why is blue parked on the grass instead of in the garage?
The answer is simple: oops!
Blue and I had a great ride back to Almonte, ON, from North Hatley, QC, a distance of about 425 kms.
I should have left her parked in the driveway when I got home because I was tired after the eight-hour ride. It’ll just take a couple of minutes to put her in the garage, may as well do it now and get it over with…
My driveway is narrow, sloped and convex. Blue weighs more than TheFox and TheTwin and it’s hard for me to maneuver her. To get her facing the street after riding her up the driveway, I have to back her onto the lawn and then ride her onto the driveway while turning her sharply to the left. The driveway is higher than the lawn, which means my feet can’t touch the ground and I don’t want to hit the deck and…
Well, you get the picture. Down we went again.
This time my left foot got pinned underneath her and there was no one to assist. Hmmmm. After several minutes of struggling (and lots of swearing), I finally managed to free my foot. But I failed miserably when I tried to lift her myself. I needed help. Knock, knock on three neighbours’ doors without success.
Then, a woman who was out for a late-afternoon walk happened to stroll by. We managed to get Blue upright and started. Sadly, when I tried to put her in gear to edge her up onto the driveway, I discovered the shifter had been bent in the drop – it was now immoveable against the engine guard.
Blue wasn’t going anywhere.
The passer-by and I put a small piece of flagstone under Blue’s kickstand and there she sat until early the next morning when the cavalry–in the form of my long-suffering friend, motorcycle mentor and riding coach James (aka Jim) A.–came to the rescue. (Too bad for him that he lives just around the corner LOL :P)
Armed with a set of vice grips and more muscle power than I’ll ever have, James made short shrift of the shifter issue and all was good within minutes. Blue and I have ridden several hundred kilometres since this latest fix. We’re resilient. That’s why she and I and TheFox and TheTwin have travelled as far as we have so far this season. And it’s not over yet!
Meanwhile, I must either get massively better at turning around on the grass or have the driveway widened and paved…
Here’s a Relive of the return ride from North Hatley:
And this is how we got there in the first place:
© 2023 Susan Macaulay. I invite you to share my poetry and posts widely, but please do not reprint, reblog or copy and paste them in their entirety without my permission. Thank you.
