So Many Bikes, So Little Progress
So many bikes, so little progress
LEANINGS
Peter Egan
A FEW WEEKS AGO, IN A SUDDEN FIT OF energy, I decided to clean my office. This is something I do occasionally to avoid real work, as it provides the illusion of progress when, in fact, nothing is happening. Can’t just stare into space, or sit on the porch and drink coffee. People would think I was useless.
So there I was, whistling and cleaning and unearthing mail I should have answered during the first Bush administration, when I accidentally tipped over my large cardboard box of random old photos. My wife Barbara actually organizes pictures chronologically into a photo album, but I throw snapshots into a box. The plan is, someday when it’s snowing and there’s nothing else to do that day, like open a Guinness and watch V Four Victory again, I’ll organize them into albums. I’m sure this will happen. Meanwhile, there were pictures all over the floor and I had to scoop them up and put them away. As I grabbed a big handful, I happened to notice one very old picture in particular.
It was a snapshot someone had taken in 1975 showing me standing in front of my workbench at Foreign Car Specialists in Madison, Wisconsin, where I worked as a mechanic for six years.
Good times. When I got out of Journalism School at the University of Wisconsin, I couldn’t find a writing job, so I went to work as a foreign car mechanic, specializing mostly in British sports carsMGs, Triumphs, Jaguars, etc. Truth be told, I didn’t look very hard for a writing job, because I wanted to race, and this was a shop where nearly everyone raced. We’d work on customers’ cars all day, then push our racecars in at night and work on them. It was here, also, that I later started racing motorcycles, with a Honda 400F.
This photo must have been taken on a weekend, because it’s daylight and my work area has two racing cars in it, both painted British Racing Green. One was the Lola 204 Formula Ford I’d just bought, and the other was my H-Production Austin-Healey Bugeye Sprite, which I had just sold to pay for the Lola. The new owner hadn’t picked it up yet.
And, parked next to the two cars, we have my two motorcycles of the era. One is a brand-new black-and-gold Norton 850 Interstate and the other is my darkgreen 1973 Honda CB350G, which I was just about to sell to help pay for the Norton. I’m standing nearby with an untrimmed beard and the usual bushel basket of hair from that era. I look like a cross between Grizzly Adams and Doug Clifford from Credence Clearwater Revival. And if you know who those guys are, you’re probably as old as I am.
It’s a changing-of-the-guard picture; two of my favorite vehicles are being sold to make room-and money-for two more. These were the early days of my lifelong Transportation Illness. In 1975 I was a mere lad of 27 and had owned, at that point, only 11 cars and six motorcycles. Such simple times, like the Dawn of Man.
Yes, the Lola was my 11th car (if you count three derelict parts cars) and the Norton my sixth bike. There have been a few more since then.
On a recent cross-country trip with my friend Tom Cotter, we sat in a bar one night in Frisco, Colorado, and counted up all the vehicles we’ve owned, writing them down on napkins. I came up with a lifetime count of 42 cars (including vans) and 44 motorcycles. Tom was low on bikes, but was able to tabulate something like 78 cars. Always refreshing to have a few beers with someone who makes you look almost sane.
But back to the snapshot.
I stared at that photo for a while and realized that I now have two of those same vehicles in my garage, after all this time. I have a nice clean green 1973 CB350G, as mentioned here recently, and last spring I bought a basketcase Lola 204, which is this coming winter’s restoration project. Don’t have a Norton Commando at the moment, but I will almost certainly get another one eventually. Can’t help myself. The Austin-Healey Sprite?
My old race car-the one in the photo-is at this minute sitting on an open trailer next to a house about 25 miles from here. The owner has left it outside in the weather for at least 10 years, and I have tried a couple of times to buy it back from him. Unfortunately, we differ on our perceptions of the car’s value, so it continues to sit. Maybe I’ll talk him out of it eventually, and have a kind of ersatz reunion of the Class of 1975 in my garage. All I’ll need is another Norton.
So, if this little time capsule of bikes and cars is still so desirable, why on earth have I spent the past 26 years buying, selling, restoring, fixing and trading an additional 31 cars and 38 motorcycles? What was it all about, Alfie? Well, it was about adventure and experimentation. It was about riding in the dirt, crossing continents, experiencing new technology, hearing exotic and different sounds from the tips of mufflers, going faster, racing, doing track days, restoring beautiful old things that needed to be saved and just exercising my God-given right as an American to be curious and restless.
Still, after all this time, the picture makes me smile just a bit at my own selfdelusion. Looking at it now, a couple of things occur to me:
First, if I’d been forced at gunpoint or by some crazy law to keep that 1975 collection forever, I would hardly have experienced any hardship at all during the intervening years. Okay, I might have needed a more reliable two-up touring bike than the Norton (who doesn’t?), but aesthetically and emotively there was nothing missing. This was a great little group of cars and bikes, and I’d be perfectly happy to have them all right now. In fact, I almost do.
Second, there’s the money. Since then, I’ve had cheap bikes and I’ve had expensive bikes, but I’ve never found the slightest relationship between the cost of a motorcycle and the amount of pleasure it afforded me. None.
Yet, even now, this hard-won wisdom doesn’t stop me from looking at bikes in all price ranges, from virtually free to ruinously expensive, without prejudice. In fact, I see there’s a Honda CBX in the paper today. Never had one of those...
As Tom Petty says, might as well go down swinging.
