Yesterday

"Who hath ordained that a parchment scroll shall fence round miles of land?  When millions of hands want acres, and millions of acres want hands?" -Augustine Duganne


Five hours in the woods.  60° meant all the fair weather riders showed up.  After nearly two months riding alone, it was time to share.  I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

Spend enough time roaming around on a plot of land and you form attachments, begin to feel a sense of ownership.  Obviously not in any legal sense, that was held by some corporation who simply hadn't found a cost-effective way to make the soggy tract of land with no viable traffic access profitable.  Yet.  Somehow, it was mine, at least a little bit.  I had conquered every hillclimb out there, searched out all the paths others couldn't be bothered to ride, carried out trash left by shitheads who didn't give a damn.

One of yesterday's riders described the place as "Heaven", and I supposed he was right.  A few hundred acres of wild surrounded by uncountable square miles of mild.  But a shadow crossed my mind as he spoke the words and I knew all too clearly, it cannot last.  Someday the fences will go up and the establishment will come down, on us, who only sought to enjoy the fallow land.

Heaven is where you find it.  You always have to be looking, because it keeps moving around.

Tomorrow

Back to the woods.  It's been nine days since I was there.  Far too long.  Piss poor weather (yes, even I have my limits, somewhere around 17° F) and piss poor work hours (haven't found a way out of it yet).

At least I've had the opportunity to do some work on the KDX.  New clutch plates, filed down the badly grooved teeth on the basket, recovered the seat along with new foam from CEET.  I installed a modified cylinder head from RB designs.  And of course finally laced a black front wheel to match the rear using an Excel rim and their spline drive spokes.

Those familiar with the KDX will recognize the front end as different than stock.  A set of conventional forks from a 1998 RM125 were grafted onto the Kawasaki.  Shortened and revalved by Works Enduro Rider in NJ, they saw their first dirt use recently.  After living with the stock front end (even after WER's tweaking) for over a year, the RM forks were a night and day difference.  It wasn't cheap, but considering the amount of time I'm spending in the saddle off-road (20-25 hours per month), it was money well spent.  The only trade off is a little bit less steering lock, but not enough to make a huge difference.

The KDX200

Today

Of course, if you get to ride a motorcycle there, it makes it a little easier.  Don't make excuses. Ride. Today. Because tomorrow you might be dead.

Lessons Learned FMT Epilogue

The final installment of "Fuck Me Twice"


I never saw The Skunk again after being hastily escorted from that back alley bike shop.  Which was probably a good thing.  I worried it might keep turning up in my life, haunting me like some mechanical apparition from which I would never be free.  Chances are it enjoyed a short repose in some scrapyard before being crushed and sent to China.  Rockabilly Rob was not smart enough or well-heeled or ambitious enough to have rebuilt it.  Maybe some of its parts ended up on other machines allowing it to live on as an alloy and steel organ donor.

It doesn't really matter.  There is no particular nostalgia in my heart for that machine and I don't pine for another one.  Not a particularly great motorcycle, neither fast nor sweet handling.  It was heavy and slow compared to the other two-strokes of the same era, the Yamaha RDs and the Kawasaki H and KH models.  That GT380 sticks out in my mind mostly because it was the first and (so far) only motorcycle taken from me.

I learned that no matter how crappy your stuff is, how little you feel like you have, there is always somebody with less that is willing to take it, along with whatever else you got, by all means at their disposal.  Not exactly a Hallmark sentiment, but true nonetheless.

My vigilance increased tenfold.  I became a savvy city dweller instead of a victim, moving furtively amongst the thieves and cabs and cops, quicker than death or skullduggery.  The price for this survival?  A little bit of innocence.

Even the most unremarkable machine can teach lessons.

  

The End, I Supposed

Part VIII of Fuck Me Twice

(scroll down blog to read parts 1-7)

It was an interesting call to the Philadelphia Police.

"My motorcycle has been stolen."

"Give me the VIN# please.", asked a pleasant sounding woman on the other end.

"86754 XXX"

"That's already been reported honey.  But, good news, it's been recovered.  You can go pick it up at....".

"53rd and Pentridge, right?  I already did that.  It's been stolen again."

"Oh honey, you don't have any luck, do you?"

