Motorcycles I've Loved (11 page)

I spied my dad through the crowd as he looked intently at belt buckles. The lenses of his glasses had gone a shade or two darker in the bright sun, and he had his nose scrunched up as he peered into the display case. He had his button-down shirt tucked into his shorts. This is a constant, good-natured battle between us: I tell him to untuck his goddamn shirt; he tells me that he doesn't want to look sloppy. The tips of his ears were bright red, burnt to a crisp.

“Dad,” I shouted, and I held up a T-shirt that said
69th Daytona Bike Week
and depicted a skeleton man smoking a cigar, holding a bottle of whiskey, and 69ing with a skeleton lady all at once. “I think you should get this.” He laughed and shook his head, blushed a little. “Oh come on,” I said, “it would look so good on you.”

•   •   •

W
HEN
I
WAS A LITTLE GIRL
, I discovered my father's power tools. The bottom floor of the house I grew up in was his woodshop, but to me it was a different universe. It was a jungle of loud noises, of sawdust and steel, filled with smells of varnish and fresh wood and glue. I had a tiny wooden seat with four wheels that he made me, and I would race around the shop on it, paddling furiously with my stumpy legs, careening around the chimney, hiding behind the band saw. Sometimes my dad would push me around on it, and I would shriek with the excitement of it all. I loved to watch him work, the two of us wearing big padded ear protectors as he planed boards or power-sanded tabletops. Before long I noticed that the power buttons for most of his machines were round, green, and low to the ground—well within my reach. A new game was born, in which I would run around his shop and turn on all the machines. The noise was deafening, my father's dismay was clear, and I loved it.

The game was short-lived. To dissuade me, he would feign panic, then pick me up and run for cover every time I turned something on. His dramatic response, the sudden noise of the machine, the speed with which I was scooped up and relocated, stunned me. I didn't know what to make of it at first, but soon the game was no longer fun. His act frightened me, and it reminded me of his wrath although even then I could tell there was a difference. I stopped turning on the power tools. I continued to admire those big green and red buttons, one for On, one for Off, but I learned not to touch them. I imagined that everything must have this On/Off capacity. I puzzled over where this switch might be located on my father. Was it in his belly button? On his spine? Hidden between his toes?

My dad and I rode the V-Strom to Cassadaga a few days before I had to fly back to Massachusetts, a little town not too far from New Smyrna that is said to be the epicenter of some kind of psychic power—going there was his idea, of course. On the ride over, there were carcasses of burnt trees on either side of the road, like eerie hands clutching at the sky, the remnants of a brush fire that had swept through not so long ago. The smell of charred wood and wet, singed earth crept in through the vents of my helmet. Beneath the jagged black trees new growth was emerging, rich, green shrubs that thrived in the ashes where their roots had found purchase.

When we arrived in Cassadaga we parked the bike in front of the post office and explored a little before finding a spot for lunch. Over crab cakes and coleslaw my dad talked about breathwork (one word) and the time he had spent at the Ananda Marga ashram in India after his discharge in the seventies. I sucked ice water through a straw and listened absently. My father has become practiced at verbalizing his emotions over the years, at releasing his feelings in a trickle rather than a flood—containing the power and processing it rather than letting it explode. He focuses his power on other things, on his passions. He becomes consumed with woodworking projects, with spiritual practices, books, camping gear, new tools, and, more recently, with his motorcycle.

I fished an ice cube out of my glass to crunch on and turned my attention back to my father, who was asking me if I remembered a rocking horse he had made me when I was a little girl.

“Of course I do,” I said. I'm not sure how we got onto the subject of the rocking horse, but I am familiar with the leaps and bounds my father tends to make in his conversations. I follow as best I can. That rocking horse was beautiful, with a yarn mane and tail, painted by my mother like the night sky, a deep midnight blue, with silver and gold stars and the Milky Way across its wooden flank.

“You loved that,” he said, and chewed for a moment. “And do you remember the puzzles I used to make you on the jigsaw?”

“Of course I do.”

My father's skills as a woodworker are vast. He can make practically anything out of wood: a jewelry box, a kitchen cabinet, a pergola, a letter opener—a house. As a child, I was unaware of this tactile genius. I didn't understand it. Beautiful, handmade things appeared throughout my childhood—a tree house, a rocking horse, a toboggan—but I never quite recognized them as my father's creations. My own strengths lie in my mind, and so this magic in his hands didn't register for me. I knew that he always smelled like sawdust, that practically all my toys came from his workshop downstairs, but I didn't know that everything he knew he had taught himself. I didn't realize that those shapeless lumps of wood I saw him carrying inside didn't just disappear—they became something else.

