I've never been a particularly superstitious guy, but this is something that might make one a believer in guardian angels. First, a little background....

Three and a half years ago, my wife of 37 years passed away after a three year battle with cancer. She never wanted me to have a bike. This stemmed from her and I riding with a group of friends up in the foothill one night on my Kawasaki triple. Coming around a curve and there's one of the group who had crashed on the curve and was spread out like a yard sale. Well, we crashed too trying to avoid the mess, and she smacked her elbow on the pavement which opened up a sizable gash. All this a week before the wedding. After that she refused to ride with me and pressured me to get rid of the bike, which I finally did. So no bike for 37 years. Not a super big deal, because I always had drag race cars.

Fast forward to 2013. After she passed, to keep from going off the deep end from the loss, I bought another bike, then another and another, till now and ending up with my Deluxe and my Triumph Bonneville.

One of my buddies and I were planning a weekend road trip up from Fresno/Clovis through the gold country, then west through wine country and returning via the PCH. Epic! This was/is to take place the first weekend in November.

Now, the Deluxe has been rock solid reliable.....up until we made this plan. First, the rear brake light switch burns out the very next day after a 200 mile ride, leaking fluid and disabling the rear brake. Easy fix.

Then, the battery gives up right after returning from a weekend in Cayucos on the central coast. This one baffled me for a bit, because it really didn't act like a bad battery. Took me a week to resolve it.

After that was fixed, the brakelight switch I had replaced a couple weeks earlier grounds out killing the brakelights. Fixed that easy enough.

Then yesterday at the end of a 100 mile loop up in the central Sierras, the bike had been running great and I was all smiles. I'm ten miles from home and the Deluxe starts sputtering and cutting out. Fortunately, I'm just a few hundred yards from a friend's place who has his business shop building out there. I make it there without having to push the bike. He lets me leave it there as I call my lady friend to get a ride home.

Sooo..... three strikes all in the space of a couple weeks right after road trip plans were made. And each time with an increasing level of difficulty to resolve.

I'm really starting to think that my wife and guardian angel is trying to keep me from taking that road trip.

Do you believe in stuff like this?

 

It's hard to say yes without thinking maybe you sound a little bit nutty, but yeah, I suppose I do.

When I was young, my mom's only brother, and my only uncle was my absolute hero. He had cool cars, a beautiful wife, and eventually some pretty awesome kids. And he doted on his niece and nephew like a champ. When I was 4 or 5 (around 1970) he got me a battery operated, sit in it and drive, Porsche. Hell, if I hadn't had one I'd swear they didn't make them that far back. He also bought a Harley in the mid 70s, Electra Glide, but I can't swear what year it was.

I was 11 or 12 and home alone (they didn't put parents in jail for **** like that back then) the night my grandmother called to tell us he'd been killed riding that bike. Failed to negotiate a curve and alcohol "may" have been involved.

I have been in too many close calls since then to have made it out of all of them on my own. From a car wreck that should have killed me, to falling in a flooded river, to just doing absolutely stupid **** and walking away from it. Maybe he has a hand in it, maybe it's someone else, or maybe it's just chance, I don't know. I do know everyone likes to think they have someone on their side, and I do.

 

That's what I'm talkin' about RedOil. Normally, I'm a common sense, assume nothing kind of guy who needs empirical evidence to fully believe anything.

 

everything happens for a reason. if the trip wasn't meant to be, it won't happen no matter how hard you try.

 

The "Rule of Three". You should be done now.
As a precaution, you might go slower for a while, just to make sure your guardian angel can keep up.
Mine's been clocked at 117 mph, but then again, I don't test it every day.

 

doesnt matter my first post, read my last

 

I say "Go with your gut feelings" when it comes to things like that. A couple months ago we were leaving for a long planned vacation. My wife was in the car with the younger grandkids and the rest of us on bikes. I had a bad sinking feeling just as we were leaving and I stopped just up the road and told my wife I was taking my bike back home and I would go in the car with them, something I almost never do. After getting in the car and leaving everything seemed right again and I told my wife I may have avoided trouble on my bike.

A couple days into the trip in rural Kentucky as I'm coming down a hill I pressed the brakes on the car and felt a little thud and they slowly went to the floor. I pulled out the release handle on the emergency brake,held it and used the E-brake pedal to bring us to a stop. Freaked my wife out big time, she said she didn't know you could hold the handle and do that. She said it would have been a big crash if she was driving.

Turns out a rock or other road debris had hit the metal line on the frame rail and had damaged the brake line and it just blew.


I've had other experiences over the years that have taught me to listen when my gut or the universe is trying to talk.

 

After everything is fixed, burn some sage, walk around in a clockwise direction and say a little prayer to the moto-god and you'll be golden.

 

Funny stuff Sarah! I do have a thing for native american culture.

And thanks guys. It's true, we all interpret stuff like this differently. Some choose to ignore the signs. Maybe nothing bad would have happened.

The funny thing is, when the bike sputtered out and even later time after thinking about it for a while, I wasn't even upset about it. All I could think of was "Strike three. You're out! No road trip." Almost a sense of relief. Hard to explain.

Well, I had a top end rebuild I was gonna do over the winter. I reckon I'll start on it earlier than planned.

 

I guess if I believed in it, I'd play the lottery.