Other Stuff

From a Rumbling Rolling La-Z-Boy to a Motorized Pogo Stick

She held up a yellow leaf. Although we were sitting outside in the sun and warmth of the brief yet satisfying Oregon summer, she felt the need to herald the coming of winter with a visual aid. I snatched it from her hand, crumpled it up, and tossed it away. Had I perpetrated this rudeness with most people, I’d be in trouble. But my friend knew that it was symbolic and perhaps a little therapeutic, pretending to be preventing the changing of the seasons--not unlike a four-year-old using the power of a nightlight to ward off evil. Motorcycle season had tipped past the halfway point, and I didn’t need to see a greenless leaf to remind me of it.

A strange motorcycling summer this has been. It is the first time in decades I have not spent these warmer months on a Harley Davidson. Monty, my long time riding comrade and general instigator of much of trouble I get into, announced that he and I were going to ride from Mexico to Canada along the Continental Divide using the off-road trails. It would take a couple months and we needed to ride, gasp, non-Harleys. So, in an unprecedented spasm of practicality, we both acquired dual-sport motorcycles. He lives in Arizona so it was more than a little strange when we had this phone call:

Monty: “Okay, I got an off-road bike.”

Me: “When?”

“A few days ago.”

“That’s funny since I also just got one today.”

“Really? What did you get?”

“An ’04 Kawasaki KLR.

Silence. Then, “Yeah, me too. Exactly the same bike.”

Now, we had looked at Beemers and KTMs and Hondas. But we both independently settled for the cheaper Japanese 650cc single cylinder dual sport—a bike designed to run on and off road; doing neither as impressively as bikes designed for a specific purpose but doing both adequately enough for our purposes. I mean, we are a couple of 50+ year-old Neanderthals with mileage well over six-figures on our American motorcycle icons. Now we’re dispensing with caution, and a little dignity, and climbing onto these skinny, lightweight, brightly coloured, buzzing, metric motorcycles. My Harley looks at me from the corner of the garage, pouting and unimpressed since it has spent most of this summer lingering in the garage while I have been reacquainting myself with a type of motorcycle I hadn’t ridden since a peanut farmer from Georgia occupied the White House. 

My Harley weighs in at about 900 pounds. My KLR weighs in at just over 300 pounds if I don’t kick the mud out from under the fenders. One sits in a Harley. One sits atop a KLR. This little Kawasaki has one of the highest centers of gravity of any bike I’ve ever ridden. With the springy, long, off-road suspension it was a bit like some schizophrenic engineer shoehorned a motor into a pogo stick. 

The thing is, the KLR is just damn fun to ride. Being light, it is easy to park and nimble in traffic. The single cylinder engine is somewhat comical in it’s ability to move the bike and my rather American heft, but when it gets its groove on, it can scoot. Perhaps that’s a little generous. But the KLR is a monument to compromise. That light weight comes at a price: a small, somewhat wheezy engine. Frankly, the bike is built much differently than my overbuilt, under-engineered Harleys. The KLR has been on the market for years, but Kawasaki is loath to make some very necessary improvements. (If Harley still built bikes the way they did in 1988, they would have gone where Indian Motorcycles went in 1953: into oblivion.) The KLR has a cult following that makes the Apple computer fanatics look as underwhelmed as a credit card customer service rep. The KLR riders don’t care how they do it in Japan, ‘cause here in ‘merica we take what were given and get ‘er done. Ever since the KLR came out in the late ‘80s, the balance chain tensioner has been prone to failure-the type of failure that sends chunks of metal throughout the engine, rendering it into something wholly suitable for little more than a 100 pound projectile. The Faithful have engineered a “doohicky” replacement worthy of the Curiosity Mars rover. The carburetor has been leaned out to the point it might have trouble giving a Briggs & Stratton two-horsepower mower enough power to knock down a blade of dead grass. Again, this somewhat psycho cycle sect has come up with a modification that cost less than a newspaper (remember those?) that bypasses EPA settings (Shuuuuush. It’s for off road use only. They would never do it for a bike ridden on the street.) and gets the bike some freaky juice. Frankly, the list goes on: The petcock chokes with half a tank of gas left; the brakes feel like they make the bike go faster; starting the bike on hot days takes a degree in thermodynamics and a mystical amulet acquired from the nearest voodoo priestess. Such idiosyncrasies keep the tourists away in droves; yet still, many are called to ride the KLR, but few are chosen.

In the past several decades I have chosen to see the West from the saddle of my Harley. From my bike I have seen lightening strike the ground 360 degrees around me on Highway 90 through Montana, I have ridden in heat so bad my seat burned “the boys” more than McDonald’s coffee spilled in my lap, I have seen snow come so suddenly I had to follow the tire tracks of semis to get over a mountain pass, I have seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate…etc. (Apologies to Philip K. Dick) The first time I saw the marvel that is Yosemite National Park, I was astride my black, American-made, iron steed; and that experience combined with everything listed above has defined me as a motorcyclist. However, the first time I saw Mono Lake I was also astride my Harley. When I rode to meet up with some friends camping along the lake I damn near killed myself flogging that overloaded iron beast along a couple miles of gravel and sand. Fun on a Harley ends when the pavement ends.

