The Solo Test Ride that Ended in Failure!

Okay, so yesterday was our usual club meet-up and ride day. However, for various reasons the breakfast eaters were thick while the riders were thin. That was okay, though, because I was a man on a mission and it required some alone time.

You see, my beautiful ST1300 has been ailing for some time now. She developed some kind of quirky electrical problem that resulted in sporadic outages of all things dependent upon electricity; little things like the ability to start the engine. This problem is (as "sporadic" might indicate) rather random and there is no discernible logic or pattern behind the misbehaving electrons.

So, yesterday, I decided to take the ST out for a little spin to see how she would fare after some decent riding over a fair quantity of miles. Not wanting to subject my fellow riders to the possible inconvenience that could result, I set out to conduct this test on my own.  Hmmmm, what was I thinking???

I headed east and made my way over into Polk County and found myself traveling down Green Pond Road, where I stopped to take a break at Pony Creek. No sooner was I off the bike when these guys came riding by as they, also, enjoyed the isolation and scenery of the Green Swamp:

I took advantage of the break to take some new photos of my lovely ST 1300:

And the break also gave me the opportunity to try out my latest photography gizmo that lets me get shots like this:

That same gizmo also makes it easier to get low-angle shots like this one:

BTW, after last week's visit from Tropical Storm Debby, the water levels all around Central Florida are pretty high, as this shot of Pony Creek illustrates:

Okay, break over, I jump on the ST and she starts up just fine. I head south and east to ride some of my favorite roads that all look about like this:

I should have quit while I was ahead. But, instead, I wheeled my way over to Fantasy of Flight for a quick comfort stop (that's code for "I had to pee!"). After only a few minutes off the bike I returned to find that the electrical gremlins had seized control and no matter what I did, what I said, or whose name I invoked, my beautiful ST was not going to restart.  I proceeded to disassemble and diagnose in the parking lot, to no avail:

A phone call to my mechanical genius brother, Robert, had a rescue operation in motion. Within the hour Robert was onsite with a pair of jumper cables and we got the ST running again. While waiting for Robert to arrive I had called ahead to the nearest repair facility and booked a slot for my ailing ST. Once she was running again, Robert and I beat feet to Fun Bike Center where they took my ST into surgery immediately. Here she is upon arrival in the waiting room:

I left the ST in the capable hands of the Fun Bike Center techs and went on home, courtesy of Robert, once again. Yes, he's a full-service rescue operation. Many thanks to him!

A couple of hours later I got a phone call from Fun Bike Center and was advised my ST was fully repaired, serviced, and road-worthy once again. Turns out that a five-year-old motorcycle battery is a bad thing and mine -- being just that old -- was somehow shorted out internally and that is what was causing all the fuss. So, a new battery and a customer-requested oil/filter change put everything right and I was able to get my beautiful bike back in her stable before 7 pm. Thanks Fun Bike Center!!!