camera56
Well-known member
This story was first posted (by me) at www.midliferider.com. Enjoy.
“What’s with all the Harleys?”
Probably Steve was at the wheel at the time, but it could have been me. We’d left Rochester, New York three days before on a road trip that would end up in Honolulu, Hawaii. No, we weren’t planning on driving all the way. Just to California via the great northern route.
“Beats me. There go a bunch more.”
The truth was, we’d been noticing them for the last two states, but in a much bigger way since clipping into South Dakota from Minnesota that morning. At first there were just one or two at a time. At gas stops we’d notice clumps of bikes and owners, including one especially memorable fellow with the outline and serial number of his engine tattooed to his left arm. He rode a “Knucklehead.” If you know what that is, you completely get it. The rest of us wonder why.
This was my second cross-country car trip. The first had been with Ron, my now bike riding pal. In 1978 or so, he heard the call of the wild and loaded up his Ford Bronco with the intention of decamping to Alaska to work on crab boats. He invited me to be part of the fun, but at the time, I thought that selling backpacks and making $800 a month seemed more important or interesting or something. So I passed but instead signed up to help him drive to Seattle where he would catch a boat north. I can’t say that driving the Bronco was loads of fun—the seats were unimaginably bad—but the driving and looking and seeing was. I vowed somewhere along Hwy 90 that the next adventure that presented itself would be mine.
That adventure nudged it’s way into view in March of 1980. I was in the throws of renovating a house in a “transitional neighborhood.” A college buddy named Jim called one memorably cold day (so that makes Steve, Ron, and now Jim) and inquired if I wanted to move to Hawaii and start a coffee company.
“Gee, I don’t know,” I said as I thought about the gutted first floor of the house I then lived in and of the gutted relationship I then found myself in. There was snow on the ground. Lots of it. I worked every day wearing every piece of outdoor gear I owned. Carter was President. The economy was going nowhere. Iran was holding hostages. 1980 wasn’t off to a great start.
“Hawaii, Rochester. Hawaii, Rochester. Okay, when do you want me there?”
It was actually several months before I could unwind my life in Rochester and make the journey west. There was that house that needed finishing. Two houses needed to be sold. I had a wonderful German Shepherd that needed a new home (that was a great relationship). There was the other relationship that needed an ending. And then there was the issue of a car.
I’m not sure why I thought it mattered, but I got it in my head that the only proper way to go to Hawaii from Rochester was to drive, and that the only proper way to do that was to inveigle my friend Steve to not only drive with me, but to cross the big water to Hawaii as well and help start that coffee company. The final piece of the puzzle was a strong running but rusted Mercedes 250 that belonged to my grandfather.
So we sorted out the Benz, shipped a bunch of tools and such to the 50th state, loaded up the trunk of the car, and headed out, two kind of geeky looking guys wearing Top Siders, Chouinard Stand-up shorts, and probably Lacoste polo shirts.
Meet the Harleys
“There go more.” A lot more.
It could have been either one of us. We were deep into South Dakota at this point and we still hadn’t figured out what all the bikes were doing other than heading in the same direction. Turns out they were going to Sturgis for the Holy Mother of all ride-ins. See the part about the Mercedes and the khaki shorts. We didn’t know about Sturgis then. Or if we did, it didn’t register. Doh.
“I have to pee.” Again, it could have been either one of us. So we banked into the next rest stop looking to rebalance the morning’s fluids.
Steve lead the way, but for some reason I slowed up. Strewn along the sidewalk were a half-dozen properly scary looking “bikers” staring forlornly at a raging lunatic jumping up and down on the kick-starter of a handsomely raked and bobbed Shovelhead.
I get this from my father who got it from his father: I can’t help but engage complete strangers about nearly anything.
“What’s wrong with the bike?” I asked the only female member of the audience.
“It won’t start.” It was a dopey question and deserved both the terse reply and the tone it came with.
“How come?” The ***** gallery was now in full song.
“He put on a new carb before we set out and it’s acting up.”
Not just any carb. He’d installed an SU carburetor, the bane of the post war English car industry, and for reasons I still don’t understand, a popular modification for those in search of more power. At the time, Harley Davidson was owned by AMF, a company that also made bowling equipment. The faithful referred to the bikes of the day as “Awful Mother Fuckers” and they were. Bolt up one of the most temperamental fuel delivery systems known to man, and voila, the scene before me.
“Well,” said I, “My friend is a bona fide British Car genius. Maybe he can help.” She just looked at me. I walked on.
On the way back to the car I explained to Steve the situation as I understood it.
“What seems to be the problem?” Same conversation, except now there were two of us. Two geeks and six bikers. The odds were looking up.
In fairness to Steve, I was really the only geek. He was just dressed that way. He was and is a card-carrying gear head who had owned and worked on more strange and wonderful cars by the time he was 25 than any other seven people you could name. He was and is “a artist” as well, equally adept at welding, sculpting, forging, casting, and firing as the piece required. He probably even knew about Sturgis and just forgot.
