The rear tire and a lesson.

It was just a random check on my tire that brought the bald spot to my attention.  That spot effectivally stopped any riding till I got the tire replaced. 

You can see the bald spot clearly.

I had planned on replacing the rear tire about 2 or 3 weeks ago, but life reared it's ugly head and things got complicated quickly.  A combination of rain, odd work schedules (for example at the time of this writing I've managed to work 24 hours in the last 48) and just my own putting off the inevitable resulted in me having to get a new tire rather quickly.  I ended up buying a Pirelli Diablo tire from Bike Bandit.com.  As it so happened this seems to be the preferred tire of Burgman owners anyway.

There is a lesson to be learned in this of course,  any new rider should get in the habit of doing a T-CLOCK inspection.   It's not something I do very often but I need to.   In a nutshell T-CLOCK is Tires and Wheels, Controls, Lights, oil, Chassis and finally Kickstand.  A nice little acronym created and used by the MSF.  For some odd reason, I decided to do one before getting on my bike about a week ago. I'm glad I did.

Close up side view.

I'm sure that I could have driven a bit further without a problem. When my new tire arrives (which it just did a moment ago) I've got to ride the bike to where I'm getting the tire put on and balanced. Of course I could have also been motoring down the road and then woke up in a nice hospital bed going "Ow that hurts" as well. And really what is more important? Taking 5 minutes out of day to at least give a cursory once over to the bike or missing 5 months of work as they stitch me back together?