Dirty Ed, my best buddy at Autoville, had sold me his R50/2. It was a decision that molded the next ten years. The frame of the Beemer was black, and the tank was rattle can blue. Eddie called it The Bruise. And bruised I was, after wrecking it. And after rebuilding it, and then blowing the engine, and rebuilding it again, I quit VW’s and went to work for Cycle City, a BMW dealership.
For me it was the golden age of turning wrenches. I had found a home. Here’s a snapshot of my family:
Fritz, the owner. Tall and Teutonic, even with his black hair. The ultimate gearhead.
Mrs. Fritz, blonde and petite. She kept one eye on the books, and the other on Fritz.
John, the parts man. Avuncular, with a pronounced limp--a memento of an unpleasant encounter in Belgium. He had the parts book in his head.
Dan, the shop foreman. Shortest of the personnel. He stood by the dutch door of the service area, at a lecturn which held the schedule. Dan wore this weird grin when he bragged about how he could cover a football field in seconds with his twin gats, aboard his HUEY.
Ray, mechanic. A graduate of Metropolitan Delivery Service, which operated a fleet of BMW mounted couriers. I could write another book about Cheryl, who also rode for Metro. Ray went on to become a cabinet maker. There is a pattern in that, yet to be revealed.
Pete, mechanic. A big hulking country boy, from somewhere down county. PG County, astride DC, was indeed country. George Wallace For President painted across barns, de facto segregated schools...
Kevin, a mechanic. He lived with two women, April and May. Or maybe May and June.
Jim, prep guy. With his cowboy mustache, he could have played the narrator in The Big Lebowski. The oldest guy in the shop, who uncrated and set up new bikes.
Others, including a two stroke guy, a larcenous part timer who liked wine and reds, and various helpers. In every bike shop there is some kid who works for peanuts, whose responsibilities seem to be doing burnouts and wheelies on customers’ bikes the length of the parking lot.
I hung out with some of these guys, and others I met, working on their bikes. Pete, for example. At his home one evening, he got me high and gave me a headset, and put on a new album. Linda Ronstadt, round my door, the leaves are turning. I almost wept.
And Kevin. Pleasing two women is difficult, so Kevin asked me to go out with April, May and himself. We heard some music and went back to their place to get high. Kevin went to bed with April, and left some coke for May and me. She had dark hair and dark eyes. She could have been named June. I really can’t recall. It was bitter cold, and a long two wheel ride home. We snorted the coke. She asked, is there anything I can do for you? But I had not been able to find a way to talk to her, really talk. So I bundled up and left. I had an Air Force style coat with a fur collar, so the ride home was really not that bad.
But back to the shop. While test riding bikes after tune ups, Kevin challenged me into a race. We blasted off, weaving through traffic, engines screaming. Way back we heard a siren. We flew back to the shop, and Kevin made it up the ramp and out of sight before the cruiser came around the corner. Not me. It hardly made a difference, however, because I had already racked up enough points for revocation, with several to spare. A whole nuther story.
In the shop, the radio was tuned to WHFS, where all the disc jockeys were freaks. On the late afternoon show, artists like Jesse Colin Young, Lowell George, and Leo Kottke would drop in and perform.
By that time the mechanics were usually stoned. Once I ate a fingertip sized piece of hash for lunch, which seemed to have no effect. I was assigned to overhaul the engine of some little bitty two stroke. I got the engine ready to pull. Disconnected the cables, linkage, exhaust and drive chain. Finally I removed the mounting bolts--but I had forgotten to disconnect the fuel line. As the engine swung to and fro from its little rubber hose, dribbling gasoline, it left glittering tracers in its path. That might have been the only time I was too stoned to work.
But this story is supposed to be about pain. No pain was felt after eating the hash, nor on almost any other day. But there was some pain I avoided.
There was something about Beemers that was problematic at high speeds. I think it might have been something to do with the axial rotation of the crankshaft. Anyway, as I was by that time the top mechanic, I got the new R75/5 from a highly regarded customer, who complained about a wobble above 100 mph. I checked out everything I could think of associated with stability: wheels, tires, steering bearings, alignment. Then I put on my jacket and helmet and took the bike out for a test ride.
It was a moonless, late autumn evening, already dark. I got on the two lane leading into town, where I could open up the throttle. Rush hour traffic was streaming toward me, but inbound was clear. At about 125 mph, I took my hands off the bars--no wobble. At that instant, a few hundred yards ahead, an oncoming car pulled into my lane to pass, nearly blinding me. In a nanosecond I grabbed the bars and whipped over to the right. I might as well have gone blind. All I remember is slinging gravel, then slowing down and finally stopping on tall grass. Miraculously I was upright, and the bike was intact.
It’s only after the event that you feel the residual adrenalin, your triphammering heart. The next morning I rode back to the site, and realized I had shot past between two closely spaced road signs. Like Odesseus sailing the treacherous straits, my own Athena had guided my path. My tire tracks stopped at the edge of a drainage ditch--invisible in the dark.
She has intervened several more times since that evening, allowing me to tell you these stories.
