Farewell Charlotte...

On March 31 an inattentive driver pulled out in front of me while riding just outside of Eau Claire. I struck the car's rear quarter panel. Luckily I escaped from the accident with only bruises and pulled muscles. Charlotte, however, was declared a total a few days later.

We bought this bike January 4, 2008 and enjoyed about 16,000 miles together in the just-over-two years we had her. The highlight of our owning this bike was definitely our 3,000 mile trip to West Virginia together last summer.

A picture of the damage (this includes bent forks, a bent frame, bent radiator, damaged headlight housing, destroyed windshield, badly bent crash bar, rash on the right pipe, and a hole in the right valve cover):



And here she is just weeks before the accident: