this is getting “tire”ing

this past weekend i parked my motorcycle in the driveway because i was planning on taking it out again. well, evidently i left the ignition on. when i came out about 3 hours later, the bike was completely dead. knowing it’s 12 volt, and it being parked near my pickup, i went and got my jumpers and hooked the battery on my pickup up to it. but it wouldn’t start it. i started my pickup and tried again…nope. then it started raining so i went inside. i went out a couple of hours later and tried it again. still no luck. i’d bought two battery chargers for boats/motorcycles in years past, so i started searching for them. (i knew where they were in 9023, but i hadn’t seen them since i moved.) i searched and searched. the next day i got up and searched some more. i found the boxes they came in…but they were empty. finally, after hours in total of searching, i found them. i hooked one up. after about 3 hours i went out and tried it. some power, but it still wouldn’t crank. so i switched chargers to the one that automatically turns off when the battery is charged, then left it overnight. the next morning when i got up for work everything was fine.
during this outage for my motorcycle, jack called me to see if i could pick up some food for them while they were working on shooting some footage for the intro to their reality show they are trying to create and pitch, as they were only a few blocks from my house. which meant i had to drop by while they were filming, which meant the crew filmed me. geh. i stayed long enough to drop off the food, and never got out of the pickup or talked very much. then i took off.
so, back to my motorcycle…today i took my motorcycle to work. on the way there in the morning, as i was just starting into the turn from 59 to 288, something suddenly banged loudly and repeatedly. it sounded to be coming from my front, so i looked to see if i’d blown a tire or some piece of something was falling off my bike and/or stuck in the fender well. as i was looking down, i saw something drop and bounce on the road away from me. i slowed down, but my bike kept steering okay, so after a bit i started picking up speed again. as i rode, i kept checking the front tire. i made it to work and parked, then got off and looked around at things. i didn’t see anything obvious, but it looked like something had banged on my front fender well and bent the metal inner lip some. i guess that’s what the loud metal banging was.
after work i came back out and looked at it again. i didn’t see anything new that i might have missed. i unlocked things and pulled my bike upright. then something felt different. i tried moving the steering, but it was stiff. as i started rolling my bike backward a bit, i heard a click/scrape. i rolled some more and got off and looked at the tread on my tire. there was the end of a metal nail or rod or something sticking out, plus a rip on the tread. i decided to ride home, but take streets instead of the highways. by the time i got home, the tire was pretty much flat.
great. i just had a new tire put on about 200 miles ago. it lasted me 2 days shy of 3 weeks. i guess i’ll be getting a tow to the harley dealer and yet another new front tire. it’s a good thing i’m made of money.