Oh, the Humanity!

Ouch!

First ding.  Don't like that, first implies that there will be others to follow but that is the nature of things.  Have no idea how this happened.  Found it last night when I came back to work to pickup a couple of things I had left behind at the office and as I walked towards the bike I noticed the scrape. The first suspect was the Fox Tactical Fork Bag; it could have scraped the parking sticker so the bag is gone now.  On close inspection of the bag, however, there was no sticker residue and nothing hard enough on the bag itself to have caused this scrape.  It is a pretty serious scrape that has taken a whole layer of paint off.

My next thought was that somebody had tried to scrape the parking sticker off and caused the damage but I can't imagine why.  The parking stickers are cheap enough as to be practically free so there really is no reason to try to steal one.

The Bullet is never parked close enough to cars for this to be a door ding and it isn't a ding but a scrape.  So, that leaves that option out and it doesn't appear that the Bullet had been hit hard enough by a door to cause this much loss of paint without leaving a ding.

It has me baffled, I guess I'll never know.  The next step is to get some touch up paint, clean off the goop left behind by the sticker's adhesive, and cover it up as best I can.

As Tony Soprano was fond of saying, "what're you gonna do?"

On the way to work this morning, I stopped at the Shell station on the corner of 30 and Spring Mill to fill-up.  This is never a good idea because this Shell has to be the most expensive gas station in the whole tri-state area.  The odo was at 720.2 and it should have been good to go up to at least 747 miles but last night on the way back from work the gas light was flashing intermittently.  Supposedly, that light comes on once you are into the reserves and stays on solid.  Didn't think there was any need to risk going dry even when it meant having to pay extra for the gas.  The tank took 2.52 gallons to fill and it should be good up to 920 miles for the next fill-up.  Mileage figured out to 67.82 mpg.

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Saturday's Ride

The intention this morning was to head out Goshen/Strasburg to 352 heading towards Brookhaven but turning around at Granite Run Mall and following the reverse route back home.  Soon after crossing 252 on Goshen there was a flock of Canada geese gently strolling across the road.  They did not seem to mind the oncoming traffic and were not deterred or hurried by the Bullet's horn.  I slowed down to pass amidships of the flock and got a lot of honking and flapping of wings for my efforts.

After that the ride up Goshen was clear and fun.  The Bullet appears to be running smoother than I remember but that may all be in my head.

Shortly after crossing West Chester Pike on 352 there was a crew working on the road.  I got stopped at the top of the key and as soon as I pulled up, the lady in charge of the stop signed wandered over to ask about the Bullet.  We chatted for a couple of minutes about motorcycles while oncoming cleared and then I was on my way.  The opposite line of traffic was getting pretty backed-up by the time I cleared the crew and I decided not to reverse the route.  Crossing over Route 1, I took the on-ramp to Rt. 1 and from there to 252.

In my new Fox Tactical Fork Bag I was carrying by Nikon SB400 which I had dropped and broken and intended to take to the camera shop to see about getting fixed.  Keeping that in mind, I headed down 252 all the way to the Paoli Shopping Center at Rt. 30 where there used to be a Cardinal Camera.  Cardinal is now gone but there is a Ritz Camera there now.  They couldn't fix it so I headed home via Sugartown and Church.  (I took the SB 400 apart when I got home and fixed it myself.)

Great ride with no hold-ups other than the brief stop at 352 for road work.  That road has some nice twists and traffic is light enough that they can be run well.  Did push the Bullet up to 70 mph on Sugartown for just a brief period, probably no more than 100 yards.  It handled it well.  Can't wait to see if it can sustain it.

At the end of the ride the Bullet clocked 631 miles on the odo.

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Fox Tactical Fork Bag

Yesterday, while waiting for the Bullet to be serviced I wandered in to the Army Navy Store in downtown Pottstown.  Not looking for anything in particular, just looking to kill time.  There I found a Fox Tactical Modular Deployment Bag that would do the perfect job for a fork bag tool kit.  The bag cost $25.95, plus tax, and measures 11.5"x6"x5.5".  The outside is Cordura nylon and the inside is rubberized for waterproofing.

After a few minor alterations it fit fairly well on the fork and should serve well as a tool kit holder or small catchall.  I altered the bag by cutting the retaining fold on the front buckle straps so that they could be folded around the back of the bag and used as attachment points to the fork cross beam.  The attachment straps on the back of the bag are not long enough to wrap around the fork crossbeam as they are designed to attached to a belt or to modular tactical equipment.  At first I thought about buying or constructing extensions, and this is a possibility, but the original idea was to have a low cost fork bag and I didn't feel the extra hassle and cost could be justified.

A pretty neat solution, now let's see how it holds up in use.

Fox Tactical Fork Bag

Close-up Fox Tactical Fork Bag

Close-up Fox Tactical Fork Bag

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