Motorcycles I've Loved (6 page)

The flexibility of community college and the isolation of my childhood home set me at ease. I wasn't happy, but I was functional. I took night classes, worked breakfast shifts at local inns and B&Bs, and when I wasn't working or at school I was usually alone in Vermont, walking in the woods, reading or scribbling in my cramped loft. The loft had been my brother's room when we both lived in that house, and my room was below, but when he left I migrated upward. It was smaller than the lower room, the sloped ceiling barely high enough to stand up under, even at its peak and even for me. Its size never bothered either of us: there was a skylight, good for smoking out of, and the room was accessible only by ladder. A teenager's paradise. As I waited tables, cleaned hotel rooms, and cared for a five-year-old while I took night classes, I saved everything I earned in a wooden box next to my bed. Once a week or so I would take my five-year-old charge to the library to stock up on movies and picture books, and after we'd drive to the bank, where I would ceremoniously deposit a wad of assorted bills. The balance was rising ever so slowly, but the county was paying for my college classes and my parents were housing and feeding me—it had nowhere to go but up.

By the time I'd saved about two grand I was almost finished with my final semester at the Community College of Vermont. My last credits were from an intensive winter class, an online course, as I recall, so there was little to no fanfare over finishing. I certainly didn't mind—education had left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. I was burnt out from a perpetual roster of classes (though that was my own doing) and from the disaster that had been boarding school, feeling more than ready to leave standardized tests and textbooks behind. I can't even remember being congratulated, though of course I'm sure I was. I'd long since left the country by the time graduation rolled around, was already in Kilkee, Ireland, soaking my feet in the horseshoe bay, and didn't even see my diploma until four years after I'd earned it.

•   •   •

T
HE SAFETY CATCH
between order and disorder is as natural to us as time's arrow. Mountains don't spontaneously fall down, even though that is the tendency of energy—they erode ever so slowly, and only as the cosmic glue that binds rock to rock disintegrates. Air-conditioned rooms stay cold because walls keep out the heat, just as heated rooms stay warm because walls keep out the chill, quarters and dimes abide the confines of a pocket, and when you plug a drain the sink fills with water. The presence of containers and confinements such as these is ridiculous to even describe—it goes without saying. It is only in their absence or failure that the pull toward disorder becomes palpable. An open door, a hole in your pocket.

By the time I turned seventeen, many of the boundaries that tend to contain seventeen-year-olds had already collapsed. I was done with college for the time being, and I was done with Vermont. I needed to break away from my parents, from my adolescence, from everything that had happened with Phineas, but there was nothing new to become attached to. My ambitions had all melted away, and so I was propelled forward not by a presence but by an absence. I didn't care about continuing my education, or beginning a career, or even having a good time. There was no one I felt connected to, no bond to anchor me. I drifted—not because I was moving toward anything but because there was nothing to keep me still.

•   •   •

J
UST BEFORE
I flew to Ireland, I took a walk during a blizzard along the dirt road that I grew up on, and all I could see were the fat, white snowflakes clinging to my eyelashes. I was taking my backpack, loaded to the gills, on a trial run before I went abroad, and in the spirit of testing my gear I was also wearing the yellow poncho I had purchased in anticipation of Ireland's rain, though perhaps my winter coat might have been the better choice. I wore a new pair of Red Wing boots, made of oxblood leather, tied with brown laces, that slowly softened into the shape of my feet as I walked. The bright yellow halo of the poncho's hood, like a circular picture frame, edged my vision, but it was all I could see. The rest was white.

Three orphaned kittens who were living in our woodshed trailed behind me as I trudged along, a little band of misfits that had gotten into the habit of following me around. Already the snow had overwhelmed their legs and was pressing up against their warm bellies. There were no tire tracks in front of us, no footsteps, no trees or power lines anymore, just thick, white powder covering everything and a dim, dirty-white sky.

When I turned and squinted to check on the kittens I saw only two, so I went back to scoop up the third, a smudge of orange fur drowning in white a ways behind the others, and tucked him inside my yellow jacket, where he purred steadily against my chest. The other two kittens eventually stopped and turned around, but the orange tom and I kept going—he kept purring, I kept walking, the blizzard kept coming, and together we disappeared into its blank, white stare.

