The bike has been in the basement for the past month or so since I brought it home. I've been doing general maintenance to get it ready for spring. New oil and filters, lubrication, rebuilt the front forks/seals etc. All good, no?

Well, I got everything back together and wanted to fire it up for a second to hear her purr, but no luck! The battery was dead! So I popped off the seat and hooked up the trickle charger and left her overnight to recharge. The next afternoon I hook up the battery again and hit the go button. Nothing but the starter relay clicking at me. Click click click. I disconnect the battery again and check the voltage which is sitting at 12.5v. Weird. I hook it up to the trickle charger again and see the red charging light illuminate as soon as it's connected to the battery, so I leave it again for another night.

Day three comes around and I immediately go try again. Nothing. Okay, so the battery is dead I think. Hop in the car and drive out to the local bike shop but I'm kind of annoyed at this point and forget the shop is closed for the weekend and don't realize it until I get into the parking lot. I turn around and I'm driving home when it dawns on me. The weekend before I had built a new workbench in the basement and had moved around some wall plugs to accommodate the new shelving. I couldn't be that dumb, could I? I get home and tell the wife I might be very stupid and head into the basement to check the plug on the trickle charger. It's not plugged in. But the charging light still is illuminated when it's hooked up to the battery! That's my excuse as to why I didn't check the cord. I hook the battery up and plug it in the wall this time and go to bed.

This morning, I hook everything back up and flip the switch one more time. Immediately she rumbles to life and I'm left standing there feeling like an idiot that spend three days angry that my battery was dead when all along I hadn't plugged in the trickle charger.

What stupid things have you done that made you stop and question yourself?

tldr; Battery died, hooked up to trickle charger, didn't work, tried again, didn't work. Drove to get a new battery, store was closed, driving home I realized the trickle charger wasn't plugged in.  

Took chain off to clean and lubricate it, next morning rolled bike down hill from home to start it, being too lazy to use the kickstart(Yamaha DT2). Wouldn't turn over....I forgot to put the chain back on!!!!

I ran out of gas. A second time in two weeks . Not entirely my fault though, at the very least the hoses are reversed from ON and RES, at worst something more is messed up. To be fair I wanted to run out of gas, I just did not intend for it to happen on the side of the freeway half an hour from home .

Oh no, cant match mine ...
I did the whole shebang of replacing the ignition box on the virago, the oiling of this and that, the swap out of tank etc etc before I pulled the battery out to charge it.
See, I knew its near about dead, so I knew I had to charge it, except I spend 2 days doing all the rest, then got around to charging it. If I did it the other way around, I'd have been able to rest ride it, now I have 5 days of cold ass rain, so I am wasting a whole week instead of just 2 days.
Cool.
Buddha.

I took mine apart a week ago to get it painted. Friday night I put it all back together, fire it up...and it won't run. Well, I mean, it'll run very rough, when choked or primed, for a little while, and will die if I even think about touching the throttle.

Turns out that I tore one of the fuel hoses during disassembly. It had a BIG hole in the side of it just under the tank nipple. 

Easy/cheap fix...but it prevented me from going on a huge group ride Saturday.