A slightly modified version of the conversation I’ve already related unfolded except the owner of the offending bike was no-longer leaping up and down having exhausted himself from the effort. From any sort of distance, the incongruity of the conversation between these two groups of people, the prep-geeks and the bikers, had to be remarkable.
Shortly the conversation moved over to the bike where Steve began to peer and point, asking the owner questions about what he’d done to the bike. From where I stood, the guy in leather could barely contain his rage and annoyance at the whole scene, and now this, some goofy looking civilian is asking him to explain himself.
And then tools came out and Steve was actually disassembling the carb right there at curbside. The rest of us stood in near amazement. Apparently frustration and anger makes even the sacrosanct sanct.
Years later, Steve recalls it like this:
<em>To the best of my recollection, he didn't have the jet centered properly. SUs have a jet needle on the bottom of dashpot that is lifted by vacuum. The gas is metered through an orifice that the needle slides up and down in. The needle is tapered and the further up or open it goes the more gas can get through between the jet needle and the jet orifice. If the needle isn't centered it hangs up on the side and in that case won’t move at all. I think he also had the dashpot on wrong somehow </em>[that’s how I remember it as well]<em> which only made matters worse. Oh, he also had adjusted the jet all the way out to try to make it run, which it was never going to do.</em>
As the SU drama continued to unfold, the traveling crew settled back onto the sidewalk to smoke and ruminate. It turns out their 1980 wasn’t off to a great start either. All employees of “Generous Motors,” they had been furloughed, or whatever they called it back then when you no longer had a job, and decided that the only sensible thing to do was ride to Sturgis. As we talked, distances melted; differences too. Pretty soon it was just people telling their stories to people.
And then magic happened. Steve was done fiddling the evil teapot and was telling the bike’s owner, “Okay, let me show you how to start it.”
“Nobody touches my bike! (Ummmm, he just did buddy)” The claws were out again.
“Okay, well let me tell you how to get it to start then.” So Steve incanted some magic combination of throttle turns, choke swizzles, and pre-kicks. And with that, the previously vile Shovelhead roared to life and then sat there going “potato-potato-potato” just like Willy G intended.
You would have been excused if you thought the second coming had come. Never before or since have six desperate to ride riders made the distance from complete despair to total elation so immediately. Amidst much backslapping and exaltation, Steve was accorded the acclaim of a true hero. Stereotypes slaughtered all around, we said our goodbyes and headed towards our respective mounts, they to their Harleys, and we to our Mercedes, all headed west with a new story to tell and tell again.
Suddenly 1980 was looking up. It sounds like an overly theatrical way to end a narrative, but then and now, it’s a story that changed something down inside the way good stories do.
2008 Copyright midliferider.com
“What’s with all the Harleys?”
Probably Steve was at the wheel at the time, but it could have been me. We’d left Rochester, New York three days before on a road trip that would end up in Honolulu, Hawaii. No, we weren’t planning on driving all the way. Just to California via the great northern route.
“Beats me. There go a bunch more.”
The truth was, we’d been noticing them for the last two states, but in a much bigger way since clipping into South Dakota from Minnesota that morning. At first there were just one or two at a time. At gas stops we’d notice clumps of bikes and owners, including one especially memorable fellow with the outline and serial number of his engine tattooed to his left arm. He rode a “Knucklehead.” If you know what that is, you completely get it. The rest of us wonder why.
This was my second cross-country car trip. The first had been with Ron, my now bike riding pal. In 1978 or so, he heard the call of the wild and loaded up his Ford Bronco with the intention of decamping to Alaska to work on crab boats. He invited me to be part of the fun, but at the time, I thought that selling backpacks and making $800 a month seemed more important or interesting or something. So I passed but instead signed up to help him drive to Seattle where he would catch a boat north. I can’t say that driving the Bronco was loads of fun—the seats were unimaginably bad—but the driving and looking and seeing was. I vowed somewhere along Hwy 90 that the next adventure that presented itself would be mine.
That adventure nudged it’s way into view in March of 1980. I was in the throws of renovating a house in a “transitional neighborhood.” A college buddy named Jim called one memorably cold day (so that makes Steve, Ron, and now Jim) and inquired if I wanted to move to Hawaii and start a coffee company.
“Gee, I don’t know,” I said as I thought about the gutted first floor of the house I then lived in and of the gutted relationship I then found myself in. There was snow on the ground. Lots of it. I worked every day wearing every piece of outdoor gear I owned. Carter was President. The economy was going nowhere. Iran was holding hostages. 1980 wasn’t off to a great start.
“Hawaii, Rochester. Hawaii, Rochester. Okay, when do you want me there?”
It was actually several months before I could unwind my life in Rochester and make the journey west. There was that house that needed finishing. Two houses needed to be sold. I had a wonderful German Shepherd that needed a new home (that was a great relationship). There was the other relationship that needed an ending. And then there was the issue of a car.
I’m not sure why I thought it mattered, but I got it in my head that the only proper way to go to Hawaii from Rochester was to drive, and that the only proper way to do that was to inveigle my friend Steve to not only drive with me, but to cross the big water to Hawaii as well and help start that coffee company. The final piece of the puzzle was a strong running but rusted Mercedes 250 that belonged to my grandfather.