The insurance company was a little more skeptical, demanding I pay for yet another police report.  Weeks turned into months and finally two years passed.  There were other motorcycles, some better, some worse.  A 1979 CX500 (utter pile of shit), a 1980 Yamaha 650 Special with custom paint (great bike when the charging system worked) and a 1979 CB750F Supersport (again, a great bike when the charging system worked or the ignitor boxes weren't failing), but the little triple was not forgotten.

A friend decided he just had to have a motorcycle, which is how we found ourselves at one of the less reputable hole in the wall cycle shops in Philadelphia.  Their wares were overpriced and had mostly been flogged to within an inch of death, I would not have felt comfortable riding one of those rigs around the block, let alone across the country, as we planned.  The tattooed rockabilly mechanic/salesmen wouldn't let it go, he was determined to show us everything and prove his superior two-wheel acumen.  He had already made technically inaccurate statements regarding motorcycles, but I didn't have the heart to try and educate him.  This reject from a Social Distortion road crew led us to a dimly lit back room to show us the "project bikes".  Again, mostly worn out machines being hacked into Frankensteinian abortions.  He was most proud of his new "chopper project".

"I bet you can't tell me what it is," he said, pointing to his "project", a frame with a motor and exhaust sitting on the floor tilted at a haphazard angle.

"It's what's left of a 1976 Suzuki GT380, and I actually own it.  It's stolen."

 My eyes were drawn to the exhaust pipes, the left one unmistakably ground down from being dragged.  I looked for the oddball kickstart lever, check, my wiring repairs, check.  I knelt down and read the VIN#, having committed The Skunk's to heart by repeated readings to the police and State Farm.  There was no doubt, this had been my motorcycle, and it looked worse than the last time I saw it two years ago.

The look of shock on Rockabilly Rob's face was worth the price of admission.  He stuttered and stammered and abruptly left the room, returning with the shop's owner, a goliath of a man.

The proprietor stood six foot six and close to 300 pounds, covered in jailhouse tattoos.  If the rumors were to be believed he was hooked up with motorcycle gangs and drug sales, he certainly looked the part.  The only other time I had been to his shop, I watched him get pissed at a motorcycle that was leaking gas, which he promptly picked up and tossed into the street.  He towered over me with his arms crossed.

"That bike ain't stolen, understand?  It's time for you and your friend to leave.  There is nothing here you need to be worried about except yourself, got it?"

What could I say?  I suppose I could have gotten the title and returned with the police, but what in the hell was I going to do with a frame and motor in my apartment?  If I caused trouble for this scumbag, I might end up with more than my share as well.  There was no way out here, except empty handed.  No justice would be meted out on this day.  Like so many other cruelly disappointing situations in life that seem to demand action, the only real choice was to walk away.

And remember.  

What remained of The Skunk in that South Philadelphia shop was less than this.

  

The Second Fuck

Part VII of Fuck Me Twice

(Scroll down the blog to read parts 1-6)

In the interest of, ahem, brevity, I will avoid going into great detail about the deaf woman who approached as we pushed the carcass of my Suzuki GT380. She told us she called the police from a payphone regarding the stolen motorcycle in front of her house (turns out she didn't have a phone, or electricity either).

I will refrain from transcribing her vernacular, not because of the wishy washy PC douchebags, but because it would take too long to do so and be far too painful to read.  Suffice it to say she sounded like Helen Keller talking out of some Ebonic Speak N Spell.

The short version of her spiritually and aurally agonizing tale is that the 21 year old turd who stole my motorcycle also happened to have impregnated her 14 year old daughter.  His name was Corey.  I remember this 20 years later because I have never met anyone named Corey that I actually liked.  It just seems like a douchey name.  The Corey in question had a violent streak, so when he wasn't spreading his seed through the statutory rape of young girls he liked to get rough with them.  My heart went out to this woman, and I tried to imagine raising a child and grandchild here in the dark without even a phone, but it was too big.  I had not come to solve all society's ills this night, but merely to return my motorcycle home, preferably before a confrontation with Corey.  Possession is 9/10ths of the law, and if that son of a bitch possessed a knife or a gun, he was the law.

We pushed that motorcycle back through the wasteland as it grew ever heavier.  Three miles might as well have been one thousand as the flat tires made this back-breaking, awkward labor.  The night was stickily humid and black like ink.  Sweat poured down and soaked our clothes without relieving the body.  If only it was cooler, I thought.....

