(no subject)
Today brought nothing but disappointments. Riding down Rt3 West, heading towards Morristown and the welcoming flow of windy country roads, I heard a distinct change in my exhaust note. With any vehicle, a change in sound never leads to anything good. With a motorcycle, the not good can easily become fatal. I started looking for a place to pull over and check out the bike when I was mildly startled by a frazzled looking young woman in an SUV, leaning on her horn, waving and mouthing the words "pull over". Despite my growing discomfort with the situation, I resisted the urge to act the part of biker scum and lose her in a cloud of blue exhaust. I reluctantly edged over to the shoulder and killed the engine. She was petite but proportional and not unattractive despite her 'jersey soccer mom desperately clinging to her youth' ensemble. In her distress, however, she was akin to a rabid poodle. Several minutes of frenzied chatter had revealed that a piece of my exhaust baffle had broken loose, skipped down the road and cracked her windshield. After calming down somewhat and returning to what passed for sanity in her world, she demanded to fill out a police report and file a claim. Normally, I would have been fine with that, but my insurance company has recently given me a substantial discount for my perfect record and I did not want to lose it over a loose bolt. After a fair bit of convincing and cajoling, I talked her into allowing me to pay her in cash and be on my way. She left, on her way to a life of child rearing, incessant phone chatter and eventual retirement in Boca Raton. I watched her pull away as I sat on the guardrail, wounded and bleeding out of my wallet. All told, today cost me $200 for the windshield, $80 for a replacement baffle, and a fortune in satisfaction of a perfect summer ride lost over a stupid piece of metal and my goddamn courtesy.