A few weeks ago I had the chance to jump on the bike one Sunday and go for a short ride around the local backroads when the weather jumped up to about 65 degrees. It had been more than a month and a half since I'd been on the bike and I was going through some serious withdrawals, so the chance to go "knees in the breeze" was more than welcomed by me. I hit the road and just wandered around the county for about an hour or so, enjoying every minute of it.
Well, about a week later I was going to work, and when I got in my truck and looked at my Nightster parked in the garage directly in front of my truck, I noticed that the rear tire looked a bit low. No biggie, I thought, tires lose 3-5 pounds of air pressure a month (something I remembered from my days in motorcycle sales) so I figured I'd just pump it up when I got home, which I did.
The next morning it looked flat again. Uh-oh, I thought, this could be trouble. So I pumped it up again - thank God for my Black and Decker portable air pump - and checked it again the next day.
Dammit all, anyway. Looks like I was about to pay for my Sunday ride, literally. I had the wife look at the back tire while I rolled the bike back, and I'd only gone about 6 inches when she said, "Yup, there it is!" I got off the bike and took a look and there, embedded almost dead-center in my rear tire, was a goddamn roofing nail.
Son of a bitch!
It was going to be nearly a week before I'd have a day off to get the bike to the local stealership to fix the flat, so I spent every other day or so pumping the tire up to preserve the tire until then. And yesterday morning at around eleven AM, I called my insurance company and told them I needed a tow. Roadside assistance, including tow trucks, are covered by my insurance policy (GEICO, in case you care) so it cost me absolutely nothing to have the bike towed in for repairs. TWO HOURS LATER the truck showed up, and ten minutes after that we're on the way to Harley Haven to get the tire fixed.
Once I got to the shop the service manager, a heck of a nice guy named TJ, took one look at the tire and told me that he thought they'd be able to save the tire and not have to replace it. The good thing about having a bike with spoked wheels is that you have to run an inner tube in the tires, whereas solid wheels use tubeless tires. If you get a nail in a tubeless tire you're pretty much screwed, because Harley dealerships and most indy shops will not plug a tubeless tire. If you plug a tubeless tire and it fails on you at highway speed, the only place you're going is DOWN and there won't be a damned thing you can do about it. But with a spoked wheel you run a tube, and unless the nail is in the sidewall or damages the belt, all you have to do is replace the tube - you don't even have to plug the hole. And, as luck would have it, that's all they had to do.
But the really sad part is this: the tube was $14.55, and the labor to install it was EIGHTY BUCKS! I am in the WRONG line of work!
In any event, it took about 70 minutes to get the tire fixed, and then I was knees in the breeze on the way home, and damn it felt good! I had a chance to ride again today going across town to my dental followup appointment, and the ride today was even better than the ride yesterday! And this weekend it's supposed to be in the 80's and I'm off on Sunday, so you wanna guess what I'll be doing?
All things considered, it could have been a lot worse with my tire - I could have had to replace it, and the tire alone would have cost me $125.00, plus the tube, plus the labor...it could have been much, much worse.
But still, it just goes to show you that nothing in this life is free.
Even though, some things are worth the cost.
IHC
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