Talk Back #126

The lure of the new bike.

I turned fifty five this year. No big deal I guess, I can order from the senior menu at Denny’s now, my beard is almost totally white and catching a glimpse of my reflection in mirrors scares the shit out of me. As a child, I always had lung problems. Bronchitis was a constant companion and really didn’t improve a whole lot as I aged. I’m at the point now where it’s pretty much all downhill from here. Yeah, I could improve things with a better diet and more exercise and such, but that’s not going to help with the creaky joints, arthritic hands and the daily fight to get enough air into my lungs.

I’ll be honest here, I’ve always been a little derisive of people who ‘sell out’ their choppers and buy some stocker bagger later in life so they can keep riding in comfort. I suppose that makes me hypocritical because lately I have been considering a (gasp) new bike. I’ll admit there have been times, when I’ve had to kick the Shovel 100 times to get it going, that I sometimes think I’d be better off just having a modern bike that I could just hit the button and go. I know the Shovel only fails to start like that when there’s a problem somewhere, bad gas, fouled plug, dirty points etc. When I get it back to the house I can usually figure it out and get it back to one or two kick status. As most of you know, I do have a ‘stock’ bike that I can use for carrying a passenger when the need arises, my trusty 1982 Triumph T140ES. So my newest bike is thirty years old and naturally, the Lucas electrics on it are giving me the usual problems. The clutch has been finicky lately and it has a tendency to overheat if I keep it at 70 for longer than 15 minutes.All fixable stuff of course, it’s just a matter of finding the time. I had Brian of Manx Motors replace the alternator, so hopefully it’ll keep charging the Antigravity battery properly now.

When I test ride new bikes, I always take into account whether I could live with one of them in my garage. Usually, it’s easy to dismiss them because I always already had bikes to fill the role. 

I think even the most ardent chopper jockey has times when they think maybe it would be nice to have a modern bike at their disposal, usually during a period when the other rides all have problems. Let’s face it, if you have multiple bikes, it’s really difficult to keep them all in tip-top condition. This one needs tires, this one needs bearings somewhere, this one needs a trip to the junkyard...

Back in the day, when i had one bike, it was simpler. You can concentrate on one and keep it up. You even get time to clean it once in a while, but I seem to have a problem in this respect... I can’t give up my project bikes.

I guess it all comes down to the “Bar Hopper” thing. The perception that choppers are only good from hopping from bar to bar on sunny weekends. This is the same as the old “Café Racer” tag, bikes that were race-styled but only good from racing from one transport café to another. If you accept this premise, then it’s perfectly OK to have a late model bagger sitting in the garage next to your chopper. One for fun and the other for ‘serious’ riding. Hammer and I have pretty much proven (as has many others) that you can use your chopper for long distance riding and still have a great time doing so. 

Really, once you reach my age (or thereabouts) you start feeling like you don’t have to prove anything to anybody, so why not have have a new Harley-Davidson FLHAEIOU and sometimes Y to just jump on and run to the store in comfort? Passion, that’s why. It’ll be a cold day in hell that I buy a new bagger (or even slightly used) because I can’t handle riding my chopper any longer. The day that happens they will be real close to shoveling dirt on my face anyway.

But back to the point, I could see myself picking up a new bike, either a 1200 Sportster, a basic Dyna or a Triumph twin to have that element of über reliability at my disposal. If all the chops go down at once (and it’s happened) there would be a backup plan that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen on. Not that I really care what others think of me, but I put it in the same category as being seen with a “Sons of Anarchy” colors shirt.

You know what I mean!

Talk Back #125 December 2012

Winter project time!

This being the December issue of The Horse, Project Season is well under way here in the frozen north of the USA. The mandatory downtime dictated by the ice-covered roads is traditionally the time when we make those improvements we’ve been thinking about all riding season. If not improvements, then maybe repairs of problems that weren’t serious enough to stop riding, but certainly was enough of a concern to limit distances or cause many prayers in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere!

