Breaking Up (is Hard)

Breaking Up (is Hard)

UP FRONT

MARK HOYER

OWNING A MOTORCYCLE HAS ALWAYS cast a positive tint on my world view. From the first one to the most recent, the pride, possession, maintenance and promise associated with a motorcycle in my garage has buoyed my perspective on living.

There have been lots of other pleasant side effects, too. I met my wife because of motorcycles, and we are married now partly because of my 1954 Velocette MSS. I met one of my best friends because of my 1958 Triumph Trophy. I discovered weightlessness because of my ’79 Yamaha RD400 (a highside). I have seen stars and nearly puked from riding off-road trails I thought weren’t rideable. I’ve seen the world on two wheels and been more excited about leaving on a trip, happier to be on the road and more fundamentally enjoyed my arrival because of motorcycles.

Which is all a part of what makes it so hard to sell one.

I am a very fortunate working stiff when it comes to jobs, but I’m still a working stiff, so I can’t keep them all.

I mean, I’ve tried to keep them all but there is a tipping point where too many bikes with too many needs overwhelms my ability (mentally and financially) to keep everything in running order, ready for the promise of action. I cannot own just to possess; I own to ride.

And so that tipping point tipped when I got my old ’74 Norton Commando back (Up Front, February).

Something had to go. I felt a bit like an executioner, or maybe a slave trader, as I surveyed the contents of the garage (and yard...), looking for the candidate to sell. My “collection,” such as it is, remains small. Aside from the Norton, there is a ’73 Yamaha RD350, the Velocette and the Triumph (modern stuff is handled on the work front). The only together and running one of these is the Triumph. It is somewhat ironic that the cleanest, most original, most reliable bike is the one that has to go, but how do you sell a disassembled RD project when you’re not even sure where all the parts are?

Once I’d made the terrible decision to sell the Trophy, I struggled with how to do it. I’d had several friends give me the “If you ever sell it, let me know” discussion with earnest expressions. In some

ways, though, I’ve always felt it better that someone I don’t know gets the bike so that I’m not as sharply reminded of the good times I had with it by watching somebody else having them. And if they sell it a year later, I don’t have to see how much more money they made, either. Then, there is always the warranty question. “None” is always implied, even stated, but I’ve sold things to the “wrong” guy and had to have that awkward and frank discussion that the failure of component X would have happened to me if I’d kept the bike, but I didn’t keep it. Good luck!

So, I decided to take the eBay route for a, presumably, nice, clean break. I could set a reserve to guard what I perceived as my minimum acceptable value and also had the benefit of presenting the bike to a very large, worldwide audience. While I’ve sold a few items on eBay, none has been as large as the Trophy. True, I did sell my 1950 Muntz Jet (look it up) because I listed it on eBay, but it did not sell through eBay.

When I got down to business on the listing, I decided to hand-code all the HTML that made up the ad, even though I am not a web-page builder. This was partly because, working in words and photos, I wanted the ad to properly represent my craft, but it was also a good stalling technique. I mean, what if I won the lottery just after I sold the bike?

But I didn’t win the lottery in the entire three weeks I worked on building the page, and I was finally at the point of no return. I hit the button to start the listing. Bidding was brisk in the beginning, and I got some great questions. One guy even directly addressed me, “Editor Hoyer, why are you selling your Triumph? I have enjoyed reading about it.” But on the downside, I began fretting about the

Triumph’s future. Would the auction winner pay? Would there be fraud? Or just who exactly is this person who is getting a turn at owning my pride and joy?

Turns out I had nothing to worry about because, after the auction closed, the winning bidder sent his deposit in mere minutes.

I sent an e-mail back to him to say thanks for his rapid response and included a link to the www.cycleworld. com story on “The Way of the Desert Sled” (August, 2011), for which we’d used the Trophy as a photo prop with the modern Triumph Scrambler-based Hammarhead Jack Pine neo-sled. I hadn’t mentioned Cycle World in the listing and used only the photos of the bike I took with my own camera. But I figured if the winner were an enthusiast and maybe even a reader, he might think it was cool that the bike had its own tiny little piece of fame.

The new owner did think it was cool, but it was an even better story than I ever could have hoped for. He called me at home after getting my e-mail.

“You will never believe this,” he began. “You know where James Loughead of Hammarhead Industries was just before he met you for the photo shoot on that story? He was at my house dropping off my new Jack Pine and rode down from here on the one you guys used for the story.”

I was blown away by how positive an outcome this was. The Trophy had come to me as a very original, very well-preserved version of a motorcycle that was most typically stripped of its street gear and then mercilessly punished off-road until it became a wrinkled, smoking pile of mismatched parts. I fixed what was broken and turned it into a real piece of transportation, and then used it for travel, camping, commuting. Which is exactly how the new owner wants to use it and care for it. “FANTASTIC BIKE! Perfecto in every way for me,” he said after it arrived. The fact that he’s from California and the bike won’t lose its very old black-and-yellow license plate is a small bonus.

So, breaking up with a bike you love is hard because, if the relationship with the bike is reasonably positive, selling it releases the dream, gives up on the potential. Sometimes you trade this for a different potential, different dreams, but it still is its own kind of loss.

Good memories to contemplate while Ï make new ones on the Commando.

But iff win the lottery, I’m going to get the Triumph back.