Kickstand Puck With Texas Carrier
Disclaimer: Read no further if you are a fanatical motorcycle purist and you identify with the BMW bike owner in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance who is outraged when Robert Pirsig uses beer can aluminum as a shim to tighten the BMW’s handlebars. On the other hand, if you enjoy practical, functional, and playful things, you might find this piece useful, if not amusing.
Now, we really like the kickstand pucks and plates from our vendors. They are a bike saver on gravel or soft ground. But in the heat of the summer, we have a problem with hot, sticky asphalt. If we throw down a puck on that black goo, then it becomes a permanent road fixture.
What are we supposed to do carry a bag of pucks in the summer? Might as well throw down silver dollars. Nah, that ain’t the answer. Normally we carry a small square of plywood in our left saddle bag. The wood block works great. It’s cheap and easy to replace and we didn’t mind leaving or loosing it. Only, it’s hard to retrieve from the saddlebag while still astride the bike. So it wasn’t convenient.
One day we were busy moving junk from one pile to another and came across on old Texas truck license plate. Inspiration struck as we realized that it would make a nice holder for our plywood puck. We did a little figuring, measuring, cutting, and bending. Then pop-riveted the plate pocket to the front of our left saddlebag.
We could have used a nice new aluminum sheet. We could have painted the plate black. But what’s the fun in that? We are rarely asked about most of the really good stuff on the bike. But the Texas Plate usually gets a “What is that?” Followed closely by an “Oh, yeah!”