3 decades ago I was doing the Thursday night thrash getting my battered short track bike ready for yet another night of combat at the Monterey Short track. It was really late, I mean so friggen late that you are just considering staying up all night. Hell morning is just a couple hours away anyway…But I digress,.. I was trying to put the top end back together while listening to a great Skynard song on the bench radio and consuming my last of what seems and endless supply of Coors beer that my dad had foolishly left in the garage fridge. In the last 8 hours I had replaced the swingarm patched and painted the ugliest fiberglass gas tank ever seen. Replaced the bent K&N handle bars with a less bent set as well as new tires (Only pinching the tube 3 times woo hoo). I had decided that installing the new Wiseco single ring piston was a slam-dunk, figuring that I had sent it and a spare barrel over to my sponsors’ shop to be bored. I had a set of gaskets (20 sets actually) all sitting in a box just waiting to go in. Here is where drinking, sleep deprivation and just being a careless 17-year-old kid all come crashing together. With the motor still in the bike I busted the 4 head nuts loose and pried the Porcupine head off. I then went ahead and slid the barrel off. I grabbed a set of needle nose pliers and went rootin’ around for the cir-clip on the wrist pin and,…PING, clatter , tinkle, tick….It was ****in’ gone. It had miraculously achieved hyper light speed as it shot out of the side of the piston, careening past my unprotected but heavily squinting eyeball. The thing is, I had no spares and this was not the first, second or fifteenth time I had done this same stupid thing. The fact is I bought cir-clips by the dozen but reluctantly I had loaned the last one to my buddy the weekend before out at Lodi. So now It was all about spending the next 2 hours systematically searching the entire shop, a molecule at a time. This was not some sano 2 car garage with a nice clean concrete floor. Nope this was a dungeon. The floor was some long since forgotten self installed covering that resembled gray paint and Oreo cookies. However there was very little of the floor exposed, most of the shop was covered with automotive engines, or parts of engines in various stages of disassembly. Most of the parts that were not inside these components were carefully spread out on greasy shop towels with a small layer of crust holding everything in place. The shelves (Thousands of them it seems) lined every wall and every one was filled beyond capacity with unrecognizable lumps that may or may not actually have been placed there by humans. Everything in this shop was the same color. A brownish charcoal with the texture of sand.
I would hollow out a little place to work on my race bike near the row of toolboxes that lined the left wall of the shop. The 4-bulb fluorescent light with 2 bulbs missing was directly over my head. Other forms of illumination consisted of a drop light that made sparks every time I moved it, and a wet cell flash light that has been in that garage for as long as I can remember, it’s battery has never been replaced, yet it still comes on and emits an eary glow.
So somewhere in this fortress of ineptitude a tiny spring steel cir-clip has blasted itself over my shoulder and into the darkness bouncing around like the ball in a pachinko machine. If it had been a basketball I would have spent 20 minutes finding it, hell a basketball on fire even. But nope I was in search of a microscopic part that was the same color as 96% of the material in this 20’ by 24’ shop.
So with my ghost powered wet cell flashlight in one hand and a rapidly warming Coors beer in the other I was about to spend the next 2 hours of my life crawling around like a possessed monkey, a frenzied obsessive compulsive primate. My mission seemed clear at first. I would just start moving everything in the path of that little missile, closely inspect then set aside. Constantly moving in the direction of the last known sighting. My theory (yes I had one) was that I would happen upon the little bugger or one of its many predecessors that had also ended its useful life by flinging itself into the primordial ooze known as My dads shop. The deeper I dug the more determined I became. I no longer cared if I ever got the bike running, I did not even care if the sun came up. I was going to find that clip.
I never did. I did however discover many other treasures that had been laying in stasis long since given up for dead. I found a box of Mikuni parts that I had set aside only to sell the donor bike they came from. I found the stock lights and fenders from a Bultaco we bought and stripped for racing. The headlight had never ever even been turned on. Lots of treasure, no clip.
In retrospect I feel that I learned more about patience then anything actually mechanical that night. I had a spiritual moment and realized as I crawled into bed with the rising sun burning my bloodshot corneas into submission. I realized that Spanish Motorcycle are stupid. Floating wrist pins are stupid. That fluorescent lighting doesn’t and most importantly. Coors beer is just awful.
