We got the bike, with 2 black keys, the red key, and the code card. The original owner was very meticulous - even had the OEM riser bolts in a ziploc bag inside a bubblewrap envelope.
Well, last Thu I lost the black key that is the only one we've ever used for riding the bike. In that moment I realized that I had not seen the other black key, the red key, or the code card since around the time I posted the above. And I also realized that we had moved twice since then.
As I spent hour after hour ransacking the house in search of the box with those magic contents, the words I had posted here almost 10 years ago about being so content to have everything I needed to ward off disaster kept ringing in my ears.
I knew how important that stuff was, how did I ever let myself lose track of it???We started by looking in every logical place, but came up empty. I did find the special tool for adjusting the spring preload on my CBX's YSS shocks, though. Oh, and a melted pump from a Pro-Oiler I uninstalled many years ago.
I finally determined to methodically open and inspect every single box in our small but disorganized basement, one after one, just in spatial order with no preconceived notions of where I would or wouldn't find it. This process took 6 hours of time and 2 years of service life from my back and knees. I started to feel optimistic when I found things like every smart battery charger I have ever bought (three of 'em!), hard drives I had put into storage to grab and consolidate their photos later, the removable dropouts from my road bike, the original CB1100F calipers I thought were lost by my machinist when he installed the Brembo 4-pots, my old MP3 player, etc. etc.
But when I was down to just a bunch of old/discarded parts in unsorted cardboard boxes, I was thoroughly discouraged. By the time I picked up the absolute last uninspected box, overflowing with crumpled-up pieces of oily newspaper, I was gutted - sure that we were well and truly screwed.
Well, in a move too cliched to be included in any well-written movie, at the very bottom of that very last box I found exactly what I was looking for.
I post this here because I believe there are others who would appreciate or somehow relate to the highs and lows of this experience.
