A few weeks ago, I drained the fuel tanks and float bowls of my two long-ridden old (BMW) airheads, washed and waxed both, aired up their tires, and then put them away inside the basement, not the garage. Also pulled spark plugs and sprayed oil in the upper cylinders. First time I’ve ever formally ‘put a bike away’. Felt like an embalming. Depressing. Had not ridden either bike this year or last, and no plans to use either during the next few years. An admission I won’t be making time to work on or ride them for a while. So, they now rest next to the washer and dryer. They do look sorta cool there. Boxer engine width made both unexpectedly difficult to get through the doorway into the basement – the ‘naked’ R100 took 20 min of wiggling and the ‘naked’ R80 10 min.

First snow is predicted this Friday. Goal: Before winter arrives fill the other three currently ridden bikes tanks with 100% no-alcohol gas and a little gas-stabilizer. They are rarely ridden after streets are winter sanded and salted. And I’ll continue to daily ride and commute via a rusty studded-tire winter bicycle.

It’s not the cold or the universal winter grime. It’s more the corrosive damage. The two older bikes with petcocks are ridden a short distance with the fuel valves closed until their float bowels are empty. This takes slightly more than a quarter mile. The goal is to run the carburetor totally out of gas, so the engine dies just as you coast up the driveway. Then into the garage with a little fuel stabilizer in the tank and trickle charger for the battery.

Last year the beat-up very old XL250 was chained up and left outside all winter beneath only a lightweight cover and about a hundred inches of accumulated snow. Hate leaving any bike outside this way because the range of the daily freeze-thaw cycle is so large. Minus twenty to plus forty.

When April finally comes its petcock is re-opened and after giving the stabilized gasoline a few moments to refill the float bowel last spring it started ‘first kick’. Satisfaction (and a little surprised) that day as I sat there in the sunshine happily listening to its familiar engine sound. The other warm-garaged fuel injected modern bike electric-started fine, too. Best fuel stabilizer? Unknown. My friends and I all use one made for (private-labeled?) outboard boat gas tanks, and widely available at big box outdoor sports and marine/marina stores.

The last time I kept a motorcycle inside the living area of a house was 1970. I was sixteen. During the first week after my birthday that year I quietly pushed my first street-licensed bike from the garage into my ground-level basement bedroom every night until my mother noticed and put a stop to it. When I asked my wife about the two old BMW’s now stored in our basement, she replied: “they look neat there…”, center-stranded next to the wall just past the clothes washer and dryer. Marry the right person.

Always the sweetest MC ride of the year is on that one late-fall day when the streets have not yet been salted and sanded while more-than-a-few light snowflakes are dancing in the air you are riding through. Still mostly dry pavement. This occurs most – but not every -- year. And when you experience this, it’s magic. Especially at night.

– Mr. Subjective, 11-1-19