The first time I took the KLR off-road I quickly dropped it on its side. Got my weight shifted wrong and next thing I knew, I couldn’t keep the bike under me. After a quick check for witnesses I might have to eliminate, I righted the bike with little more effort than picking up my Schwinn. It fired right up and found its way to the pavement. After a quick inspection, I was back in the dirt. It became obvious that this was what this bike was built for. It is a “what’s over there?” bike, because it will get you over there to see. Suddenly, every gravel road that I had blinded myself to on the Harley was now a ticket to adventure. Rather than surfing Reddit or searching eBay for velvet paintings of Chihuahuas in tutus, I am now on Google Earth looking to see what road ends where and how much gravel I can find. The faster this KLR goes in the dirt, the more stable it becomes. The KLR will slide around a corner and rocket up to fifth gear without a complaint. I have feared water-cooled motorcycles since they came out—yeah, I’m that old—but the KLR has kept the temp gauge at a reasonable point even when running it up to redline in 95 degree heat. After punishing the beast on the crappiest of roads, it vaults up to 70 mph on the highway and wrings out about 65 miles per gallon. After I pulled off the aftermarket racing exhaust designed to produce more deafness per gallon than any other device ever made, I found the stock exhaust is quiet enough that I can go through Finley Wildlife Refuge and not have the birders hurling all nine volumes of The Birds of the Western Palearctic at me.

Monty has also reported that he has been flogging his KLR across the open desert of Arizona with great success. One of the things we both learned independently is the need for a proper full-face helmet. One does not just do 50 mph down a gravel road and not expect facial scarring. My epiphany came when a stinging creature of indeterminate species slipped past my small windscreen and stabbed me in the face. Twice. Judging by the pain, I was sure it was a flying scorpion black widow cobra. It was probably a dandelion spore. 

Aside from being able to take you places where safety gear is a must, these bikes are loved for the uncarved block of motorcycle functionality they are. Newsgroups and websites are rife with DIY modifications that range from ingenious to “hold my beer and watch this.” I personally am adding surplus ammo cans as saddlebags. Rugged, cheap, and all testosterone.

Being a lifelong macho Harley rider is not something one simply walks away from. My heartbeat will always sync up with the rumble of a V-twin, and my neck will instinctively turn my head in the direction of that rumble when it comes down the street. But the fact is my tolerance of other Harley riders has been…strained. When I am parked at a rest stop on my Harley, I am starting to dread the inevitable congregation of other Harleys that assemble when they see a lone member of their pack. When I’m out on my bike, thousands of miles from home, I’m not too chatty. Frankly, I’d rather be left the hell alone. But, the Harley subculture has dictated that one must converse with every other Harley rider one encounters and pretend to share some bond that unites us by blood until we die. There are times during the subtle and not so subtle penis-size contest that inevitably comes when two bikers share a rest stop (male riders do this, too) that I want to just say, “I think Romney is an asshole, gays should be allowed to marry, and corporate welfare has done more to mess up this economy than any Mexican waiting for work by a Home Depot. Are we done now?” Back not so long ago Harley’s reliability was so bad we all needed each other just to get home. The spare parts I carried belonged to any other rider who needed them. When you saw a Harley—actually, any rider—on the side of the road you made sure they were okay. There was a pre-cell phone ethic that required that you asked. That ethic is essentially gone. I watch Harley rider after Harley rider ride past someone stranded on the side of the road. These people who wouldn’t slow down to make sure I have water when I’m in the desert between Reno and Vegas want to pretend to be my friends when they see me at a rest stop? We used to need and care about each other. Now it seems to be all about the chrome.

The dual sport riders seem to be a much less organized and more diverse group of souls. I’ve rarely been able to predict how a conversation with a dual-sport rider is going to go. They might ignore me. They might wanna ride with me for a couple states. Either way they don’t look down their noses at my trunk made from an old cooler, mounted with bungee cords on the back of my KLR.

Monty and I are a year or so away from loading up our coolers and ammo cans for about four fortnights of fun cutting a line south to north across this land. Life keeps happening when we try to lay down plans. But we see it as a chance to get to know our new steeds a little better before hurling ourselves hundreds of miles away from civilization, only to find ourselves wondering how to change out a head gasket on the side of the trail with a Leatherman tool, a condom,  and a zip tie. Not to mention polishing up riding skills left behind with our adolescence. As I segue into the last half of my life, I don’t bounce as much as I used to. Honing the skill-set that keeps the bike rubber side down is as important as my daily dose of ibuprofen and sarcasm.

For now I spend my spare time inhaling the dust kicked up by my KLR’s knobby tires on roads suited for jeeps and goats. The waning warm of summer is not to be wasted on something with more than two wheels—even if it isn’t a Harley. I’m looking forward to seeing the trees explode almost audibly with oranges and reds this fall—even if it is a harbinger of the coming graying of the Oregon skies. However, this winter I have a motorcycle in my garage adapted not only for when the pavement ends, but also for when the rain begins.

Love Me, Love my Motorcycle

Motorcycling is a deal-breaker in many relationships. Many partners get into a relationship with a motorcyclist knowing full-well s/he rides one of those things. But, it’s like women who date gay men thinking they can change them. It usually doesn’t go quite the way either party hopes. For most of us, we are wired from birth with a genetic predisposition to love rumbling through the wind with a metal monstrosity between our knees. Whereas some men are wired with a genetic predisposition to be more interested in the monstrosity between another man’s knees. Often, women see motorcycling as a relic from a man’s youth, like collecting baseball cards or missing showers. Even if we prove those baseball cards proved to be a better investment than the Blue Chip Stocks they squandered their money on, or we did a little time in an institution where taking a shower meant unwanted company, it’s irrelevant. We are expected to behave like the more successful boyfriends, girlfriends, and spouses of the past. So it goes with the motorcycle: Once the bliss of the relationship takes hold, the two-wheeled beast is expected to become a want ad. But, maybe it’s just me. I’m sure my observations about the women in my life and the women in my friends’ lives are totally unique to anyone else who has ever tossed a leg over a motorcycle. So, this is nothing more than a humor piece with no credence beyond that.

With that outta the way, let me say the problem is many fold, like an accordion. Often the problem is the people the man chooses to be around when he is in motorcycling mode. We are not all drooling, NASCAR loving, wife beating morons who crunch beer cans on our foreheads and pee in the front yard. You may be in suits and drinking martinis, but then a hint is dropped: “When I rode through there last year…” Or, “Next to the Harley place…” You might spot a commemorative Isle of Mann ring or Norton belt buckle. Then the question is asked, “Do you ride?” If the answer is, “Yes,” then no other conversation will matter.
“Honey, I want you to meet Ursula. She’s a model from France and if you like her I’ll bring her home and we can all get kinky together.”
“That’s nice, dear.” Turns back to biker. “So, how many miles before you went to synthetic oil?”

Motorcycling is dangerous. No shit. You might work in an ER. You might be a neurosurgeon. You might deal with the leftover and scraped up human pieces of motorcycling every day. Somehow you think those of us in the saddle are blind to the dangers of being on the road on two wheels. Now that we are in a relationship with you, you think you have the right to pontificate on and dictate whether we ride or not. We’re not blind to the dangers, they just come in at a lower number on the “Crap We Worry About” scale.

Yes, motorcycling is dangerous. We all managed to get through puberty, our first divorce (or two), and ingest drugs brought into this country packed up someone’s anus without ending up dead. Even with all that history, why is it that wanting to ride a motorcycle seems to reflect some defect of cognition that warrants intervention? The intervention often consists of an either/or situation around what one gets to ride. Most of us choose the motorcycle.

There is the Babe Magnet factor. Many women see men (and visa-versa) on motorcycles to be trolling for “action.” Somehow tossing a leg over a two-wheeled machine reduces us to slut-dom. We might be married, have hit every branch on our fall outta the ugly tree, and smell bad, but somehow riding a motorcycle is the same as shaving, donning a tux, and picking up a red 500SL or getting a Brazil wax, slipping into a string bikini, and wrapping a leg around the stripper’s pole. For men, it would be seriously discounting Harley’s marketing prowess to say there haven’t been a few bikes sold with this idea in the buyer’s mind. But the mountainous reality rapidly juts above the low-lying clouds of fantasy. The dashing footloose fantasy of a chick winking at you on every street corner is shattered when he discovers few women will be blinded by motorcycle chrome to the point they overlook the power gut, 70s styled clothing, and bad hygiene. The guy with the deodorant and the Mercedes wins again. At least you paid less for your Harley than he did for his SL.

It took me more than one try to find a wife that gets what motorcycling means to people like me. She doesn’t even get annoyed when I stop dead to look out the window every time a motorcycle rides by. Even when we happen to be in the middle of a serious conversation…about the French model…during a tsunami…and Uncle Cletus walks in with his pants around his ankles. But, I digress. The fact is the women I know who ride their own motorcycles with spousal units who do not ride, say the same thing about their S.Os. Their men talk about how dangerous it is and how it makes them look cheap—I kid you not. We all just shake our heads, knowing that there really isn’t a gender barrier between how men and women feel about their partner’s riding motorcycles. Many men and women who ride their own motorcycles together have an interesting dynamic. The women are usually relegated to the smaller bikes. If they are a Harley couple, she is usually on the Sportster and he is on the Road King. She usually doesn’t look too happy. Anyone who has every tried to keep up to a Road King on a Sportster knows why. When I have run across or ridden with couples that have the same bikes or the bikes they chose to ride, they seem genuinely happy.

A lot of women who chose not to ride their own bike, but sit behind their man seem to be seized by their own good spirit of the road. Many people share miles and miles of happiness with the wife/girlfriend/partner blissfully passing the hours snuggled up behind her man. That is unless the man has been conned into one of those stupid intercoms. One of the greatest joys of the road is spending time with your wife and not having to listen to her talk. She can’t tell you where to go and how to drive. I find insisting she wear a full-face helmet helps in that department. It makes them feel safer, too. And when a lot people feel less danger, they talk less.

The danger is real. A motorcyclist cannot control how the car driving public is going to behave and most motorcycle deaths are not single vehicle accidents. How do we reconcile the danger? For many, the good chemicals motorcycling releases in the brain are well worth the dangers involved. Others feel we do not get to choose how we live, for the most part. We grow up, get jobs, married, debt and become terrified of that which we do not know. We become driven by our fear and start living very safe lives that, in reality, chokes the life out of us. Motorcycling is less destructive than telling your boss, workmates, customers to go pee up a rope. Since we can’t do that, a motorcycle ride cuts down on the ulcer and blood pressure probs.

