One day one photo - 14: AA motorcycle breakdown service to the rescue....again!

Technically this would be a post from yesterday, but it was the early hours of this morning by the time the AA motorcycle breakdown guy was able to help me out and get my motorcycle started. 

I really don't know what's going on with it. I rode it to band practice, after having left it on a trickle charger for most of the day.

In the two hours from when I parked it up, attended band practice and returned to it to restart it the battery had gone flat. I couldn't get the machine started. 

There I was, at around 10.30 at night at a loss to know what to do as other band members were getting in their cars to go home. I felt rather embarrassed to tell them of my predicament, especially as I didn't want to burden them with my situation. What could they have done? I don't know if they would have had jump leads for the bike. Some of them were older folks so where would they find the strength to roll the bike and jump start it? 

So I just casually said goodbye as though nothing was amiss, while quickly googling how to bump start a motorcycle. The car park was on a slight gradient so I thought it could work.

After the church car park had emptied I then began to wheel the bike and get it into position. A couple of local youths who saw me with the bike commented on how nice it was. They asked if it was broken down and did I need any help. But I just told them I was waiting for a friend. You just never know who you're talking to at that time of night.

Sadly my efforts to bump start the bike were a bit feeble so I had to give up and call the AA. Thankfully he was able to find me as I had hidden myself and my Honda Monkey around the corner in a cul-de-sac. 

On starting the bike, the first thing he said was "you need a new battery". That's interesting, I replied, "this one is barely a month old!"

He suggested that the battery was not a very good quality, and the fact that it had had to be jump started a few times will have weakened it.

Given the time of night and the fact that if I stalled the bike while riding it home I wouldn't be able to restart the bike, the AA man decided to follow behind in his truck for the short journey home by way of being on standby. Jolly kind of him.

I really must say I'm at a loss as to what to do. I have changed the battery already, I have changed the tracker (which it was thought was draining the battery too much), and I constantly have the motorcycle charged up when not in use now. It's frustrating to not know how to fix the problem, and I find starting the motorcycle quite stressful knowing that even within two hours of leaving it parked the battery will have gone flat. 

I was too tired to think exactly what to do next when I got home at almost 1 o'clock in the morning. I was just glad to have had the possibility of being rescued late at night.