I think maybe I’ll start parking on the sidewalk

Today while I was feed­ing a vaca­tion­ing friend’s cat, some­one backed into my parked motor­cy­cle with her car. After months of liv­ing with shot steer­ing bear­ings I final­ly got them replaced less than two weeks ago. Now my steer­ing is messed up again.

I don’t think its too bad but the mechan­ic’s shop does­n’t open again until Tues­day. It appears that the brack­et that lim­its the range of steer­ing is bent, as I can turn the han­dle­bars all the way to the tank to the left, but only about fif­teen degrees to the right. I believe that it’s safe to ride; fif­teen degrees is much more than I need except when I’m park­ing or get­ting around in a park­ing lot.

Much more incon­ve­nient is the dam­age to the side­stand. The bike now leans much far­ther over when parked, and each time I want to go some­where I have to push the bike side­ways so that no weight is on the stand, then recon­nect the spring and plate to the the side­stand itself—certainly doable, but quite a pain. When it gets light out again I’ll reassem­ble it and see if some zip­ties will keep the assem­bly togeth­er. In any case it will need to be fixed. If the side­stand breaks off entire­ly the only thing I’ll be able to do is lean the bike against a wall.

Even though I think it’s safe to ride, it seems pru­dent to ride as lit­tle as pos­si­ble for the time being until I can get it looked at. Back and forth to the gro­cery store should be OK, but prob­a­bly I should­n’t go out rid­ing in the moun­tains until next week­end, and I ought to avoid the free­way just to be on the safe side.