We spent way too much time in Niagara. Crossing the border kind of took forever. We took a time-sink detour to drive through a nice town people told me about- Niagara-On-The-Lake. By the time we rolled in to Toronto, it was about 9 or 10pm. So we pack into Greg’s car and…. it doesn’t start. Doesn’t even attempt it. Shit!

Long story short- the evening continued with no issues, the next day Greg learned how to pop the clutch, and we all became real men. Popped it, grabbed some dinner, then popped it again in the parking lot of the restaurant to get back home. Then we popped it one last time on our way out so Greg could bring it to the mechanic. It was cool.

Cut to a few days ago. We’re staying with Scott’s Aunt Wendy outside of Chicago. We’ve just come back from dropping Scott’s bike off at the shop and as we both get off of my bike I leave the keys in the ignition. Unfortunately I didn’t find this out until later. Totally drained the battery as well as my pride.

We take my bike apart to get ready to jump the battery. Then it hit us- we’ve been having such luck with popping the clutch in cars, why not give it a try on my motorcycle? All we need is to get the bike started and then the engine will do the charging for us! So I put my machine back together again and we roll it to the back of Wendy’s parking lot. I turn the key, put the bike into first gear and Scott start’s pushing. This is the guilty part of bump starting, as Scott heaves and strains I sit comfortably in my seat. Finally we reach our destined location, I release the clutch and this happens:

Awesome! Unfortunately the battery was not strong enough to even fire the spark plugs reliably, so we had to give up, and the next day looked like this: