Selfie: 2021, Week 19 – The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

With apologies to Robert Pirsig, I don’t know that I ever found anything approaching Zen when performing motorcycle maintenance. I do, however, routinely discover new and creative swear words and create impressive scars.

Or at least I did.

In my Story of Jasmine, my old Honda CB360, I mentioned some egregious wrenching faux pas and that I grew into a decent mechanic. What I didn’t mention – who I didn’t mention – was my friend Kirk. I don’t know this, but I suspect Kirk saw from the beginning that Shawn’s truck never did run quite right. He likely knew Perot (my CB200) was absolutely never going to run again. Because Kirk could fix anything he touched.

I don’t remember who got theirs first, but he also had an ancient CB360 and where I was able to keep Jasmine running reasonably reliably, Kirk kept the same model bike with all its questionable engineering choices running with the efficiency of a Swiss watch. Which was good, because I’ve never seen anyone push an antique right to the edge of its performance envelope. But if something broke – and, despite his meticulous maintenance, it would – there wasn’t a question of whether it would be fixed. The only question was how much better the repair would be than when the bike came out of the factory.

I tried to glean everything I could from Kirk in terms of wrenching, but he had the touch. Maybe for him it was Zen – I’ll have to ask him. I saw skinned knuckles, fascinating conjunctions of four-letter words, and dollar signs. But I did learn…

There’s a gap of about fourteen years between those old riding days of Perot, Jasmine, and, later, Pumba (1985 Honda V-65 Sabre). If you know me, then you already know what brought about that gap – a little argument between Pumba and the hood of a gray Volvo that turned left in front of me. Spoiler: Pumba and I lost. Between not being able to walk on my own for eight months and finances, I wasn’t able to get a bike again.

But, man, did I want one. I still read all the magazines (most of which have gone out of business), then blogs. I could tell you merits of various cylinder configurations, the bells and whistles offered by one manufacturer versus the other. For a while I thought my next bike would be a Honda Valkyrie… and then that went out of production. Maybe one of the shiny Moto Guzzis with their V-twin cylinders peeking out the sides…

In the back of my mind, though, my dream motorcycle never really faltered. Since I first saw one at a show in the 90’s I was deeply in love with BMW’s big opposed twin “boxer” GS bikes. When the stars aligned (or so I thought) and I was able to buy my dream bike – a 2014 BMW R1200GS Adventure (Amelia) – I deliberately bought it new because I knew it had so many electronics and I didn’t have a garage to work on it – not that I’d know how to do anything anyway, right?! I’ll let the warranty (and extended warranty) deal with that!

A few months ago, I was at a Costco gas station at 9 at night when I went to start the bike, I realized my mistake. The starter clicked rapidly, the tell-take sign my battery was dead, and a cold dread washed over me. Sure, I was stuck – I had to do the crabwalk of shame to get the bike out the way of the next car in line. That didn’t bother me – everyone’s had that situation whether on a bike or a car. No, as I was waiting for Akilah to come with a jump starter, the panic I felt was due to the fact that I didn’t know how to get to the battery.

Yeah, I’d managed to ride Amelia – Amey for short – to Death Valley twice, over the highest pass in the Sierras, up to the uppermost islands of Washington state and I didn’t know where the goddamn battery was.

Akilah showed up (of course), and I got Amey home, all the while admonishing myself for having to use YouTube on my phone in a Costco parking lot to figure out how to jump start her. I wondered where that guy was that was able to perform the fairly herculean task of adjusting the valves on that ridiculously awkwardly canted V-4 in Pumba…

Okay, I wasn’t that hard on myself. This is one of the ways in which I’ve grown in the last few years – beating myself up over mistakes (real or imagined) doesn’t get me anywhere. That sounds obvious, and I’m sure some of you are rolling your eyes and audibly saying “duh,” but I cannot express how hard fought that lesson has been for me. I suffer from crippling self-doubt. It’s taken me a long time to push past through that terrifying fear of failure and just try. I fight it every day, every hour, right now – “Does anyone really want to read this…?” (answer: “Who cares? Worst case you’ve got it down, and that’s creating something”).

I went back to YouTube in the light of day. I changed the battery myself. That picture up there? That’s me changing my rear brake pads myself. I’ve got some other things to do in the coming weeks leading up to an exciting trip I’m taking in June (that’s another story), but I’m feeling really confident I can do them. In fact, as I was reading the manual, I said out loud, “Oh, I’ve done that before!” See, despite her German lineage, despite electrically adjustable suspension, Traction control, ABS, despite a goddamn CANBUS… it’s still a motorcycle. I can work on motorcycles (thank you, Kirk).

