Thanks Darrell, and like you, I really do get excited before a ride. Like other places in the world, Covid rules the roost, so if Victoria is 80% double vaccinated by this weekend, I'll be allowed to ride off into the countryside, so I'm trying to decide between my faithful K2 bitsa, or my 2300cc Triumph Rocket III to visit my 93 year old mother on the weekend.
As much as I enjoyed riding the K2 down last time, I'm keen to ride the Triumph because I bought new Tyres for it and had it serviced back in March, and haven't ridden it since, so it really needs a run. Like you I'll have problems sleeping the night before, but after the 200 miles to Bairnsdale and a few drinks with my cousin after dinner at my Ma's, I'll sleep like a log, then burn rubber all the way back to Melbourne on Sunday.
But of course I couldn't wait until the weekend when I realised that I had an opportunity this afternoon. The wife went shopping, so I quickly bolted the speedo back in place, wheeled the T500 up the driveway, bump started it, and did a tour of the neighbourhood. I bought this house in 2001, but in 1978 I moved into a flat (apartment) with a couple of other Army jerks one suburb over, and I haven't really ridden/driven around there much in the last 40-odd years, so it was fun to cruise my old neighbourhood on the Suzy, riding past my ex-girlfriend's house (her grumpy Italian father probably still lives there, if he's still alive, I probably gave him a few ulcers back then) and a few other girls I knew, and was surprised at how much the place hasn't really changed.
The bike went great, and blew happy clouds of blue smoke wherever I went. I was disappointed when a late model toyota pickup drove past blowing more blue smoke, and it wasn't even a diesel? The cheek! I had to catch up and ride in front of him just to coat him in some happy smoke. A guy pulled up beside me at the lights and told me that he liked my bike, and he had an old TS250, so I told him that mine was basically two TS250 engines grafted together. I should have asked him if he wanted to sell his TS250, but the lights changed, and we went our different ways.
When I got home I saw that I had a fine spray of something on both shoes, and I reckon that there's a bit of smoke coming out of where the header pipes go into the mufflers, and a bit of raw fuel has been blown out onto my shoes, because unlike oil, it disappeared as soon as the heat from my feet warmed the leather in my shoes, or something like that? There doesn't appear to be any oil in the pipe betwixt the pump and the engine, but I could see tiny bubbles of oil moving towards the engine, so hopefully my oil pump rebuild kit will arrive while my engine's apart and I can rebuild the pump while it's out, but if my luck holds true, it'll arrive the day after I reinstall the engine.
Oh, and the speedo doesn't work, bugger. Still, I'm not going to give up, I'll jack the front wheel off the ground and spin it, just to make sure the speedo drive at the wheel is actually working, I'm pretty sure I checked it, but that might have been the T350? Anyway, the T500 can take a rest while I wait to pull the engine, so I'll pull the wheels off and replace the tyres, fix the speedo, and dream about longer rides........
