Sure, the original thought was to save money on gas since my car gets maybe 14MPG on a good day and if the planets are lined up correctly. It's a V8 from 1987, bought it when gas was reasonable. My motorcycles average about 40MPG which is course a savings of sorts. Averaging as I am about 350 miles for work commute each week, and using an average price of say $3/gallon, I figure I save just over $49 a week. Not bad.
Of course, all the riding around I do on the weekends kind of negates the savings but who's counting?
But now that the motorcycling bug has me firmly in its grip, its not going to let go anytime soon I believe. Riding all the miles that I do, before you know it, it's time for yet more services to be done to keep the motorcycle running.
Today was Brigitta's turn for a major or 12,000 mile service. I had decided to have Pete Homan of Bavarian Motorcycles West do it since I wanted his "once over" over Brigitta since she'd had her transmission replaced recently. Turned out though that he did not want to separate the transmission from the engine until around 90,000 miles. But, still its just as well I took her in since he spotted a damn nail on my less than 3700 miles on it rear tire! Dammit.
So, he did the 12,000 mile service, which replaces all the fluids to include the fork oil which I'd neglected to do since I got her about 17K miles ago (whoops). She got a new air and oil filter as well, had the pivot points of the advance unit in the ignition canister lubed, her too high idle lowered and I bought a new tire at the dealer which Pete put on for $40 extra labor.
I must say though, she ran sweetly all the way back home. Her idle does not climb to 1500 when hot anymore, and Pete lowered my gear shift pedal as much as possible and I can shift her into the higher gears seemingly easier so far. About six hours of Pete's time and I was out of there for less than $500, add in the $140 for the new tire and you can see why I titled this posting as I did.
Still, the joy and peace I experience while riding is important to me, as my loving wife puts it, it's my prozac on wheels. Who can argue with that right? I figure it's just about two regular car payments every 12,000 miles if I decide to let Pete keep doing the major services.
On a related note, Pete was telling me about the "nail" he picked up on his GS's rear tire while riding on a railroad bed roadway yesterday. Here's what Pete got stuck in his rear tire:
Yep, that's a railroad spike, pretty old one too
you can see the gouges the spike took from the inside of his wheel before Pete stopped his bike upon hearing "klunking noises"
By comparison, the less than one inch long nail Pete pulled out of my old rear tire is nothing, but enough to cost me almost $200.....why couldn't it be the front tire which was more worn?
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