Who hasn't dropped one bolt or spring, and then when it vanished dropped the other one to "see where it went"? It even worked once or twice.
This reminds me of the first time I built my own SS brake lines, broke every banjo the shop had trying to bend them just right and took 9 hours (6pm-3am) in the parking lot of a 7-11 to bleed them.
Man, I read "Fun with a young 17 year old" and dove right in to the story. Hmmm, not the story I thought it was gonna be. Anyway, not a bad story. You write well too.
Just f'in amazing.............. you're short story was as gripping as anything lois l'amor ever penned. Plus instead of hossies and six shooters you chose beer bultaco's and described "the shop" to the point I could smell it
If I had the writing skills I would write a book, at least a series of short stories. The fact I survived my youth with a quarter of my brain is as amazing to myself as it is to my probation officers
If I had the writing skills I would write a book, at least a series of short stories. The fact I survived my youth with a quarter of my brain is as amazing to myself as it is to my probation officers
You should write a book. I think it would be a very entertaining read. Your not a bad writer, besides isn’t that what publishers are for?
The ghost light brought it home for me, I had a simular experience with one of those self powered lights you shake, and they last for about a minute slowly getting darker and darker, you don't even notice it because it is gradual...
Looking for spring that shot out of a carburetor for about 2 hours, fairly clean garage, but I just heard it shoot out, and didn't see the projection of it... so me and my trusty flashlight go hunting as I feel my arm going numb from shaking the hell out of this flashlight for about two hours, I thought about how much money I could have made at a bus station doing the same motions...
After I finally gave up, I reached in my shirt pocket for my smokes and lighter, and wouldn't you phucking know it... That damn spring shot right in my shirt pocket!
And I was holding out on having a smoke untill I found it to motivate myself to look harder and not give up...
I woke up in my clothes stretched out on the floor of my parents house with no memeory of the previous nights shennanigans. My only evidense that I had a good time was screaming hangover complete with the taste of vomit and a nice split lip. (that could have come from passing out and falling face first onto the hardwood floor in front of my parents woodstove) Anyway as I regained a broken state of conciousness I realized it was quite late in the morning and that my mom had allready left for work obviously stepping over my prone form several times, as I was blocking the path to the kitchen and her coffee. I stumbled to my feet and looked out into the front yard and to my utter amazement my car was not there. I showered and changed my clothes, pulled my motorcycle out the garage and went to school. I missed the morning classes but was in time for my favorite period, Lunch. I asked all the members of my social circle if anyone remembered how I got back home the prior evening/morning and was left with a bunch of nopes. My running buddy was absent and not answering his phone so I cut the rest of my classes and rode out to his house. He was just starting his day and the sound of my un-silenced RD 350 rattling up his driveway was enough to split his internally bleeding mellon so he turned the hose on me as I rolled up. Now Orin is your typcal country raised farm boy complete with a lump of chaw wedged in his mouth. Orin was pissed at me for more then clanging the gong in his head with the stuccato snap of my bike. It seems I had abbandoned him the prior evening leaving him and his little brother to finish off the liquor we had spirited away from his moms private stash. He had no Idea where my car was. I showed pity to my wounded friend and coasted dead stick back down his driveway and went back to the last known position of my car, The Beach where the party was. Nothing there but the carnage of the party. Hmmm. well I was screwed. If I told my parents I lost my car,. well I was probably homeless. If I called the cops they would just laugh at me then tell my parents, and ..yep homeless. So I just figured it would turn up, or hell I could always just build another one.
2 weeks go by and my mom and dad are starting to get curious why I am riding my RD to school and work. The bullshit story that my car was getting some work done to it over at a buddies house was not holding water and I feared it was about time to come clean. Besides my Girlfriend was getting pretty sick of us using her Maveric to cruise around in. Then I run into a friend of mine that had graduated the previous year therefore was not in my daily stoner group. He see's me standing in the back of the motorcycle shop that I work at and yells at me to come out front and say hi. He tells me he is getting a lot of heat from his dad because my car is leaking oil on the driveway at their house. Would I please come get it asap?
Seems he drove me home and then parked my car at his house because I promised to come get it the next day
How I ever survived the 70's has got to be the big mystery of the ages
I am so old, here is proof (writing my Memoirs)
Thanks for the grin
"03 RC"
Although I noticed in the pictures from your MotoGP party , you STILL have your Disco clothes...
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