It's Life......Everybody Poops: New Motorcycle

This year I have really let the ball drop when it has come to giving gifts to my husband. Truth of the matter is that generally we just don't have the finances available for me to buy things that live up to his taste and expectations. Well with our 5 year anniversary just around the corner I've been looking for something special to do for him. I've toyed with the idea of us spending the night alone somewhere in a cabin or hotel room; going camping; perhaps a nice dinner and a movie etc. But who am I kidding, we just aren't one of those romantic, lovey-dovey couples. Not to mention that a night alone for us is next to impossible. Of course we have a few wonderful friends that would be willing to take the little ones for the night and the oldest will be out of town with ROTC that weekend but seriously if he and I did manage a night alone anywhere we'd be asleep by 9pm so what would be the point in wasting the money.

Well a few weeks ago we were toying with the idea of how nice it would be to own a motorcycle again. Nothing that he would ride to work everyday because let's face it, the highways here in Dallas are in no way safe for someone on a bike. We were talking about having something that we could take out for a ride on the weekends, perhaps out on some country roads every now and again and just relax. As it turns out there is a guy that works with Michael who is currently in need of some space in his garage and is selling both of his motorcycles plus all of his dirt bikes. After talking with Michael he agreed that if we wanted the bike he'd sell it to us owner financed. How awesome is that?! Only snag is that the bike has been sitting up for a few years. He did sink a few hundred into it about a year and a half ago to get it running again but then ended up parking it back in the garage. So it would be up to us to get it running again. No problem. With Michael being a former mechanic, getting this bike running should be a cinch.

So with both parties in agreement on pricing and terms we headed over to take a look at the bike this past weekend. It is a '92 Honda Shadow VT1100 with about 64,000 miles on it. The bike itself is silver/grey and black and once we removed the leather strap on the gas tank and the leather saddle bags it was gorgeous. While there we decided to go ahead and take the carburetor apart and check it out. For you see with bikes that have been set up for a while the key to getting them started again is to clean the carburetor, clean out and change the gas and get a new battery. Sometimes you may have to change out the spark plugs and do a little more detailed work but in this case it seems that all we really need is some new gas and a new battery. Once we were able to remove the carburetor Michael could see that it was still clean and had no problems. Next step was to drain the old gas from the gas tank and last we checked the battery.

The battery seemed to be the only place where the bike really had a problem. Apparently when the current owner had the bike repaired last year he'd put the battery on a charger and over charged it causing battery acid to spill out. This of course leaked onto the bike and beneath the battery and caused some damage to the paint there as well as left a lot of build up. Well we cleaned up that mess and the damaged paint shouldn't be too much of a problem to fix so we agreed that we will take the bike. Last night we ordered the new battery and will pick it up today then we'll probably head back to the guys house this weekend to try to get the bike started and bring it home.

So for our anniversary this year our gift is a new (well new to us) motorcycle. What we're actually going to do on the day of our anniversary is still in question but I think that this will make up for the gifts I didn't buy over the past few holidays and birthday.