The Ride- Time to Upgrade

Finally, the ’41 Chevy truck is sold! I won’t bog you down with details, but the truck was a marathon of misery, deception, fraud and fiscal pain. It really is a nice truck and I hope the new owner enjoys it for many years. I simply couldn’t. A few hours on a psychiatrist’s couch may help me too.
Mark Cline of Import Auto was the only person of integrity I encountered in the entire ‘give an old truck a new life’ saga. The rest of the fraudsters broke my spirit for classic restorations. Thank you, Mark for all your help. If your car needs repair, whether import or domestic, current classic, custom or race car, he can hook you up.
With that monkey off my back (not Mark, the truck), I feel ready to buy a newer bike.
The old ’97 Gold Wing works great. Yet it has 65,000 miles on it. To be honest, I’ve never tried the cassette tape player to see if it works. However, none of those reasons cause me to run to the bike shop and get a new one. The engine does, however. It’s a 1500 cc. I think an 1800 will perform much better.
When fully loaded, the 1500 struggles to launch, and I must fan the clutch a bit to get moving. A year of that, and I can see needing a new clutch in Columbia, South Carolina.
The Little Woman and I decided to set parameters for the potential Wing:
20k miles or less.
’07 or newer.
Heated seats and grips. Yep, they do.
A color. Any. I don’t care.
$17,500 max. Doesn’t that seem like a ridiculous price for a used bike? But they do have everything but the kitchen sink.
The rest of the wonderful features (cruise control, CB, GPS, ABS brakes, fuel injection etc.) are standard. Or we can do without.
Remember the ‘60’s? Okay, maybe not. But if you did, we Baby Boomers loved cars and bikes. If you wanted to buy a used Corvette for instance, the former owner, an idiot, had wrung it out. Crazy, irresponsible kids. Well, those kids are older and wiser now. So when shopping for a used Gold Wing,
most of the bikes have service records, nary a scratch, and gleam in the sunshine. Buying a used one makes sense to me. I can save up to ten thousand dollars and still get warrantee remaining. Excellent condition is commonplace.
This economy has taught me to buy used.