How can anyone be so stupid? pt 1

The next morning the rain clouds still looked threatening and the forecast didn’t offer any positive encouragement to hit the road, so I decided to stay an extra day in Laplje Selo. It was a nice enough if very small village and it had a pizzeria. I walked the length of the main street which seemed to be where all the ‘action’ was, and that over I went to the cafe for a coffee.

One of the favourite features of my bike is the keyless ignition. It means I never have to fumble around in my pocket to find the ignition key, I just walk up to the bike, and as long as the key is in range, press a button and I’m ready to go. The key is always kept in the same pocket and I never take it out. It’s worked great for the last two years and 25000 miles, but…

My ignition key stays in my pocket all the time, but on the same keyring are my two luggage keys so I need to take the key out to unlock or lock my luggage to the bike. That’s OK, use the keys then put them straight away. Of course what you shouldn’t do is balance the keys on the rear of the bike on top of a tail bag and ride off, that would be stupid!

Which of course is just what I did do. Considering the ignition key must be very close (within about 1.5 metres) to the receiver I got quite a long way. It wasn’t until a few kilometres down the road that the orange warning light alerted me to the fact that I had lost my keys. They must have sat on my tail bag enjoying the ride for some distance before jumping off.

I rode or walked backwards and forwards along that route for 2 or 3 hours looking for my keys but never did find them. I left my contact details at the hotel just in case they were handed in, asked anyone I saw walking the road, using the international hand signal for ‘key’, in case they had spotted anything but eventually had to give up.

I had spare luggage keys so that was OK, but for the ignition the spare is a small plastic ’emergency key’ that has to be held under the rear mudguard before the ignition can be turned on, it means getting of the bike so is much less convenient especially if in a queue of traffic at a border crossing for example. Something that I would be doing a lot of.