The Frankie Build Grand Finale

Soooooo how do I begin this one… As I said in my previous Ramble it all started out a joke, one of those things you say that you don’t actually mean. The idea of taking Frankie to the Stelvio was not impossible but it wouldn’t be as easy as starting any of my other bikes and setting off because contrary to them Frankie has been restored by someone that had very little idea of what he was doing and most of the time with a healthy amount of beer in him…to be fair I’m sure my Tiger was as well!

After fully committing to it I decided that a shake down ride around the lake was in order to figure out if there were some issues that would immediately show themselves to me, and oh boy was I in for a surprise.

I set off for the small ride around the lake and all was going fine, Frankie was doing good, getting up to ‘‘speed’’, taking the corners well, the suspension was working fine and it was a fairly smooth ride for a bike that was in such a sorry state before I got it. I was about 20 Km in it when boom my front brakes stopped working and my speedometer went to zero although I was moving forward quite briskly. Because I am a responsible adult capable of good decisions I decided to ignore it and continue my ride.

Just in case you never saw how the inners of an old breaking system looks like

The Ride went okish from that point on, despite the fact every time I braked the back wheel locked up which can be a bit disconcerting. Back in the garage I took the brake apart and found that the cable had snaped but in a stroke of luck I actually had that specific part in stock myself. So with Frankie repaired I started planning my ride for that weekend.

If you look closely you can see the speedometer is at zero

I decided in my infinite wisdom to do the ride wearing my Gentleman Ride attire, nice button up shirt, a tie, a vest looking properly dapper compared with my usual homeless man look. My thought process was, this is an event, proper milestone so I might as well wear something nice for the occasion and off I went.

I started my ride later then I usually do because I didn’t want to freeze to death given I was wearing what I was wearing and also since I decided to sleep at the Stelvio I didn’t have the stress of having to be back on the same day so I could take my sweet time.

My first stop was at a beautiful lighthouse at the Walensee lake side which usually takes around 1 hour and 15 minutes or so but this time around it took me about 2:30 hours to get there because I wasn’t using highways and I stayed on country roads all the way, but it was worth it, that beautiful view with the lighthouse and Frankie looking amazing in the morning light… and I got some compliments of some people that where there about how nice Frankie looked…would had been nice to compliment me though on the only day of the year I put a bit of effort in.

From there I was going to try and reach Davos which was going to be the most difficult part of the trip. I thought for the entire time that climbing the Stelvio would be the most difficult bit of this entire trip but as usual I was wrong. I started my climb to Davos which is surrounded by beautiful scenery, the road is perfect and tarmac is new but, and it’s a big juicy but, you drive the entire time in a 80 Km/h zone and its uphill and you go into some long tunnels…Frankie was gasping for air, first couple km I kept trying to down shift and just go full throttle but he just Shaked and lost speed and I actually thought that we wouldn’t make it…but Frankie was trying to show me how it would work if I wanted it, I needed to be gentle and forget about speed and power, I started to understand the message so I just put him in second and twisted the throttle enough to make him move forwards without the complaining and up he went at around 45 Km/h up tunnels with inpatient rich boys behind wanting to open up their Ferraris towards Davos but there was no other way for me, he wouldn’t go faster. I was getting a bit nervous because I thought this was going to be the easy bit but it was bad so I was losing hope almost as fast as Frankie was losing speed. But we eventually made it. Success!!!!

Ma Boy made it to Davos and I was acting like a proud dad taking pictures and slapping the hell out of his petrol tank

Next stop was Flüelapass which was actually absolutely amazing, Frankie was flying up that pass, could get up to reasonable speeds, maintain them through the corners and even drift a bit here and there to keep the heart pumping just right, my hope was back up that I was gona make it. From there I made my way towards Ofenpass where I stopped for an amazing Schnitzel and my navigation showed that it wasn’t long till I would arrive in Sulden, a little village on the feet of the Stelvio where I was staying overnight. All the way there I kept thinking how amazing it was that I was actually doing this with Frankie which a couple months before was sitting in my garage with an open engine destined to die because he was deemed too damaged…I was properly proud of him and I was gona show him as many amazing places as I could. The ride was going really smooth and people where properly waving hello as we passed them apparently amused at the sight, Frankie was performing perfectly at this point and we arrived at the Hotel at around 15:30 and I decided that instead of checking in and just go hug a beer I was gona go and climb the Stelvio, because why not.

So check in done and up I went, and he was doing amazing, using what I’ve learned earlier with being more gentle with the throttle and listening to all the noises we went up that beautiful and amazing piece of engineering marvel that is the Stelvio, we even overtook another much bigger bike twice which was a surprise, for us and the poor chap that was being overtook. We made it up. I’m not gona lie, I was properly proud of Frankie and of myself at that moment, sitting up there in my happy place looking at the view and realising I was there with Frankie was one of those core memory moments and although it’s normal to have people up there it wasn’t normal that we actually pulled a crowd ( 2 or 3 people is a lot when you’re not as sociable as me) they all were asking about Frankie and I was happy to tell them the story, Frankie’s story is one I find everyone likes even if they don’t like motorcycles they like Frankie and they probably think I’m mental but they love the way I tell it.

This is it…I started out wanting to build something to ride down the road and get a coffee in style and ended up building my best friend and ultimate riding experience. Me and Frankie are not perfect by any measure but we are perfectly imperfect and as a unit we work like nothing else. I’ve since taken him on tours through the Swiss alps and for 2023 we will be back on the Stelvio and all around Switzerland and Italy…..who knows maybe I’ll do the Route des Grands Alps with him down to Monaco…Shit I’m getting bad ideas again…. Hope you enjoyed reading all these Frankie Rambles and if you did don’t worry because there are many more adventures to come with us. So buckle up buttercup because it’s going to be a wild ride!

Winter Blues