Truly Stupid Things To Do With A Motorcycle Part 1.

Truly Stupid Things To Do With A Motorcycle Part 2.

Truly Stupid Things To Do With A Motorcycle Part 3.

Chris, Bronson and the Bonnie "Bonzogoes to College?"

Guzzi Engineering Humor

As I recall, Ducati is wholly owned by TPG (correct me if I'm wrong, I frequently am and I am fully versed in humility). If there are "Ducati is buying Moto Guzzi" noises, it might be more appropriate to ponder if it really means that TPG is adding to their holdings. That wouldn't be bad. Ducati itself buying Moto Guzzi gives rise to all sorts of speculations, mostly with negative consequence (in our view) for Moto Guzzils (cancel the Sport, build only cruisers etc.). So we might as well have some fun with these rumors before they bear any fruit, rotten or otherwise...

Ducati buys Moto Guzzi, combines the best of both marques and in a retro-revisionist spate of ingenuity, develops a shaft drive bevel head, begetting the "Double-Shaft" appellation. Feeling the power of creativity, that combined firm then buys the Dnepr/Ural line and adapts their powered side car to the double shafter, resulting in a "Triple-Shaft".

Now we're getting somewhere, no matter which you buy, you're getting the "Shaft" - plural. It's getting to be a complex motorcycle now, underpowered and, uh, ugly. More cylinders are added (did someone mutter "Wing"? Shame on you.), and the grotesque creation outgrows the legal definition of a motorcycle and becomes an "MUV". Kinda lika an SUV, but instead of a car, it's a motorcycle that's grown too large for it's species. Somehow, the ugly oversized beast becomes the darling of the SUV/HumVee set and becomes a hit. You start finding them parked in garages next to the SUV and that BMW with the ski-racks (welded on ski racks, we're talking serious status seeking here).

Production of the "Three-Shafter" takes off, they're everywhere and the US Feds "Smog Police" take notice. Special smog rules are applied and the company finds it necessary to add a jack-shaft off of the side car shaft fitting to drive a smog pump. Bingo!, the "Four-shafter" is born. The Army then takes notice of the great utility of the Four-shafter, but requires a different configuration and specifies a contraption that looks remarkably like the original Moto Guzzi V-twin 3 wheel mule and we're right back where we started from to begin with.

Uncle Sam's Canoe club was nice enough to send me and my RD350 Yammerhammer to Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii. If you've never been there you can't appreciate the near total lack of twisty paved surfaces for motorcycles. After two years there, I was desperate, the Hawaiian Road Racing Association only raced infrequently and there was a paucity of roads that weren't well traveled by the omni-present Oahu PD. So what to do? Hickam AFB had a go cart track hidden in a copse of jungle and pretty much unknown to the entire world. Go cart tracks by nature are a bit undersized for a street bike, but when you're desparate, anything will do.

One Sunday, I went to the go cart track and played ricky road racer all by myself. If I pushed the limits really hard, I could just hit 80 mph on the miniscule straight. Then I had to brake like to hell to avoid becoming part of a tree. It was immediately after one of these retina detaching stops, with my brains plastered to the backside of my eyeballs (non-functional), that I decided to answer that universal biker question: "How hot does the disk brake get after a stop like that?"

I got off, took off my glove and GRABBED the brake rotor. Oh yeah, it's hot. Real hot. The memory of my fingerprints turning to white ash is with me still. I looked at my hand. Across a major portion of the ends of all four fingers, and the thumb, my fingerprints were ironed nearly flat in a beautiful crescent shape. This isn't something you brag about - and it hurts, so I meekly returned to the ship

Monday rolls around, and my division officer pops his head into the ET (electronics Tech) shack and announces that I'm to get my butt over to the security building at Pearl Harbor and give them my fingerprints for a clearance. Oh good, I'm trying to hide my stupidity and now it's going to print.

