In 6 months i had only ridden my R3R twice , i was thinking i had lost interest and fallen out of love with her. I found myself making up excuses not to ride her, ie: makes my back sore , got no one to ride with , sick of the same old rides , then the back brake stopped working due to me never changing the fluid in 4.5 yrs since i bought her.
For the past week i have been considering selling her to get enough to pay off the loan ( got 8k left to pay ), even the Mrs has been in my ear that maybe i should sell the R3R as i never ride it and it had become nothing but a 2 wheeled clothes horse ( when it's got it's cover on she hangs washing out over it in the winter......). Yesterday i logged into here with every intention of placing an ad. on the forum and try and get the coin i need to pay the loan. I left the page open all day at work and tried my best to avoid the inevitable , i reminded myself of all the regrets i have from years of buying , restoring and then selling both cars and bikes of many different types , still the voice nagged me that selling would be best for the long haul.
I told myself i'd go home have one last look at her before i made any totalitarian decision to place the ad , what would another day hurt ? When i arrived home i made my way sheepishly to the garage , put the door up and removed her cover , she was dirty , the tires were showing signs of needing some air and she looked as sad as i felt . The Mrs wouldnt be home for another hour so i decided to have a go at bleeding the old fluid out of the rear brake , we went through the old motions of getting her up in the air and level on the Anderson stand , for a big bike her balance while holding her up one handed by the bars and levering her onto the stand still amazed like some sort of magic trick , the big girl played nice.
Took me a good 4-5 reservoirs of fluid to flush the crap stuff out , ive never seen brake fluid that looked like milk........ , once i buttoned the res back up i topped up the air in the tires , took her off the stand and enjoyed the feeling of spending time with her and making her well again, put the key in the ignition, hit the starter and BANG she was off into that nice steady rumbling idle a sound i would likely miss once sold , i thought the best thing to do is bring her to work in the morning ( today ) give her a run and look at her through my office window as i formulate what i wanted to say in the ad.
The ride to work this morning was crisp and refreshing , she purred along like something mythical and rare , every gear change was rewarding as the teeth meshed and passed the torque to the back wheel , i flicked her left and right through the early morning traffic , cracking the throttle everytime i needed to get out of the blind spots of all the drones holding my girl back from smashing a R3R sized hole at speed through the air, i was in love again........
I sit here writing this, looking out the window at my girl , the shape and swoop of her beautiful lines makes her look brutal but at the same time elegant , i cant wait for when work finishes and i get to ride her home once again , decision made i wont be selling her