February 25th, 2008

So the other day I parked my motorcycle on the street out in front of my new workplace and walked inside to work. Nothing particularly unusual about that, you might say. And you'd be mostly right except for one thing: I left the keys in the ignition ... with the lights still on.

I might as well have put a large sign on it:

Please come steal my motorcycle.

Well, until the battery went dead, anyhow, which, I figure, happened around 11:00 or noon. It must have been before 1:00, because that's when I walked past my bike on my way to my favourite salad bar for lunch. It should be pointed out that I didn't notice the keys in the ignition, despite giving it a visual once-over.

Anyhow, after getting out of work at 5:00 and discovering it dead as a doorknob, I tried the old trick of pushing it to the top of a hill, and bump-starting it in 2nd gear. But it didn't work, frustratingly. The battery was so dead, and the push-starting not enough to get the fuel injectors working. Carburetors would have worked, but the little computer needs 12 volts steady, or it just won't work to get fuel into the cylinder. But I didn't know that, so I pushed it up to the top of the hill three more times before giving up.

Incidentally, my bike weighs about 400 pounds, or maybe a little more with a full tank of gas, so pushing it up to the top of a hill is not exactly an easy task. I was really huffing and puffing, and sweating like a race horse while doing it.

But, what I really needed was a boost, which I finally got from my dealer. They have a mobile truck so they came down and boosted me with special motorcycle battery cables—car cables would have probably worked, too, but it was getting late and there weren't a lot of people left at work who could help.

Once I got my bike started, I needed to keep the engine revs above 3000 in order to charge the battery, so I drove home in 1st gear pretty much the whole way. It sounded funny, and some people were definitely aware of the high roar of my bike as I drove up Canada Way at 9000 RPM (and it was kind of fun, too, to make such a noise).

Some bozos, most notably drivers of white pickup trucks (why always the white pickup trucks?) heard the noise and felt their manhood challenged and, as a result, had to pass me and get in front of me. I should talk more about them some day ... oh wait, I already did!

Anyhow, once I got home, I plugged my battery into a charger and got it up to 90%+ charge; the bike has been well-behaved since then ... I even took it out for an extended spin on the weekend to Horseshoe bay, so I guess no permanent damage was done. But batteries don't like being completely discharged, so I expect I will have to replace it sooner than if I hadn't been so absent-minded. (Did I mention I was a Mensan?)

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