Human kindness isn’t dead
Yet another FTR fuellish mistake thankfully rescued by the Christmas spirit
I’ve made no secret of my disdain for pretty much everything petrol-related on the FTR S. From the pessimistic gauge and awkward filler neck to the tank size, range and MPG figure, it’s the most annoying part of an otherwise brilliant bike.
The latest instalment in my ongoing fuel saga came as I headed home from the office on a chilly but bright December day. I’d ridden just shy of 118 miles on the current tank of fossil juice and as I was just 5 miles from the nearest Tesco garage (Clubcard points go a long way in a cost-of-living crisis) so I sailed confidently past a Shell garage safe in the knowledge that I’d previously squeezed 130 miles between fill-ups.
The problem is that because of the daft gooseneck of plastic inside the filler cap, it’s really difficult to work out if you’ve actually brimmed it. I’ve rolled off garage forecourts with a predicted range of anything between 136 and 95 miles before.
And so, just three miles later I got the first dreaded cough from the engine before grinding to an inexorable halt in a very exposed and dangerous part of the A47. ‘Oh deary me,’ I thought – or words to that effect. A little further up the road I could see some houses so I stashed the bike as well as I could and headed off on foot to knock on some doors. The first was answered by a frightened-looking teenage girl who had no fuel and quite rightly became suspicious when I asked if any of her neighbours have petrol lawnmowers. The second was empty and so I headed for the third and final option. As I approached I could see a gentleman plugging Christmas decorations into a junction box. He didn’t have any fuel either, but immediately offered to transport me to the garage.
It’s easy to feel as though the world is an unfriendly, selfish and dangerous place but life with a motorbike so often proves that feeling wrong. Almost every time biking has left me vulnerable thanks to flat tyres, snapped drive chains, damp sparkplugs or simply running out of fuel, someone has offered to help out. And if you take a look at the number of charity rideouts and fundraisers taking place at this time of year, you can see that we bikers are a pretty decent bunch, too.
‘It ground to a halt in an exposed part of the A47’
LIKES
● Reaffirmation of human spirit
DISLIKES
● Unpredictable, inconvenient and inconsistent range