A Tale of Woe

First I begin with a rather sick but apropos joke:

A man goes to the doctor for a follow-up and the doctor says "I have some bad news; you have Alzheimer's and cancer."  The man says "At least I don't have Alzheimer's."

So this morning as I set out I thought I would have breakfast and then gas up.  Breakfast was excellent.

As I sat on the expressway shoulder west of Mobile I was grateful I had gotten AAA for motorcycles.  No mile marker where I was so I checked Google Maps for my location which I read and reported backwards (see above).  I called back to correct this but that update didn't make it to the gas delivery guy so I sat for an additional hour or so while that got cleared up.  My phone was low so I hooked it up to my battery tender to charge.

Eventually the gas guy showed up and, as he said that he had had two reported then closed gas-up calls that day, he had extra gas which he gave to me.  $5 tip there.  Then he suggested that I start up before he left.

Well all that phone charging had drained my battery.  Not to worry the gas guy was also a jump guy.  So where is the battery on a Honda ST1300?  Turns out you have to unlock and remove the bags.  The you have to remove the seats.  The you take out your 5mm allen wrench and remove the side panel.  Amazingly the jump guy actually had a 5mm allen wrench.

So jumpola and start up and we're ready to go, right?  Well we do have to put the panel back on, the seats back on, and the locking bags back on.  Note, "locking" bags; bags with a lock which requires a key and said key is in the ignition keeping the jumpola alive.  Well we sigh, turn off the bike, and reassemble everything which we did.  And see if the bike will start.  Nada.

So we stared at this for a while then I had a brain wave.  We again disassembled everything INCLUDING the side panel.  Then we reassembled everything EXCEPT the side panel.  Started the bike; all is well; and bungied the panel onto the back of the bike.  For all this the $100 tip.

And down the road.