Amanda Zito—also known as As the Magpie Flies on YouTube and Blindthistle elsewhere on the internet—is best known for her motorcycle travel videos. For the last several years, she’s been traveling around the U.S., and taking us all along for the ride via her YouTube channel. While many of her travels have been on board her trusty Honda CB500X, she’s also done some Africa Twin travels in more recent time.
We’re not here to talk about the Africa Twin today, though, or even the CB500X. See, long before either of those bikes entered Zito’s life, she had her first bike—a 1980 Suzuki GS 850GL that she named Lazarus. Here in 2023, she still has her first bike but it hasn’t run in about three years. So, the question is, can she get it to run again? She still wants to ride it, because it’s just what riders generally tend to want to do.
In this video, she starts to try to diagnose what’s preventing Lazarus from running properly. Along the way, she tells the story of how when she dropped it off at a shop (that no longer exists in 2023, apparently), it was running, but needed a good going-over.
Long story short, the bike was no longer running when the shop phoned Zito up to come and get it. They told her it was ready, but when she and her grandfather arrived, they found it, a very inexperienced and young mechanic, and a box full of parts from Lazarus sitting next to them both. Apparently, the more experienced mechanics had decided it would be hilarious to haze the newbie with a nice, intimidating bank of carburetors—such as the four on Lazarus. The end result was probably both wonderful for building that new mechanic’s confidence, while simultaneously also being a strong example of stellar customer service (yikes).
In any case, besides that nightmare scenario, Zito credits this experience with teaching her a hard lesson to learn: If you do the work yourself, then at least you know exactly what was (and wasn’t) done. Maybe you won’t always have the answers, but at least you’ll know what roads you’ve already gone down, and can hopefully keep going until you eventually successfully diagnose and remedy the problem at hand.
Will Lazarus run? She will...but she still needs a bit more help than Zito has the time to give her just now, since she’s due to start another trip very soon. Still, if you’ve ever successfully solved a problem on a bike of your own, using your own two hands and some tools, then you’ll be able to appreciate the joy she clearly feels when she finally gets it to run again (even if it isn’t perfect).
