WARNING: THIS COLUMN CONTAINS GRATUITOUS REFERENCES TO MOTORCYCLES AND MOTORCYCLE RIDING
I don’t want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motor-sickle
And I don’t want to tickle
I’d rather ride on my motor-sickle
And I don’t want to die
Just want to ride on my motor-cyyy . . . cull
— Arlo Guthrie from “The Motorcycle Song”
For the past couple weeks, I’ve kept a handful of people mesmerized with the details surrounding my first motorcycle, a 1969 Triumph Daytona 500. When we left off, I had procured said machine, girded my loins (more accurately, my arms, back and shoulders) with a Detroit-made Brooks black leather jacket and enjoyed the adoration of another rider who mistakenly assumed my marginally-larger machine dwarfed his Honda 450.
We spent some time discussing the idiosyncrasies of Lucas electrics (“Lucas, patent holder for the short circuit”) the sketchy performance of twin Amal concentric carburetors, the unique reality of Whitworth tooling and finally the mysterious and mighty Zener Diode.
There, now we’re up to speed. I rode around the Lansing area, basking in British noblesse, for three weeks, when a friend of mine, who upsized from his own Honda 450 to a brawny 1973 BMW R100, suggested that I accompany him and his associate, “Crash,” on that highest endeavor to which a motorcyclist can aspire . . . The Bike Trip.
The Bike Trip — putting the mundane world of career and family on hold for at least a week, gliding over the tarmac, hundreds or even thousands of miles, listening to the throaty roar of your “freedom machine.” Purple prose? Yes. Rampant hyperbole? Of course. Undeniably High Truth? Selah.
My two comrades were veterans of several bike trips. On two of them, Crash earned his colorful sobriquet by falling off his motorcycle. Fortunately, neither the man nor the machine were irreparably damaged either time, nor, remarkably, were their sojourns interrupted.
Before I could embark on my first long ride, the Triumph needed a new rear tire and a couple rubber boots for the front forks so the day before we were to embark, I headed over to Shep’s Cycle Shop where I’d bought my leathers.
Shep’s was a Triumph and I think, BMW dealership, on Lansing’s gritty south side that probably carried some Japanese brand too so Shep could pay the bails. It was your classic, old-school motorcycle shop, that is to say, it wouldn’t be mistaken for some tony mall clothing boutique like today’s bike shops. It was dark, cramped, smelled like gasoline, was strewn with oily rags, lit with a couple buzzing florescent tubes, boasted a few flickering neon Triumph and Dunlop signs and a dog-eared Playboy calendar. In short, it was simply beautiful.
Early the next morning, Mike on the glowering black BMW that he had named “El Brujo,” and me on my newly-shod Triumph, met up with Crash on his 450 Honda Scrambler. Our course had been set a week before, over a couple six-packs of Stroh’s — straight north and over the Mighty Mac, through the eastern U.P. to the Soo locks and over into Canada. From there, we’d skirt the northern coast of Lake Superior, west to Thunder Bay. After that, well, we’d just have to see.
The Daytona started on the first kick and we were off. I’d been riding a motorcycle for three weeks and I was starting out on a trip of a thousand miles or more on a machine most people seemed to regard as an antique. I’d never been happier.
Five hours later, we convened at a gas station café just south of the Canadian border. Times being what they were, we had brought along a quarter ounce of, er, contraband to enjoy around the fire at night. Much to my surprise, my two companions informed me that they’d lost their nerve and had decided to ditch our campfire entertainment rather than sneak it through customs.
“Are you kidding? Give it to me, you weenies,” I snorted. In the parking lot, I took off my tail light, stuffed the baggie inside and screwed the lens back on. “Let’s go,” I told them. “Now I understand why you two wear brown jackets.”
And so it went.
Don Negus is a Morning Sun columnist. Email: dhughnegus@gmail.com