Extremes

Extremes

TDC

Kevin Cameron

BIKES EXPRESS EXTREMES EASILY. Maximum Harleys, bedecked with lights like Tokyo by night, rumble by. Sportbike purists are here, their backs and wrists aching as they assume the position in their $1200 one-piece leathers and Mick Doohan helmets. Charley hoppers lean rakishly on their slender sidestands, their front wheels canted the other way. Head-scarved, chain-walleted brothers in fingerless gloves prepare to initiate combustion. On the highway, somewhere west of Laramie, odometer-minders glide through the night, borne along by twos in sofa-like comfort amid arrays of art-deco luggage and quadraphonic speakers.

Men in shops above or below ground are making things. Their tools are the burette, the milling machine, the airbrush, the TIG welder. Some have just finished day jobs and are now, coffee in hand, beginning their private nightshifts. All these tool-users dream their separate extreme dreams of astounding beauty, of laminar intake airflow, of what is to nestle in the angel-hair at the Oakland Roadster Show, of riding away in style from tension and discord.

No one is striving for a middle ground, for an average effect. All rush away from the center like stars in an expanding universe, seeking the extremes at the ends of their separate vectors. Who has come the farthest? Who leaves the longest patch? Whose turbo bike wheelies at 130? Whose fingers are black with Simichrome? Whose pants are the stiffest with fiberglass resin? Who has lost his mind, breathing too much paint thinner?

Even moderation conceals extremes. This Vincent fancier burns his vacation time in trips to England, finding men who once worked in the factory. He seeks undiscovered lore. This clean, stock ’69 Bonnie runs well. Conservatism? Not quite. The owner built the engine twice in a row because an oil leak offended his sensibilities. BMW riders, personifying conservatism, push an extreme that few others do, riding 30,000 miles a year.

Some of the extremes are unintended. The cross-dresser blends beach clothes with his GSX-R. The bike says sport, the bare knees and head, the go-aheads on the footpegs and the gloveless hands, say something else. The 150-mph machine chugs up the promenade, barely

above chain-snatch speed.

Although extremes fly away from the center, some do so in tightly conforming groups. Spectator parking at the German Hockenheimring reveals acres of identical sportbikes. Under the neon, see the bar-bikes-individuality through sameness. Custom-builders survey each others’ beautiful work, trying to squeeze another drop of distinction out of a confining paradigm. Racing advertises itself as high-tech, its managers swinging chic carbonfiber briefcases, but real change comes slowly because failure is more painful than reward is pleasant.

And there is extreme history. Highriser bars had other ingenious names. Anyone remember Chicago shifters? Peanut tanks, for cruising no more than 10 miles from the nearest open gas station. Cafe bikes with thick English fiberglass that’s made like boats, with a chopper gun. Amal GP carbs on the street, dribbling fuel, refusing to idle, infinitely cool. CL-77s with Snuf-orNots in their high pipes. The 1950s obsession that All Engines Must Look Like Eggs-i.e. the BSA Bantam, the Harley Hummer, Ducati Singles. Engines? Eggs? Mufflers and non-mufflers filled whole catalogs-elongate Christmas ornaments, some in suppository form or resembling German sausages. Megaphones, too, up-pipes, low pipes, cross-overs, dummies and chrome flex-pipe, hanging from extremely easy-to-produce flat brackets designed to fatigue and crack off real soon. Sissybars towered above king-

and-queen seats, motorized hanging planter racks. Extended front ends flexed like AA fuel dragster chassis in staging. Rigid frames. Finned valve covers. Frames so entombed in Bondo that they sound like wood when you rap your knuckles on them. Twisty chrome to dress up your cables.

And think of canyon racers with their severe credo, or the New Zealanders’ White Helmet societies, dedicated above all to seeking extreme risk, a modernized road-going version of the decorative saber-dueling in 1930s German universities. Wounds are worn with pride, like the ripped pants brought home from intermediate studies at local on-ramps and rotaries. Personal pepperonis at elbow, knee or palm. Or, more extreme in mind if not in fact, the riders who ask machinists to grind the ends of their footpegs, shifters and brake pedals to suggest tremendous riding skills. And casts carefully sawn off by racers focused on making the next event. Escapees from hospitals, entire lives lived against doctors’ orders. Never-walkagains walking. A one-legged racer on a Gold Star, his prosthesis bungeed to the footpeg. Outside a Daytona restaurant, a legless vet on a trike, powered by an Olds 455.

Too much is just enough-maybe. Denizens of the extreme drilled for lightness as if it were oil, and reached for really bad ideas like magnesium axles. Even the exalted sometimes work near the edge of sense: The glorious Ing. Carcano refused to paint or even gel-coat the fairings of his extreme Guzzi Singles. Too heavy. Like an ounce of prevention.

Extreme love and brand fanaticism thrive, testifying to confusion of self with thing. Only my brand of bike exists and is gold or grail, even if the last one left the line in 1950. While we’re extreming, let’s bring back the Dot, the Pope, the Indian or the 2*/2-1 iter Buchet. There are even virtual churches for those who worship Dr. Taglioni, the late Phil Irving or Mr. Ness. Shall we wave only to our own kind, wave to all, or just wave with extreme care? Please park with the other RZ500s.

What does it all mean? Rites of passage? Color to illuminate the gray? The life-wish at work? Decadence? Free choice? Ask a hundred extremists, get a hundred answers. Extreme variety. E2