When that rare moment comes when I actually talk about why I don’t think about dying on a motorcycle, it usually goes a little like this: I do not want to die in a comfortable bed, stoned to the gills, watching my family and friends cry while secretly wishing I’d just get it the hell over with. I want it to be a sunny day, I want to be on my Harley, and I want it to be something I cannot avoid. I want to know this is it, and look at whatever it is that will end me and twist the throttle all the way open. I want to feel my bike torque into it, letting me know she’s glad to go with me. And I want my eyes wide open. Whoever is riding on the back can do whatever they want.

And my friends will say, “He died doing what he loved.” And maybe a few of them will see it as permission to do what they love.

You can be a man or a woman. Gay or straight. Republican or smart. You either get it, or you don’t. If you feel a lump in your throat when “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” plays, it doesn’t matter if you are a cop or an outlaw, you are part of something that came before you and will linger after. You know at the end you will be seeing, as Richard Thompson sang “…angels on Ariels in leather and chrome, swooping down from heaven to carry me home.” Even if you have to give up the motorcycle for the new baby or the old lady, if you get it, it’s for life.

Penis Sounds

Many people complain about the sound of motorcycles in general, and the sound of Harleys specifically. Why do they have to be so loud? After all, cars are not that loud. There are many motorcycles that are quiet. Why do Harleys have to sound like a title wave chasing over a jumbo jet?

Ah, Grasshopper. Listen and learn. There are many reasons. First, the obvious mechanical stuff. Car engines are generally water cooled. That water jacket around the engine absorbs a lot of noise. Also, that engine is crammed into an engine compartment which provides yet another layer between the exploding combustion gasses and your sensitive ears. Next we have a big-assed muffler hanging under a car and a lot of tail pipe. Some cars have miles and miles of tail pipe between the engine and the back of the car. Motorcycles get a couple of feet to take that exhaust note from the sound of a gatteling gun to the whisper you would find acceptable. There are motorcycles that are very quiet, but they usually are water-cooled and spend a lot of their horsepower pushing the exhaust through heavy mufflers. Harleys are generally louder because, as much as their riders may hate to admit it, they generally have less horsepower per cubic centimeter. This means a less restrictive exhaust is needed to create more power. This means more noise for the viewing public. So this gives a brief, incomplete, one-sided view as to why motorcycles are so loud.

The other reason is that the riders choose to make them loud. Sure there are laws to prevent that, but there are lots of laws that don’t get enforced. More on that later. Many bikers like loud bikes because it is their only chance to make noise. They may work a soul-sucking job and ripping down the freeway on something that sounds like god with a nasal problem is all they got. They may spend the day dutifully bagging your groceries and listening to you bitch about the price of lettuce like they are the ones setting the prices, or fixing your kids’ teeth and listening to them moan because you’re too stupid/lazy/ignorant to know all those treats you give him or her to shut him or her up put him or her in the dentist’s chair. But when the bag boy or dentist walks out the door and throw a leg over their iron horse, they are in a world where they get to sound off.

Then there are the motorcycle riders that have small penises. This breed of biker is so afraid of living their life directly that they have to get a loud motorcycle so everyone will look at him. They do nothing else remarkable in their existence. They strive to be mediocre in every aspect of their lives and know the only way to get people to notice them is if they wear leather and ride a loud motorcycle. They tend to take the biker lingo into every aspect of their lives and lack the facilities to understand how absurd they are to the non-riding public and what an absolute joke they are to the riding public. They tend to brag about the women they’ve known and the cops they outran in a transparent attempt to compensate for having done neither. Many times there is a latent homosexual issue hidden behind the macho biker image. These people generally are unaware that there are whole groups of gay motorcyclists who are pretty much accepted in the world of biker-dom.  Or, worse yet, make fun of these groups when in the company of people who really couldn’t care less. They also go out of their way to make fun of Japanese motorcycles while putting around on their old Sportster (a smaller version of Harley generally considered an entry level Harley). Anyone with any motorcycling experience knows most Japanese motorcycles, cc to cc, can outrun a Harley any day. We also know that the original prejudice against Japanese bikes was due to Mr. Honda using very American business tactics to come in and take over the American motorcycle scene in the U.S. Those of us in the know realize the Japanese invasion of the United States motorcycle scene was about the best thing to ever happen to Harley. It forced them to stop turning out substandard junk and start making bikes that were as reliable and comfortable at the Japanese bikes. But, when you have a small penis, and you can’t just get past the fact that’s all god gave you, and you will never be a porno star, then you tend to not see how you are coming off to the rest of the world.

There have been many campaigns to get motorcycles to be quieter. Communities have pressured police and have passed ordinances to hush motorcycles. Yet, the “problem” continues. When it comes to noise, much as one’s weight, you never see it as other people do. Many citizens who make the most noise about motorcycle noise think nothing of firing up the ol’ gas powered leaf blower Sunday morning. Speaking of small penises, have you noticed how loud the over-sized diesel trucks are? Even at idle at a light they will drown out even the most unmuffled idling Harley. So why is it your kid’s subwoofers loosening the body panels of his Honda Accord is okay, but the sound of a motorcycle is offensive? Do you think your toddler is really that adorable singing at the top of her lungs in a restaurant and is somehow less offensive than the sound of a Shovelhead’s straight pipes exhausting the gasses being sucked in by the S&S E-series? Lawnmowers, your kids playing, you screaming at your kids, banging your trash cans, the remodel of your kitchen starting a few hours after I’ve gotten to bed, your drunken sports yahooing in the bar where I’m trying to eat my dinner, your yapping dog you leave alone all day to yelp non-stop until you get home: Most people don’t give these things a second thought. Yet, someone rides by on a motorcycle, then it’s an indication of the decline of civilization.

