Ode to my 09 Wee

Welllll...

Back in 2016 I found this bike here. Flew to Atlanta, met the really lovely family of the trooper I bought it from, and spent a few days riding back to Wisconsin. Great ride, bike's fantastic.

About to leave Atlanta

We have some great rides, that bike and I. It's Wisconsin, so the season is short. So I maybe only put 3k on it (not my only bike of course). I did pretty much nothing to it other than oil changes and chain lube. I took it fishing, I took it sport riding, I took it touring. I took it to the UP. To Buddy Holly's crash site. To follow along in the middle of the Cannonball when they rode across Iowa a few years ago (highly recommend!)

Last summer my best friend flew up to WI from Dallas. I borrowed an r9t from a friend, and the three of us started off for LaCrosse , no route planned. It was lovely May weather.

That ride ended just after lunch. I stopped to look at a cool building. My friend from IL stopped behind me. This is common for us.

My friend from Dallas um, didn't quite stop. He bounced off my friend's side box (big GS), looped around to the left, came back around right in front of me, into a dirt driveway.

He would have been mostly good. But there was a chain across that driveway. Forward momentum ceased.

That was a long day. He's OK now, but had to have two vertebrae fused in his neck. Doc said this was likely to have been the case eventually, the crash just made it happen faster.

Anyway. I was in the middle of finishing remodeling a 100 year old house at the time. We used the rest of that week to move my kitchen remodel forward while my buddy sat on the back porch and smoked cigars and took his pain meds. Thankfully I was not the person who had to tell his wife what happened.

So I had like 9 months of work to do in 3 months. So the v-strom sat in the garage. Busted cowling, broken radiator. But the fix looked simple.

And it sat and sat. Bought a new house. Finished the old house and finally got it sold. By then it was October. The nearest Suzuki dealer is an hour away and my only trailer is stacked up with crap from my big old garage that absolutely do not have anywhere to put.

So it sits until spring.

Normally I am a 'fix it myself, all DIY all the time' kinda person. But this time, since my friend was the rider I had filed a claim with State Farm.

So State Farm didn't care that it took a year to get the thing in for an estimate. Got it out there maybe 3 weeks ago.

Today they finish the estimate. $3200.

How it's that expensive I do not understand, but I do not have the dealer estimate, and I'm not sure I want to know. They totaled it. I investigated the buyback. it's pretty good.

But.. I have three other bikes that need fixing and one more that needs to be gone. I really have zero space to store the v-strom.

So, I am choosing to say goodbye.

So long old v-strom. You were good to me, and I will remember you fondly in the graveyard of my motorcycle heart, sitting proudly beside the memory of my '86 GSXR-750 that omg I should have kept why did I sell that its worth a lot now.