Lifting the Unliftable

[DGS49]

So I was in the process of leaving Chic-fil-ay after lunch yesterday. I'm making a left out of the driveway and a guy in a pickup runs the nearby stop sign and cuts me off, thus forcing me to make an abrupt stop with the wheel fully turned to the right.

Almost immediately, gravity started pulling my 900-pound Goldwing to the ground. I tried, tried, tried to hold it upright, but alas, no good. There she was, lying on its right side on the pavement. I quickly stood over it and tried to lift it. Couldn't even budge it.

Then I remembered a Youtube video I saw shortly after I bought the bike. It seemed to me that there was a way...you stand next to the bike but facing away from it...grab the handle next to the seat with your right hand, and the end of the handlebar with your left...then you stand as straight up as you can and gradually walk backward (toward the bike).

It worked!

Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to lower the kickstand on the other side before I did this, so it was just a matter of pushing the bike a little bit over straight-upright, and it rocked over onto the kickstand. No harm done.

Everything I've learned over the past five years has been from Youtube.

 

[DGS49]

Parenthetically I must add that Chic-fil-ay is loaded with eye-candy, mainly young moms who take their kids there for the little play area.

 

[pismoe]

Goldwings , I sneered at the early Goldwings , after all , I was riding a 1974 Triumph Trident . Oh well , that was 1974 or 75 and sneering at Jap bikes was required by Brit and Harley riders . Anyway I would love to have a nice , low mileage first year Goldwing 1000 . ------- glad that you were able to get your bike back on its rubber . I bet that yours eats the miles in all kinds of comfort ehh ??

 

[DGS49]

My first reaction to the Goldwing was...WTF?

Honda rocked the MC world with its CB750/4, then the other Japanese competitors followed with similar large 4-strokes...then Kawasaki came out with their 900-4-stroke...knocked everybody's socks off. We were all expecting a larger version of the 750 2-stroke. I was prepared to buy one when it first came out.

But Honda fires back with a water-cooled, four-cylinder "Boxer"? What the fuck were they thinking of? Surely, those cylinders would scrape the ground in hard cornering. But it didn't work out that way. It was heavy but with a low center of gravity, it was relatively easy to maneuver around, and it was passably quick as well. Vetter quickly developed a set of fairings and hard bags for it, Honda figured out where the money was, and the rest is history.

The early Goldwings were the answer to a question that no one was asking, but as you say, finding a clean original would be a pretty cool thing.