Several weeks later I boarded a plane in Boston amid more snow, the Red Wings on my feet, the backpack in cargo, and crossed the ocean. Disembarking in Ireland, I began a journey that would last longer and extend farther than I'd ever expected. Along my way, I would learn that the kittens who had followed me so faithfully into that blizzard disappeared the same month I did. I comforted myself by imagining them finding adventure—a new life in a strange place, just like me. It may be unlikely that a trio of kittens could survive a forest full of predators and emerge on the other side, but I don't think it's impossible. Survival is easy. It's living that's hard.

Friction

T
he summer I bought the Rebel I went to a local dealership to get it inspected. It was before I left to work at the camp in Rowe, an hour north of my house in Northampton. In the service area there was a makeshift office, nestled among the oil stains and the scattered tools, fitted with a desk, a watercooler, and two screechy rolling chairs. Roy, the proprietor, sat in one, me in the other. I watched as he riffled through a mound of paperwork on his desk, leaf by leaf, throwing nearly all of it into the waste bin, and I waited. Finally, he looked at me and asked, for the second time, what I wanted.

“An inspection,” I repeated. He fell silent, threw away a few more things, and let the pause go on so long I wondered if maybe he'd forgotten I was there. Again.

“Bring your bike up to the line,” he grumbled eventually.

“Actually, it's that one,” I said, and I pointed to it, parked with the front tire on the white line, just like he'd asked, not ten feet from where we were sitting. He made an unhappy little noise in his throat, as though being bullied, as though he'd rather not be wasting his time with this girlish intruder. The other, younger mechanic, who had been making eyes at me since I walked in, snorted under his breath; it occurred to me that I didn't know which one of us he was laughing at, but I suspected either way the joke was on me.

Finally, Roy stood, pulling himself up by the edge of the desk. The chair rolled away from him as he got to his feet and chirped to a halt near a glowing yellow Chopper parked next to the open door. He shuffled over to my bike, which looked tiny beside the hulking monsters that crowded the edges of the shop, took a little ruler out of his shirt pocket, and started measuring the tread on my tires. He told me I'd need to replace them soon, but that he'd let it go for now.

“Cute little bike you got here,” he said with a condescending smile. “At least it starts with the right letter.” The right letter is
H
, and according to men like Roy, of whom I've met many, the right ending is
ARLEY
, letters that spell not only an all-American motorcycle manufacturer but an all-American lifestyle. I made what I hoped was a polite but discouraging sound—squabbling over one's preferred make of motorcycle is infantile. Either it runs or it doesn't; either you ride it or you don't. If you want to ride a Harley, then buy one. If you want
everyone
to ride a Harley, then move to Daytona or shut the fuck up about it.

His huge midsection flared out from his slight frame like a ballerina's tutu, precariously balanced on his slender legs and tiny, tennis-shoed feet as he moved around the bike, inspecting. He crouched down to check my oil, then my front axle. Leaning in close, he poked the front brake pads with a pen.

“You're in trouble over here,” he said, and stood up slowly. “You need new brake pads.” He paused and chewed on his pen for a minute, then reasoned, “But you probably don't know what those are.” I ground my teeth together with a squeak that made my head ache. The younger mechanic snorted again and looked over at us. I glared at him, and he went back to his carburetor.

“I know what brake pads are,” I snapped, but Roy wasn't listening anymore, he was lumbering back over to the makeshift office.

He retrieved his chair from near the Chopper on his way and rolled it back over to the desk. When he sat down, the scream of creaking metal was so shrill I thought the springs might snap, but they held admirably. He shuffled through some more papers. I stayed by the bike. To soothe myself, I imagined knocking over that entire flock of motorcycles, like shining, flawless dominoes crashing down, one after another. They would topple, starting with the Chopper, until they had all crumpled into one long, metallic mountain ridge. I imagined the silence that would follow, the eerie moment of an echo, then the final crunch of a mirror splintering.

“I'm gonna pass you this time,” he said finally, like it was against his better judgment, “but get those tires replaced and don't forget about your front brakes. You want a quote?”

“No, I can do it myself,” I lied. I would figure it out eventually; maybe Rigdhen could give me some pointers.

