icecadavers
Training Wheels
My Connie is my first and only bike, but in addition she is also the bike I learned to ride on. I bought the bike in January this year, and the previous owner, a friend of mine, was showing me the ropes. I believe it was Wednesday, the 13th, and until this point I had not ridden a motorcycle. Let me digress for a moment to explain something about this bike. She's sort of what you'd call a fixer-upper - not in terrible condition, but certainly neither complete nor well-kept. I'll save the laundry list of things to fix for another time, because the relevant detail here is the left front peg. My friend had dropped the bike a while back and cracked the peg; it stayed on nonetheless so he decided to leave it until he could find a new one on ebay, but then he lost the peg when it finally fell away while doing 80 down the tollway. So, he had a makeshift peg essentially clamped to part of the bracket. It wasn't pretty or 100% solid, but it held well enough for most of a year. Back to my first ride. I'd spent enough time on bicycles and with manual transmissions to know some of what to expect, but as I mounted the bike I had yet to truly understand how top-heavy a Connie is. Clutch in, I shifted into first gear, then cautiously began easing off the clutch, creeping the throttle back, feeling for that friction zone and praying I didn't find it all at once. Success! I felt it catch just enough, steeled my nerves and let myself roll forward. I picked up just enough speed to stay upright and scooted across the parking lot. It was a narrow space; I was nearing the end and didn't want to try turning with such little breathing room so I had to stop. Braking with a motorcycle, by the way, is quite different from braking on a ten-speed that you can lift with one hand! I slowed too quickly, and I hadn't prepared to be suddenly leaning further and further left. I stuck my foot out but knew already it was too late to catch myself; I managed to jump away a split second before all 600+ pounds of Concours crashed down onto where my leg had just been. Having gotten the bike into gear (and avoided seriously inconvenient bodily injury) I considered the brief jaunt a win nonetheless. Yet as I got the bike back up, the clamp-peg did not follow suit... Further inspection revealed that the bracket itself had broken, and the clamp-peg, while still whole itself, had nothing to attach to. In the end I had no choice but to suck it up and pay the $150 to order a new peg and bracket from the stealership, and thus my second ride ever took place a whole two weeks after my first. Since then I have dropped my bike five more times. Drop #3 busted the right-side peg, and #4 took my brand new left-side peg out of commission. Those two incidents removed any remaining desire to spend that kind of money on something as fragile as footpegs ever again, and are solely responsible for the invention of what I call Foolpegs: 
Made of steel angle post (I think that's what it's called,) duct tape and coat hanger wire and mounted through the bottom bolt behind the bracket, they hold my weight without any trouble, and after drops #5 and #6 they bent upward - I merely needed to straddle the bike and stomp down firmly but none to forcefully a couple times to return them to their proper positions. I'm rather proud; they aren't too pretty but I've seen worse, and they will surely last at least long enough for me to fix everything else and put on some rollover bars as added insurance. Kellin Mavis COG #9068 Houston, TX '95 Concours "Nausicaa"
Made of steel angle post (I think that's what it's called,) duct tape and coat hanger wire and mounted through the bottom bolt behind the bracket, they hold my weight without any trouble, and after drops #5 and #6 they bent upward - I merely needed to straddle the bike and stomp down firmly but none to forcefully a couple times to return them to their proper positions. I'm rather proud; they aren't too pretty but I've seen worse, and they will surely last at least long enough for me to fix everything else and put on some rollover bars as added insurance. Kellin Mavis COG #9068 Houston, TX '95 Concours "Nausicaa"
