The future is far off, but it looms. I bought my PC800 with a plan. The plan was delayed but not defeated. I inch forward. Vague plans become more solid. What is fleeting and ephemeral moves forward, seemingly molecule by molecule, but it moves nonetheless.
I have hope.
I was carrying a box. The box had things that go with hope. I will store them in the PC800’s voluminous bedonkadonk. They are for the plan. I have a map. Many good dreams start with maps. I have an attachment that goes on the battery to allow me to jump start with the battery pack, directly through a charging wire. Thus, I should be able to jump start without pulling off panels to access an inconvenient battery. (I haven’t installed it yet.)
Then I have the pièce de résistance! A freshly printed and bound shop manual! I paid $70 getting that bad boy printed. I even bought a water resistant envelope to carry it. I now have the entirety of Honda derived instructional materials. Back in the 1980’s this manual went to dealers along with Honda’s new, carefully designed yet soon to be market failure, Pacific Coast.
The PC800 is an odd duck and it’s old. It has a Rubik’s Cube of cladding that was meant to be a killer marketing win. It scared bike guys away in droves. From what I can tell it fits together in ingenious ways as only Honda engineers could manage and (with a modicum of care) it pops open for most reasonable service. However, it’s not an easy “look at it and deduce what to remove in what order” situation. I have seen at least one such bike where a ignorant monster used a hacksaw (A HACKSAW!) to access the battery. Good grief, anyone with the slightest common sense would fucking know that the bike must have some way to remove and replace the battery and a hacksaw ain’t it. But people are stupid.
What kind of heathen sees this location and decides the best access method is a fucking hacksaw?
(Ironically, test driving that abused mangled bike sold me on the model as a concept. It ran like a top despite being beaten by apes, cut with saws, stored in a snowdrift, and otherwise subject to indignities that are mechanical war crimes. If a bike could run well after that… it was a good design! I didn’t buy that mess but was more confident when I bought a much prettier one that had been owned by a person who knew to patiently pull panels in proper order to mess with the battery.)
Anyway, people are apes and even many mechanics aren’t overly clever. Dealers in my area (which are few, expensive, and largely incompetent) won’t touch a bike like mine. Would they fuck it up? Who knows? Do they think they might? Yes. Thus maintenance falls to me.
I’m pretty sure I can handle routine maintenance; oil changes and such. Plus I’ve got hope that the well built little spud won’t need much. But there’s a whole different wrinkle. I have plans that involve very remote roads. Also, I ride alone. Shit could go south in a flash. This is the “working without a net” world where you don’t have cell phone service to call the tow truck that doesn’t exist. You have to get out on your own initiative. I have to be prepared. Which is why I printed the entire damn manual.
This is a real world test of “The Professor Theory”. Remember Gilligan’s Island? It’s an old TV show from just as black and white morphed into color TV. It’s so old that “the Professor” was assumed to be intelligent. I laugh just thinking of it. In the modern world I associate “professor” with words like “indoctrinated” and “irrational” and “intolerant”. (Forget what woke university swine say about “tolerance” and “diversity”, there’s never been a more lockstep, intolerant, uniform, population of useless looters on earth than the “professors” of modern time.)
Back to Gilligan’s Island. In the show, the Professor built radios out of coconuts, concocted plans to get the hapless castaways off the island, and generally acted as a voice of reason.
Gilligan, I’m three standard deviations smarter than anyone on the island and possibly eleven deviations smarter than you and your platonic male partner combined. Now get away from my coffee maker.
Also, it’s common knowledge that the only correct answer to the question “Ginger or Mary Anne?” is Mary Anne.
Of the castaways, guess who the Professor hung around most.
Even as a kid, it seemed clear to me that the Professor could, at any time, figure out how to build a craft, and with a bit of pluck, sail his ass home. It’s not that he was a boatwright and a sailor but that he wasn’t a dumbass and given enough time and motivation he’d figure it out. Alas, he was surrounded by idiots. Everyone else on the island, especially the weapons grade nitwit Gilligan, fucked up the Professor’s plans. Like clockwork, at the conclusion of every 25 minute episode, the Professor’s earnest attempt was thwarted as Gilligan covered everything in goo, or set it on fire, or ate it for dinner. The people around him dragged the Professor’s ass back into the crab bucket.
What’s this have to do with a service manual? Everything!
I plan on riding alone to places nobody goes. If something goes wrong there wont be a tow truck for me. And I’m absolutely not a good mechanic. I’ll have my inexperienced and untrained self, a handful of tools, and all the time in the world. And the book of instructions! If shit goes wrong, will I get off the island? Will I manage to read the manual, figure out the situation, fix what needs fixing, and get home? I guess I’ll find out.
While the PC800 idled in Honda-esque perfection, I popped the bedonkadonk to store these treasures.
Oh no! Fucking mice had moved in! I had anti-mouse satchels in there and it did no good. The rodent demons built an insulation nest right on top of it. They ate my goddamn gloves!
Panicked that they damaged more than gloves, I cleaned the mess. Luckily, that was the extent of the damage, no chewed wires or whatnot. I stowed the manual and maps and a tire patch kit and other parts of the dream and breathed a sigh of relief.
More in part 4 where I discuss the literary crack that’s the air under today’s wings.