“You guys GOTTA come and see me…. free board and I’ll show you the island if you fix that blasted Strom, too!!”
We’d met Jimbo a couple of years before on the Fire’n Ice NZ ride in 2005, the invite was to see him on the Big Island of Hawaii, catch up, have a holiday, ride some bikes….and fix that Strom which had mysteriously quit running, the local dealer being totally baffled.
I sent some parts across, none of them helped….
Time went by.
We rode the European Alps….twice…. he moved to the mainland, finding a place in southern Oregon, only 30mins drive from the North-Californian border.
Time went by.
“You guys GOTTA come and see me…. free board and I’ll show you Oregon and NorCal…..and you have to have a crack at fixing that blasted Strom, too!!”
Another year went by….”I’ve got a DR650 for Goodie….and if you don’t show up soon we’ll all be 6ft under, dammit”….
That sorta clinched it.
Time to hop across to the land of the Free and the Brave, God Bless and the rest of the baloney…..just to find out, that they really take those things seriously, gulp!!:wow:
Flags in front of every 3 building… the star-spangled banner everywhere, painted on garage roofs and side-walls…even the over-patriotic Frogs could well learn a lesson here.
Next to that the impressively-sized “prayer-sheds” of the Baptists, Mormons, 7th Day and a myriad of lesser known Hallelujah-mobs….. and we’re talking the backblocks here, not exactly population centers
(another guuulp).:wow::wow:
At the same time….you couldn’t meet a nicer mob !!
Stay away from politics and religion (which often takes some effort) and things are looking bright indeed, oh yeah!!
Awesome folks, always happy to help….and extremely courteous. But I’m rushing ahead a little…
We still needed one more bike “if you get that Strom going, it’s yours to ride”. Hmmmm, I couldn’t really see myself fixing a bike that’s sat at various dealers for 51 months !! and hadn’t run at all for over 4 years!! , got shipped from Hawaii to the mainland in between, didn’t have a record of what had or hadn’t been done by those dealers or anybody else along the way….for all I knew it might’ve had the pistons rusted up the bores.:thun
Plan B was to rent a 2. bike to complement the DR….which seemed to be impossible anywhere near Chateaux Jimboeaux as all the local bike shops had either fallen victim to the post-world-financial-crisis recession/depression (which is biting horribly hard over there) or are close to it :bang::bang:, all having given up the hiring business. Bummer!
Pricing was another thing, a 14-16 day hire coming to an easy $2grand, incl. insurance and all.
Jimbo’s “and when you come next time, we’ll do Alaska” promised a 2. trip in the foreseeable future
….and one where a roadbike wouldn’t really cut it.
The long and short of it then?
Let’s buy a bike for this trip and the next, preferably a D/S with extras and somewhat easy on the wallet…..and something that would pay for itself over the 2 trips, costing the same as the 2 lots of hire, any resale (or 3. trip??) would be a bonus.
KLR’s are like sand on the beach over there….not to mention the extremely favourable exchange rate…..and the depressed market.
6 weeks of intense Craigslist.org search followed until Jimbo finally came up with this one:
With only 4 days to go to our arrival, he believed my lies about fixing the Strom
and ran a 700km pick-up trip to Portland and back to go and grab this gem….and a true gem it turned out to be!
Barely run in, a spare set of hoops and a whole box of goodies and OEM parts, the bike itself semi-farkled (by Jaime’s/ Mr. Farkles standards that is). And all for just a tad under $4k…Aussie Dollars at that.
Freshly serviced, there wasn’t much to do, just a cursory check and some de-farkling (those highway bars....cmooon…we’re talking D/S bike here, not a friggin chrome-bucket).
OEM tankbag, soft-panniers, medium sized topbox, 12V sockets, high screen and a host of smaller bits….and upon checking, all internal pockets of the luggage had extras in them as well, from small LED torch to scribble-block, mini-Leatherman, pens, micro first-aid-kit to tyre-gauge and more.
What an awesome buy!!
Well spotted, Jimbo!! And a huge thanks to the previous owner!!
Plan C had worked brilliantly….now it was my turn.
Picture 3 shoe-boxes full of Strom parts humming it for 14hrs across the Pacific to LAX
….then a few more hours to Southern Oregon via 50-seater Turboprop. We climbed out of the silver-grey cigar totally rooted…into Jimbo’s wide-open arms.