Now, I’m not a cop, nor do I play one on TV, but it is no huge stretch why every unplugged motorcycle isn’t getting written up. Let’s take me, for instance. I’m big. I ride a big bike. Now if you’re a cop and you have a choice between pulling me over, or some bozo in a Prius holding up traffic while trying to get the last mpg outta their ugly little car, what would you do? Let’s say I’m running straight pipes and cruising along at the speed limit. The cop pulls up behind me and runs my plate. The first thing he sees is that I have a gun permit. So, we have me, a big guy, on a bike that usually indicates attitude, who is probably armed. Now we have some inconsiderate driver still stuck in the ‘60s who thinks he’s saving the world by driving something the marketing told him was fabulous. Who would you pull over? Which one is likely to involve back-up thus using more resources for a ticket that may or may not stick? Another thing is more cops probably ride Harleys than drive hybrids. By the way, my motorcycle uses less resources than your hybrid, takes up less space, costs less to insure, and is easier to park.

My Harley has a factory exhaust and I have had people tell me they like how quiet it is. I like my neighbors, so I keep it pretty tame. But, if it’s been a bad day, I will drop a couple gears, hold the needle at redline, and eat up some pavement. It’s either that or putting sugar in your diesel truck’s tank, smashing your leaf blower, spraying your kids with the garden hose, telling your contractor to put that router up his exhaust pipe, or spray-painting “small penis” on the side of your son’s hip-hopping Accord.

Kaws and Nortons and the Law

My brother rode a KZ650 that he had tickled a few more horsepower out of and made look pretty sharp with custom paint and drag bars. I was loping around on a bone-stock 750 Norton. My brother had the nice fitting racing leather jacket. I had a beat up old leather jacket that looked like it had weathered weather and vicious rodents. We didn’t ride together that often, but on this day we were tearing up the roads between Eugene and Cottage Grove with little regard for the speed limit. We had just screamed out of a corner at twice the posted speed and my brother was slightly behind me but keeping close. The Kawasaki didn’t handle as well as my Norton, but it was faster, so he knew if he stayed tight in the corners, he could pass me on the straights. And he did. As soon as we flattened out that corner, he was past me and his speed was climbing. We roared toward a rise in the road. My instinct had me back off the throttle since I couldn’t see what was on the other side of the hill. My brother kept on it, rocketing ahead. I felt the weightlessness that signaled the crest of the hill a couple seconds behind him.
As if he knew we were coming, a sheriff was parked on the side of the road.

I immediately started grabbing handfuls of brake and clutch, trying to get my speed out of the triple digits before I passed the cop car. I don’t think my brother saw it and blared on around the next corner without slowing down. I knocked it down to the double-nickel as I passed the sheriff and watched the sheriff’s lights come on in my mirror. He was on my butt in a microsecond and I pulled over with a graceless fishtail on the gravel shoulder. He didn’t even slow down. He was after my brother.

So here I am on the side of the road, listening to my brothers bike in the distance, which didn’t sound like it doing anything but going faster, while I watched the cop disappear around the next corner. Then I started to feel a little stupid. What the hell was I waiting for? My brother was probably on his way to the next county and that cop wasn’t coming back for me. Then again, I was on one of the more distinctive bikes in the county. If he asked about a blazing yellow Nortons, the list narrowed to, well, me. So I started my bike and crossed over the train tracks to a rough road that paralleled the one that my brother and Johnny Law were on. There was a fair amount if brush and trees between me and the other road so I kicked it up a notch or two and sped along to see if I could catch up. I was passing sparse traffic at a pretty good clip when I spotted the coloured lights of the sheriff ahead and my brother standing there with his arms crossed. I killed the bike and coasted in behind a tree. And watched. 

The cop was pissed and my brother was giving him lots of attitude, and this I could tell without the sound track. I observed from a distance wondering if I should head back to where the cop had passed me. At this point an old, beat up pick up pulled up next to me. A rather non-descript man got out and walked over to me. I was not in the mood to chat so I ignored him until her was upon me.
“You were movin’ right along back there when you passed me.”
Evidently he’d been reading the Idiots Guide to the Bloody Obvious. I continued to ignore him, watching the cop and my brother.
“I bet that officer would like to talk to you, too.”
When I turned and looked at him, he was holding up a badge. I had to laugh: busted by some off-duty cop on his way to the dump in an old pickup with a scanner.

I started my bike and rumbled up to the sheriff and my brother, with the pickup right behind me. When I shut down the Norton, the sheriff came over and stuck out his hand. No words, just his palm. I put my license and registration in it. He wordlessly walked away. Pickup truck guy walked over and looked at my old Norton.
“Old British.”
Yep.
“I got a Ducati.”
Old Italian. Maybe this guy was okay. So we started talking European motorcycles. My brother stood there with his arms crossed looking like he was about to punch something. Turned out pickup truck guy knew quite a bit about motorcycles and I was actually passing this part of the afternoon pleasantly when the sheriff came back. Now, I’d done the crime and I knew it. Can’t blame the cops for getting me. But, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to lie.
“How fast were you doin’ when you came over the hill?” 
“About 60.”
“Bullshit. Try again.”
“About 65?”
“Bullshit. Try again.”
“I might have been brushing up against 75.”
He snarled and I got a whiff of the bourbon on his breath before he walked back to his cruiser. I was suddenly very glad I passed that that off duty cop and he elected to join us.
We picked up the motorcycle conversation as my brother commenced with his expressive arm-crossing.
After the pickup truck cop and had listed every bike we thought was worth anything and I argued my differences, the Sauced Sheriff wandered over to me and handed me my ticket.
“I wrote you for 75, though I know you were going a helluva lot faster than that.”

