word to the wise, check your bolts

so, i'm headed out to meet the local, not-so-hell's angels (my dallas sabre chapter) last night and 70 feet out of the drive of my apartment complex, i hit an unseen hole in the concrete and the bike jumps. nothing bad, nothing to lose control over, but it startles me. so i pull up to a stop light about a half mile away from that and the cover to the battery on the bike jumps off and slides a coupla feet. again, i'm startled, but no biggie, i just pull forward, pick it up and attempt to put it back on. as i'm doing so, i discovered the cause of the supposed 'hole in the road' and realize that it wasn't a hole, but the bolt that holds the top half of one of my back shocks has worked lose and the shock has separated itself from the male part that it attaches to. In other words, i'm riding with one shock. fuckin shit. so i pull over into a parking lot, call my rommate and send him on a scavenger hunt for the missing bolt that's slipped into oblivion. he shows up with a set of bolts, none of which are for the bike and makes the observation that the bolt probably left the bike a while back and the only thing that was holding the shock on was a wing and a prayer. after some huffing to get the shock back on, with no success, we eventually have to lay the bike down on it's side to get it back into place. this upsets me more, because not only does it end up scuffing some of the chrome on the pipes, but the bike weighs in at 650 lbs and is a struggle for even 2 full grown men like ourselves. so now i've got newly scuffed parts and a missing bolt AND, i missed the outing. RAT TURDS!

And i wanna be pissed, but i'm not really. nothing i can do about this and i know this kind of stuff happens until i post it on our board as to why i missed the outing and it turns out that this happens regularly with hondas. Over half a dozen others posted that the exact same thing happened to them after their 600 mile checkup (which i had done, just last sunday). Guess the checkup doesn't include checking bolts.

So, i'm headed off to the dealer during lunch to get a replacement bolt and get them to replace the cover as well. I've been told that it's actually cheaper to get the chromed cover replacements for both, cheaper than it is to replace with one painted. If this is true, i'm happy again.