Learning Curves

Virtually all of the motorcycles I have owned in my life have been metric, save one: the 1986 Harley Davidson I picked up three years ago 'cause I am a Boomer and every moto-Boomer has to have the V-twin Chopper he wanted when he was young but could not afford. The H-D's body had been pretty thrashed by its current owner, but the engine had been worked on by the original gear-head and was an absolute monster, so my dream rebuild began.

And the nightmare started. I am an average weekend shade-tree putterer whose biggest asset is probably the fact that I know what I don't know, at least usually. While I knew that I didn't know p'diddly about Harley's, what I didn't know was how much less than p'diddly I knew about Harley's.

So the journey - and the learning - began. I learned about how what some folks call "bolt-on" ain't; I learned that when something doesn't seem right, STOP; I learned that a minor mis-step is not made better by continuing to muddle along; I learned that a small independent moto tech can be your best friend IF you have the sense to tell him the truth when you screw up!

So it is three years later and I am just about there; the upsweep pipes and forward controls were to be mounted this weekend, oil and filter changed, and BOOM! off to the races with a sweet looking Old Skool Chopper, like the one I couldn't afford when I was a kid. Look out Easy Rider!

My buddy Pat came over on Saturday to help; I had pulled all the old parts off (another learning: taking old shit off a bike is usually a whole lot harder than putting new shit on), laid out the new parts, read through the instructions, and off we went. Six hours, many busted knuckles, and a couple of "Now what?" moments later, she was all finished up. Just needed to put in the oil and fire it up.

I had already drained the oil ... or at least I thought I had. In my experience to drain the oil you root around under the crankcase, find the drain plug, unscrew said plug, and drain the oil. So I rooted around, found the plut, unscrewed the plug, and watched as precious little oil drained out. "That's odd," I thought to myself," as I regularly check the oil level and it was fine just a week ago.

And yes, the oil has been changed during the past three years; but given that I was putting less than 500 miles per year on the bike as it was often in parts, it got changed when I took the bike in for something that I knew was WAY beyond my threshold, like rebuilding the wiring harness.
Since they were going to have to pull that stuff anyway, it just made sense to let them change the oil once each year as well.

But I digress; setting aside my puzzlement, I opened up the oil tank and lo and behold saw a tank full of oil! Once more the buzzer went off in my head: "That can't be good." Luckily I have progressed far enough on the learning curve to know when to STOP! and think a bit. In fact, I was so puzzled that I even consulted the shop manual ...

Now there's a concept, huh?

You know what I learned? Where eveybody else puts the drain bolt for the crankcase oil, Harley put a drain bold for the transmission; so I had drained the transmission of oil, not the crankcase. Sigh.

OK, no problem. Just go buy transmission oil and put it in the transmission, right? Nah ... nothing's that easy. Turns out the access cover into which one places the transmission oil requires a very specific H-D tool to open and it also appears some previous owner tried to open that access cover with a hammer & chisel! There was no way on God's green earth I was going to get that open without that very costly proper tool, which I will probably use twice in the next decade. For the same amount of money I can load Chopper on a truck and haul her to a professional and have him/her replace the oil ... for the next TWO decades! So an appointment is made for next week and the saga continues as my dream ride remains elusive. Easy Rider can remain easy for a couple of weeks.

But what the heck; I am learning a lot (like never buy another Harley!), having a good time, my brain got a lot of good exercise, and have done nothing irrepairably stupid. I guess there are worse ways to spend a beautiful weekend and you know what?

That ain't near the dumbest thing I have done in my life!

Road Stories

I met a big shot in our community the other day. He is quite proud of the three high end Harley Davidson's in his garage, including a 100th Anniversary CVO. Not too shabby. He told me with great flourish about his adventure a couple of summers ago, a 4000 mile long-ride from Seattle to Las Vegas with five of his buddies. I listened politely as he repeated several times that it was 4000 miles. I smiled as he spoke of the "adventure" as though it was something truly remarkable. While a nice long ride on a well attended and beautiful bike, riding on the remarkable highway system of America (curiously, this fellow is very much anti-government and I wondered to myself just who he thought built those magnificent highways) with cell phones, friends, and a platinum credit card is nice, it must be put into perspective. Let me tell you about some real adventures.

Let's start with C.K. Shepherd, a Brit who, upon concluding his front line military service in the First World War, decided he wanted an adventure - by himself - and in 1919 set out on a motorcycle across America on a Henderson. He left New York and some three months, 4,950 miles, five new cylinders, three pistons, three sets of bearings, two connecting rods, eleven "sparking plugs", and over 142 falls (he quit counting at that point - US roads in 1919 were not exactly moto-friendly) later he arrived in San Francisco.

Then of course there is Jack Newkirk, a nineteen year old kid in 1939 when he set out with one change of clothes and a State Farm Atlas on his 1930 Harley Davidson VL Big Twin to see both the New York Worlds' Fair and the San Francisco Golden Gate Exposition. His route just happened to take him through a little place in South Dakota called Sturgis, and he just happened to meet a fellow who introduced himself as "Pappy," one of the Jackpine Gypsies ... who just happened to be the Clarence "Pappy" Hoel who organized the first Sturgis Rally in 1938. Through rain, sleet, desert, and having to fix his points with a rock, Jack made it across American to San Francisco.

And let's not forget the ladies, like Peggy Iris Thomas, who, along with her airdale in a box on the back, rode a 125 cc BSA Bantam from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, Canada down through the western USA into Mexico, back into the USA and up the Atlantic seaboard to New York City, a journey of some 10,000+ miles. Oh, and she did this in 1952. Or how about another British lass, Lois Pryce, who traveled 20,000 miles through North and South America on a Yamaha XT225 Serow ... yeah, that's right, a friggin' dirt bike!

I love long-rides; every summer I hit the road and have ridden as far as 8,000 miles in one journey. And one has a right to feel some accomplishment in achieving a long ride of any sort ... but such a ride, like so many things in life, needs to be put into perspective. It is nothing to ride such distances today on trustworthy machines, with cell phones, GPS, and hotels and gas stations available every few miles. We ride our rides, and admire folks like Ewen McGregor and Charley Boorman when they make a well-supported trip around the world or across the African continent. But the truly remarkable riders are individuals like C.K. Shepherd, Jack Newkirk, Peggy Thomas, and Lois Pryce who set out alone and unheralded to see the world and to blaze new trails not for glory, but for themselves. That is courage.