Center Stage Stand

Victory over gravity and common sense!

We've had Shadowfax on his centre stand about, oh; let me count. Once. And that took both Karen pulling from his rear sissy rails and me tugging at his handlebars and flip-out handle made for the reason of leverage in this very maneuver.

So, Ka's on nights and tucked up in bed and the kids are too young to pull anything (thankfully in the case of my daughter). Therefore, if I am to have a good go at the job in hand I need to get him up on his stand by my lonesome.

Now, I've been planning this for some time. I've even lay in bed late at night and early in the morning pondering this very puzzle where I should have been subliminally charming the pants off Sandra Bullock, Jamie Lee Curtis, or any other unobtainable fillie with whom I might choose to get familiar in my dreams. So, I had 3 scenarios to try ranging from grunt-powered super-lifting to clever use of gravity, inertia, and dumb luck.

I've seen John Bagguely put his Pan on its middle stand at Paragon Rider Training. He used a power-lifting technique beyond the comprehension of mere mortals to replicate some 3-months later but I vividly recalled his leaving the side stand deployed just in case there might be a wobble. This seemed a necessary part of any plan. The gravity idea would call for me to push Shadowfax back off the drive onto the slightly droopy pavement tarmac leading down to the gutter with such speed I could jump down on the stand and kind of "run it over" into position using the inertia. There were obvious poor outcomes associated with this going horribly wrong so this was resigned to Plan No.3.

Plan No.2 called for me to knock on my neighbour's door and ask for a hand, but the style of the net curtain's twitching told me not to even go there - I had already been rumbled - something to do with my lost look stood aside the bike for too long with the pain of thinking flashing over my brow.

Plan No.1 it'd be then. I made sure the side stand was securely down, grabbed Shadowfax's handlebars and special flip-out designed-for-the-purpose handle by my thigh, pressed hard down on the stand and hoicked. I hoicked again. Then I slipped Shadowfax into neutral and tried a mix of No.3 and an ill-fortuned No.4 calling on a can of spinach and an old clay pipe. Out of balance, I moved my left hand to the handle and the handle hand (my right) to the sissy grip and pulled back hard while keeping pressure on the stand. To my (and my neighbour's hidden) amazement the beasty rolled back. "Tra-daaa".

Mind you, I still couldn't get the old tax disk holder off and I rounded a hex key and a knuckle t'boot. Oh, and here's a good argument for a power-assisted stand on the 2010 model: Honda?