You’re damn right I thanked him. He then walked over to my brother and handed him this ticket. My brother did not thank him. Matter of fact, his response to the ticket was perfectly matched to his attitude. The sheriff matched his attitude and upped it. My brother, seized by the spirit of self-preservation, shut up. He got on his bike and sped off perhaps a little more dramatically than was prudent. The sheriff stood there watching him leave, trying to decide whether to go after him or not.
Pickup cop said, “Well, he wasn’t happy.”
“Maybe next time he’ll stop when he sees my lights behind him,” the sheriff spit out then got in his cruiser and headed off in my brother’s direction. I fired up the Norton and, well under the legal speed limit, made my way home.

Going to court is never the highlight of anyone’s day. But going with your brother who was already simmering without a steam vent, is not a ray of sunshine. I pled guilty and stated I was being stupid and had checked with my day planner and was not scheduled to do something that stupid again in this lifetime. The judge looked at me over her reading glasses, shook her head, and with a sigh, knocked my fine down to $22. My brother, well, not so lucky. Thus began my brother’s rant about how he and I were doing exactly the same speed when we came over the hill. I was touched. Fortunately for me, the judge was unimpressed, cut him off mid diatribe, and directed us to the door with that age-old judge phrase, “Next case.”

Wyoming Indian Humor

When the weather goes to rainy gray and outdoor activity is limited to running from the car to the door and back with collars turned up and hats pulled down, Seasonal Affective Disorder is a very real downer that moves in like a big-assed rain cloud ruining your psychic picnic. I suffer from S.A.D. but mine hits during the brightest part of the summer, when the movie season typically grinds to a painful slow crawl. I get depressed about having to lie, borrow money, and dodge landlords until the rains hit. So, as the sun sets on prime motorcycling weather, I’m trying to ignore the few sunrays that are left, while appeasing the wolves at the gate. It’s enough to send to Gandhi on a killing spree.

For my odd psyche, there is a certain peace that comes with the winter rains. Someone (maybe Tom Robbins?) once said of the NW climate, “The weather outside matches my internal climate.” I stir to consciousness in my bed watching hissing droplets bounce off the roof out my window, as my cat gently pulls my hand into his chest with clingy claws and licks the hair on my knuckles. Coffee tastes better and the weight of the winter comforter might as well be shackles for the difficulty it causes me getting out of bed. The rains mean I can go into my garage and not purposely ignore my motorcycle, who is listing on her sidestand wondering why it’s been weeks since she roared. I can tell her it’s raining, not that I’m too busy for her.

When it comes to trying to turn the lemon rains of winter into lemonade, nothing works like the memory of 107 Middle-of-nowhere-Wyoming degrees.

<begin self-indulgent riding story>
I had been riding all day trying to make it to Sheridan, WY to rendezvous with a buddy coming in from Illinois. The day bore the kind of heat so intense I had to soak my T-shirt at every rest stop faucet, and after 10 minutes of riding, not only was it dry, it was stiff from minerals. I was drinking a liter of water an hour and knew it wasn’t enough, but the water at the rest stops was only good for soaking shirts. It was the worst part of the afternoon, when the heat apexed and my mood and humor bottomed out. I pulled into a gas station for fuel and after gassing up, headed inside the western motif store/restaurant for food and more water. This was reservation country. The Native Americans seemed pretty detached from the white folk who mingled around--the whites not knowing the difference between this tourist trap and the real west.

There is a thing that happens when you spend a lot of time in the saddle and cover a lot of geography. A hardening of manner prevails, combined with a sharpening of reflexes that comes from dealing with the hailstorm of rocks, tire parts, and weather hurling over the windscreen into your face. Many people wonder what kind of cognitive slippage makes one consider this a vacation. The answer is that traveling by motorcycle peels away the layers of codependence. After a few weeks of living on the road, you do not give a shit who you offend or frighten. There is freedom in that—a release, if you will, that constitutes a real vacation. In reality, the tough-guy crap is quickly traded for ambassadorship when someone asks about the bike, the ride, or wants to tell you about the Harley they rode after the war—any war. You count on these drivers not to kill you, so you are nice to them.

But this day there was heat. I was feeling antisocial. In the booth in front of me was a native man and his wife, both with skin toughened by years of sun, speaking their native language. The white folk were staring like the Indians were some sort of museum display. I was minding my own business looking at a map while I splattered it with mayo. The Indian man with the leather face looked over at me with a, “Hey?”
I was not in the mood to interact with anyone. So I silently looked up at him.

“Where ya from?” sez he.

Oh, great. Now all the sweaty tourists were looking at me, too.

“Oregon.”

He took off the hat he was wearing and showed me it was from the Pendleton Roundup.

“I rode in the Round Up more years than I care to admit.”

“Nice country out there.” Now, let me get back to my damn sandwich and map.

“Where you headin’?”

I closed my map with a little too much drama and looked at him, then at the shifting crowd waiting for my answer.

