April 05th, 2014

Today was actually a fairly cool day. I woke up nice and early and pretty much just took the bike out straight away. I didn't want to do any big miles, so I pretty much kept it within twenty miles of where I live. I stopped early to grab coffee and breakfast and then fired the bike down some of the local roads before traffic got too heavy. All in all, it was pretty good. With two exceptions, the worst of which is when my keyring got caught up with my steering damper just as I was entering the petrol station. Bit of a heart in the mouth moment that. The second was when leaving a roundabout, I found the quality of tarmac unsuitable for the angle I intended on taking. I basically bailed, sat the bike up, grabbed a handful of front break, stopped mid corner and made it around safely.
During the ride, I stopped off and bought Sarah a little something and I ended up at Metropolis to pick up a new clutch res cap. £3 well spent.

As I was there, Mike took a call from one of his customers who had got stranded in a local high street with a dodgy battery. He had a new one at home, but got caught out with traffic and the bike stalled and he couldn't restart it. As he was really busy and as he knows I'm happy to help he asked me to take the battery booster pack up a restart the bike. I couldn't get that in my backpack so I ended up putting a few miles on a Multistrada that had a topbox. I then couldnt get the bloody thing of the centre stand and then kept stalling it as I wasn't giving it enough revs. Once up and running, its actually a really nice bike. Good riding position and really comfy seat. Still not for me through.
The main star of the day though was an almost brand new 999R that Mike has in the showroom. With only 300 miles on the clock it isn't even run in and if I win the lottery tonight, this bike is mine.