A Knight in Gleaming Armour

There I was this morning, zooting along on my nice shiny new big motorcycle, laughing as I passed the cars that were stuck in a traffic jam stretching from the city centre all the way out to where I join the motorway, about 18km outside of Dublin. Biking is great - being stuck in traffic is pretty much a thing of the past.

And then something weird happened; I opened the throttle a bit and where the engine should have revved, nothing happened. There was a slight jerk, and then it took again, then another slight jerk and the engine pretty much died. When I initially realised something wasn't right I had moved over to the edge of the road, so when I stopped I wasn't causing an obstruction.

"Waaaah! My bike's broken!!!" was my first reaction.

Because, you see, at first I'd thought I'd done something silly like run out of petrol. There's no petrol gauge on the new bike so it's hard to tell. But I'd checked the tank last night when I got home and I could see what looked like plenty of petrol in there. So surely it couldn't be that?

I had only just stopped and was still turning the key in the ignition when another biker pulled over in front of me to see if I was OK; when I shrugged to indicate I wasn't sure what the problem was, he dismounted from and came over to take a look.
I found myself looking into bewitching blue eyes, and a silky voice with a French accent asked, "Is it gas? Do you have a Reserve switch?"

{gulp!}

It's unreal how quickly an intelligent, educated, 35-year-old wife turns into an airhead blonde in the presence of a hot, leather-clad Frenchman with smoldering baby-blues..!
I pointed in the general direction of somewhere under my seat, he flipped a switch, leaned over and with a masterful flick of the wrist, restarted my bike.

I smiled, embarrassed, with a lame, "It's a new bike..."
He smiled back kindly and suggested I find a petrol station.