The 2009 Kawasaki KLR 650 of # 9 suffered a drive chain loss at 65 mph on interstate pavement, eight miles from Anamosa, Iowa. An Indian Motorcycle owner came to the rescue and with the help of J & P Cycles, the KLR was back on the road a day later. In Wyoming, off-pavement, the heavily loaded KLR 650 proved its true dual-sport nature, navigating some serious gravel and dirt sections.
The KLR of # 9 did suffer a small fall down into the front of a stationary SUV when the owner was checking the oil level and the motorcycle rolled forward, down a slight incline. Alone and unable to lift upright the KLR because the front wheel was pointed the wrong direction, the owner used a Hi-Lift car jack to upright it to a near vertical position. No serious damage was suffered in the "bike fall down" slow speed adventure.
Earlier DNFer Richard Livermore (# 7, aka Dick C. Nevermore) had a similar “bike fall down” in Chile in January, 2016 when he lost control of his parked Honda GL 650 in front of his motel room and broke his windscreen and a front turn signal. He had been attempting to park his motorcycle on the sidewalk in front of his room for what he thought was security, versus leaving it parked in the parking slot in front of his room.
Livermore was able to repair the windscreen damage with cable ties and the turn signal with duck tape and a spare turn signal he wisely carried two of, as he had broken the another one in an earlier crash/spill in Colombia.
One entrant in late September, 2022 opined, “Maybe Livermore’s crashing in North America once and South America twice, his motel bike-fall-down, and then self-DNFing in Africa, put the jinks or bad mojo on our 2022 adventures?”
In the spirit and style of Livermore’s Indiana-farm-boy-English, and after researching the mystical world of Toto's Kansas and the etymology of certain phrases and words Livermore often used, # 9, ever the existential motorcyclist, looked skyward for a circling Edgar Allen Poe described raven for some seconds, and then said, “Okey dokey, you betcha, and the crashing and DNFs this year will be cosmically blamed on the psychologically dark world of the nevermore.”
[Saul Bishop posted November, 2022]