martinkap

Luckily, I was not standing in the freshly digged grave and was not talking to Hamlet. But the picture I saw was not prettier. I was standing in front of a bike lying on her side and almost obscenely showing her guts. I don't know about you, but I feel that there is something ungodly and disturbing about bike down. It is never a pretty sight. The bike, nicely painted roadster with not much chrome, was lying on my favorite spot. I was too late to repark my Hawk GT and a guy who parks in the same area, snatched my spot. Just couple days ago, we parked next to each other on the oposite side of the street. We snuggled our bikes together and hoped for the best. Before he disappeared into the night, I had showed him my newly installed sliders, or as I personally call them, 'the crash bars'. He was impressed and was hoping to find similar for his bike. It was 2am in the night and I was standing alone next to his injured beauty. Seems like the crash bars were more needed that he thought. I felt lucky that my Hawk was not the one lying there. It was obvious that I could not pick her up alone and I did not want to risk being shot by approching complete strangers on the dark Manhattan streets. So, full of guilt I went home. The next morning, I left home and hoped that his bike will be already standing. She was not. She was on the right side and was obvious that someone was messing up with the cover. I stood for long time there. If that was my bike, I hope someone would pick her up. But, I don't have full coverage insurance nor very expensive motorcycle. So, after all the thinking, I have still not found any strong reasons for picking her up. Feeling more guilty than before, I left for work. The same night she was not there anymore and I haven't seem him or his bike since. But the question remains: Should have I pick up his bike? Or did I do the right yet painful thing?

On Saturday, I decided to visit my friend in New Jersey. I zoomed through George Washington Bridge and enjoyed about 20 miles of nice freeway speed. Soon, I turned into his neighborhood. I remembered that the last time, I was almost hit by a car coming onto a street from nearby parking lot and thus slowed down. I was on the typical road in the shopping rural area. Two lanes each way, hard median and rather wide shoulder on the side. I kept my distance from ugly looking SUV in front of me and scanned for incoming traffic from the side. When suddenly, the SUV back doors opened and the driver hit the brakes. The distance which was safe moment ago shrank immediately. I hit the brakes and swearved to the inside lane. The SUV driver also start swearving but luckily towards the shoulder. And as he was in the middle of his swearving, a huge mattress comes out from the back door and goes flying on the road. The swearving car motion and the speed caused the mattress to rotate and smash it on the pavement right in front of me... It rotated and slided towards me as it was still in its protective plastic. Luckily, I finished swearving and barely missed a corner coming into my path... My heart was pounding while I was turning to my friends driveway. "What a stupid way to die!", I thought, "Killed by mattress while riding a motorcycle!"

I will try to beat the parking tix - they were written within 1 hour. But I think you are right that the rash on the side with bunch of duct tape put them off - or they were just couple of drunks fidgeting with a motorcycle.... I guess we will never know But I have to say, the police was impressive ... the undercover was perfect - looked like bunch of 20 year old drinking in the car :-) and they arrived amazingly fast! Did not expect that at all...

Thursday was just a weird day. In the morning, I have discovered that I got two parking tickets during one hour over night. I did not want to leave my VFR there anymore, so I rode her to work. From then, the crap started just pile up. I went home that night and first I realized that I left my knee protectors at work (which complicated my planned Friday ride out to upstate NY because I never ride without proper gear) and then it took me forever to find the 'right' parking spot for her. I had to park her on the street (since I did not want to get more tickets) but I managed to find a spot visible from my bedroom window. Not so clearly (there is construction site in the way), but still I could monitor if the VFR is there. To top the evening, I just could not fall asleep... So around 3am, I decided to shut the air conditioning off and open the windows. As I was wrestling with the window, I noticed that there are two guys walking around my bike and trying to uncover it. My heart stopped. I watched them for couple minutes and my adrenalin was just going through the roof. Suddenly, a black car parked perpendicularly to the street right in front of my bike and I could not see anything anymore. I was sure that they are trying to steal it but I was unable to do more than just stand there and watch. To run to my bike would take me good 15 minutes, since I had to get dressed, then get out of the building and then run around the whole huge block (there is no straight street to there - just construction). So, with shaking hands I dialed 911 and spent about 10 minutes describing the situation. Since the car and some motion was still there when I hung up, I changed my mind and decided to run to my bike and meet the police there. While I was racing through the middle of 4 lane streets to get to my bike, I realized that firstly, I might be there before the police come and secondly, the robbers can start shooting if they are still there. Before I turned the last corner, I ducked down and tried to hide behind some parked cars. James Bond would not be ashamed of me... Well, the street was empty... I finally run up to my bike spot, VFR was still there but the cover was put on a bit differently. The police arrived couple minutes after me. They were in undercover car and probably watched me already hiding behind cars and playing 007... In the end, I am not sure what happened. I am not sure if some guys were just interested in my bike and tried to peek under the cover or if they really tried to steal her but decided not too, since half of my bike is badly scratched from my last year incident with the deer. I glued and duct-taped the worst areas but it does not look pretty plus it makes the bike very unique (among other unique features). I was afraid but the police was really nice to me. I got home around 4am, with my heart still pacing and adrenalin almost higher than one can survive. I had fallen asleep eventually, but it took one more movie on the dvd and two glasses of Laphroaig...