FROM THE FRONT

Ihave a new plan. I almost always have a plan – plans keep a chap sane – but today I have a new one. My new plan is to sell a bike. I am almost always planning to either buy or sell a bike. Maybe more than one. Last month I was scratching my head over the prices asked – and apparently obtained – for some truly worn-out old lunkers. I was filled with despair at my inability to buy a wreck to rebuild to the spec I wanted. Had I been the type who gets gloomy … gloomy I would have got.

Shortly after revealing to a startled world (well, to you, gentle reader) that everyone had gone completely deranged and were evidently paying silly money for worn-out, incomplete and generally disreputable wreckage that could only charitably be described as a motorcycle, I enjoyed a complete change of heart. When I was a younger chap, such sudden inversions of opinion were often the result of far too much cider. But not now. No. Today I can amaze myself all on my own. It saves money if nothing else.

My reasoning was simple. It always is. Why not convert a couple of the more stationary, rusty-relic classic bikes in The Shed into money? An amount of money sufficient to or greater than that required to avail myself of the project motorcycle I covet? It makes perfect sense.

I hate selling bikes. Which is a perfect balance thing, because I love looking for them and finding them. What I hate the most about selling bikes is prepping the things so that they’re in some mysterious way ‘ready’ for their new owners. This involves getting them to run, at least approximately, getting them legal in an MoT sense, and making them look less neglected. This can be such a lengthy and tedious process that it can take months. I don’t like doing it. I have no talent for anything apart from the ‘making it work’ side of things. And in any case, by the time I’ve got the thing in a state where some other owner can delight in the undoubted pride which comes with ownership, I have a ride to the MoT station, decide I like the thing and don’t sell it. Then I don’t ride it again for the entire rest of the year and call myself names under my breath so I don’t hear them.

However. The new reality suggests that I can now drag some rusty, dusty wreck from the farthest corners of the damp shed and advertise it as a ‘barn find’. It’s not entirely accurate, given that The Shed is not – quite – a barn, but it is an agricultural building, which is close. And ‘find’? I always knew roughly where the bike was, but… I doubt the advertising standards people would come after me.

If my understanding of the brave new reality is correct, happy would-be purchasers will beat a furrow to my door, where they will gaze adoringly at whichever pile of scruffy junk I’ve decided deserves a new home, will flex their wallets appropriately, and I’ll be able to pay more than a sane chap should for an even more disastrous project to replace it in The Shed.

Great scheme, no? Cannot fail. I’ll let you know how I get on…

Ride safely