Shakedown Blues
A Collection of Motorcycle TalesBy C.G. MasiiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2009 C.G. Masi
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4502-0091-2Contents
Preface.....................................................................viiMotorcycle Journalism Meets The Three Billy Goats Gruff.....................ixShakedown Blues.............................................................1"Shakedown Blues" and the Too-Long Troll....................................3The Saga of Fred's Paint....................................................5Shakedown Run...............................................................17In the Dark.................................................................29The Vermont Loop............................................................39"The Vermont Loop" and Procreation Through Cuttings.........................41The Vermont Loop............................................................43Arizona Heat................................................................57"Arizona Heat" and the Cut-and-Paste Troll..................................59Arizona Heat................................................................61Rolling Thunder V...........................................................79"Rolling Thunder V" and You Wanted It When?.................................81The Road Down...............................................................83The Road Back...............................................................89Mojave Tryout...............................................................97"Mojave Tryout" and the Stake Through the Heart.............................99Mojave Tryout...............................................................101Epilogue....................................................................111
Chapter One
Shakedown Blues
"Shakedown Blues" and the Too-Long Troll
Around 1991, I conceived an idea for a monthly column entitled "Our Gang" that would consist of character studies of ordinary motorcyclists. Bikers tend to be unique individuals with an off-center sense of humor; following almost any one of them around for a weekend, or even an afternoon, can easily fill a thousand-word column with hilarious anecdotes.
Fortunately, I decided to experiment with the form before trying to sell the idea. Unfortunately, I found that all the columns I started took on lives of their own, turned into short stories, and grew past three thousand words with no end in sight and no hope of cutting without losing the story's thread. I started five of these things before giving it up as unworkable, at least by me.
"Shakedown Blues" started out as one of those columns profiling Fred Hutt and his misadventures with his just-rebuilt antique motorcycle at the annual Laconia, New Hampshire, motorcycle rally in 1991. The story grew so large, so fast, and has so many interrelated twists and turns that it is almost a book in itself. I tried breaking it up into three stories: "The Saga of Fred's Paint," "Shakedown Blues," and "Electric Overload." That strategy didn't work, either. Each section was still too long by itself, and a lot of the impact would have been lost by publishing the pieces separately. Telling it would have to wait for publication of this volume.
Even in its present form, "Shakedown Blues" leaves out a lot of what happened. In fact, the story is still growing. In a lot of ways, Fred's Panhead is a hard-luck bike. Since the end of the story as reported, it has undergone two major reconstructions. In 1992 it swallowed a wrist-pin retaining clip, which destroyed the motor. Fred spent the rest of that summer and winter on repairing that damage. The 1993 season started off with the bike taking a first prize in an antique motorcycle show, then being smashed in the classic motorist-making-a-left-turn-in-front-of-the-bike accident. ("I didn't see him," she said. Sound familiar?)
When last I saw the Panhead, Fred had brought it back from the dead for a third time and was, once again, riding it to work each day! He reported, "For the first time, I feel really comfortable riding it. I was always afraid of getting a scratch or a ding. Now, it's got scratches and dings and I don't have to worry anymore."
The Saga of Fred's Paint
It all started one winter several years ago, on a cold Saturday morning. Bob had stopped by to borrow a star wrench and stayed to drink coffee for a while. We were idly tossing ideas back and forth, trying to figure out how to make money riding bikes.
Every motorcyclist wants to make money riding bikes. There's a fantasy that, if you can make motorcycling pay well enough, you can spend all your time playing motorcycles.
As most bikers find out, that's nearly impossible. The number of people who make money on bikes divided by the number of people who burn money up on bikes is so close to zero you could shave with the difference.
For example, Bob was a professional photographer. His thought was to ride around the country taking pictures of what he saw. Being a professional writer, I thought of doing something similar-and writing about it.
The result is that I spent a ton of money riding around North America and writing about it. I then sold the stories to motorcycling magazines and made back a fraction of what the tours cost. Bob's experience was about the same.
Nearly everyone who makes money on bikes is either a Harley mechanic or parts seller or salesman. Almost nobody makes money out of actually riding the things.
Anyway, in the middle of this eternal and hopeless discussion, the phone rang. It was Fred, and Fred was a bit breathless.
"Charlie, where can I find a good Harley mechanic?"
Like I said, most people who make money on bikes are either Harley mechanics or they sell parts. Fred hadn't gotten to the "parts" part, yet.
"What do you need a Harley mechanic for?" At the time Fred was riding a 750 Honda.
"My father just gave me his old bike. It's an old Harley."
"Hey, Bob!" I said, "Fred's father just gave him his old Harley."
"What kind is it?" asked Bob.
"Fred, what kind is it?"
"I just told you-it's a Harley."
"Yeah, but what kind of Harley? Is it a Knucklehead, a Panhead, a Shovelhead ... what?"
"I don't know, how can you tell?"
Fred didn't know a hell of a lot about Harleys. Despite an early childhood spent on the back, riding with his father and mother to rallies, he'd never gotten involved with the actual machinery. To him, Harleys were a dream out of the mists of time, or something to aspire to. They were an ethereal mystique from the cover of a Grateful Dead album. They weren't quite real.
