Thursday, September 19, 2019
After ordering a pizza to go and a beer for the wait, I snapped this picture in the men’s room.
After ordering a pizza to go and a beer for the wait, I snapped this picture in the men’s room.
As I sipped Alaskan Amber, my unexpected encounter with BMW-themed moto-art seemed like the latest of several good omens.
I’d left work on this Thursday barely early enough to crawl through rush hour traffic and arrive at the BMW shop seconds before closing. This was a big win because I really didn’t want to have to squeeze the errand into the final Friday before departure, or worse yet Saturday morning on the way to the airport. I’d expected my part to come in days earlier, and Jessica the parts gal was as surprised as I that it had taken so long to show up. But now I had it in hand.
On the way out I spied an unusual item hanging from the gear rack.
“What’s this?” I asked Jessica.
“Guy bought it and never used it, brought it back. Need to get it out of here.”
I looked more closely at the price tag, which was hand-written and was what had first caught my eye.
“Sold!” I said, unhooking it from the rack and plopping it on the counter.
I hadn’t intended to buy a tank bag that evening, but I did need one.
Back in the mid-eighties I bought a Chase-Harper tank bag of the same model my dad had on his bike, because I liked his so much. I’ve used it on all four of the BMW motorcycles I’ve owned, and for the past few years have swapped it as needed between my 1993 R1100RS Nada 3 and my 2012 K1300S Princess Therese.
But the main zipper was starting to give out by the time I started planning my 2016 Alaska trip, More Epic Than Usual. Not wanting to deal with a tank bag failure during my most ambitious tour ever, I bought a new Cortech bag and rigged both Therese and Nada 3 to accept it; the Chase-Harper was tossed atop the moving blankets draped over my 1974 BMW R60/6 Nada 1. There, unlike the mothballed machined underneath, it proceeded to collect dust.
On my way back from California in 2017 I decided I’d ridden across the Great Plains way more times than I’d ever wanted, so I parked Therese in mom’s garage in Phoenix and bought a plane ticket. Part of the calculus of that decision was that back home I had a spare motorcycle and all the gear to go with. Those spares were all old stuff, of course, but good enough for riding in Michigan.
So, for the past couple years the Chase-Harper has been employed exclusively on a bike only a few years younger than the bag. But it’s been failing fast lately, and while riding back from the FCMC rally in May the main zipper finally blew out completely.
It sure didn’t owe me anything, and I was looking forward to learning all about the new bag after my impending western tour was over.
I sipped my ale and felt suffused with a warm glow not entirely due to the beer.
It had been a good day.
I’d done four major presentations over the past three weeks; todays had been the last. They’d all been successful, a reflection of projects that were tracking well; two were essentially complete ahead of deadline.
Major projects at home were likewise wrapped up. Thanks to Laurel's diligent management, a succession of crews had painted the house, done a bunch of landscaping work, replaced the carpeting in the dining room with hardwood, and replaced the carpeting in the room which will soon be my office, now that my son has moved out.
The pizza arrived.
I’d left work on this Thursday barely early enough to crawl through rush hour traffic and arrive at the BMW shop seconds before closing. This was a big win because I really didn’t want to have to squeeze the errand into the final Friday before departure, or worse yet Saturday morning on the way to the airport. I’d expected my part to come in days earlier, and Jessica the parts gal was as surprised as I that it had taken so long to show up. But now I had it in hand.
On the way out I spied an unusual item hanging from the gear rack.
“What’s this?” I asked Jessica.
“Guy bought it and never used it, brought it back. Need to get it out of here.”
I looked more closely at the price tag, which was hand-written and was what had first caught my eye.
“Sold!” I said, unhooking it from the rack and plopping it on the counter.
I hadn’t intended to buy a tank bag that evening, but I did need one.
Back in the mid-eighties I bought a Chase-Harper tank bag of the same model my dad had on his bike, because I liked his so much. I’ve used it on all four of the BMW motorcycles I’ve owned, and for the past few years have swapped it as needed between my 1993 R1100RS Nada 3 and my 2012 K1300S Princess Therese.
But the main zipper was starting to give out by the time I started planning my 2016 Alaska trip, More Epic Than Usual. Not wanting to deal with a tank bag failure during my most ambitious tour ever, I bought a new Cortech bag and rigged both Therese and Nada 3 to accept it; the Chase-Harper was tossed atop the moving blankets draped over my 1974 BMW R60/6 Nada 1. There, unlike the mothballed machined underneath, it proceeded to collect dust.
On my way back from California in 2017 I decided I’d ridden across the Great Plains way more times than I’d ever wanted, so I parked Therese in mom’s garage in Phoenix and bought a plane ticket. Part of the calculus of that decision was that back home I had a spare motorcycle and all the gear to go with. Those spares were all old stuff, of course, but good enough for riding in Michigan.
So, for the past couple years the Chase-Harper has been employed exclusively on a bike only a few years younger than the bag. But it’s been failing fast lately, and while riding back from the FCMC rally in May the main zipper finally blew out completely.
It sure didn’t owe me anything, and I was looking forward to learning all about the new bag after my impending western tour was over.
I sipped my ale and felt suffused with a warm glow not entirely due to the beer.
It had been a good day.
I’d done four major presentations over the past three weeks; todays had been the last. They’d all been successful, a reflection of projects that were tracking well; two were essentially complete ahead of deadline.
Major projects at home were likewise wrapped up. Thanks to Laurel's diligent management, a succession of crews had painted the house, done a bunch of landscaping work, replaced the carpeting in the dining room with hardwood, and replaced the carpeting in the room which will soon be my office, now that my son has moved out.
The pizza arrived.
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