Maybe I shouldn’t apologize to Mr. Pirsig too much, after all. My high school drama teacher gave me a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance after the first time I rode Jasmine to play practice (yes, I know how cliche that sounds, but it really did happen!). I appreciate the book, and it’s one I like to revisit every once in a while and I still wrestle with the philosophy. In the end, though I think I wanted more motorcycle than existential exercise – more of William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways on two wheels. Or even Kerouac, On the Road… My problem, I know, is I’m too much Pirsig’s romantic and not enough the rationalist.

Can a leopard change its spots? Can a romantic even out his rationalist? Can I push through my staggering fears? I’ll tell you this, it starts with changing my own battery…

Five Things This Week: 2021, Week 18

The Mitchells vs. The MachinesNetflixI don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a long time. Just a really well-executed movie across the board. Seriously, drop what you’re doing and go watch it. I’ll wait… 
See! I was right!


Into the Mystical and Inexplicable World of Dowsing
Outside Magazine
In high school I worked on a maintenance crew out at Shoreline park in Mountain View. We planted trees, built retaining walls, installed fencing. One cold morning a contractor showed up with auger attached to the back of his Jeep to drill holes for fence posts along one of the overflow lots for Shoreline Amphitheater next door. Our supervisor got told him where we wanted to drill and the man took out two bent welding rods and proceeded to dowse the drilling spot to determine whether he’d hit anything. 17-year-old paranomal-obsessed Jordy was gobsmacked and pumped the guy for details about what dowsing. He said he does it before every dig just to be safe. He pointed out that back in 1985 when he was hired to drill for extra fencing around Stanford stadium in preparation for the Superbowl that year he told the foreman he couldn’t drill at the indicated site because there was an electrical run underground. The foreman insisted, saying the electrical run was safely a few feet away. The guy shrugged and drilled and hit a power line that blacked out the entire block.
This story reminded me of that guy. Science says dowsing isn’t real. I know what I saw – on that hillside he correctly located a gas line safely ten yards away from the proposed fence line. It wasn’t marked on the ground, but our supervisor verified it against a map later. Cool stuff.

How The Pentagon Started Taking UFOs Seriously
The New Yorker
Wow, first dowsing, now UFOs… Didn’t expect this to get all paranormal themed! A really well written article about, well, how the pentagon started taking UFOs seriously. It’s grounded in real people and no one is written off as crazy. UFOs may or may not be from across the galaxy, but it’s worth looking in to at least.

The Bad Batch
Disney+
Okay, I’ll be honest, this was the Star Wars series I didn’t think I needed. I mean, I’ve watched all of Clone Wars – even the continuation that came out last year (where the Bad Batch were introduced). I’ve watched all of Rebels. I even tried to get through Resistance – and maybe that was it. Maybe that was when I felt I’d reached Peak Animated Star Wars. 
Well, I was wrong. Beginning in the Star Wars timeline right about act 3 of Revenge of the Sith, it picks up at a dramatic time that hasn’t been explored too much (at least in film or cartoons). First two episodes have dropped as of this writing and I’m all in!

Sam Pilgrim
YouTube
“Sam Pilgrim (born 4 June 1990) is a professional freeride Mountain biker. Known for his missing tooth and his unique style of tricks, he gained international fame with his YouTube channel exposure under his name Sam Pilgrim in which he makes videos documenting his extreme stunts on various courses around the world. He is an FMB World Tour overall winner in 2013, becoming the first European athlete to win the competition since its establishment in 2010.”
That’s from his Wikipedia page. I went there after I watched too many videos on his YouTube page. 
Look, I know absolutely nothing about freeride mountain biking. But I know his videos are a lot of fun to watch. And he comes across as the nicest guy in the world. Seriously, this ridiculously talented guy has nothing but the kindest things to say about everyone else around him. It doesn’t matter it’s a mediocre trick — “That’s EPIC!” “Whoa, living the dream!” Go to his channel and watch a few of his videos. I think this was the first video I watched. Careful, it’s addictive.

Story: 2021, Week 18 – A Motorcycle Story: Jasmine

Not actually Jasmine. But same model, same year, same color. *sigh*

One of last week’s Five Things was Bring A Trailer and in the description, I mentioned a recent auction they had for a 1974 Honda CB360G motorcycle in practically mint condition. Since watching the walk-around video in the listing and listening to the engine settle into its sewing-machine like parallel-twin cadence, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about my old 1974 CB360T, or, as I called her, Jasmine. Remembering exploits on that thing remind me of the crazy, idealistic, reckless kid I was. There’s the old saying, “God looks out for old folks and fools,” well… I wasn’t an old man, but somehow I survived that transition from teenager to “adult” on that CB360 — which, I will note, had the same birthday as I did: October, 1974.

