nastybun

I thought I might wax lyrical about the beastie a little. It’s come time to part ways with it, see. It’s been a good little steed, got me going admirably on two wheels and provided mirth and merriment in the process. One chap I was talking to suggested that given it’s so cheap to keep and will likely never die, maybe I should keep it as a spare vehicle. I dismissed this immediately, but then when I took it out for a ride a couple of weeks ago the thought came up again. It’s actually more useful than the new bike in some ways, and certainly is cheaper to run. Its fuel efficiency is at least double for one thing, and its load carrying capacity is admirable for a little bike. Its brought home a printer, a vacuum cleaner, a monitor, an amp and a few dozen bottles of wine in its time. It could be my own personal Toulouse le Truck…

Ok, some explaination required there. Toulouse is a ute who is part of the extended household of my yoof. It’s a 1982 4 cylinder diesel Ford Ranger that’s lived a hard life. I learned to drive in it, as did the rest of the young’uns and everyone else we know has borrowed it for picking up furniture, taking crap to the tip (en-us: dump) and anything else you can think of. It was my first car for a month while my Rover SD1 (the V8 one with EFI!) was being made roadworthy, and I borrowed it again when I was working on a tv show. In short, it’s the most useful vehicle anyone’s ever had, and once you’re used to having one available there’s really no turning back. Once his roadworthy life has ended, I believe he should be retired to a plinth somewhere.

So anyway, there’s several reasons why the beastie could aim for such heights of automotive greatness. Firstly there’s the aforementioned handy/dandy load carrying capacity. Then there’s the impecable reliability that can be attained with such a utilitarian vehicle. The beastie would want little more than its battery kept charged and a run every now and then to be kept happy. The downside to this whole thing is that I don’t really have somewhere to keep it. At the moment it’s staying in a mate’s garage until I move it on, which is ok in the short term but I don’t really want to turn that into anything long term. Also without it being at hand it means that doing any maintenance or going for a ride required forethought and planning, which are two things I’m not historically much good at. So alas and alak, I must put it up for sale. Anyone want to buy a much loved postie? New clutch and rebuilt carb, runs excellent, some money ono.

I worked out today that the new bike gets about 4.5l/100kms, or 55mpg (imp). Which is actually not all that great if you think about it, but it’s really not designed for fuel efficiency. For one thing the design dates back to 1989, and even then it was but an evolution of an earlier bike. Still, it’s better than most cars. Otherwise things are going well with it, I know where the fuel tap is now so I can switch it to reserve when it starts coughing… as it did this morning. Not that that’s an issue, there’s still heaps of fuel in there when that happens.