Do You Have Duct Tape on Your Motorcycle?

The guy was looking at the 1/4-20 bolt screwed into the face shield of my Walmart helmet. I had installed the bolt a little below eye level because the protruding thread makes it easier to maneuver the shield. The original plastic tab had broken off years ago during an end-over in Nevada’s talcum-powder desert.

I climbed down from the Widowmaker’s saddle and slid my credit card into the gas pump’s money hole. He stood looking at the bike. “You might want to check your tire pressure, buddy.” I was entering my zip code on the keypad and didn’t quite understand, “What’s that?” He was a young guy, no more than 40 to 45 years old. “I think your tire is low on air.” I selected “no” to a car wash, “no” to grocery-store cents-off coupons, and “no” to a 55-gallon fountain drink.

I turned to face my accuser. He pointed to the KLR250's 21-inch front tire. "You've got severe cupping, buddy. I ride a Harley and my tire did that from under-inflation." The two of us bent down and looked at the tire. The knobs were worn in an alternating pattern: one high, the next knob nearly gone followed by another high one. Up and down, the pattern repeated itself around the tire's circumference. "That could cause a crash. You don't want to go down on the pavement, buddy."

The sharp plastic chin bar release lightly grazed my forehead as I removed my helmet. “I pumped it up this morning. It’s okay,” I told him, sweeping my hand across my forehead and checking it for blood. While I was doing this the guy spotted the paper shop towel I had zip-tied around the clutch-side handgrip. It looked bad. I should have used a cleaner towel.

I felt obliged to explain. "These damn grips have gone septic on me. It's like they're dissolving. The paper keeps black, gooey stuff off of my hands." He looked over the KLR's broken mirror mount, ran his eyes across the scratched fenders and right-leaning headlight. He saw the duct tape holding the blinkers on and then, shaking his head in disbelief, he saw the bald rear tire.

I must have appeared hopeless to him: unshaven, slightly addled with a motorcycle in quiet distress. Maybe I was riding the bug-catcher from a 28-foot motorhome. Or maybe I was a guy down for turkey season and the Kawasaki KLR was my swamp stomper. Whatever he thought, you could've lashed 11 stray cats to the Widowmaker's luggage rack and not lowered his opinion of me. "Well," he said doubtfully, "be careful out there, buddy."

He drove off in his metallic-gold Ford F-150. I wanted to chase after him and tell him that it didn’t happen overnight and that the KLR was a beautiful motorcycle a few years ago. Slovenliness crept up on me so slowly I felt nothing.

Infrastructure breakdown is a major problem for us KLR owners because, like zombies, our motorcycles just keep moving forward. I saw on the internet-of-science where 83 percent of the parts on a KLR can be damaged before you’ll notice any decrease in performance. Their hardiness makes it hard to tell a bad KLR from a good KLR.

Fixing them doesn’t really seem to help anything. First a mirror breaks off or maybe a tree rearranges the headlight. You mean to repair it someday. Then the kill switch dies and plastic oxide rust, always creeping across a KLR’s bodywork, erodes your will. A series of insignificant insults spread over time until you and your motorcycle are figures to be pitied.

I holstered the fuel nozzle, smoothed the wrinkles on the Widowmaker’s handgrips, and pulled the duct tape tighter on the blinkers. It’s funny how so many defects escaped my attention. After a while you simply ride right around them. Like I just did to that metallic-gold F-150 pickup truck.