I arrive at the security office, get my fingers inked and then roll them across the appropriate blocks on the form. The security officer picks up the form and his mouth drops open when he sees the beautiful two-tone fingerprints with the lovely crescent shape. He starting to say something when I say, "Don't even ask." I turned and left trying to maintain my dignity.

The FBI collects all of these fingerprints, they've got billions of 'em. And somewhere, there's bound to be a gallery of the unusual ones. And up there, with the hoodlums and top 10 most wanted and every other weird fingerprint, I'll just bet there's a gorgeous two-tone crescent imprinted set of fingerprints. Mine.

I used to have a 40+ mile commute to work, 25 miles of which was up the central valley of California on Interstate 5. A straight shot, and when I was doing it 15 years ago, traffic was non-existent and the speed limit was 55 mph.

Boring.

I would lock the throttle on the bike and ride leaning on the tank with one hand under my chin and the other draped across the tank. Look Ma! No Hands! (you could say no brains either, but that will come back to haunt me later, stay tuned). I did this every day for about four years and probably racked up about 3000 miles of riding with no hands. It isn't terribly difficult, unless the wind is gusting. On one particularly gusty day, I was feeling pretty cocky about my ability to steer - literally - by the seat of my pants and was nonchalantly heading north on I-5. Totally relaxed. Under control.

Too relaxed maybe. As I passed under the Hwy 132 overpass, a really strong gust of wind lifted me clear off the bike! At about four inches above the bike and moving aft in relation to it, I dived and grabbed for dear life. I made it but it took the seat about two more days to get that pinched appearance out of it.

The following week, once again riding without hands (slow learner...) I look in my mirror. Some guy on another bike is ripping up the freeway at about 65 mph. I think to myself, "What a knothead, he'll get a ticket". And he does, I pass the patrol car and biker a few miles further up the road.

The next day, I'm riding north again, with hands,  because I know the CHP is actively patrolling my stretch of commute.  I'm at the exact same location the other guy got a ticket at the day before when a patrol car pulls alongside. The loudspeaker blares out something incomprehensible. I wave okay. No clue, but trying to avoid confrontation. Figuring the patrolman has me confused with the other biker from the day before, when I get to work I call up the local Highway Patrol office and sort of gripe about the officers making sure they know which biker is which etc. (Real Slow Learner Mode).

Two days later, riding with no hands again (slow learner mode still engaged), he nails me. He's really ticked. I get reamed for reckless driving, endangerment of the public (there are NO other vehicles in sight), and a host of other failures to behave as a good citizen. Somewhere in the middle of this tirade he gets an emergency call, scribbles a much abbreviated ticket for speeding, and departs.

I don't ride without hands any more.

Part 1.

Wayyy back in my junior college days, about 1971, there was a U.S. TV show called "Then Came Bronson", an improbable mix of hardware and plots starring Michael Parks - and various bikes. The bikes were the improbable part, they would magically morph into whatever was suitable for the plot. It might be a Sportster in one shot, a Hodaka Ace in the next. The main bike was a Harley Davidson. Bronson, the main character, wore a woolen "watch" cap and wrap-around sunglasses, and mumbled his lines in a Marlon Brando fashion. He set a styling trend for Triumph owner wannabee's of the day. Only the wannabees. To my best recollection, no Bonneville owners I knew would dress that way, but every kid in my apartment building that wanted  a bike. wanted to "look like Bronson". And wanted to wear the cap and glasses.

