Telling Stories

TELLING STORIES

IGnITIOn

TDC

MINIMIZE YOUR SCRAP RATE

KEVIN CAMERON

I am fond of saying that writing is just keying in whatever it is you have to say. That is considerably complicated by the terrible question: What if somebody reads it? Writing in school can be an exercise in humiliation, so the very large population of people who can tell compelling stories in person is reduced by their memory of writing as, frankly, a punishment. As a result, people who have no trouble getting up in front of their RCmodeling club and giving a funny, sincere 10-minute talk are somehow paralyzed by a blank sheet of paper or by the dreaded blinking cursor on an empty screen. This is a tragedy, best explained by the British arrest warning, "Anything you say will be taken down in evidence and may later be used against you in a court of law."

In the long, thirst-inducing movie Lawrence of Arabia, the late Peter O'Toole unflinchingly closes his fingers around a glowing match head and says, "The trick is not to mind." Maybe that works for some writers, but not for me. I don't want to put out nonsense, so I try hard to speak the truth. My friend Graham White, author of Allied AircraftPiston Engines of World War II and two other wonderful, thick engine books, was dismayed when prickly, retired, and very experienced engine men crabbed over the inevitable few small errors in his first book. I asked him to consider the statistics: The more you say, the more rubbish you must inevitably utter. Every manufacturing process has a scrap rate, and writing is no exception. So, over the long haul, you must accept fallibility and criticism. And resolve each time to do better.

For me, though, the main thing about writing has been figuring things out. There is nothing that so exposes the weak points in your understanding of something as trying to explain that something to others. Then you must go back, re-read the sources, phone the people who know more, and then put it all into clear writing. In the days before computers, I walked around the house, copy in hand, reading it aloud to see how it sounded, to see if it made sense.

Like so many other children, I was fascinated by trains, planes, and mechanisms. Things that go. A visitor to our house carried me from room to room, pointing at objects and asking me to name them (a peculiarity of adults was that they thought interrogation was conversation). He pointed to my mother's Model 94 Winchester and said, "And what's this?" Because the questioner's finger rested on the ammunition door, the tiresome little boy replied, "The cartridge cases hole."

I walked along, holding up a toy airplane in one hand, making my best moving-through-the-clouds airplane engine sound. I made modeling-clay engines. There was also the problem of the peer group. In a nursery school, I was encouraged to enjoy myself sociably with the others. The teacher arranged us all in a line, the hands of each on the hips of the one ahead.

"Pretend you're a train!" she called out, using the special high voice so many adults reserve for addressing small people. "The first one in line, say, 'Choo-choo.' "

With some shuffling and bashfulness, whoever it was complied. The next in line was to say, "Ding-ding," the one after her, "Whistle-whistle." Last in line was to be the conductor, tirelessly reciting "All aboard, all aboard."

This was not for me. I, the little stuffy boy, felt desperation. I moved out of line and sat on a chair. Too strange.

"Why, Kevin, don't you want to play?" I didn't want this. I wanted to know about real trains. I pestered adults for information. Here is the valve chest. This is the feedwater pump. These curved things are the reversing gear. I wanted all this passionately, and even now, it brings tears to my eyes to think of it. How does it work? Why is it shaped this way? What is it made of?

BY THE NUMBERS

1 NUMBER OF TIMES I'VE ACTUALLY SET EYES ON A SAROLEA.

NUMBER OF TOHATSUS I'VE OWNED.

ALL NUMBER OF MY GAS CANS THAT VIS~T~NG RACERS HAVE BORROWED.'

My mother arrived to pick me up. Twenty years later, she would tell me that when she asked me why I wasn't playing with the others, I replied, "They think they're a train. But they're not."

It's comfy to share the general opinion, to believe that electricity just comes cleanly out of the wall, and that the ocean is full of hydrogen, free for the taking. If your own examination of the facts gives you a different idea, you may find yourself in Tom Houseworth's predicament (Tom was Ben Spies' crew chief for years). Some time in the '90s, while at Yamaha in Japan to build their AMA Superbikes for the coming season, Houseworth and his teammates were encouraged to make suggestions in a meeting with engineers.

Houseworth raised his hand. "How about some engines with four valves (instead of the fivevalve heads then in use)?" His question was greeted only by a stony silence.

"I had to eat lunch all by myself the rest of the week," he related.

In 2004, Yamaha engineer Masao Furusawa (now retired) gave newly hired Valentino Rossi the choice of four different prototype YZR-Mi MotoGP bikes. Rossi chose the one with four valves per cylinder and a 90-degree crankshaft, both of which features have now been adopted on the i,ooocc YZF-Ri production bike. Now who's eating lunch with whom? There is often a difference between what is the case and what is generally believed to be the case. No matter how many opinions you line up, you can't vote nonsense into truth. It's not a voting matter. That's one of the reassuring things about engineering: When test results come in (dyno, time slip, wind tunnel), we have to accept them. Zero points for being cool.

THERE 15 NOTHING THAT 50 EXPOSES THE WEAK POINTS IN YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF SOMETHING AS TRYING TO EXPLAIN THAT SOMETHING TO OTHERS.

In 1982, Phil Schilling (we were then at Cycle) gave me this little forum the TDC column— in which I could hold forth about things that interested me and which, I hoped, might interest other like-minded persons. I like to read about stupid stuff like liquid droplet break-up in airstreams stuff that might bore many people and after awhile, connections appear that look like they might make a story, possibly with some relevance to motorcycling. For some reason, this i,ooo-word format has relaxed my writing, making it less like a tense highschool essay and more like talking. Who wants to be tense? Thank you, Phil.