"Look at the cylinder heads. What do they look like? A Knucklehead has fins sticking up that look like knuckles, a Shovelhead looks like the back of a shovel ..."
"No, these look like a couple of bread pans turned upside down."
A moment of silence.
"Bob," I said quietly, "Fred has himself a Panhead."
It turned out that Fred was sitting on a 1949 74 c.i.d., Hydra Glide Panhead in nearly original condition. I probably would have changed the oil, gassed it up, screwed on a borrowed license plate, and hit the road right then.
Fred made a different choice. He decided to restore it.
Fred spent the rest of the winter on his restoration project. By early spring, he had the Panhead completely apart. No fastener was still threaded into its mating part. He had inspected every nut, bolt, gear, and machined part. He knew more about what the inside of a Panhead looked like than most of the people who'd ridden them for years. He was deep into planning his meticulous restoration when disaster struck.
People talk about dropping a stone in the water in, say, England, and how it affects the pattern of the waves in, say, New York. They say you never know what the results will be. It could change history.
In this case, Fred became enamored with the enamel (sorry, I couldn't pass up the play on words) on Jamie's bike.
Doom reared its ugly head on Laconia weekend. At the time, there were three major motorcycling events each year, each named for the town at its epicenter. Sturgis, South Dakota, hosted the biggest, typically topping half a million participants. Daytona Beach, Florida, hosted one about half that size. The Laconia, New Hampshire, run was considerably smaller, seldom reaching a hundred thousand participants, but it was local for us, since we all lived less than a hundred miles from it. Our friend Guy, for example, hadn't missed a Laconia run in twenty years.
In those days, a bunch of us would spend Father's Day weekend up at a cabin in Meredith, New Hampshire, owned by Guy's brother-in-law. The cabin was a ten-minute ride from the center of the Laconia maelstrom at Weirs Beach.
Guy's brother-in-law wasn't a biker. Every year, he'd leave the key to the cabin under the porch where Guy could find it-and make himself scarce. Later that day, we would wander in one or two at a time, get drunk, shoot at beer cans, and generally howl at the moon.
The bikers in attendance would change from year to year. That was the first year Fred made the scene (on his Honda) and, as fate would have it, Jamie showed up on a Harley Davidson FX he'd rebuilt.
Jamie's bike was a fairly late model FX. He had put a lot of TLC into it and a fair amount of money for a working-class kid in his early twenties.
The bike looked good. The paint looked good, too. It was a nice deep violet enamel. Fred, as I said, loved it. "Who did your paint?" Fred asked.
"I did it myself," Jamie giggled.
Why did Jamie giggle?
"You have your own spray booth and gun?"
"No." Jamie snickered, about ready to burst. "I used a spray can! It's plain old Krylon! I just sanded the surface down well, made sure everything was clean, then-sssst. That's how it came out."
After Fred saw Jamie's paint job, advice about chemistry, spray booths, and, especially, paint selection whizzed right past him. He did listen to the part about preparation and buffing, however. After all, Jamie said his secret was in the preparation.
Fred swore to prepare the tanks and fenders on his Panhead within an inch of their lives. He talked about wet sanding with twelve-hundred-grit paper. He talked about putting things in a cold oven for hours to make sure they were all at exactly the same temperature. He experimented with Rust-Oleum paint.
Swear-to-god! Rust-Oleum paint! He started using the stuff on things like little rough-finished levers and fittings, then got as far as doing his inner primary cover. He was getting results that were fine.
There is, however, a vast difference between what's acceptable on an inner primary cover and what looks good on a tank.
The Saga of Fred's paint took another abrupt turn to the left (or, the more sinister direction) after Fred and I spent a day selling the contents of our garages at a swap meet in Warwick, Rhode Island. It came without warning. There was no defense.
Fred got the show bug.
At Warwick, the bike that walked away with trophies in the antique-stock class was a '49 Panhead like Fred's, but couldn't match what Fred had for completeness or authenticity.
"Look at this thing," Fred said, "It's supposed to be a '49, but that tank emblem is from a '48. The fender trim is all wrong, and the rear bumper is completely missing."
He droned on like that for about ten minutes, working himself into a frenzy. Over the year he'd spent playing with his Panhead like it was a jigsaw puzzle, Fred had made himself into an expert on the fit and trim of stock Harleys from the entire Panhead era.
If only Fred could get a show-quality finish, he could give 'em a run for their money.
By this time, however, Fred had primed everything with Rust-Oleum primer. He felt he was committed to that paint. But, now he wanted to end up with a show-quality bike! That, of course, was a recipe for disaster.
Jamie's bike was pretty, but it wasn't show quality. He didn't intend it to be. Those of us who've been riding Harleys for a while have come to realize that there are bikes for riding and bikes for showing-and that never the twain shall meet. After a bike has been ridden for a while, it can't compete in a show. General wear and tear quickly degrade the finish.