I may not have inherited his practical skill as a craftsman, but I gleaned something about the metaphysics of renovation from him: there's always time to rebuild, room to grow, and always, always more to learn. As time goes by, I realize that my father and I share more than I thought. There are minor differences: he builds with wood, I build with words; he pursues emotional knowledge and I go after ideas. But in the end we are both builders, and we are both in dogged pursuit of mastery. When I was younger I used to be frustrated when he would become so caught up in a new interest or hobby or project that he couldn't keep track of time. He would dive into the experience of learning, headfirst, without saving any room for logistics like making dinner or picking me up from soccer practice.

As I began to uncover my own capacity for learning, for losing myself in the exploration of something new, whether it be knowledge or terrain, I came to respect his; I came to admire his powers of fascination, of contemplation, and of illumination, and to strive for them in my own experiences.

Energy

W
hen I returned from Florida, the Rebel's new tires were waiting for me and the snowdrifts had shrunk while I'd been away. The fresh rubber smell of the tires filled the house as I ripped off the plastic and ran my hands over the tread. I called Matt, who had moved just up the road with his girlfriend, Katie, and who had promised to borrow a motorcycle lift on my behalf. He was my go-to motorcycle mentor at the time. The first words out of my mouth were “They're here!” and he knew exactly what I meant.

A few days later, we had the Rebel up on a lift, with a few mildewed paperback books we found lying around in the basement to fill the gaps between the frame and the lift. The spines of
Stranger in a Strange Land
and
The Sun Also Rises
stared back at me—such academic spacers, I thought to myself—while together Matt and I circled the heightened machine, mugs of tea in hand, tools at the ready, discussing our game plan. My faithful Clymer manual was on the floor next to my toolbox, which had grown in size and usefulness since my first foray into motorcycle maintenance, and Oscar Peterson's
Night Train
played quietly on an old CD player that buzzed a little in one of the speakers. I cracked open the toolbox, selected a likely sized ratchet, and set to loosening the rear brake caliper. Matt knelt on the other side of the motorcycle, and we took apart the puzzle, collecting spacers and nuts and bolts and screws and arranging them in what we hoped was a logical design on top of flattened grocery bags. When it came time to reassemble, this design would be the map. I wrapped my greasy fingers around my mug, drained the last mouthful of lukewarm tea, and set it aside. Matt slid the rear axle out while I held the tire in place, then we did the same with the front.

The process of mounting a tire on a wheel rim is a delicate one, beyond my skill set and accompanied by serious consequences if done incorrectly, so we nestled both the wheels and the new tires into the backseat of my car to outsource the rest to a mechanic. Once the tires and wheels were stowed, I removed the battery from its casing and hooked it up to a portable 12-volt charger. We called it a day and washed our hands with lemony dish soap and steel wool at the kitchen sink, then I put on a dress and went to work.

I let the battery charge overnight. It can be said that an unused battery loses roughly one percent of its charge every day, so it's safe to assume a battery that hasn't been used for almost a year will need a little help. By running the engine, the battery is able to rejuvenate, to recharge itself, but without the mechanical energy of the pistons the electrical energy seeps away over time. When you come right down to it, the battery itself is only a means of storing energy, not generating it. The battery's charge is needed to start an engine, but once the engine is running, the battery is no longer actively being used—rather, it is being replenished. The charging system of a motorcycle varies with each model, but they all depend on a few components: the battery itself is one—this is where the stored electrical energy comes from when you turn the key. Second is the alternator—this is where the mechanical energy created by the engine is transformed into electrical energy. From the alternator, energy is sent out to the rest of the motorcycle but also delivered back into the battery. Third is the rectifier, which is responsible for regulating the raw electrical current that the alternator creates and smoothing out its distribution.

An engine needs a considerable jolt of electricity to turn over, but once it's running it no longer requires such a high voltage. Think of jump-starting a car with a dead battery—all you need is the initial connection to start the engine, the “jump,” and then it's the engine itself that brings the dead battery back to life. The chemical energy of the fuel in concert with a spark creates the combustion within the chamber, which in turn creates the mechanical energy of the piston's movement, which travels to the alternator and becomes electrical. A jump-start is not unlike a kick-start, which is common on older motorcycles, but rather than using a rush of electrical energy to start the engine, the kick-start uses the jolt of mechanical energy created by the riders when they stomp down on the kick-start's lever. With a lawn mower, or maybe an old generator, there is a similar starting mechanism—the pull cord. Batteries, jump-starts, kick-starts, pull cords—they all serve the same function: waking the engine. The Rebel slept on in the shadows of the basement, but it was only a matter of time before she would be roused from her hibernation. Recharged, reshod, wide awake.