So we sorted out the Benz, shipped a bunch of tools and such to the 50th state, loaded up the trunk of the car, and headed out, two kind of geeky looking guys wearing Top Siders, Chouinard Stand-up shorts, and probably Lacoste polo shirts.
Meet the Harleys
“There go more.” A lot more.
It could have been either one of us. We were deep into South Dakota at this point and we still hadn’t figured out what all the bikes were doing other than heading in the same direction. Turns out they were going to Sturgis for the Holy Mother of all ride-ins. See the part about the Mercedes and the khaki shorts. We didn’t know about Sturgis then. Or if we did, it didn’t register. Doh.
“I have to pee.” Again, it could have been either one of us. So we banked into the next rest stop looking to rebalance the morning’s fluids.
Steve lead the way, but for some reason I slowed up. Strewn along the sidewalk were a half-dozen properly scary looking “bikers” staring forlornly at a raging lunatic jumping up and down on the kick-starter of a handsomely raked and bobbed Shovelhead.
I get this from my father who got it from his father: I can’t help but engage complete strangers about nearly anything.
“What’s wrong with the bike?” I asked the only female member of the audience.
“It won’t start.” It was a dopey question and deserved both the terse reply and the tone it came with.
“How come?” The ***** gallery was now in full song.
“He put on a new carb before we set out and it’s acting up.”
Not just any carb. He’d installed an SU carburetor, the bane of the post war English car industry, and for reasons I still don’t understand, a popular modification for those in search of more power. At the time, Harley Davidson was owned by AMF, a company that also made bowling equipment. The faithful referred to the bikes of the day as “Awful Mother Fuckers” and they were. Bolt up one of the most temperamental fuel delivery systems known to man, and voila, the scene before me.
“Well,” said I, “My friend is a bona fide British Car genius. Maybe he can help.” She just looked at me. I walked on.
On the way back to the car I explained to Steve the situation as I understood it.
“What seems to be the problem?” Same conversation, except now there were two of us. Two geeks and six bikers. The odds were looking up.
In fairness to Steve, I was really the only geek. He was just dressed that way. He was and is a card-carrying gear head who had owned and worked on more strange and wonderful cars by the time he was 25 than any other seven people you could name. He was and is “a artist” as well, equally adept at welding, sculpting, forging, casting, and firing as the piece required. He probably even knew about Sturgis and just forgot.
A slightly modified version of the conversation I’ve already related unfolded except the owner of the offending bike was no-longer leaping up and down having exhausted himself from the effort. From any sort of distance, the incongruity of the conversation between these two groups of people, the prep-geeks and the bikers, had to be remarkable.
Shortly the conversation moved over to the bike where Steve began to peer and point, asking the owner questions about what he’d done to the bike. From where I stood, the guy in leather could barely contain his rage and annoyance at the whole scene, and now this, some goofy looking civilian is asking him to explain himself.
And then tools came out and Steve was actually disassembling the carb right there at curbside. The rest of us stood in near amazement. Apparently frustration and anger makes even the sacrosanct sanct.
Years later, Steve recalls it like this:
<em>To the best of my recollection, he didn't have the jet centered properly. SUs have a jet needle on the bottom of dashpot that is lifted by vacuum. The gas is metered through an orifice that the needle slides up and down in. The needle is tapered and the further up or open it goes the more gas can get through between the jet needle and the jet orifice. If the needle isn't centered it hangs up on the side and in that case won’t move at all. I think he also had the dashpot on wrong somehow </em>[that’s how I remember it as well]<em> which only made matters worse. Oh, he also had adjusted the jet all the way out to try to make it run, which it was never going to do.</em>
As the SU drama continued to unfold, the traveling crew settled back onto the sidewalk to smoke and ruminate. It turns out their 1980 wasn’t off to a great start either. All employees of “Generous Motors,” they had been furloughed, or whatever they called it back then when you no longer had a job, and decided that the only sensible thing to do was ride to Sturgis. As we talked, distances melted; differences too. Pretty soon it was just people telling their stories to people.
And then magic happened. Steve was done fiddling the evil teapot and was telling the bike’s owner, “Okay, let me show you how to start it.”
“Nobody touches my bike! (Ummmm, he just did buddy)” The claws were out again.
“Okay, well let me tell you how to get it to start then.” So Steve incanted some magic combination of throttle turns, choke swizzles, and pre-kicks. And with that, the previously vile Shovelhead roared to life and then sat there going “potato-potato-potato” just like Willy G intended.
You would have been excused if you thought the second coming had come. Never before or since have six desperate to ride riders made the distance from complete despair to total elation so immediately. Amidst much backslapping and exaltation, Steve was accorded the acclaim of a true hero. Stereotypes slaughtered all around, we said our goodbyes and headed towards our respective mounts, they to their Harleys, and we to our Mercedes, all headed west with a new story to tell and tell again.
Suddenly 1980 was looking up. It sounds like an overly theatrical way to end a narrative, but then and now, it’s a story that changed something down inside the way good stories do.
2008 Copyright midliferider.com
