Tired

Last night I practiced removing a road bike tire.  My Dawes front tire conveniently developed a flat since I put the Trek into service.  I figured it is something I need to be proficient at since you WILL get a flat tire on the road sooner or later.  I watched a video on YouTube for reference. When I got the tire off I found that I did have a pin hole in the tube.  It could probably be patched but I think I will just snag another tube and a patch kit.  The old tube can be my new spare.

Yesterday I headed home around lunch time to meet the guy picking up the Moto Guzzi.  I got back ahead of the driver so I would have time to reconnect the battery and drive the bike from the shed to the garage.

I expected the truck to be either a big tractor trailer or a long straight body truck.  It was neither.  Instead it was a long pull behind trailer, like an extended version of what a landscaper tows around.  The driver was a friendly guy named Scott.  He told me about the motorcycle delivery business.  His trailer holds about a dozen bikes and he is usually on the road for around 12 days at a time.

Scott said the vast majority of the bikes on his trailer were Ebay transactions.  He said that Ebay is responsible for the majority of their business.  I knew people bought cars/bikes on Ebay but I didn’t know it was THAT popular.

He said he used to work construction but when that dried up he got into this.  He asked me about the bike and was surprised that it ran.  He started it up and drove it down to the trailer where it got loaded up in a narrow spot between two other bikes.

I snapped the picture a few moments before he closed the door, knowing I would never see the bike again.  The part of me that gets sentimental about inanimate objects felt a little twinge as the door was closed.  The bike was owned by my dad since the early 90’s. In a way I felt bad to be sending it off to the mid-west but in the big picture I know it made sense.  What is the point of it just sitting in my shed?

So I completed my first cross country vehicle transaction.  It wasn’t as troublesome as I anticipated.