“Tryin’ to get to Sheridan for the night.”

Beat.

“I’m gonna tell you where to stay there.”

Lucky me.

“There’s the main drag. I forget what it’s called. But there’s a hotel on it. It’s white, I think.”

“That narrows it right down.”

“Now, hold on. You’ll know it when you see it. Ya know why?”

The suspense was killing me.

“Because there’s a big white limo in front of it.”

The crowd chuckled. I was hoping this was the punch line.

“And why the hell should I stay there?”

“Because the folks there (he looked around the restaurant) AIN’T WHITE.”

The crowd of eavesdroppers quickly cleared its collective throats and found somewhere else to look. I laughed. My strain of native blood is pretty lean, but I’ve had more than a couple people pick me out of a crowd. The old guy winked at me.

“They’re good Indians.”

With a water-soaked T-shirt, full gas tank, and stabilized blood sugar, I hit the road. In a few hours I was in Sheridan and met my buddy who had arrived only 15 miraculous minutes earlier from as far east as I had come west. We feasted at a Chinese buffet and I told him we needed to find this certain motel. One of the reasons Monte and I travel so well together is he doesn’t need a lot of convincing. We pulled up next to a rather unimpressive establishment graced with a seemingly inappropriate limousine. Shortly after I stepped inside, Monte could hear me laughing all the way out in the parking lot. The “Good Indians” were East Indians, not Native Americans. The old guy set me up hundreds of miles ago even though he’d never see the punch line.
<end self-indulgent riding story>

My cat goes to sleep with a furry sigh and his claws retract from my skin. Slowly I take my hand back and slip out of bed. I’m thinking: the weather sucks. I’ll write something about a summer ride. Maybe I’ll put it in the Other Stuff section. People might get a smile and a memory of their own summer joy. And it might help them forget about those beautiful leaves we will all soon have to slop out of our gutters.

Motorcycle Kick-Starters: Satan's Playground.

It was on a hike when I felt something give way in my left knee. I was three miles away from the car and it was uphill all the way back. By the time I limped up to the parking lot, my knee was swelling up to the size of a cantaloupe. The doctor visit brought compliments on the tear of the cartilage under my kneecap. Then, as if an afterthought, he manipulated my right knee. I’d gotten used to the grinding and popping my right knee had been making for years. My doctor was somewhat alarmed.
“Years of kick start motorcycles,” I confessed. 
He nodded, knowingly.

When people think of the physical damage motorcycles inflict on their riders, it usually revolves around the shinny side of the motorcycle meeting the pavement followed by flesh and bone meeting the pavement, or the grill of a car. I believe the British motorcycle kick-starter is the passive-aggressive revenge for what we did to the Red Coats. Those ancestral colonial knees not damaged by musket fire during the battles of Lexington and Concord, were taken out by the starting rituals of the English motorcycle. The Amal carburetor, popular on many British motorcycles for no known reason, is of the most sinister design. The tickler, as they called it, was a probe that pushed down the float to squirt gas into the carb before cold starting. Very little guaranteed a backfire more than a flooded carb and the dozens of kicks on the kick-starter needed to clear it. The object of this was to weaken the knee and reduce the rider to a state if exhaustion. I use the term “rider” as if the person kicking on this machine will get to actually ride after the carb is cleared and the engine tries to start. What usually happens is the flooded engine has a delayed ignition, which sends the kick-starter back at the rider at a speed rivaling a lead ball from a revolutionary black powder rifle. The fatigue-weakened knee is hit with enough force through the kick-starter to the foot that the “rider” is often left limping, and not riding.

If the kick back from the kick-starter doesn’t take you out, that’s okay, the Brits were just warming up. The kick-starter seemed to be built with a sensor that picked up when you reached the level of frustration that led to kicking on the machine like a boxer jabbing at an opponent against the ropes. The “rider” would start the rapid-fire leg movements to generate the maximum rpm on the stubborn engine. Sensing this, the kick-starter would choose to conveniently fail to engage, sending the full weight of the kick against, well, nothing. This usually led to the hyperextension of the knee since there was no engine compressive resistance to stop the knee from swinging all the way through past the point it usually stops bending. More motorcycle riders have spent more time in the shallow end of their vocabularies after a zesty kick on a kick-starter that failed to engage.

The Japanese Tea Ritual has nothing on the complexity and attention to detail needed to get an olde English motorcycle to start. Assuming you get actually ride the motorcycle to the point it warms up and you stop it, then you are presented with the issue of hot-starting. The gods of British motorcycling give you one chance to start a warmed up motorcycle. If something happens, like a mouse farts three counties away and the bike fails to fire on the first kick, then the game is on. Oh sure, you can kick it again, but the same British motorcycling gods will just laugh. It ain’t starting. So one kills the ignition and pumps the starter through a few dozen times to clear out the fuel. With a little spark, it might pop once in the next half dozen kicks. About now, one starts kicking in earnest with the dim hope something will happen other than the bike back-firering or the kicker missing the cog and one’s knee enjoying the comical yet crippling hyperextension when nothing stops full body weight from forcing the joint about two inches further then it ever has been before.

