Strange how we get emotionally attached to machinery. I guess the physical item is a portal to the memories and it is tough to detach from that. That's how some folks end up taking it to extremes and living in strange warrens of a lifetime's accumulation of ephemera.
In the case of my '97 Bullet the time came to separate the physical from the spiritual. The bike has taken me around India and back home to the UK via Pakistan and Iran, down to the Sahara in Morocco, more visits to France than I can remember and is a veteran of several long distance trials. The Bullet was a faithful friend for some 17 years and rarely let me down despite the punishment oft metered out. In return maintenance was regular, time consuming and thorough. Time, that's the crux of it, I'm lucky enough to have a garage full of motorcycles all demanding attention and there was one that absorbed near all of it.
You often see adverts for machinery offered for sale tinged with sentimentality and slight regret, 'for sale to a good home' or 'suit enthusiast', hoping the cherished item will be equally cherished by the new owner. I'm a realist and have sold enough bikes to know that the next owner will do exactly what they want with their new property, it's their machine and they have the right to take it straight to the scrapyard and crush it if they choose to. I don't bother to let emotions creep in to the copy of a for sale ad, but of course inside I am as most others and am hoping my baby will find a loving home and not end up in the possession of some oafen mechanical barbarian.
With the Bullet I struck lucky with Matt who came down from North Wales to pick it up. A good bloke and a true enthusiast who's planning to keep using the bike as it has been used. Hope you enjoy it as much as I have mate.
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| 1998 and the Bullet is on the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan. |
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| As sold posing in front of Hambledon Hill Iron Age hill fort. |
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