16 days before I leave. Essex. It’s warming up as I arrive at the dealer. One bike to test today. I sign the paperwork. A £1000 excess if I damage the bike. I have no plans to do that. The dealer takes the panniers off and provides a satnav so I can find my way back. The bike has a slot for satnav so having it show me just below my eye line makes for a more relaxed trip. Except the roads are awful. The country roads are narrow, bumpy and dirty. The towns are crowded and lack the flow of London.
I pull to a halt at a junction on a lane to turn off a lane onto the minor road and back to the dealer. It’s slight uphill and gravel strewn. I hesitate and change my mind about where to put my foot at the last second. It’s a sea of tiny stones and slippery. So I slip. And find I can’t hold the bike up. By God its heavy. Rather than risk injury I disengage from the bike, stepping away as it goes down. Now I have a bike. On the ground. With a damaged engine head cover. And I don’t know whether I can lift it up.
Turns out I can. I manage to right the 280kg bike, possibly because the tank is nearly empty and there are no panniers. Thank god I don’t have to be rescued. Hold the bars together. Back straight. Bend legs. Lift like a dead weight and push it up once its high enough. Some minor but expensive cosmetic damage.
I decide to buy the pre-registered bike they have for the simple reason that they’ll let me off most of the damage charge if I do! A discount if ever there was one. I get an email from Park Lane just then saying they’ve cut their prices by £850. I ask the dealer for a SatNav and get one thrown in, another £450+ saved, and suddenly I’m buying a bike, and a brand new one at that! This is really going to happen. Paperwork sorted I drive home feeling so happy I can barely stop smiling. I am getting a motorcycle.
The strange thing is they had loads in stock available straight away. Apparently they were worried about no deal Brexit causing disruption and not being able to get stock. This puzzled me. A large economic shock and they’re concerned that demand for luxury motorbikes won’t be able to be fulfilled. Someone should tell the Bank of England about the amazing business confidence. Back to bikes, they were mostly white LE models but only a few with the options I wanted. There was a saving from having a pre-registered bike, so legally I am the second owner even if I picked it up with 15 miles on the odometer. EF19MXU is mine!
Now here is an interesting point. Why can I remember the Suzuki number plate without even trying but get the BMW’s plate wrong all the time? After my holiday and riding the bike every day I still had no idea what the plate was except for the fact it started with an E and had a 19.
The deal is struck. I agree a pick up on Saturday, a mere two days later and a week before I am due to leave. Slight snag. The bike needs a first service at around 1000km, or 620 miles, before I go for my long trip. I need to get the miles in before I go away. I start counting the trips I can do and the miles needed. Lunch with Jake in Cambridge, 100 miles. Visit my parents for the day, 220 miles, Ride back and forth to the dealer, 100 miles. I don’t need that many extra to get to the magic 600 mile mark.
Andrew’s Bike Blog 