As for the title of this post…“Be Sure to Get My Good Side”….that is in reference to the OTHER side of the tank having a dent and road rash. My plan is to leave the tank the way it is though.
I finished doing all of the actual repairs to the bike a week or so ago. There are still a few odds and ends I may attend to, but mechanically the bike is sound. The finishing touch went on this morning. I had not replaced the bar end mirror and so I stopped by O’Reilley’s last night and purchased one of the standard 3-inch convex mirrors that are meant to go in the bottom corner of an ordinary side mirror on a car. Turns out it also fits beautifully in a high-dollar CRG that’s had the glass broken out of it. And keep in mind that the bike is an aesthetic work in progress. I like the current round headlight I have on there, but it’s maybe 7 inches in diameter at most. This week I purchased from Ebay what the guys on the board call a “train light”, which is more than 9 inches in diameter. I do think the big train light looks great on the muscley ZRX. And while the light on there now is chrome, I’ll paint the big train light flat black.
I took the bike out for a 150 mile run today. It was the first time doing any kind of real miles on the bike since the accident. I hit a twisty route up near Leavenworth. It was sunny and in the mid sixties here today – Thanksgiving day. I was a bit tentative at first. But honestly I am always a bit rusty after I haven’t ridden in a while. It was a little different this time; I could more easily envision hitting the pavement or worse. But I found my comfort zone about 50 miles into the day. I scrubbed all the dirt off the rear tire that I had picked up in the accident. That was pretty cool to scrub that off “the honest way”.
I made a lot of stops today as I was taking more pics than usual. I would say that I started the bike maybe 12 to 15 times today. And on two occasions, the bike didn’t want to start for some reason. It would turn over, but it just wouldn’t actually start up. Each of those two times it took maybe 10 to 12 attempts to get the bike running. The second time it happened, I turned the petcock to PRIME position since I suspected fuel delivery might be the issue. That seemed to help. I have never had this issue until now. The only thing I can think is that maybe in the accident some debris from the bottom of the tank got kicked up and is causing problems in fuel delivery. I am grasping at straws. I’ll have to wait and see if it happens again. But like I said, it started pretty quick each time. And the bike is running strong as ever other than that. Overall, a good day of riding.
As for me, I am pretty much healed up. I am still nursing a hurt knee. I had an MRI two weeks ago and the results of that showed a sprain (small tear) in the outer ligament of my right knee. The orthopedic specialist says that particular ligament gets good blood flow and should heal on its own. He suggested I cut back on my activities and give it more time, but the prognosis is good right now.
