O Battery Where Art Thou?

My battery woes continued on Thursday afternoon. Well maybe it was my noobishness.

The morning went well enough as did the past week. My KLR started everytime with very little effort. In cold mornings the battery output was noticably less but it still turned over. This was all going well until Thursday afternoon when I was walking out from the office on post and was about to put my helmet on when I noticed the faint glow of my rear parking light through the back lens. Son of a B#$%^

It’s going to be dead I thought. My dread was confirmed when I tried to turn it over and got a sickly buzzing sound.

I called my wife as I decided I will very likely need a jump. As she got ready I decided to try a running pop the clutch in second gear while holding the starter cheese way of getting going. I tried a couple of time with a running start in the tight parking lot getting a couple familiar lug lugs but nothing that resembled a starting engine. I pushed it by an open car parking spot and waited.

My wife arrived with the tool set and homemade pair of cigarette lighter to battery terminal jumper cables but it was taking to long with a poor connection. I pulled off the plastic and the seat allowing me to connect the battery with the big car jumper cables from KLR battery to Jeep Liberty battery. With this fine connection the bike started after a couple cranks of the engine.

I let it idle for a while as my frustration with the circumstances had reached its boiling point and I felt the need to express this visually as I brute forced my plastics and seat back on while I mumbled and scowled. "Clearly I was not thinking and made an ass of myself" Sorry honey.

I rode home repeating to myself "Pay attention! Riding a motorcycle deserves my full attention on the road."

I finally arrived and cut the engine. I turned the key back on and tried to turn the pig back over. Ahhhhh there is that oh so dreadful sound. The sound of an underpowered low amp battery as it struggled to create enough spark to start the bike and quickly diminished as the cranking slowed to groans.

I ordered my new Odyssey PC545 last Tuesday but UPS has decided to take their time with the shipping and it has sat in some east coast shipping facilities the last 3 days. They expected the delivery date to be Tuesday the 6th of October a full 7 days of shipping.

I guess I will try and get a little more life from this old battery as I wait for UPS.

Where art thou battery?