A Guy of the Moment
A Guy of the Moment
LEANINGS
Peter Egan
WELL, AFTER ONE OF THE WORST WINTERS since the siege of Stalingrad (I wasn’t there, but I heard about it), the sun came out last Friday—nice and hot. Eightytwo degrees. Wisconsin is one of those special places where you turn off your furnace and switch on the A/C in one smooth motion of the wrist.
And that glorious Friday morning our friends Mike and Bonnie Mosiman came beaming up the driveway from Fort Collins, Colorado. They were visiting relatives in Chicago and decided to stop at our place for a few days on the way home.
Mike’s current bike-hauler is a Honda Ridgeline pickup, and perched in its remarkably short bed was his latest eBay conquest, a Suzuki DR350. Mike tells me that the DR350 is the new favorite of adult trail riders in Colorado, rediscovered as being not too big to be fun. Makes sense to me.
While Barb and Bonnie went off to an art fair or a farmers’ market or something, Mike and I suited up (i.e., put on our sunglasses and open-faced helmets) and went for a ride into the suddenly balmy, sun-drenched countryside. We took my two modern Triumphs, the tangerine-and-silver 900 Scrambler and the claret-and-silver Bonneville T100. A very festive combination, what with me in my mustard-brown work boots with chain-lube black accent stripes.
Mike and I rode around the country lanes all afternoon, stopping by Sharer Cycle Center to ogle the new khaki green fuel-injected Scrambler (Mike has an older blue-and-white one back in Colorado). We had coffee at an outdoor café where they’d just rediscovered their patio chairs and Cinzano umbrellas in the waning glacial melt-along with a surprisingly well-preserved Neanderthal hunter who’d been drinking a double mocha latte when the blizzard hit last fall-and then we headed home for a pasta dinner that couldn’t be beat.
As we sat on our screened porch that evening, finishing off a second bottle of red wine (claret, actually), Mike and I got talking about some of our favorite early motorcycles. Oddly, it turned out that both of us had built our first bikes in our early teens, before we could legally ride or drive, both of them made from bicycle frames and Briggs & Stratton utility engines. Mike’s had full-sized bicycle wheels, while mine used old wheelbarrow wheels-essentially a minibike.
“How many motorcycles do you think you’ve owned since then,” I asked.
“Oh, man...it would take me a long time to remember and add them up.” “Me too,” I said.
And then, after a long, ominous moment of reflective silence, I added, “Might be fun to try, though...”
I went into my office and returned with two legal pads and two pens. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s add ’em up.”
And so we did, on late into the evening, pacing, slapping our foreheads, re-filling our wine glasses, consulting motorcycle encyclopedias in my office, mumbling to ourselves, counting on our fingers and so on. Try to imagine Einstein in the throes of visualizing Relativity. That was us, only not as smart, and with neater hair.
Barb and Bonnie, exhausted from the stimulation of being married to two such fascinating men, said goodnight and went off to their respective beds. Still, Mike and I slaved away, probing our deepest memories for those lost, half-forgotten projects, restorations, dirtbikes, track-bikes, racebikes, garagesale gems, fleeting infatuations, etc.
By midnight, we were all worn out and couldn’t think of any more. “What have you got?” I asked.
“My lifetime total is 66 motorcycles,” Mike said. “How about you?”
“You won’t believe this,” I said. “My total is 66 bikes.” Weird.
We then broke them down by brand, and I found that Hondas led my list, at 18. Next in popularity were Triumphs (8 of them), followed by 7 each Ducatis and Harleys, 5 BMWs, 4 KTMs, 3 each for Norton, Suzuki and Kawasaki, 2 Bridgestones and 1 each for James, Yamaha, Aprilia, Moto Guzzi, Velocette and Vincent.
Mike was the BMW King. He’s had 26 BMWs over the past 42 years. After that, it was 9 KTMs, 7 Hondas, 6 Triumphs and Suzukis, 4 Kawasakis, 3 Harleys, 2 Ducatis, and 1 each Moto Guzzi, Yamaha and Ural with sidecar.
“Now,” I said, “which of these bikes do you regret selling? Which one would you like back in your garage right now?”
Mike scanned the list for a while and said, “None of them, really. I’m a guy of the moment. I like the three bikes I’m riding now. I don’t fall in love with individual motorcycles. I fall in love with the experience of riding them, and the trips I take, and learning about a new bike or fixing up an old one. The only bike I really miss on this list is the Harley Electra Glide Standard.. .but if I got another Harley, I’d probably get a Road King instead. What about you?” “Well, if I had it to do over, I probably wouldn’t sell my green-and-black 1995 Road King. It was a great-running bike, and I’m always on the lookout for another one. And then there’s the Norton 850 Commando...and the Triumph TR6-C and T100C... But I’m also strangely content with the few bikes I’ve got now. If I get anything else, it’ll just be something that seems ideal for my next big ride. I can’t afford to have a museum, and I’m not really a collector.”
“I’m more of a revolving collector,” Mike said. “And I’d probably buy the same bikes-for the same reasons-all over again. I’ve never regretted buying a motorcycle, but I don’t have to own them all at once, or keep them forever.” “Same here,” I said.
We polished off the last of the claret and then Mike said, “You know what we need to do is find us a couple of Road Kings and take a long, loafing trip across the South this summer. Maybe from the Ozarks to the Blue Ridge. I’ve never done that.”
“Me either.”
“I’d probably have to sell something to afford it..Mike mused.