That wasn’t the first thing I noticed when I saw the motorcycle. Shawn had just gotten off at Orchard Supply Hardware and one of his coworkers was selling it. I noticed the color first – a teal green. It was the nineties, after all, and I don’t know how that color went over in 1974, but in the early nineties it fit right in. I also noticed it wasn’t running. Shawn was confident we could get it running easily. One of the mistakes I’d made was trusting Shawn’s mechanical acumen. I mean, he told us he rebuilt the engine in his Chevy stepside pickup himself and that was a lot more than any of us did, so…

I usually refer to the CB360 as my first motorcycle, but that’s not quite true. The summer after my dad died, I picked up a smaller Honda CB200. That first motorcycle was short lived. It was 1991 and we nicknamed that CB200 “Perot” because you never knew if it would run or not — nothing as evergreen as a 90’s political joke. It wasn’t long, though, until Perot wouldn’t go into first gear. Shawn said we could fix it. It would be easy. We’d have to “crack the cases” to get to the transmission, but that was fine. We started dissembling the bike, then we pulled the engine. To keep track of what nut and bolt went where, Shawn had a great system: everything went into a bucket. One bucket. All. The. Nuts. And. Bolts.

Perot (my Perot) never ran again. We never did crack the case. And knowing what goes into that process, it’s for the best.

But I suspect Shawn was feeling a little guilty for Perot’s fate when we looked at the CB360. “It’s just the carbs – we can rebuild those!” he said. I still believed him. Come to think of it, his truck never did seem to run perfectly. But I didn’t think about that then. We got it back to the garage at the house on Bonita we had moved to not too many months back and started working. True enough, it was just the carbs. Though, I think I managed to mess up the rebuild of at least one. But I learned. And soon enough Jasmine coughed to life.

So a note on the name “Jasmine.” Given when I got her (again, early nineties) I think most of my friends believed I had named the motorcycle after princess Jasmine in the Disney animated movie “Aladdin.” Not true. No, there was a flowering jasmine bush outside my window and in the morning I loved waking up to the smell of jasmine coming in through my (always) open window. Similarly, working on the motorcycle I found myself drawn to the smells of things in the garage – the metallic tang of used motor oil, the stale funk of old gasoline, the acerbic sting of carb cleaner. It wasn’t some kind of “Let’s huff fumes!” attraction, it was more that this was the olfactory imprint of the mechanical world, of a well-used garage and tools, and I was falling in love with it, like I had fallen in love with the morning scent of that jasmine bush. Jasmine. That’s where it comes from.

In high school I had the luxury of not relying on Jasmine as my primary transportation. I had a car (oh, stories there…), and I even acquired an old Spanish moped that my mom sewed a tiger striped seat cover for, I hose clamped a golf flag to the back, and with my Little Mermaid lunchbox bungied onto the front rack I’d mosey to school more often than not with my Birkenstock-clad feet stretched out on the running boards.

Yeah, I was that kid.

But I sold my car to pay for part of the first year at UCSC, and the moped wasn’t going to make it to Santa Cruz, so anytime I wanted to go farther than the bus would take me I had to rely on Jasmine. For a kid born in 1974, I was just coming into my own in 1993. But for a Honda twin of the same age, it was vintage. And I was pushing it way beyond what I should have…

The RA of my dorm that first year, Sol, and his friends were putting together the Cigar Aficionado club. It was their way of sort of putting a finger in the eye of the UC Santa Cruz hippie image, and I wanted in. I told my then-girlfriend about it and she couldn’t have more strenuously objected. She thought it was disgusting and how could I even think about it? That was a long-distance relationship that carried over from high school. She had gone to UC Berkeley, and I to UC Santa Cruz. I cared about her opinion even if she wasn’t there and I told Sol in the dining hall at lunch I wasn’t going to take part in that night’s first gathering. I still vividly remember what he said: “Jordy,” he had this cadence and presence that reminded me of Vito Corleone even though he was from Fremont, California, “I totally understand.” Dramatic pause. “But I’m going get an extra cigar for you in case you change your mind before tonight.” I thanked him, but assured him I wouldn’t be there.