Do we learn? No. With all things in life, we want bigger and faster. After years of bouncing around the countryside on British motorcycles, I moved on to Harleys. There is a world of difference between kicking over 750ccs and kicking over 1200ccs of engine. The designers of the Harley kicker were graduates of the Marquee de Sade School of Engineering. The throw of the kicker seems way too short for the amount of spin needed to fire the engine. Somehow the Limeys managed to get a couple of crankshaft rotations per kick. The Yanks seem to get roughly an eighth of a turn of the crankshaft per kick. Not terribly contusive to getting the bike to fire right up. Though the difference in engine displacement is less than half again more than the Brit bikes, the kick back from a Harley backfire is about 706 times more. There are tales of riders being tossed ten feet into the air, through the ceilings of garages, and hung up in trees after being ejected from a poorly timed Harley after an unfortunate kick-starter incident. Recent reports from NASA indicate increasing number of satellites have been identified as bikers floating in space with hyper extended knees.

The good news is most people caught riding Harleys are used to a little pain. The older Harleys were secretly supported by the American Dental Association because of all the fillings the vibration form these bikes shook loose. The bikes were heavy and needed almost as much work as the British bikes did. So, even if you preferred Earl Grey to Jack Danials, you can easily push a British bike when lack of maintenance or silly bad luck left you with no power. Anyone who has ever pushed a Harley more than a couple feet has a firm appreciation of the amount of energy in a cup of gasoline. The older brakes on Harleys were about as useful as M&Ms for birth control. The sphincter tightening sensation of hitting the brakes and having the bike actually go faster is not unknown among riders of old Harleys. These are the riders with scars and metal plates in their heads. So they are used to hitting things and being hit by things. A kick-starter launching them into orbit is little more than a mosquito bite. Hardly worth a mention. Oh yes, the English bikes could inflict a fair slice of damage on American bodies, but it took a real American bike to make a dent in an American biker. Even those in orbit.

As we get older we realize there is damned little worth being in pain to peruse. So we graduate to newer bikes with starters actuated by thumbs, not feet. But to this day, those of us who cut our teeth on old motorcycles still think it’s funny when an electric starter bike backfires and the rider holds up his thumb and complains about almost having it knocked outta joint. My doctor gets it. That’s why he had both my knees x-rayed.

Yellowstone Nudity

Yellowstone had been closed for a few days due to wildfires, so the regatta of RVs and minivans, well stocked with families, were  choking the roads through the park. The advantage of motorcycling through Yellowstone is that one can creep around the lumbering aluminum Winnies, rather than getting stuck behind their ample behinds as they slow down to look at what you’d think was the world’s only deer. The drawback of motorcycling through Yellowstone is that the roaming buffalo are huge mobile walls of meat that wander around the place like they were there first.

Monty and I were on our way to see Old Faithful do that thing she does. The crowds were thick and she wasn’t set to blow for some time, so we found a spot away from the masses and settled in. Monty pulled out his pipe, a long-stemmed affair that made him look a bit like an olde English pub owner, and I had my bottle of water, which made me look like I was from the NW. With no invitation and even less warning, a woman wandered into our space. Being that I’m kind of hard to miss and Monty is roughly the size of a small planet, I’m guessing it was the way we were resting silently, draped over a couple of rough-cut log benches, that rendered us invisible to her. We knew she’d missed seeing the roughly 500 pounds of leather-clad bikers dozing behind her, because she proceeded to remove and adjust the wrap around her waist with a speed that didn’t allow for a cautionary “sweetheart-you-ain’t-alone” throat-clearing. Very quickly it became apparent she was “going commando”: sans panties. After retying her skirt, she looked up and saw Monty and me, lounging about ten feet away.  Monty nonchalantly nodded to her, as if to say, “Nice day.” Instead of screaming like we’d ambushed her in the women’s changing room at Nordstrom, she smiled politely, as if to say, “Yes, it’s lovely,” and walked off.  Monty removed his pipe from his mouth, blew out some smoke, and said to no one in particular, “You know, life is good.”

As we traveled to the west end of the park, we spotted a herd of elk. It was moving in our direction, so we stopped and seated ourselves at the top of the slope leading down to a stream, which Monty had guessed correctly was their destination. The elk gracefully wandered into the water, and soon more and more people were gathering around us to watch the wild animals bathe and graze. With no ceremony, a young man broke from the crowd and headed down the slope toward the herd.  Monty speculated this person was either going to spook the herd or discover elk are not domesticated. The man slowly approached the shore of the stream. The elk were watching him like he was wearing a pink sheet to a Klan meeting—not at all amused. Then the man slowly removed every stitch of his clothing. Exercising his gift for understatement, “Not much of an antler,” was all Monty said. The crowd chuckled nervously. The man very casually wandered into the middle of the herd and lowered himself into the water. Interestingly enough, the elk seemed to lose interest in him and went about their elk business. For about twenty minutes the man silently communed with the herd as we watched, wondering if the herd was going to take exception to the human and violently defend their stream. The human herd on the side of the road grew, about half being newcomers not realizing we were watching a nude man in the water more than the indigenous wildlife. Slowly the man stood up and made his way to the shore, regaining the attention of the herd, and some gasps from the unsuspecting latecomers. He dressed, bowed to the attentive herd, and walked away toward the crowd. As he passed between Monty and me, sitting on separate logs, he looked over at me without stopping, and asked, “How’s it goin’?”
Monty’s comment: “Old boyfriend?”
I pointedly stated I had no idea who this guy was.  Monty just shook his head and relit his pipe. The crowd thinned and the herd moved back into the woods. Ahh, the wildlife.