Locomotive Breath

Day 1 Ride Home
Ahha!! I have the bike! I'm on the road!
I'm going back to my apartment and I have no idea how to get there.
Pull out the trusty Iphone and look at the map, A12 to A4 to M4...I think.
I take off and fumble through the gears and and hear something that sounds like a WWII Tiger tank going into gear.

I'm on the A12 and see a sign that looks like alien hieroglyphs.
It seems to be a traffic circle......a round intersection looking...thingy.
I look at the sign.
I'm supposed to take the 3rd exit, I think, in the traffic circle.
I do this without getting hit and now I'm on the motorway.
Open up the throttle to 80 Kilometres per hour.
Sounds impressive to you non metric Americans right.
(Hint if size really is important to you, use the Metric system)
That's a whopping 50 miles per hour.
And it's actually quite a comfortable speed.
The engine is rewarding me with a nice steady thump.
For some reason I have Jethro Tull songs going through my head.
The sky is blue, the sun is shining.
People are passing me and waving.
......No make that everyone is passing me.
A red car pulls up and a guy starts yelling and pointing behind him.
I look around.
Did I drop something? I'm I leaking oil, I'm I on fire?
I pull over to the left hand lane and he gives me a thumbs up.
Oh.....the left hand lane is the slow lane here.
Oops!

Not being sure how much gas I have I pull into a small town to fill up.
The gentleman that sold me the bike also gave me a small single seat.
This I have strapped to the back seat.
While I do still have it I notice that I am missing a seat spring for it that fell off.
Ahh no big deal.....little did I know this was a forwarning of things to come.
In getting the gas cap off I accidentally rip the gas cap rubber seal.
When the cap is put back on gas leaks onto the tank which I clean up.
Go though the start up routine. Up on center stand, fuel, neutral, no choke since the engine is warm, Kick, ouch....Kick...start.
Off on the road again.
In checking my Iphone map I notice the M4 is screwed up with traffic.
I decided to take the A12 through London then.

I'm now positive the path to hell is paved with people trying to take short cuts.

Get into London and all my troubles start.
The engine stalls out at intersections, mostly because I can't find neutral.
And this bike in first gear seems to idle at 30 miles per hour.
I'm not sure if it's trying to go somewhere or hump the Volvo in front of me.
At least it could pick a Ferrari or something.
And every time I stall out I have to pull over, up on the center stand, neutral, kick, start etc. etc.

At one point it doesn't start back up though.....uh oh.
I check everything over. Fuel? filled but up what position is the fuel tap in?
Should be on but what position is on? It has three: on, off, reserve. But what position in on? I figure that out. OK, check the choke lever.
Move it around and....there is no choke cable.
But there is a lose cable in front of the bike. What does that go to?
It goes to the top of the cylinder head....ahh OK.....and what does that do?
I have no idea and I can't find the choke cable.
I finally figure out that it is the cylinder decompression cable.
And it seems both ends of it are broken.
But the cylinder decompression can be manually moved with my thumb.
So it's no big deal.
The choke thing is bothering me though.
Get the bike started again and drive for a bit until I hit traffic and stall out again.
On this bike you cannot come to a full stop in first gear holding the clutch down and except it to keep running. You have to have it in neutral, which is a pain in the butt to find. Maybe the clutch cable needs adjusting but I'm in no position to screw with it at the moment.
It has a Neutral finder lever by the right foot but I have no idea how that works.
I'm sitting on the side of the road, hot, tired, dying for a bottle of water when a guy drives by in a lorry (Truck) and yells at me in something that sounds like English.

“Oieeee! Tahts a niuce right proper Englush bike thur!!! Cheeers!!!”

What the heck did he just say?
“Thank you... Cheers!!” I yell back.
If you have no idea what to say always say "Cheers".

After much trial and error, and the impending threat of rain, I get the bike started again.
Go for a bit, hit traffic. Stall.

The universe is trying to tell me something.
Maybe something like
“Wow! you have no idea what your doing do you?”

I push the bike into the parking lot of a Japanese restaurant.
I get off and of go inside and have a coke and a glass of water, With a lots of ice cubes.
That gets me a funny look from the bar tender, maybe be because of the fact that I'm sweating, have grease stains, sunburned and probably look exhausted.

At this point I'm almost 2 miles from home. No problem. Get the bike going. Started going through the last major intersection when BANG!! all sudden the bike gets really loud and giving it gas just makes it louder and not going very fast. Pull over next to a nice big park. What happened? As I'm looking around a nice man pulls up and tells me, in the same voice that people tell you your zipper is down.
“Hey your muffler fell off back there”
“Oh....uh..thanks”
I walk back and pick up the muffler, some scratches but not to much damage.

At the point I'm a mile from home. The bolt that holds the muffler on is missing.
I only have some tape and a simple leather man tool.
On the bike is a sticker that says “This bike protected by Zen Philosophy”
Zen in a nutshell: Stuff happens Get over it.
Zen for Royal Enfields: Breakdowns happen, things fall off, get over it.
Oddly enough during all of this I'm not upset or angry.
I'm actually kind of happy because I have a challenge.

A drunk homeless man walks up to me and starts talking about
how he used to have a bike also.
I'm polite and talking to him and trying to figure out what to do.
I start to pull the bike up on it's center stand the same way
I did with my Virago 1000.
Foot on the center stand, hands on the handle bar, take a deep breath, swing back with all my weight when the drunk nicely says
“You don't have to go through all that”
????
“Here see the handle on the left hand side behind the seat, grab that with your right hand, with your left grab the handle bar. Now lift up and pull back”
The bike goes up on the center stand with no problem or effort.
The drunk says a few more words and wanders off.

You ever wonder if God sends us Angels as
drunk smelly homeless people just to screw with our heads?
I was afraid I would screw something else up so I push the bike the last mile home.
I needed the exercise anyway.