There are also those hardy souls who are beginning their Amateur Chop Off bikes (hopefully I’ll have it all sorted out by the time you read this). Only a few short months before wide-eyed idealism gets T-boned by grim reality of trying to build a bike with a deadline. It looks so easy on TV. I mentioned earlier in the year I was building my own ACO-type project just so I could get a taste of it. The bike was not done when we had to leave for the Smoke Out, but I could have trailered it there and it would have made the ten miles on the mandatory ride to the Rock. The charging system was not working and it took me a few weeks after we got back to sort that out. The bike would have made the run on a freshly charged battery.

This year, I’m not sure which way to go.

The Shovelhead is running great, tires are good, brakes work fine etc. The only thing I’d like to do is replace the primary drive with the Baker TTP setup. Well, that and completely rework the bike to accept a thirty-over Sugar Bear front end and a sissy bar with king and queen seat... but I have several problems to overcome, not least of which is the potential destruction of the VIN sticker, which is the only number on the frame, placed there by the State of Michigan in 1998 when I finally got it registered. That and the amount of money such a conversion would cost.

I have a 1968 Triumph 500 that already has a rigid frame, I’ve slowly been working on bits and pieces. The inside of the engine and trans looked like it had been at the bottom of a septic tank since 1970. It’s such a shame because things like the bottom end has never been apart, the rod bearings were standard size, the actual crank journals didn’t look bad at all. I had Brian, out at Manx Motors have the crank reground for me. The sludge trap was surprisingly clear, indicating there wasn’t many miles on the engine at all. I have a way-cool Lowbrow peanut take for it and I have my eye on a Factory Metal Works stainless exhaust. What I don’t have, is wheels or a nice front end. 

The main problem I’m having, is trying to get myself to work on it. I originally bought the project to put together for Nurse Nut to ride. The 500 is fairly light and pretty forgiving. When I got the Hondamatic and decided to go that way instead, the 500 was put on hold. Nurse Nut LOVES the Hondamatic and so it makes me doubt she would ever ride the 500 when it’s finally completed. So, I guess I could ride it, yeah? Well, yeah I could, but I have a pair of running Triumph 750s right now, the 500 will feel like an oversized moped to me. This is the main reason I gave my oldest daughter the Triumph 250 project a few years ago. These bikes are pretty cool, but not my favorite. I COULD put it together as a Stampede bike, although the rules allow Brit 650s, so it would be silly to go for the more underpowered version. I really don’t know if my ass could take doing the Stampede anyway. I don’t mind riding long distance, but my biggest trouble is usually ass pain after about the third day of 600 mile sprints. Maybe if I lost 80 pounds...

Project financing is always a problem. I could budget this part for this month and that part for next month and such, but stuff like three kid’s birthdays, all the Christmas stuff and the usual unexpected car/furnace/replicator blowing up and requiring half the mortgage money to fix will no doubt conspire to foil my plans.

The biggest problem is drive. I don’t really have the drive necessary to buckle down and get the 500 finished, although I will be working on it as time and finances allow. I’d like to work on the duplex framed pre unit in the corner. But that’s looking like big bucks.

What I could really get into, is building a cool longbike, Sugar Bear front end, S&S Panhead with Baker primary and transmission. The drive is there for that one, but the finances are not, I’m guessing that’s something I share with a lot of the readers.

I know, I should just stop whining and get on with it and I probably will.

Good luck to all of you with your winter projects.

Issue #122 September 2012

Danger, Will Robinson!

I shouldn’t have to mention that motorcycling, generally speaking is a dangerous thing. And really, that has always been part of the attraction, flying down the road at silly speeds wearing tennis shoes, blue jeans and a T shirt on some cobbled together contraption built by some crazy guy in his shed, nothing feels as good and at the same time, you KNOW what will happen if that nut you forgot to red loctite backs off at just the wrong time... and it isn’t going to be pretty.

