Radio Flyer

Radio Flyer

LEANINGS

Peter Egan

THE PHONE RANG LAST SATURDAY EVEning and it was my friend Rick Olson.

“You want to ride up to Pine Bluff for the start of the Slimey Crud Café Racer Run with me tomorrow morning? I’m taking my new Can-Am Spyder.”

I stared vacantly at a nearby wall, trying to picture my almost comically vintage 1961 Velocette Venom running down the road with Rick’s bright-yellow Spyder three-wheeler. Talk about the odd couple.

If he rode behind me, he’d look like an F-22 adjusting his thrust nozzles to get a target fix on a Sopwith Camel.

If I rode behind him, I’d look like Father Time chasing a large yellow hovercraft.

But aesthetics were not the crux of it all. We had serenity and metallurgy to consider.

“I’ve vowed to ride to Pine Bluff alone this year,” I told Rick. “The Velocette is really happy cruising along at 55 or 60 mph, and whenever I try riding with modern stuff, I start hammering it too hard. I think I’d just like to relax and ride at my own pace.”

“I understand completely,” Rick said. “I’ll see you up there.”

Certain motorcycles, I’ve noticed over the years, should really be ridden solo, or only in the company of others exactly like themselves.

Back in the mid-Eighties, I bought a new 883 Sportster and made a project out of it-FXE tank, low bars, rearsets, black paint, vintage tank emblems, 2-into-1 exhaust system and so on. I guess I was trying to build a modern XLCR Cafe Racer. In any case, it was a nice bike to ride and I spent a lot of pleasant summer afternoons plying the backroads with it. By myself.

Then I foolishly took it on an all-day ride with a group of fast guys mounted on Ducatis, Cagiva Gran Canyons, BMW Oilheads, Bimotas, etc.

All of a sudden, my Sportster, which had been so enjoyable and serene rumbling solo along those country lanes, turned surly on me. I was absolutely thrashing it to keep up with the group. Gears clanged, forks dived and the engine bellowed harshly to redline. The formerly pleasant midrange torque was not enough. The bike felt asthmatic and overmatched.

I sold the Harley not too much later, I think because that ride had taken some of the bloom off owning it. This was probably a mistake on my part. The Sportster was simply intended for a different, though perfectly pleasant, type of riding. Same with the Velocette. Riding with a gang of new sportbikes-or Rick’s Spyder-would be a similar mismatch, like taking the Queen Mother out for a date at the roller rink. Nothing good could come of it.

So I got up on Sunday morning, put on my Barbour jacket and went out to the garage to kick-start the Velo. It started on about the ninth kick-at least three kicks shy of my total exhaustion/unbridled profanity threshold-and I was happily on my way. It ran great, thudding along the back lanes under cathedral arches of green budding trees, flicking easily through the turns along creeks and rivers.

Every vintage bike suggests its own historical place and time to me, and on a Velocette it is always 1940, somewhere in England, right in the middle of that unusually warm, clear summer before the Battle of Britain.

Yes, I know Velocettes were manufactured until 1970 and that my bike was made in 1961, but the look and sound of these things take you back to their design roots in a much earlier part of that century. They’re stuck in time.

Some of this historic vibe may just be a distant echo from the Velocette factory itself, which was situated in Hall Green, a suburb of Birmingham. There’s a very good chance my bike was built by people who were actually there in 1940, scan-

ning the skies for Messerschmitts and Heinkels.

Anyway, after a 30-mile trip through pre-war England, I arrived at Pine Bluff, Wisconsin, in 2008, and there were an estimated 1200 bikes parked in the little town. After much coffee and bike gazing,

I mounted up for the 35-mile trip to Leland. I kicked the Venom many times, adhering carefully to the known ritual, but it would not fire. About six kicks past my ankle damage/profanity threshold, I accepted a quick push from some guys and it bump-started immediately.

A big cheer went up from the usual mixture of well-wishers and those who have never kick-started a big Single in their lives but enjoy the Schadenfreude of watching some other fool try his luck.

Had a great afternoon looking at bikes in Leland, then headed home when the shadows began to lengthen. This time the Velo started miraculously on about the fourth kick, and I was on my way. My buddy Randy Wade decided to follow me on his Honda VFR800 Interceptor.

It was a nice ride, but with a VFR in the mirrors I found myself inadvertently cruising at 65 or 70 mph, as if to show off what an ageless, competent bike I had. The clutch began to slip slightly on long hills and the engine smelled a bit hot and oily at stop signs.

Randy peeled off for Madison, and I continued the last 30 miles alone. My speed soon crept back down into the 5560-mph range and the big 500 Single fell into its serene sweet spot, clicking along easily and smoothly at 4000 rpm. I could hear birds now, instead of just the wind around my faceshield.

By the time I turned onto Old Stage Road, I was firmly back in the summer of 1940 again, without a modern car or bike in sight to tell me otherwise. I had a sudden flashback to an old “Twilight Zone” episode in which a man buys an antique radio and discovers it plays nothing but programs from the past-Glenn Miller tunes, Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats, that sort of thing. Pure science-fiction nonsense, of course, but an interesting concept nonetheless.

As I neared home, the lilacs were blooming in the farmyards along the lane and the clear blue skies were filled with contrails from aircraft.

Spitfires and Hurricanes, probably. □