The Home Workshop
The home workshop
TDC
GOING UP TO THE SHOP TO CHECK on a part." My wife has heard these words from me countless times over the past years. Everything is not in one place. There's no such thing as just sitting at the typewriter, and there's no such thing as just hiding out in the shop. Words appear on the screen: "TZ350 exhaust timing was 83 degrees ATDC..." and I stop. I'm pretty sure it was 83, but maybe I should check. My office is in my house, on the opposite coast from Cycle World, connected by phone line, computer and rumor.
As I walk up the path, I pass the spot where three of us, trying to push a 750 on slicks in the snow, fell over it in a laughing midnight heap. In the shop, I find the TZ cylinder. Is there a vernier caliper in the drawer? A crankshaft rests in the truing stand, rebuking me for not giving it the last lead-hammer taps that might zero it out. What the hell, why not now? There's no one here but me. Or I might even rearrange the boxes in which I keep two resto-racer projects, awaiting nonexistent spare time.
Moments later comes a wail from the house. Three sons, all home schooled, equal permanent domestic disturbance. Besides, wasn't I writing an article? Here I am coasting empty handed toward deadline. I return.
Back at the house, I hear the litigants.
He took my piece of string!"
"I had to-he hid my plastic car!"
These are large issues, but I'm not Solomon. Can I separate them? Can I distract them? I step back in the of fice and pull out a smudgy file marked "Piston Motion Graphs." With the measurement just made in the shop, I convert millimeters to de grees. Eighty-three it is. I slip into the chair, a relic of the 1960s, still comfortable even with its unfashion able mere four casters. Sensible men go to real offices, populated only by reasoning adults, and miles from home. Does that make me insensible, or senseless?
As I begin to type, the phone ringsit always does when dinner is near. And as usual it's someone I need to talk to, a call returned. My wife calls this kind of conversation "squish band." To make my talking less obvi ous, I step onto the porch where I freeze happily, hearing good stuff about some new development, walking up and down. With the free ear I moni tor the emotional climate in the house. If it gets too hot in there I'll have to become Dad again.
Dinner comes and goes. The more people there are, the more relation ships. And there's always the question of vegetables, and their possible rela tion to dessert. Back in the chair, words seem to pour out onto the screen. I enjoy this time, but I know I have to stop and read to the younger boys. Life is channel-surfing, role hopping. Robin Hood pushes aside the TZ350.
I look forward to the time it takes me to get to sleep. I can think about anything I like and there's no inter ruption. I like to have a problem, but sometimes it has me. Then, I wake up at 4 a.m. and nothing works as well as a book. I might take notes. I would read a good mystery if I had one. Why isn't there a Good Book Emergency Service? It could look just like a coffee truck, but full of books instead of Danish and sand wiches. Neither wind, nor rain, nor dark of night...
Morning is good, and a proper breakfast could last a long time. But life at the end of a dirt road requires maintenance. Too often it seems the tool I need for the job at hand has it self to be fixed. Where are the heads for the pop-riveter? Why are all the metal fenceposts bent? FedEx drives up and I run to receive an envelope from the home office. Inside is a help ful memo about how to correctly cal culate my vacation time. I need to finish this writing, finish this crank shaft. No DNFs will be tolerated. I'm also looking for a paper, and on the desk are letters I ought to answer. How about these beautiful photos of the Honda Six? I want them mounted, on the wall where I can admire them, but it has to be later. They go back in the pile as the phone rings. If it's not an earth-shattering new credit-card or phone-service deal, it might be a human being I actually know. I answer and take my chances.
I look at the paragraphs I've writ ten and they seem irrelevant. Be sides, I'm growing more certain that I don't really know what I'm talking about. Time for study hall. Can I curl up in my chair with Mixture Forma tion in Spark-Ignition Engines and go over the problem area until I can make sense of it? Maybe. Better to escape, though. We all get in the car and head for the local diner. There's nothing more inspiring than food.
Later, I hear hammering. The children are building something. Can this be the fabled cooperative play? I keep a low profile. My wife attends to her horses. I have to talk to my editor, but he's out of town. Maybe I should talk to myself? Or I could callowly procrastinate by cleaning up the shop or office, both of which need it. But now I get some good tidbits from a technical paper with a ghastly title like "Monodisperse Spray Deflagration," and at last I feel I'm on top of my subject. This is why I buy every ir relevant, discounted technical book I can afford. This feels good. I ad vance to the keyboard, unafraid now of the blank space and winking cur sor. Words appear on the screen.
After a while, I read through what I've written. It actually seems good now. I make coffee and walk be nignly around the house, sipping. Later, I go through the text twice more-this is "polishing." Remember the grand childhood feeling of relief when a loose tooth finally came out? I feel the same as I modem the text to the home office in faraway California. "File's done," announces the computer voice.
Kevin Cameron