That's why bike-show organizers judge ride-ins separately from straight show bikes. Constants and blasting by 70-mph road grit, errant rocks dropped from trucks on the highway or kicked up by cars, and the odd drunk weaving between rows of parked bikes with a pound of keys hanging from his belt leave their indelible mark on any bike that has to work for a living, burning any chance it ever had to outshine a show bike.
For example, I have a 1988 Heritage Softail with its fair share of chrome doodads. A little chrome polish, a squirt of S-100 spray cleaner and it looks like new-until you look closely.
The windshield's badly scarred in a few places. The finish on the seat is heavily worn. My ol' lady's boots have scratched up the chrome on the passenger floorboards and chrome toolbox. Packing sleeping bags, tents, and so forth for thousand-mile weekends has wrecked the finish on the saddlebags and rear fender. Yanking the rear wheel three times has scarred the rear pulley and brake caliper. After nineteen thousand miles, the chrome on the wheels wouldn't clean up right, and it carries a lot more miles than that, now. It is a great bike for riding and nothing to be ashamed of, but it would be a joke at a show.
I actually did show it once. One of the bros in my H.O.G. chapter had gotten involved with the Autofest put on every year by the Exchange Club of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Art was heavily into show bikes and was trying to get as many bikers as possible to show up.
At the time, I was editor of the chapter's newsletter, so I felt I was doubly obligated to show up. Besides, every time this bunch gets together, it turns out to be a plain-old, sit-down-and-have-a-beer, let's-see-what-happens-next good time.
When I got to the gate, they started taking down all the particulars of my bike and wanted to know what class I was going to show it in.
"I'm not going to show this thing. I'm here as a spectator."
"Then you'll have to park on the street."
I looked across the field at the three rows of bikes parked inside with little stickers on them that marked them as show entrants. My bike wanted to park there, too. The thought of being left out lonely on the street when it could huddle up with all those other bikes and have a motorcycle's equivalent of a good time sent shivers through its little metal heart. It looked up at me with a little puppy-dog look in its headlight, as if to say, "Pleeease, Please, can I go in? Huh? Huh? I'll be good. Pleeease?"
"How much to put it in the show?"
"Six bucks."
"Sold!"
Happy again, my bike carried me in and snuggled between Art's heart-stopping FX and Bill's super-classy Softail. It didn't care that it looked like a mongrel between a greyhound and an Afghan hound. It was happy to be with its friends.
"You entered your bike in the show?" Bill asked.
"It's the only way they'd let me park in here. Besides, it'll help make your bikes look better. Although, if I'd known I was going to show it, I might have washed it. I just didn't have an hour free to do it today."
"An hour!" said Bill. "It takes me that long just to do the headlight."
Washing it wouldn't have made any difference. Bill, like anyone who's serious about winning, spends at least half a day detailing his bike before a show. Then, they trailer their bikes in early and spend another couple of hours picking off the dust that settled on them during the trip and looking under the fenders for any spots they might have missed. I'm not about to give up half a day of riding for a little sparkle that will disappear at the first mud puddle.
And, Fred wanted to compete with these guys while painting his bike with Rust-Oleum!
I told Fred to do some rethinking. To get a show-quality finish, he should step back, strip off the primer, go out and buy some good-quality lacquer, and shoot the paint in Guy's spray booth.
Fred didn't like the part about buying the lacquer and having it shot through a gun. He said he'd checked into it and people were charging seven hundred to a thousand dollars for the job.
"You don't need to spend that much. Shoot it yourself. I've painted a couple of bikes myself and gotten perfect results. All it takes is care, planning, and patience. The worst that can happen is that you get a couple of runs. If that happens, you re-sand the finish and shoot another coat.
"Guy has repainted his bike several times. Between primer, paint, and thinner, you're talking about fifty dollars in materials. Guy has a spray booth and all the equipment you need. He'd love to let you use it and will give you all the advice you need."
"But I can't spend a week doing the job and still put the rest of the bike together in time to shake it down for Laconia," Fred whined.
"So, pay Guy to shoot it. You know how he is. He won't charge much. The hardest part will be to get him to charge anything at all."
In retrospect, this was horrible advice to give. Fred was already working well beyond his experience level-and he didn't know it. He thought he was pushing his personal envelope. In reality, though, he had blasted through so fast that he never heard the rip, and he was now well beyond the orbit of Pluto entering the cold, dark reaches of interstellar space.
Next thing I knew, Guy had Fred's tank and fenders and was getting ready to finish the job. I imagined that the Rust-Oleum demon had been exorcised.
I was wrong.
The following Saturday dawned clear and fine. Guy and I were going to get some spring riding in. I called him up in the morning to settle where and when.
A frantic and depressed Guy answered the phone. Fred's paint was not going well. Fred had insisted that Guy use paint from a spray can. The demon was still on the loose!
There wasn't much I could say to make Guy feel better. He should have refused to do the job as instructed. He should have told Fred to go away and get some proper paint. But, being Guy, he wanted to help Fred out as much as he could. Faced with the Rust-Oleum demon, he agreed to do the best he could, hoping against hope that he could get a result that would at least be acceptable to Fred.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Shakedown Bluesby C.G. Masi Copyright © 2009 by C.G. Masi. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