Chuckling, Roy ripped off a receipt for the inspection from his pad and handed it to me. “If that don't work out, you feel free to come back. I'll give you a good deal.”

I said thanks as gracefully as I could manage, not very, forked over fifteen dollars, and hit the pavement. The sun was out, I had the day off, and it was only the beginning of my first motorcycling season. I let my arms hang slack from the handlebars and my shoulders relax, then I opened up the throttle, knocked the Rebel up a gear, and let her do the rest.

•   •   •

N
OTHING STRENGTHENS
determination quite like skepticism. The idea to replace my own brake pads was born the moment Roy insinuated that I couldn't do it, and it was the same when I'd decided to go abroad as a teenager: the friendly and familial doubt that met my initial airing of the idea only made me more certain that I would do it. The particular friction of someone else's disbelief or doubt, that chafing between what I
think I can do and what someone else thinks I can do, is as infuriating as it is irresistible.

In the physical world,
friction
is defined as the force that resists relative motion between two surfaces—the quantity of resistance. It isn't a straightforward force, like a push or a pull, nor is it constant in its application like gravity; it's unpredictable, with a whole host of variations. There's fluid friction, internal friction, lubricated friction, dry friction, and the list goes on. Dry friction comes to mind first, simply specifying that the two objects or surfaces coming into contact with each other are solid. Within dry friction, there are two subcategories: static and kinetic. Static friction occurs between two objects that are not moving relative to each other. A motorcycle parked on an incline is relying on static friction to stay stationary, but if that same motorcycle were being ridden down the freeway, it would still be relying on the static friction between the pavement and the tire to stay in control. The bike is moving, the wheels are spinning, but as each inch of rubber connects with another inch of highway, in that moment those two surfaces rely on static friction to keep them joined. Lay some ice down on the road and it's a different story—it's kinetic friction.

Kinetic friction occurs when two objects or surfaces are moving relative to each other. The element of ice undoes the static friction the motorcycle tires were relying on from the road, and suddenly those tires are slipping all over the place—but what has changed? A new surface has been introduced to the mix, ice rather than concrete, and along with this comes a new frictional coefficient. The
coefficient of friction
is a number that describes the ratio between the force necessary to move an object or surface against another and the pressure between the two surfaces. For example, the frictional coefficient for rubber on dry concrete is 1.0. For rubber on wet concrete it's 0.7. Rubber and ice? 0.15. These numbers don't come from calculations, they are empirical measurements, which means that they come from experimentation and observation. There is no formula for friction.

•   •   •

I
T WAS A WEEK
or two after the inspection. I was at the youth camp in Rowe, warming up to my affair with motorcycles. I stood up from examining the front wheel, and my knees left sandy dimples in the road. Dusting off my hands and my gravel-studded shins, I considered the scant handful of teenagers that crowded around the Rebel. The Clymer maintenance, troubleshooting, and repair manual for this model lay facedown on the black seat, open to the chapter on brakes—front brakes, rear brakes, brake maintenance, brake pads, brake rotors, brake troubleshooting: we were hot and thirsty and totally stumped.

That afternoon we had wandered down to the parking lot with our chests puffed out and our elbows cocked, looking to start a project. We had brought my dusty toolbox, filled with tools swiped from an abandoned garage and a brand-new ratchet set on loan from a friend, the Clymer manual, a bag of salted pretzel rods, and some shiny new brake pads, still in the package. The ruse was that this was a summer camp activity, that I knew what I was doing, and that I was going to teach them something.

I explained to them the basics of how to ride, even though they weren't quite old enough, how the brakes worked, what we were aiming to do, and then we sat in the dirt and tried to figure out how to do it. I had already read the chapter, but being handy is something I only aspire to—I have never had that instinctive knowledge of how things work the way someone like my father does. Sometimes I can see the gears clicking together in his eyes when he looks at a machine, or the boards joining up when he looks at a house, and his hands just know where to go, what to do, what's wrong and how to fix it. It's miraculous; but for me, that base intuition into how something
works
just isn't there. I see what it does, how to use it, but the inner life of objects has never been visible to me like that.

The teenagers and I tinkered on, eating pretzels, showing off, flipping through the manual. The sand we sat on got hot, and then the metal on the bike got hotter, and then we hit a wall. We couldn't apply enough force to a small, awkwardly positioned place on the front brake caliper in order to make room for the new brake pads.

