Dragon: A Parable

My car would not start this morning. Didn't bother trying to solve it since I was on a schedule, just hopped on the bike and went. This evening I get home and give it another go (since I couldn't do the errands that were the reason I was taking the car in the first place) and it started up with no problems.

I swear, my car and my bike conspire together while I sleep.

(don't try to fix the problem, just enjoy the story)

My bike was hit'n'run while parked yesterday. It happened sometime between 5:10 and a little after 6 (I know because I looked out the window at 5:10 and it was fine). It was found lying on its right side with the kickstand up. The steel under the rear fender had been shoved down (normally it is flush with the fender, and the metal itself was bent rather clearly) and the plastic bit that holds the license plate snapped in two, with most of it broken off but the part held on by bolts remaining. The mirror on that side also was snapped off. Both of these imply a decent amount of force, as in my own losing battles with gravity the mirror simply folds itself neatly and mere gets a few scratches on the edge/back. The raised kickstand (as well as the folded steel under the fender) implies being hit from behind, since that indicates the kickstand was pushed up in the incident. I did manage to ride home, but only after someone stronger and more Leatherman-equipped snapped off the point jutting out the most from the broken plastic that once held the license plate, and my teacher followed me to make sure I'd be OK (then told me she had a lot of better ways for getting from here to there which she'll share with me when he sees me next, which is awesome)

My bike was parked next to a marked spot at my school. Only people who work or go to school in that building can use those spots. There was a dark (I think black) sedan in that spot. There was also a bright yellow custom bike in same area as me (a marked-off wedge next to an unusable parking spot marked "fire lane") but he would have had to purposefully hit me with rather a lot of force from a very short distance (since bikes are so much lighter than cars). I very strongly suspect the black sedan did it. I'm going to go in today with my phone's camera and look for signs of damage on black sedans in the marked spots. I'm also going to see if I can get the law offices and the computer company that also occupy the building to pass around a memo asking for information, as well as have it put up on the bulletin boards at my school. I don't know as it could possibly help, but just doing nothing doesn't feel right. Meantime last night I called the police who gave me a form to fill out - they didn't find a car with damage on it in the area (unsurprisingly, I'm sure the asshat went straight home).

I'm trying to decide if I should wait until Friday with the form and my insurance company to give the asshat time to come forward and settle without insurance getting involved or if I should get the insurance process started immediately. One the one hand, considering how insurance companies drag their feet what's another 2 days, on the other hand could taking so long to report it negatively affect how my insurance company deals with it, and on the gripping hand I want to be able to ride my bike ASAP. Hmm, tricky.

ETA: Called the insurance company, they're sending someone out Friday morning to assess it. We'll see how it goes.

I was a bit concerned because a strange noise had been coming from my motorcycle on my last ride home from the gym, but it had stopped and I couldn't find a source so I stopped worrying about it. After attaching my backpack to my bike I found out what it was: one of the hooks of my bungie net had caught onto the belt guard (Savages are belt-driven, dontchaknow) and the noise was the belt grinding down the (rubber part of) the hook. Belt seems fine (tension's OK and it looks good) and it's being maintenanced next week anyway, plus I'd already bought a replacement bungie net since the old one was really stretched out, so it's all good.

For them what might've been concerned, I got home just fine. Engine braking took the brunt of the work off my front brake and traffic was light enough that no one got horribly confused by my behavior (the pads are done. again. I'm not pleased).

I got up at 9 this morning expecting to take my bike in for its 4000-mile maintenance. I called GBM and found out that they "don't do major services" on Saturdays. Even though I know this won't take much time, maybe an hour or two (I'd've been OK with, "We're too busy right now, how about next Saturday?"). Fskers, how do they expect me to get my bike serviced when it's my only means of transportation at the moment? I can't afford to leave work early for this (and no they couldn't do something useful like pick my bike up at work, do the maintenance, then drop it back off). If it wasn't for the fact that this maintenance is free from GBM I'd take it to Bikeworx without a second thought (hell I'd've taken it there in the first place).