It was this ersatz styling trend then, that actually sets up this story. My buddy Phil, who actually owned a Bonneville, had a friend named Chris. And Chris, wanted to "look like Bronson". Dedicated soul that he was, he worked as a bus boy for tips and low pay in a resort during the summer months while out of college. His trip to work was accomplished on a Bridgestone 175, going through 30 miles of southern California freeways twice each day. I said he was dedicated didn't I? After two years of this masochistic approach to life, he had saved up enough money to purchase a used Triumph Bonneville. Apparently, there were some funds left over to purchase the watchcap and sunglasses as well. The yet to be seen Triumph was somewhere further south in the state, so Phil borrows his uncle's dry cleaning van - no windows, and the two of them head south to pick up the bike. Chris is particularly stoked about his soon to be Bonnie and he is already wearing the watchcap and sunglasses when they show up at the house where the bike is. Phil - the real Bonnie owner, checks out Chris' dream machine, pronouces it fit for purchase and the two of them proceed to load the Bonnie unto the van. At which point Chris manages to knock off his glasses and then step on them, breaking one lens. Undeterred, Chris resumes wearing the glasses, now slightly bent and one lens missing. Bent fits anyway, because Chris now has one of those new-owner, mile-wide crooked smiles too. What he doesn't have, is anything to tie the bike in the back of the van. "No problem, I'll just put the bike on the center stand and sit on it all the way back!" Don't worry, our intrepid hero makes it back okay, he's not sitting on it when the van makes a panic stop or anything like that. Nope, we're aiming for the subtle here. What you have are two single college males, one driving, and one sitting in the back of the van on a motorcycle. Chris is sitting in the back , silly grin, watchcap, and broken glasses. Like any good kid with a new toy, he's also providing sound effects - VAROOM - VAROOM. This is just short of putting playing cards in the spokes of a bicycle if you've ever done that. Two college males, right? While transitting a stretch of road somewhere in the vicinity of Cal State Fullerton, Phil sees a college coed thumbing a lift, and stops to pick her up. Everything is fine until she actually starts to get in the van - and sees Chris in the back, making noises and twisting the throttle. "Er, thanks, but no thanks, I'll get a ride with someone else". The Bronson image only worked with adolescent males. Girls were simply not impressed by it.

Part 2.

The Bronson image worked for Chris though, because he was totally clueless. Two weeks later, Chris saunters into the apartmentand asks Phil for a very large metric wrench-

"Jeez Chris, that's huge, what do you need that for?"

"Gonna pull off the swingarm."

"???"

Everyone moves to the window. There, arrayed neatly across the apartment building lawn, are assemblies from the Triumph Bonneville just purchased so soon before.

"Chris, what are you doing to the Bonnie?"

"I was going to put on a new chain. I took all of that stuff off before I discovered the chain goes inside the swingarm. Have you got a wrench that'll fit it or not?"

Phil gets real quiet, then asks-

"Why didn't you just remove the master link?"

"Master link? What's a master link?"

Part 3.

A week later (after Phil has helped him re-assemble the Bonnie), Chris is back again. It's a bit more innocuous this time, he just wants to clean the Bonnie at our apartment building. It's a beautiful day for it too. A gorgeous sunny Sunday. Great spot to clean the bike too. It helps that there are a LOT of very nice looking coeds residing in the building, something that is sorely lacking where Chris lives. Chris spends hours detailing the bike and conversing with every girl that goes by. Finally he's done and he has a crowd of nubile college girls as an audience.

"Ya wanna hear it run?"

"Oh yes, Chris - let's hear it!"

Chris gets on the bike and starts doing the Amal dance, just like Phil taught him. Well, maybe. Tickle carb, position kickstarter, KICK. Again. Again. Again. This goes on for a while and the girls start to lose interest and drift off. Chris is chagrinned at this point and calls for help. Phil - who is desperately trying to keep a straight face, walks out, takes Chris' place and... with one smooth kick - starts the Bonnie. Chris gets back on and in an attempt to save face, decides to ride the bike away. Chris blips the throttle a few times, puts the Bonnie in gear and gracefully pulls away from the curb. And then with a panicky look on his face - circles right back and dumps the Bonnie right there in front of everyone.

"Hey Chris. Didja remember to unlock the forks?"

An engineering student was walking across campus when another engineer rides up on a shiny new Moto Guzzi.

"Where did you get such a rockin' bike?" asked the first.

The second engineer replied "Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said 'Take what you want."

The second engineer nodded approvingly "Good choice! The clothes probably wouldn't have fit."