After the fresh tires had been mounted, Matt came over again and we put everything back together. We followed our imperfect map of operations, squinting at the manual as we tried to re-create the fuzzy black-and-white photographs. I slipped the battery back into its casing and refastened the power supply. When we were done we rolled the Rebel out of the basement, through the greenhouse, down the hill, and into the neighbor's driveway, where she sputtered to life without too much coaxing. After warming up the engine for a few minutes, I took her clumsily out into traffic, skidding on frosty gravel, taking the turn a little too wide, but feeling her lunge back into motion after a long stasis, awkward and glorious. Her tires touched road for the first time in their young lives, and the rest of her shook off the thick dust of the basement, all her parts moving together once again, a little loudly at first, a little stiffly, but before long it was as though she'd never been asleep.

Waking the Rebel did more than provide me with a different mode of transportation. It quickened the blood in my veins, the length in my stride; it signaled the arrival of a new season, a fresh start. Getting back on the motorcycle reminded me of how it felt to be fully charged and wholly invested—the sensation I had been pursuing with my research all winter was suddenly tangible. I could hear it, feel it, smell it. With my bachelor's degree in hand and two years of work, study, and little else behind me, I wanted a chance to take what I had learned out on the road and see how it handled. I had no idea what to expect from the unplanned years that stretched out in front of me, but I was ready to find out. Fully charged and with the Rebel purring beneath me, I started planning a new adventure.

Impulse

T
hat summer, I was approaching my twenty-fourth birthday, three years since I'd returned from Australia, roughly the same number of years I'd been gone. I was ready for a change. The idea of taking a long-distance motorcycle trip had been bouncing around in my head for months, and I was growing tired of Amherst, with its crushing, gray winters; I wanted new terrain. I was anxious to feel the uncertainty of travel, the thrill of arrival, the terror of saying good-bye.

As the summer wound down, I felt an urge, a physical pull that is all too familiar, and knew that I needed to leave. The rituals of comfort and stability began to seem binding, and the motorcycle in my driveway was the only thing that made me feel free. I'm not sure what attracted me more, the reality of being a motorcyclist on an epic journey or the symbolism of it, but in either case I latched on to the idea of riding south without understanding it or having any notion of what I was in for. Having never ridden farther than a hundred miles or so at a time, I had no idea what such a journey would be like, and I suspect it was the uncertainty that intrigued me most of all: the unknown narrative that awaited me.

As a seventeen-year-old I had traveled to escape, to lose myself, but as a twenty-four-year-old, I was traveling to find something. I didn't know what I was looking for, but that didn't matter—it was the search itself that I needed. My destination, I decided, would be my parents' house in Florida. Beyond this, I made no plan, had no ideas for what would come after. I would ride south, and that was all I knew for the moment; I focused on the journey itself. I began to search for a new motorcycle, one capable of going the distance and handling the interstate, and I started investigating places to stay, thinking about what route I planned to take. I rented a storage space for all the stuff I had managed to accumulate over the past few years, turned in my notice at work, dealt with the logistics of moving out of my house, and settled in to wait for the end of my lease.

They say the ability to control one's impulses is a psychological strength. A couple decades ago the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment gauged impulse control in a group of four-year-olds by giving them each one marshmallow, then promising them two if they could wait twenty minutes to eat it. Checking back years later, researchers discovered that the four-year-olds who were able to delay the gratification of eating their marshmallow grew into more dependable and better-adjusted adults—they even scored higher on the SATs. I wonder how my four-year-old self might have reacted to this experiment. I mentioned reading about the study to my mother, and she told me that my brother, Phineas, would have popped that marshmallow into his mouth before they'd even finished explaining the directions.

“You, on the other hand,” she said, “would have spent those twenty minutes weighing your options.” It's possible she's right, but I think she might have reversed the order of my thought process. Having a deeply analytical reaction to the world around me hasn't made me a patient adult, nor has it quenched my impulses. Personally, I think I would have eaten the marshmallow, and
then
spent the next twenty minutes analyzing my decision. Regretting it, justifying it, savoring it. For the most part, I follow my impulses without questioning them—it's only after the fact that the left side of my brain raises its hand and begins to systematically rip apart the choices I couldn't help but make.

