There’s a bit from a book that I’ve thought of during every frustrating repair I’ve tackled in nearly 20 years. This funny, dry little vignette that’s probably kicked off a million blog posts by home mechanics illustrates the relationships between meaning, abstraction and the physical world with the extraction of a single stripped side cover screw:
You think about it, and the more you think about it the more you’re inclined to take the whole machine to a high bridge and drop it off. It’s just outrageous that a tiny little slot of a screw can defeat you so totally.
Robert Persig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I dunno how many times the fact that there aren't any bridges nearby has saved the KLR from a watery doom. I guess I could dump it into the bay, but eight blocks is a long way to push the damn thing.
The latest issue has been the back bolts on the KLR’s luggage rack. The KLR's infamous for paint-shaker vibration that likes to back bolts out and scatter them along the highway, but the luggage rack bolts like to mix things up for the sake of variety by shearing off down in the recesses of the rack plate instead. You may not notice the first one going, but once the second does you'll sure as hell notice the first time you brake hard and the rack flips forward on its hinged front and catapults whatever you have secured to it right into your lower back.
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