really need.  But they won't take them back.  On the receipt they gave me in the top picture it says they won't take any electrical stuff back as well as any swimsuits.  I can see the swimsuit, but one bulb was still in its wrapper.

Chad, a very nice young man who studied the books came up with the right bulbs but they would cost another thirty bucks but he would give me some kind of break.  In for a penny, in for forty, right?  Three weeks later I called to see if the bulbs were in, and they said, oh, yeah, they came in yesterday and we haven't had time to call.  Yeah, right.  I don't like these guys anymore.

I took the new set of priceless bulbs back home and tried them out.




COST:

Two trips over the Skyway....$5.00
Two tanks of gas..................24.00
4 red bulbs...........................44.35
                                        ________

Total Cost, more or less      $73.35

All this so I can change my turn signal from amber to red.  Yes, we bikers are a strange lot.  Please help me not to be an engineer, an ad man and an art department wunderkind. Let me be satisfied with my stock seat, although I'd rather have a Mustang ($329).  Let me be satisfied with my universal cruise control although I'd rather have a Flip-A-Lever ($59).  Let me be satisfied with my makeshift iPhone filming system although a GoPro system is he ultimate ($300).  Let me be satisfied with my stock headlight although I'd rather have a safety modulator ($100).  Let me satisfied with my stock saddlebags although the metal ones look awful nice ($1000).  Let me be satisfied with my stock horn, although the one Rick put on my old bike sure sounded great ($50).  You get the idea.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Summer Swim

It's Monday and the start of another work week.  Except for me.  I have the week off because the parents of my daycare charges are taking the week off, too. This is one of those wordless posts I love on Mondays so I can put my laziness in full view of loyal readers.  These pics need no words.  Why muddy the waters?   They were taken at the pool at Sinkhole Estates aka Death Valley.  The nice thing about this pool is it is heated in winter.  If one must find positives in one's situation, I suppose that is one.  But, please, no more.   

Flashback Friday

Class, Or Lack Thereof The Dwight Vice gravestone in Oquawka, Illinois. I bring this old chestnut out every so often just to remind me that class is classless.  Dwight Vice was killed in his home near Oquawka in 2001.  It was one of those things that can generate crime:  two guys thought Dwight had a lot of money stashed at home because of his pot-selling sideline to supplement his fishing job.   Not really one of those big drug deals gone-bad things.  Marijuana was, according to the trial, about the only stuff Dwight sold.   But these two guys barge into the house and killed Dwight and attempted to kill his 11 year old kid, Darryl, before they took off with what money they could find.   His son, now 23, was stabbed in the back and left for dead.  He survived and is wheelchair bound and has undergone several surgeries to repair his wounds.  He will be paralyzed for life.   None of this is pleasant.  Reading the facts of the murder and attempted murder are most unpleasant