After lunch I decided to take advantage of the gorgeous fall day and go for a ride. I still try to go back to Santa Cruz in the fall because the smell of the leaves mixed with the sea breeze… it’s utterly intoxicating. My mom forbid me to take the underpowered motorcycle on the notoriously dangerous Highway 17, so I knew well the serpentine Highway 9 that ran through the Santa Cruz mountains from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz, meandering through little towns among the redwoods. But on the other side of town ran Empire Grade, a road I’d never heard of (this was way before I could trace it on Google Maps) but looked inviting. I strapped on my helmet, zipped up my leather jacket and pointed Jasmine up Empire Grade.

We passed the West Entrance to campus and the road swept up and carried us out of sight. As the road climbed parts of it reminded me of the roads around Lake Tahoe where, only a few years before I’d ridden my bicycle with the redwoods giving way to pines as the road traced the ridge between the coast and the inner forests. Where the bike was underpowered on a contemporary freeway, this road with its gentle sweeping curves and undulating rises and falls were a perfect match and I was enjoying the hell out of it. I came over a rise and twisted the throttle to gain a little more momentum for the next rise ahead… and the throttle cable snapped.

I coasted to the side of the road and realized, for the first time in my life, I was stranded. The University lay at least a dozen miles back down the road. There were no cell phones back then, and even now there’s relatively no service up there. I was screwed. I locked my bike and tried hitchhiking – I’d already seen plenty of folks around campus hitchhiking into town and even if the notion scared the crap out of me what choice did I have? But it wasn’t a well-traveled road, and the dozen or so cars that passed didn’t even slow.

I went back to the bike and tried to reassess the problem. The Honda CB360 has a parallel twin engine with two carbs behind the cylinders with a little wheel between them that housed the throttle cable. Twist the grip, the cable gets pulled, the carbs open to let in more gas and air. The motorcycle still ran just fine. It just… idled, and that was it. But maybe I could feather the clutch to get a little motion and even if I had to push uphill, there were enough downhills that maybe I could coast it back – I mean it was Empire Grade after all. So I sat astride the bike, kick started it to life (the optional electric starter had long since died), pulled in the clutch, stepped down into first, and tried feathering the clutch. It… really didn’t work. But… you know… if I could get my hand down under the seat just so… between the carbs and the crankcase… if I could move my fingers in there between the carbs and push that wheel….

Vroom!

Holy crap.

Half bent over the right side of the bike, I manipulated the throttle again and, sure enough, the RPMs went up. I experimentally let the clutch out a little as I hunched over and gave it a little gas and… I was moving again! Yes, I only one hand on the handlebars. And, yes, I had the other arm contorted under my seat, but, goddamnit, I was moving again! I could make it home!

I knew it was crazy dangerous at the time. How do I know I knew? Because at some point as the wan light of the ancient Honda’s halogen headlight split the growing dusk descending on Empire Grade that night, my reptile hind-brain decided it was the appropriate time to start singing the theme to “Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark.” As I awkwardly steered the bike around curves with one arm I bellowed, “Duh duh duh-duh, duh duh duh! Duh de duh DUH, duh de DUH DUH DUH!” like a wildman.

I made it back through the East entrance and up the panoramic sweeping Coolidge Drive. I managed to turn in to Stevenson College, and pulled into the narrow motorcycle parking below my dorm. Only then did I extricate my arm from mechanical linkage and flipped the engine kill button. The headlight darkened as I turned the key off and I sat there in the twilight listening to the heat ticking of the quiescent engine and what I just did, the insanity of what I just managed to do swept over me like a cold wave of “What the hell were you thinking?!” The adrenaline that fueled my Indiana Jones bellowing body had drained and I was shaking.

I don’t remember dropping my helmet and jacket in my room, but I must have. I do remember making a beeline for the dining hall where Sol was finishing dinner. I walked up to the table and he stopped talking to someone mid-conversation. “Jordy,” he said, “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

“Sol,” I said, “I’m going to have that goddamned cigar tonight.”

I did, too. A Macanudo Portofino. It was divine.

I’ve got myriad Jasmine stories – the time I didn’t take her to the nude beach, the time I took her rear wheel on the bus over the hill to get a replacement tire, the time Owen and I rode it over the aforementioned Highway 17 TOGETHER…  yeah… crazy.

A few years later I got a new used bike and Jasmine languished under a tarp until I could find time and money to properly restore her. As these things do, it never happened. Fortunately, my friend Mark was interested in getting into motorcycling and was wondering what a good starter bike might be. Funny, I said, I happen to have one…