Without wheels

The Guzzi is in the shop, and the news is not good. Repairs to the dam­age caused by a neigh­bor back­ing into the bike will be in the mul­ti­ples of thou­sands of dol­lars. This means it’s time to get insur­ance com­pa­nies involved. And I prob­a­bly should have got­ten them involved at minute one.

I was told not to be shocked by the first num­ber that I got. The bent steer­ing stop is part of the frame, and the only right way to repair the frame of the bike is to replace the frame. It seems that it can be weld­ed, but that weld­ing is not the pre­ferred way of deal­ing with any­thing hav­ing to do with the frame of the bike. The­o­ret­i­cal­ly any­way it can dam­age the integri­ty of the frame. The good folks at Munroe told me that there were oth­er options, but that they have to start with a com­plete check­list of repairs the way the man­u­fac­tur­er (and insur­ance com­pa­nies) would want it done before look­ing at alternatives.

What’s trou­bling is that the esti­mate I got from Munroe—$2,800.00—doesn’t include replac­ing the frame. So the num­ber I get tomor­row could very eas­i­ly exceed the val­ue of the motor­cy­cle. As much as I’m being told not to wor­ry, that the woman who hit my bike and her insur­ance have to take care of it, it’s hard not to be con­cerned when look­ing at my sole form of trans­port being totaled.

Munroe is keep­ing the bike for the time being. They’re say­ing it’s not safe to ride because of the steer­ing lim­i­ta­tion and I have to admit that’s true. While there’s plen­ty of range for nor­mal rid­ing, The lim­i­ta­tion on steer­ing to the right is trou­ble at slow speeds in park­ing lots or any slow-speed maneuvering—just park­ing on the street requires extra care and I’ve had to make a cou­ple of dra­mat­ic foot­plants to stay upright when I could­n’t turn the bars any fur­ther. While those sit­u­a­tions are more like­ly to be embar­rass­ing than injurious—dropping the bike at 5mph is nev­er a proud moment—a slight­ly faster encounter in an inter­sec­tion with vehi­cles of the four-wheeled vari­ety and the clue­less idiots that dri­ve them in this town could be a big problem.

For the time being I’m on foot and not in great spir­its. The Guzzi is paid for so I don’t have to wor­ry about cov­er­ing a debt, but my expe­ri­ence with deal­ing with insur­ance is that it takes months if not years to get worked out. I’m in no posi­tion to take out a loan for a new (or even new to me) bike so I real­ly am not hap­py about this turn of events.

As a post­script, I apol­o­gize for not hav­ing this writ­ten yes­ter­day. The first day after I said I’d have some­thing post­ed here every day and I’ve missed my first dead­line. I got home from the shop at about six-thir­ty and was asleep on the couch by eight. I did­n’t wake up until about 2am. My sleep cycle as well as my motor­cy­cle is tak­ing a hit.