As if in a wry answer from the universe, a terrifying crack rent the night and from some ironic heaven obscured by smog and darkness, a deluge came.  The thunderstorm I wished for three days ago arrived.  At the worst possible moment.  The sky was alight with electricity and thunder broke overhead like bombs exploding.  It rained so hard we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces, let alone push a boat anchor with flat tires.

Luckily we were only two blocks from a friend of Kevin's who allowed us to wheel the beast into her yard.  It was 4 am. Dripping and exhausted we abandoned the bike, agreeing to come back first thing in the morning to remove it.

Kevin went to his girlfriend's house, I returned home.  The rain stopped and the humidity rose again.  I lay in bed, thinking about the work that would be necessary to fix my bike.  Expensive, well beyond any value of the machine, but it seemed like the only appropriate fuck you to the thief and the universe that created him.  I dozed, taking some small satisfaction in the fact that what was left of my motorcycle would be back home tomorrow, and the process of rebuilding could begin.

The telephone jangled me awake at 8:00. It was Kevin.

"Did you come and get that bike already?"

"No, I just woke up."

"It's gone man."

"What?"

"Your bike ain't there. It's gone.  Somebody must have taken it."

Fuck me.  Again.

As I slept, visions of a triple rebuild danced in my head.  All for naught.

Heavy Instrument (Part VI)

Part VI of Fuck Me Twice

(scroll down the blog for parts 1-5)


In the middle of the block between 53rd and 54th, I could see The Skunk.  From about 50 feet out she looked ok, but as I got closer things took a turn to the gruesome.  The tail light was broken, as were both signal lights, rear fender crinkled, and the rear tire flat.  It got worse as I came around the left side of the machine, the gas tank was dented to hell and had deep gouges from what I guessed was being dragged on its side, because the seat cover was shredded, and the left exhaust pipe ground through.  Gauges smashed, the headlight, mirrors and front signal lights as well, the front tire also flat.  Hewn wires dangled like vinyl covered copper entrails.  Someone had wantonly smashed every inch of the motorcycle with a heavy instrument, slashed the tires and left her to die in this grotesque wasteland.

I wasn't sure how to feel.  Of course there was anger.  I wanted to kick some motherfucker's teeth in.  But I was also afraid.  The sheer violence with which my motorcycle appeared have been attacked was shocking, could the perpetrator be lurking in the darkness somewhere, full of more malice and savagery?  A stranger in a strange land I was clearly not equipped (or armed) enough to handle, my soul turned a sickly cold.  Had my roommate Kevin not been there I may have just run away, a white streak in the black night.

"Can you ride it with two flat tires?", he asked.

"Really slowly."

"Start it up and let's go."

I swung the kickstart out and nearly buckled my goddamn knee when the lever refused to move.  The motor was locked up solid.  My other foot slipped and I finally noticed the dark wetness all over the tarmac beneath the bike.  The heartless bastard had pulled the transmission drain plug and cut the oil line from the injection tank and let the very lifeblood of the machine drain into the gutter, then he must have started the motor and let it run until it was finally overcome by friction.  Who in the hell steals something only to utterly destroy what little value it has?  I could have wept, if not for my overwhelming disgust.

It was dead.  About as dead as a motorcycle can get, and it's lifeless corpse had been raped and desecrated by some lowlife piece of shit.  You know how on those cop dramas the tough yet sensitive detectives are always telling the family they don't want to see the body of their loved one after a horrific murder?  Well, I got a feeling they are probably right.  It wasn't a particularly fancy motorcycle, and prior to this it had its bumps and bruises, but it was mine.  My hands had sprayed the paint, covered the seat, replaced the clutch and a thousand other smaller, forgotten chores.  We had cruised the back roads of upstate NY, ridden the interstate 400 miles to Philadelphia and hundreds of other jaunts.  And this is where it was going to end, some godforsaken city street, nothing more than a pile of petroleum oozing scrap?

It was too much.  Even with two flat tires, I was going to push that 400 plus pound thing back home.  I would rather have had a heart attack doing so than leaving it there, a forgotten casualty in a fucked-up war.

  

Not a good place to die, even for a 1976 GT380.