•   •   •

T
HE SEARCH FOR
a new motorcycle took a little time, but eventually I found an ad for a 1982 Honda Silverwing GL500, with no picture and just one line of information—the year, model, mileage, price—and below it, the words
call Gerald
and a number. I reached for my phone. The man who answered was monosyllabic, and he responded to my questions with deep, rumbling yeses and nos.

“Could I come tomorrow?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Could I come around two o'clock?”

“No,” he said.

“Three?”

He paused. “Yes.”

“Great,” I said. “I'll see you then.”

“Yes.”

I dragged along my friend Seth for company. When we arrived at the address in Worthington and got out of Seth's car, Gerald appeared, looking precisely how I had pictured him. Somewhat grizzled, with a scratchy white beard and tufts of silvery hair going in every direction, he hobbled down to his driveway to where we were already inspecting the Silverwing. It was a beast of a motorcycle, well over five hundred pounds, almost thirty years old, with a cigarette lighter and radio speakers contained within a hefty fairing that was so big it looked more like the dashboard of a Buick than a motorcycle's instrument panel. The body was a rich, chocolaty-red color, with two hard plastic saddlebags to match, each of them printed with the word
Interstate
and studded with square red reflectors. I swung my leg over and centered the weight of the bike. I was on my tiptoes, not the best sign, but I wasn't about to give up that easily.

“Mind if I take it for a spin?” I asked.

“Go for it,” Gerald said.

Riding the Silverwing was about as different from riding the Rebel as it gets. It was quiet behind the big windshield, and while the engine didn't have much punch to it, there was no question of its highway ability—it was, after all, the Interstate model. I made a sweeping U-turn and headed back the way I had come, playing with the gears, slowing down, then speeding up to get a feel for things. By the time I pulled back into the driveway, I knew I wanted it. I also knew it was too big for me. What the hell, I thought, and bought it anyway.

As Gerald filled out the title and wrote me up a bill of sale, I could barely sit still. I arranged to come back for the bike itself the next day, but we exchanged the paperwork and the money and the keys right then and there, then shook hands to seal the deal. The Silverwing was officially mine.

The next day, it poured. I waited for the sky to clear, but it never did, so it wasn't until the day after that I got a lift back to Worthington. I had the Rebel's license plate with me, and when I went to fasten it to the Silverwing I was pleased to see that Gerald had left me the nuts and bolts to do this, a detail I hadn't thought of, and the nuts were shaped like little silver skulls with molten red plastic eyes. It seemed like a good omen at the time, like those two little skulls would watch over me—a pair of hoodlum guardian angels. I waved my ride off and started the Silverwing. I got on and remembered how very high the seat was. I suddenly began to worry that this might not have been the best idea, but it was too late for that, so I stubbornly blocked it out. And it was such a handsome machine. I pulled out onto the road and once I was moving I pushed my worries away and got acquainted.

Learning to ride the Silverwing was like learning to ride a motorcycle all over again. The sheer size of it—the weight, the height—all conspired against me. In the first few days of owning it I dropped it twice just trying to park the damn thing. I found that only under the best circumstances could I find enough purchase with my toes to back it up, and that I couldn't manage to pick it up by myself—in addition to weighing well over five hundred pounds, it was unwieldy and top-heavy. Both were troubling realizations in light of my plans for the coming months, but I stuffed my doubts down as deep as they would go and told myself that it was just a matter of time and practice before I would be able to handle the Silverwing with as much ease as I could the Rebel. Besides, every motorcyclist has heard the saying “It's not
if
you drop it, it's
when
.” I hung on to that, and kept riding.

•   •   •

A
UGUST SLIPPED AWAY
and I turned twenty-four. I started by packing my books first, then I packed my trunk with most of my clothes and took down the artwork I had hung. With empty bookshelves, an empty closet, bare walls, and two weeks left on my lease, I continued to wrap up the loose ends of my life in Massachusetts. The uncertainty of when I would be back to claim everything spurred me on, and the more excited I got, the higher the tower of cardboard boxes climbed.

I took the Silverwing to a mechanic to get it checked out. I had found a different shop since my last run-in with Roy, one with a showroom full of bikes made all over the world and a staff that was kind and professional and helpful. I gave the guy behind the service desk my keys and asked him to give the Silverwing a once-over. The price I paid Gerald for it fell short of my budget, so I had figured on spending the difference to get it up to speed—after all, a thirty-year-old motorcycle can use all the love it can get.

“I'm riding to Florida,” I said, “and I sure would like to get there. Also, if you could lower the seat at all . . . even an inch, that would be great.”

“No problem,” the guy told me. “I'll call you in a few days.”

