What was he thinking? I said to myself as I turned the rental car round and headed for the highway 371 miles back home to my stilt house in the Keys. I couldn't wait to get out of the cookie-cutter, gated community,with golfing privileges, where the BMW was being offered for sale. He was a nice guy, with a dry sense of humor, perhaps someone I couldhang out with by the pool and talk about his interesting life. I could be friends with this man I thought.The seller said he was an engineer, and clearly he's no salesman. The motorcycle was a fixer upper, which were it listed as such, would be no bad thing, but I couldn't imagine riding it home in the condition it was in. Worse than that, it clearly had never been loved, just used, and never cared for. Shame.
The day started rough with a massive thunderstorm dumping inches of rain on Islamorada, the purple island in Spanish ( pronounced, in English: isle-a-more-ahh-dah, which confuses wanna-be Spanish speakers). I love the rain in hot climates, it gives reason to pause, it cools things off and it rarely descends during the cold time of year when the presence of rain would make cold temperatures just miserable. This rainy season has proved to be old fashioned wet,("In the old days it rained all the time.") inasmuch as it is raining fit to drown our waterlogged peninsula. Water restrictions? We don't need no stinkin' water restrictions! (We do actually, as the mainland aquifer is way down, development continues along with consumption; but you can't sell the need for restrictions to peasants when the skies are flooding the fields). 
The Highway became even more tenuous as it disappeared into a wall of water, part of which fell from the skies and part of which was thrown up by our tires and the third part was simply moisture saturation in the atmosphere. Even I was forced to accept that thirty miles an hour was quite fast enough in these conditions. A lot of people drive as though vehicle and tire technology hasn't progressed since the model T Ford, yet they forget to turn on their lights and they decline to pull over and stress themselves out way too much in the rain. Rain persisted on and off throughout my 800-mile day but it never again came down as hard and as long as it did in the Upper Keys. Lovely and spectacular it was.
Eventually I found my to an Orlando suburb, an agglomeration of Runs, Courtes and Shoppes, all winding landscaped streets fronted by 3,000 square foot mansions with pools (water! water!), garages and not a bum in sight or a leaf out of place. I live in the Keys and one gets used to different standards I suppose. The motorcycle was presented for my inspection as though parked a year ago and never cleaned since. It was sun faded, the paint actually photographs well, but when he lived in the Arizona desert years ago he left this poor beast out in the sun. A lot.
Candy apple red has become faded pink on the tank.
I took a test ride and it hesitated, I tweaked the enrichment knob and the cable almost fell out of the socket. There was sooty black residue around the end of the exhaust. The oil radiators had long dead bugs caught in the fins, the engine casing had splotches of oils and grease and yuck spread on it.
"I had new fuel injectors installed," he said. "Not by the BMW shop," I said. He agreed and I knew because in changing them they had spilled yellow fuel over the engine casing and they had failed to balance them at all properly. The engine surged and idled uncertainly.
God knows how the motorcycle really handles because the front tire was so badly worn down one side it rode at a permanent lean. To add injury to insult, the bulbous fuel tank squashed my testicles with the seat in the lowest position, the position where my feet reached the ground.
God knows how the motorcycle really handles because the front tire was so badly worn down one side it rode at a permanent lean. To add injury to insult, the bulbous fuel tank squashed my testicles with the seat in the lowest position, the position where my feet reached the ground.To sell this thing he needs to take a lesson from a realtor: presentation!
I want to be riding again, and I want to write about the joys of the ride, but there it is. My goal is to buy something reliable, long lasting and fun. I can't lose sight of that goal, even as I wither and wonder if there is a real alternative to the Vespa. Like a decent lightly used Bonneville? There had better be, because the GTS has to go, as she-who-must-be-obeyed has made it plain. I sigh and and wonder how will I cope with a real crisis in my life, say a terminal diagnosis, bankruptcy or a satellite crashing in the canal?
