Quantum Mechanics demystified, a try
My first DR was a 750cc red one. It is a one cylinder Suzuki motorbike, air/oil cooled ‘Desert Racer’. Nick name due to being one of the bikes used early days in Paris-Dakar desert race. Honda had their Africa Twin, 750cc dual V-cylinder bike with cardan shaft secondary drive. Which I would had actually preferred, but it was hard to catch one in 1990’s. As was the DR, but had a bit of luck with that one.
Later on I had a DR650, with smaller body, and two more big DRs, 800cc now. The other one still left with me and the other is by my son. We also had a DR125, two of my sons rode with it at their times.
Must have been this millennium already, when I was riding back home from work with one or the other of the DR800s. All of the sudden bike started to cough badly on ring road II at Mankkaa. Oh no, fuel is running out. Bad news. This bike with it’s single 800cc cylinder takes quite a lot of battery to start after having been dried out. Nearest gas station was a couple of kilometers ahead in Karamalmi.
I started to shake the bike sideways on the fly, hoping some gas from the right side of the gas tank would end up on the left faucet’s side. Construction is such that a few liters remains on the right side groove, you see. Don’t know if that was a designed feature for desert racing or what.
Unfortunately the maneuver wasn’t a successful, bike stopped. I probably was’t shaking the bike enough. I tipped the bike over on the side and started to lift bottom up, to get the gas flowing. Suddenly I realize there is a police patrol with paddy wagon besides me. They had probably noticed me waggling with the bike for some time. I waved and smiled on them. They smiled back and carried on.
Raised the bike up and I was lucky to have good enough battery and got it running after half a minute’s starting. Rode to the nearby fill up station. DR800 has a 25 liter gas tank. But now it got full by just after 20 liters.
What’s happening. I was stunned. Then I started to count, 25 minus 20 is 5, exactly the volume of the spare tank of DR800! I had a look on the faucet. I hadn’t turned it to the spare mode. Shame on me!