With the Silverwing in the shop, I slapped its license plate back onto the Rebel and rode that around in the meantime. At first I couldn't believe it was the same bike—it felt more like a scooter after my time on the Silverwing, but it was a relief to feel my feet flat on the ground once more, even if it did seem like a downgrade.

I think it must have been one of my last days at work when I got an update on the Silverwing. I remember sitting out in front of the restaurant with Zach, the head chef, before dinner service started. He was smoking and I was sunning, with my legs stretched out into the street, trying to soak up those last few minutes of freedom before the dining population descended. My phone buzzed inside my apron and I answered it.

“We've got a 1982 Silverwing here,” the man on the other end said.

“Yep, that's mine,” I told him. “What's the verdict?”

“Well,” he said. “We looked things over, and—it's pretty old. I'd figure it's a good bike for cruising around town, but that's about it. I can't really say if you'd make it to Florida on this thing, but I guess I advise against trying. Just enjoy it for what it is, y'know? There's not much we can do for it. Anyway, you can come pick it up whenever you like.”

“Hm,” I said.

“Oh, and the seat's as low as it can be.”

I said thanks and hung up. Zach lit another cigarette and held it between his teeth while he rolled up the white sleeves of his T-shirt over faded tattoos that snaked around his biceps. We sat for a minute, watching the pedestrians stroll by.

“What's the story?” he asked me.

“Weeell,” I said. “He would advise against taking it on such a long trip.”

“But you knew that already.”

I glowered at him, but that was true. I did know that already. How could I not know that? A thirty-year-old motorcycle is not exactly the ideal cross-country vehicle, even if it is the Interstate model. A beautiful woman walked past and our heads turned simultaneously to watch her go. Zach pushed his sunglasses up onto his nose and grinned at me, his snaggletoothed smile cracking open his tired face.

“And?” Zach prompted me. “You're gonna do it anyway?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm gonna do it anyway. I'll get as far as I get, and if it breaks down, then I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

“Sounds like it's settled, then.” He finished his second cigarette and put the filter in his pocket. “Tell you what—if you break down north of the Mason-Dixon, I'll come pick you up and bring you back.”

“What a relief,” I joked, although the prospect was more terrifying to me than funny, and we both got up to go inside. Again, I pushed my anxieties away and gave Zach a thump on the back as the door slammed shut and the air-conditioning hit us. “Ready?” I said, meaning the dinner shift, but still thinking about my ride south. Then I scooped up my helmet from where I had left it on the bar and tucked it away in the basement.

•   •   •

T
HERE IS ANOTHER FORM
of impulse this makes me think of, and it has nothing to do with the sudden and unreflective nature of my decisions. The physical manifestation of impulse has to do with the length of time a force is applied, and there is no better example to illustrate it than the design of a motorcycle helmet. The goal of the helmet is to increase the amount of time during which one's skull absorbs impact, thereby reducing its impulse. A force that is applied over a short period of time would be far more devastating to the brain than the same force if the impact were prolonged by mere fractions of a second. The padding of the helmet, combined with a layer of Styrofoam underneath, both prolongs the impact and disperses it, thereby lessening the likelihood of traumatic brain injury. Should a person's head connect with concrete instead of the inside of a helmet, the chances of a head injury skyrocket. In the event of a crash, motorcyclists are almost fifty percent more likely to die if they aren't wearing a helmet. Impulse is the reason why.

It's also worth mentioning that motorcycle helmets are designed to absorb impact only once—this is because the layer of Styrofoam, which is crushed during impact in order to prolong and disperse the force applied to one's head, doesn't rejuvenate, it can't un-crush itself—and so the next time that helmet is in a crash it won't slow the impulse the way it is meant to. Impact will be almost as severe as if the helmet wasn't there.

Consider the math. An impulse of one hundred newtons per second is enough to cause a fatal brain injury, and an average head might be expected to weigh six kilograms. Based on these numbers, a motorcyclist not wearing a helmet would need to be going only 37 mph at the time of a collision for a fatal head injury to occur. Now consider: you are thirty-seven times more likely to die in a motorcycle accident than in a car accident.

Thirty-seven miles per hour. Thirty-seven times more likely.

•   •   •

T
HE NEXT DAY
I got a ride to the mechanic's shop and picked the Silverwing up, then rode to work. I was in the middle of setting the dining room when the sous chef called me over to the big windows in the kitchen that looked out over the parking lot. He pointed down at two police officers circling the motorcycle, parked side by side with the dumpster. “I think you're getting a ticket,” he said with a bemused grin, but I was already racing down the steps, into the basement, and through the dish room. The two officers looked at me quizzically as I crashed through the screen door and into the alley.