What a start ;)

It was 2AM at the third of May 2013. The normally silent night was disturbed by the noise of a Beamer motorbike riding in the dark. It was me – Wolfi, transporting the last pieces of trash to the trash container. There I got my long desired chance (issue on my to-do list) to test the newly installed HID50 Xenon lights (and they are bright!).

The night went away and dawn was coming. Still plenty of hassling at this idyllic place which we called home. It was 3AM now and finally I was able to finish packing SilberWolf. With three extra roll bags, I was able to stuff all those things on the bike. It looked like we had far too much stuff with. On the other hand, some of the building work needed to be postponed to later when we anyway do changes to the sidecar. Therefore a few extra parts and components found their way into our luggage.

It felt very cold outside and the meter showed -2C. Ice started to form on the roll bags. It was a bit after 4AM. At 6AM we must wake up to catch our ferry which departed 0915. Better sleep fast if this was possible at all with this amount of adrenalin in our systems. The alarm clock on my mobile was ringing at 6AM sharp and we got out of our sleeping place. Half in trance, we packed the remaining items and moved some stuff nicely away (remember, we sell our house and it should be tidy enough). The last bag of trash was put on the bike, it was 0715, we closed the door to our (soon to be ex-) house and we were ready to GO-GO.

Then Skippy asked me to give her her bike keys (those for the side cases and top case) back. Mmmmhh – which bike keys please?? I did not have any bike keys! Taking a deeeeep breath. OK - they were either inside the house in case of which, our real estate agent would need to ship them to us. In worst case, they were in some of the clothes which went to trash last night. Great! None could do and since we still had another set of keys somewhere, we would use those. Let's go now – the ferry was waiting.

Skippy asked me then where I had put the dog leashes. I said, that I did not have them as I thought she had them. A quick look inside the house and ... Oh NOOOOOO – ALL leashes, I mean ALL of them were inside the house. The three which were adjustable in length and the two with a fixed length. Per**** Saa**** V**** Sch****!!!!! I rushed to my shed and found some 8m of polyester rope. That must do until we will find a better solution. Let's go now – the ferry was waiting.

Since we were in a real hurry, I decided not to fix the trash bag (it was a big 240l one) on my bike and ... of course ... it did indeed fell down when I drove up the steep hill. ENOUGHHHH of this nonsense, I wanted to GO-GO and instead, now I needed to go back to get another one in order to collect our items away from the street. And BTW, where was Skippy? I thought she kept a little bit too big distance as we were in a hurry. Anyway I went back home, passed the trash pile and there she was standing: Her bike did not start. AAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!

We tried to push it – no help. We had no car anymore neither a single extra battery to jump-start the bike. Neither do we have a jumper cable anymore (we gave all those things away). I changed the original battery on the SilberWolf to a car battery. This one is well hidden, which would mean that if I want to get there, I needed to take two rolls down, the two huge Zarges boxes and all the other stuff which was now hanging there in between. No way. Thinking hard what to do as one can expect that at 7AM in the morning without breakfast and only 2 hours sleep.

I did not have any kind of thicker cable anymore in the shed since I threw away all cables a few hours ago (I did a thorough cleaning!). Frustration came up. Inhale ... exhale! The clock was ticking and the time to catch our ferry was getting less and less. Then I though I could use the connection cable which was meant for my winch. Lucky me it was in one of the rolls, therefore easy to get and not deeply buried in the sidecar. So I took the part which you connect to the battery and connected the cable to the battery. Good attempt. I then realized that since I have three cables connected to minus, the screw is too short to reach the bolt at the battery. Exactly for this purpose I installed the small emergency tool box. It has easier access instead of digging tools from my huge tool box within the sidecar. So I took a small allen key to lift the nut a little and the bolt could reach again.

My emergency tool box for quick fixes (operation manual container for tractor)

Then I took out my Leatherman, connected the cable ends. I cut the winch connection cable and un-isolated both ends. Where does one get fastest access to +12V high-power connection point? Right – at the starter motor. One tiny screw and the starter motor cover was removed and BINGO.

The mutilated cable

When holding one cable end on the plus and the other on chassis, I said to Skippy: try to start now and brummmm, the Suzi went on like nothing was ever wrong in this world (I think this SAITO battery does not like cold and freezing weather, it seems to loose its capacity to such an extend that it becomes useless). Now quickly the cover back, put tools away, got another trashbag, collected the trash from our street, brought it away and hit the road. The ferry was waiting.

After an “accelerated” ride to Helsinki and with a big relief we entered the harbor area early enough to check-in in time. 

World we are coming.

- Wolfi