Did he know I conned him with that Strom-fix promise?oo:
We’d met Jimbo a couple of years before on the Fire’n Ice NZ ride in 2005, the invite was to see him on the Big Island of Hawaii, catch up, have a holiday, ride some bikes….and fix that Strom which had mysteriously quit running, the local dealer being totally baffled.
I sent some parts across, none of them helped….
Time went by.
We rode the European Alps….twice…. he moved to the mainland, finding a place in southern Oregon, only 30mins drive from the North-Californian border.
Time went by.
“You guys GOTTA come and see me…. free board and I’ll show you Oregon and NorCal…..and you have to have a crack at fixing that blasted Strom, too!!”
Another year went by….”I’ve got a DR650 for Goodie….and if you don’t show up soon we’ll all be 6ft under, dammit”….
That sorta clinched it.
Time to hop across to the land of the Free and the Brave, God Bless and the rest of the baloney…..just to find out, that they really take those things seriously, gulp!!
:wow:Flags in front of every 3 building… the star-spangled banner everywhere, painted on garage roofs and side-walls…even the over-patriotic Frogs could well learn a lesson here.
Next to that the impressively-sized “prayer-sheds” of the Baptists, Mormons, 7th Day and a myriad of lesser known Hallelujah-mobs….. and we’re talking the backblocks here, not exactly population centers
(another guuulp).:wow::wow:
At the same time….you couldn’t meet a nicer mob !!
Stay away from politics and religion (which often takes some effort) and things are looking bright indeed, oh yeah!!
Awesome folks, always happy to help….and extremely courteous. But I’m rushing ahead a little…
We still needed one more bike “if you get that Strom going, it’s yours to ride”. Hmmmm, I couldn’t really see myself fixing a bike that’s sat at various dealers for 51 months !! and hadn’t run at all for over 4 years!! , got shipped from Hawaii to the mainland in between, didn’t have a record of what had or hadn’t been done by those dealers or anybody else along the way….for all I knew it might’ve had the pistons rusted up the bores.:thun
Plan B was to rent a 2. bike to complement the DR….which seemed to be impossible anywhere near Chateaux Jimboeaux as all the local bike shops had either fallen victim to the post-world-financial-crisis recession/depression (which is biting horribly hard over there) or are close to it :bang::bang:, all having given up the hiring business. Bummer!
Pricing was another thing, a 14-16 day hire coming to an easy $2grand, incl. insurance and all.
Jimbo’s “and when you come next time, we’ll do Alaska” promised a 2. trip in the foreseeable future
….and one where a roadbike wouldn’t really cut it.The long and short of it then?
Let’s buy a bike for this trip and the next, preferably a D/S with extras and somewhat easy on the wallet…..and something that would pay for itself over the 2 trips, costing the same as the 2 lots of hire, any resale (or 3. trip??) would be a bonus.
KLR’s are like sand on the beach over there….not to mention the extremely favourable exchange rate…..and the depressed market.
6 weeks of intense Craigslist.org search followed until Jimbo finally came up with this one:
With only 4 days to go to our arrival, he believed my lies about fixing the Strom
and ran a 700km pick-up trip to Portland and back to go and grab this gem….and a true gem it turned out to be!
Barely run in, a spare set of hoops and a whole box of goodies and OEM parts, the bike itself semi-farkled (by Jaime’s/ Mr. Farkles standards that is). And all for just a tad under $4k…Aussie Dollars at that.
Freshly serviced, there wasn’t much to do, just a cursory check and some de-farkling (those highway bars....cmooon…we’re talking D/S bike here, not a friggin chrome-bucket).
OEM tankbag, soft-panniers, medium sized topbox, 12V sockets, high screen and a host of smaller bits….and upon checking, all internal pockets of the luggage had extras in them as well, from small LED torch to scribble-block, mini-Leatherman, pens, micro first-aid-kit to tyre-gauge and more.
What an awesome buy!!
Well spotted, Jimbo!! And a huge thanks to the previous owner!!Plan C had worked brilliantly….now it was my turn.
Picture 3 shoe-boxes full of Strom parts humming it for 14hrs across the Pacific to LAX
….then a few more hours to Southern Oregon via 50-seater Turboprop. We climbed out of the silver-grey cigar totally rooted…into Jimbo’s wide-open arms.
Did he know I conned him with that Strom-fix promise?
oo:
