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For the first time in ages I woke to sunny skies and a free day. With the flick of a switch, the coffee pot stirs. My eyes open up. I see so much more then just light. Quickly the pot percolates with fresh, dark, liquid freedom and a sip later it isn’t simply a cup of awakening but rather a cauldron of possibility that’s brewing. Twelve cups of warm virtue that smells and tastes of escapism.
Moments later I feel a twinge of freedom, a sense that after months of hard work, deadlines and stress, today I can finally unwind. Finally I can let go. Nothing looms over head. Nothing has to happen immediately. There is no sense of urgency nor dread. No obligation to attend to. No cloudy mental facility born from lots of late nights and far to early mornings. Instead there is simply nothing at all. The calendar is finally clean… But then.. Then it all goes wrong – Because today is my day of reckoning — Today is the day that I finally had my first ‘get off’…
The suit feels stiff. The zipper determined not to budge. The protective pads feel awkward. The plastic part of a junior prom gone bad. Yet as I snap the last buckle on the boot and listen to the loud pop which suggests that the strap running across the top of my foot is now locked into place, I can’t help but wish that the rocket scientists who developed thermoplastic had something for a bruised ego. But they don’t, so instead I’m left to my own devices. Left to battle my own demons.
Walking into the garage, it’s hard to imagine that its been just six days since I laid the 999 down for the very first time.
The Rebuild Begins
999 Rebuild at Motorcycle Performance by Alex White
And so it begins — A mere six days after laying the 999 down, it is time to officially tackle its reincarnation… What that means exactly is still up in the air, however where it will take place is not…
Ideally of course if time, money and legality were not issues that required consideration in this process then I’d be the first to tell you that this would have been the perfect time to roll up our own sleeves and wrench the bike back to health ourselves.
But the reality is that isn’t a realistic option right now. For starters there’s the time thing. In short order life will once again ramp up as we start production on our next motorcycle documentary, so I find myself asking the question, on those intermittent days off would I rather be wrenching or riding? Clearly the answer keeps coming back as the later…
Perhaps more importantly however, the insurance company has legal concerns revolving around one’s own wrenching versus an actual repair shop, which at first blush seem somewhat annoying, but on the other hand I certainly can’t fault them for having these sort of concerns in today’s litigious world. If someone can sue McDonald’s for coffee that’s to hot, then who knows what they could do in a rebuild situation if something were to go wrong down the road…
So, after spending a few hours dealing with the insurance company and sending out a dozen or more emails and/or placing phone calls to some of the various folks we’ve met in the motorcycle industry over the past four or five years, the old man and I have finally settled on a local motorcycle repair shop to tackle the 999′s rebuild — Alex White’s Motorcycle Performance Shop in LA. Alex is a former racer and long time mechanic, who came highly recommended to us by three different folks whose opinions I greatly admire and trust…
So now we wait for the insurance claim adjuster… And then the fun begins…
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