Guzzi Central

Guzzi Central

LEANINGS

ABOUT EIGHT MILES WEST OF WHERE I live is the small village of Brooklynno, not that Brooklyn-this one's in Wisconsin. It's a picturesque, sleepy little town with about two stores on its main street, which sits parallel to the railroad tracks where Highway 92 makes a large S-bend through town.

When riding west I used to stop at a small corner gas station/garage to fill up, but that place is closed now. A new, larger Mobil station and con venience store has opened to replace it, just north of town on Country Highway M.

That's okay. The old gas station has been taken over by two friends of mine, fellow Slimey Crud Motorcycle Gang members Rick Mahnke and Gor don Kline. They've opened a Moto Guzzi shop called M-G Cycle.

Strangely, this little town has be come something of a motor-culture hotbed, for no discernible reason. At the edge of Brooklyn in the neatly re stored stone ruins of an old farmwindmill factory is a shop called Brooklyn Motoren Werke, Inc., spe cializing in Mercedes restoration. And across the tracks is a former im plement dealership that houses the ever-changing vehicle fleet of a de lightful retired fellow named Gerar do, who tinkers with old Cadillacs, MGBs, motorcycles, bicycles and coffee percolators.

Now the Moto Guzzi shop. Just the proximity of neat old stuff gives you a good feeling when you ride through this town-provided you go exactly 25 mph. The place is a speed trap, too, so wary locals drive at a walking pace. All the better to see what's in the front window of the Moto Guzzi shop. Which I confess I've been doing lately.

There's a high-mileage, silver-blue 1979 SP1000 sport-tourer in the win dow, for sale on consignment, that has caught my eye, and I've also been negotiating of late with a fellow in In dianapolis who has another `79 SP with much lower mileage, but frozen brakes from years of storage. At any rate, I'm looking for a two-up sport touring rig again, and flirting with Guzzi ownership. We'll see. I may end up with one yet.

In the meantime, it's been interesting to see the goings-on at M-G. Rick and Gordon opened the shop in early 1997 and put a lot of energy into clean-up, shelving, lights, workbenches, etc. They then went to work stocking shelves and opening a mail-order parts business, which now keeps them so busy they've quit doing service work.

After they got the shop up and runfling last autumn, they threw a party on a beautiful warm moonlit evening, with tubs of beer on ice, properly grilled bratwurst and well-chosen blues stan dards emanating from the shop stereo system. It was one of those rare nights where everything is just right and you walk around with a low-voltage hum of pleasure running through your brain. You find yourself using the famous Kurt Vonnegut test of perfect content ment by asking, "If this isn't nice, what is?" That these moments always seem to occur in the presence of rows of parked motorcycles is one of the mys teries of the universe.

Anyway, Brooklyn and the M-G shop give off good vibes, and they seem to be spreading across the coun try. Guzzis, after all, have always been a slightly off-beat choice, with a streak on non-conformity running through the ranks of their owners. They have never been numerous, so news of a new shop and parts source travels fast, as if by tribal drumbeat-or phone (608/455-2300) and website (www.mo toguzzi.com),in this case.

Last time I stopped by, on a Satur day afternoon, the place was remarkably busy. Several local Guzzi owners had dropped in and a few from Chica go were passing through, as was a fel low who had flown to South Dakota to buy an Eldorado and was riding it home to New York. The place was crawling with Guzzis, and I think some of the owners had stopped in just to warm themselves at the hearth, as it were, to feel the glow of more than one Italian transverse V-Twin in one place at a time.

A whole row of Guzzis, after all, is something of a novelty. In regional density, Guzzi owners are sort of like Muslims living in rural Utah, or Roman Catholics in Teheran; it's hard to get a big parish together, let alone form a decent choir. It's a religion of outposts and missions.

From my own observation, there's another interesting component to the Guzzi scene at this small shop: There are young riders dropping by. Not just the usual grizzled aging Boomers like me who seem to popu late most underground bike venues these days. As a BMW dealer friend of mine said recently, "Gen-Xers love Guzzis. They are honest bikes, and they have a certain beatnik appeal that almost nothing else has, except maybe the old Earles-fork BMWs. That's what they're looking for when they come in here, but they're also looking at older Moto Guzzis."

Glad to hear it. I've always believed that motorcycles are sold on some romantic vision carried within the heart of the buyer, and when you lose that appeal with young people, you have no new riders. Old Guzzis, like Beemers, are highway bikes, motorcy cles for the open road that could take you anywhere. We need to get a little of that Jack Kerouac traveling instinct back into riding, and maybe this is how it'll happen.

Maybe even with me. Barb and I have a long trip with friends planned this summer, out to Colorado and through the Rockies. A big V-Twin from Mandello del Lario might be just the ticket. If I can get the brakes un stuck and the engine to spin.

With a local shop just over the hill and through the woods, my prospects have certainly improved. It's only a mission church, but at least it's a church. Maybe I'll join the choir.

Peter Egan