Braking on any vehicle is essentially the transference of a small force created by the driver, in this case the pressure on the lever of the right handlebar, into a larger force that slows the rotation of the wheel by maximizing the friction between the brake pads and the rotor. On a motorcycle, when you squeeze the front brake, it compresses the brake fluid that flows through the brake line to the caliper on the front wheel. Pinned to the caliper and clamped onto the disk rotor are the brake pads, two little pancake pieces of metal that catch the rotor between their graphite palms every time the rider brakes and slow its rotation. The two pads are pressed together by the force provided from the compressed brake fluid, which has nowhere else to go, so it extends the caliper pistons, which compress the brake pads, which make contact with the rotor and create the friction that slows the vehicle. The brake pads slowly wear away with each use; the heat of the friction, the grind against the disk rotor—it all takes its toll, and if you let them wear too thin you run the risk of grinding through the rotor. The problem might start as a soft squeal or a squeak, but eventually you will lose the ability to brake effectively.

We had gotten the caliper off the wheel and the old brake pads out without too much trouble, but the problem that the afternoon inevitably presented wasn't covered in the Clymer manual, and, like I said, we were stumped. As the brake pads wear down, they become thinner, and as they become thinner the brake fluid level adjusts to keep them firmly pinned to the rotor by the caliper pistons. On the Rebel, the pistons had seized in an extended position and the new brake pads, fat and fresh as they were, couldn't fit into the space. We had tried to force the pistons back, to no avail. Even our strongest efforts yielded disappointing results.

There is a level of raw strength that is required in auto mechanics—to loosen a bolt that hasn't moved in decades, or to fit a part into a space that will barely accommodate it—but there is also a certain tenderness that is called for. You wouldn't drag a big piece of furniture across a polished hardwood floor, the friction would scuff the hell out of it; you find a way to move it without damaging the wood. It's the same working on motorcycles—no unconstructive friction. Find another way.

The pistons were impossible, and even though we were trying to be careful, there were a few shallow scratches on the caliper that hadn't been there before: never a good thing. The workshop slot ended and the teenagers drifted away, thrilled by the smell of grease, unfazed, I hoped, by the failure. I stubbed the dirt with my toe and watched them disperse. There had to be another way to go about it.

If the essential concept behind motorcycle brakes is to transfer a small force in the front brake lever into a larger force in order to compress the brake pads, then that conversion of force also works the other way around. After the campers left that afternoon, I went hunting for a clamp—something that wouldn't slip the way the crowbars and wooden wedges we had been trying did, and could exert a large amount of force transferred through a measured, relatively small force applied by me. I eventually found one with a little help, and in the near dark I sat cross-legged in the sandy parking lot and fastened the clamp onto the extended pistons. I tightened it, and as I wound the crank, the pistons sank back into the caliper. I slotted in the new brake pads and fished the unfastened pins out of a canning jar I kept in my toolbox for loose parts. I attached the caliper to the rotor, pumped the brakes a few times to tighten the fluid and test the friction, then I sat down with my back against the car parked next to my bike.

Almost as soon as I started riding motorcycles, I became eager to learn how they worked. Roy wasn't my first encounter with mockery surrounding my new interest, and he wasn't my last. While reactions like his inspired my irritation, they also fueled me with a thirst for mechanics. It made me realize that my capability as a motorcyclist was going to be constantly called into question and that I'd better do my homework: at the very least, learn to name the components of my vehicle, their function, how they fit together. There's an elegant simplicity to motorcycles, especially old ones—the engine is right there, the mechanisms exposed. I may not be able to
fix
it, but the least I can do is figure out how it works. This stuff isn't easy for me, but I owe it to myself to learn what I can, whether it comes fast or slow, easy or hard.

I leaned my head back on the driver's-side door and found an early star in the dusty blue sky—just one, though—and I nudged my toolbox shut with my foot. The snap of the latch echoed, bouncing between the cars and the softly murmuring maple trees. I fished a wrench out of the sand that I almost hadn't seen and I turned it over in my hands. I balanced it on my palm, testing the weight of it, then I opened the box and laid it down among the other tools.