diamond jim
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Ha ha. About two weeks I'm hanging outside a gas station standing next to my bike. This stranger pulls up not far from me on his completely decked out V-Star 1300. He cuts the bike off, drops the kickstand and with helmet still on he immediately starts messing with the clutch lever adjustment. I walk over to him to strike up a conversation. I first notice that there's not a place on his bike that's not adorned with an LED. Honestly, I've never seen so many LEDs on a bike. And there's chrome everywhere. He's half talking to me cause he's trying to adjust his clutch and he seems to be struggling to do two things at once. I start peppering him with more questions of course. "Where ya from?", "Who do you ride with?", "Does your dog hump your leg too?". Anyhow, he stops fiddling with it, turns the key, starts the bike, pulls in the clutch lever, pops it into first and the engine instantly it dies. He does the whole process again. I can see he's starting to get frustrated. He pulls his helmet off and places it behind him on the lazy-boy inspired passenger seat with custom passenger arm supports. Again he commences to messing with the clutch lever adjustment. "Ahem", I say to him, "You're kickstand is down. I'm pretty sure you've got a safety switch on your bike". He mumbles a little to acknowledge I said something but I could tell he didn't hear me. Key, start button, engine on, clutch in, first gear, engine dies. Again. And again. He gets off of the bike, his countenance conveying his degree of irritation that an audience (me) is watching. It was starting to get painful for me to watch. I could feel a bystander trauma developing. I politely suggest the kickstand again, being careful of my choice of words and tone knowing that people often react unpredictably in stressful situations. Unfortunately, my words drift off again like dust in the wind. He scans the bike for a few moments. He walks around the bike slowly until he goes full circle. His hands go on the hips in a sort of half defeated posture as he now stares defeatedly at his bike. I'm thinking to myself, "yew can dooo eeet!", Rob Schnieder voice and all. A few more moments of silence pass and then I see this little light bulb suddenly pop on in his head, figuratively speaking. "Aha! The kickstand is down!". Aha, I think to myself. "Yep, YOU are right!" I said to him. I saw a slight smile of satisfaction upon his face that he figured out the problem all by himself.
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