Fork Failure

We went out again for Margaret to get some practice in last Sunday afternoon.  Temperatures were in the high 60's which in my mind is a sign that we should be doing some sort of riding and not waste away the day drowning in the sofa and gurgling at the TV.  So off we went to the practice parking lot to progress some more.  It had been a couple of weeks since she rode due to cold and rainy weather so we started her off easy to get accustomed to the basics again.  This just wasn't her day though.  She couldn't get her confidence level up for some reason.  She kept walking the bike forward with her legs to get it moving instead of clutching, and was riding about 7 miles per hour.  I could see the hesitation and asked her what was wrong but she said she didn't know.  After about 10 minutes of trying to get back into it she came to a stop and dropped the bike.  No harm done, but she was very upset so we called it a day and went back home.

All night she kept beating herself up about how badly she had done.  Even the next day she sent me texts about it and finally asked if we could go out for a little while when I got home from work.  She said she didn't want to wait too long before riding again after having a bad experience for fear that she might give up.

When I got home we headed out on the faithful Kawasaki to the faithful practice parking lot.  She hopped on and took off like she had been riding for months.  Strange.  We didn't do anything serious this time, just wanting her to build the confidence again.  She did get on the throttle a lot more than usual though while shifting through the gears and started coming out of corners laying on the gas!

During this short practice session, Murphy struck again!  She pulled up, came to a stop, and I just happened to look down at the front left fork.  Oil was gushing out, UGH!  Blew an fork seal.  See how hard she was riding it?!  Hehe, I rode it carefully back home and parked it.  For a bike that is 32 years old things like that are to be expected.  Well let Murphy off the hook this time. I already have the seals from an order I placed from when we put in transmission seals.  Just figured I would see how long the forks would last before tearing them apart.  Yuck, replacing fork seals is a messy job and I wont be looking forward to doing that.