There is, of course another completely separate segment of motorcycling that believe in ATGATT. This annoying acronym stands for “All the gear, all the time”. 120º out? Only going to 7-11 1.5 miles away? No excuse, the multi-buckle boots, the armored knee leather pants, the armored elbow and shoulder leather jacket and the full face helmet MUST be worn.

Now those guys have perfectly sound logic and reasoning as to why they do this, they want to have the best chance of surviving a wreck as possible, they have the facts and figures to back up their arguments and will always point to the guys racing bikes for a living that fall off at 200 mph and then get up and stroll nonchalantly back to the pits for an iced tea.

So, why do I not ascribe to that theory? I have family and loved ones to whom it would be devastating if I were to splatter my unprotected body across the interstate. I’m sure some of you readers would miss me for maybe an issue. Maybe it’s pure laziness, I would probably rather jump into the air conditioned truck on a hot day than climb into all that gear. I LOVE the freedom of just putting on the shades, kick and GO! I don’t think I’ve put the helmet on in Michigan since they repealed it earlier this year. I don’t think I have some secret desire to live the rest of my days with a feeding tube in my mouth and family members arguing about who gets to pull the plug.

Clearly, the best protection is afforded by the full face helmet. But I’ve never liked them, the distortion of the shield, the affect on peripheral vision, the dulling of the ambient sounds around you, the weight on your neck, the ‘oven’ effect when stuck in traffic, hell even the lack of smell annoys me, and don’t get me started on the fun of sneezing while you have those things on. In reality, even when there was a helmet law in Michigan (and all the other states we have run in), I only wore a ‘novelty’ beanie helmet anyway, just for the appearance of legality so I wouldn’t be hassled by the ‘man’. Any sort of comfort one may have taken from the protection of such a cheap device would be at best wishful thinking.

The reality (as I see it) is that the ATGATT guy probably wouldn’t be any better off than me if a minivan ran into him, but I feel I have a better chance of hearing, seeing and reacting faster without all that stuff on.

This brings me to the point that prompted me to write this editorial in the first place... it had become a LOT more dangerous out there in the last couple of years. I am, of course, referring to the cellphone impaired driver. Now, I know lots of people that can drive perfectly fine while talking on the phone, but you do see a lot of drivers out there that cannot. After a while, you get used to looking for them with their hand to their ear, careening the minivan through the parking lot as if they were a Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. As annoying and dangerous is this is, most of us have adapted to it. What is getting worse, however, are the damned texters.

If you’re cruising in traffic at all, scan the drivers side mirror on vehicles, if you see the tell-tale look down.. look up quick.. look back down... look up real quick being repeated over and over, you know this drive had no idea of what’s going on around him. I saw a hidden camera report that showed teenagers checked their texts every 30 seconds and had no second thought about replying while driving. I have no great words of wisdom about how to solve this one. It’s already illegal in a lot of places, but that’s not going to stop most people and we know it. I know people who think it’s perfectly fine to endanger the lives of others while texting or updating facebook because they ‘can handle it’. Well bullshit!

Listen, I’m no safety nazi, I don’t give a crap if you wear seatbelts or not, only run a questionable back brake or think that shorts and motorcycles are a great mix, if you’re texting/surfing/updating FB etc. while driving, you’re a damn menace, right up there with the repeat drunk driver and probably deserve it when you run into the back of the parked big rig.

So watch for them, we need to limit injuries to when we are doing stupid shit on the bikes, let’s get back to when we were our own worst enemy!

Talk Back 120

 Recently, I’ve been daydreaming about building myself a real, ‘dream’ chopper. Yeah, I know everyone does it, except for those guys that already have theirs. Anyhow, I had visions of a 24 over Sugar Bear springer, rigid frame (of course), a King And Queen seat and the ‘usual’ drivetrain. I say ‘usual’ because I automatically assume a Shovelhead mated to a Baker 6 in a 4 and an Evil belt drive primary. Then it occurs to me, that the Shovelhead I have now, is only a frame stretch and front end away (pretty much) from that very setup.
So that prompted me to try and change things up a little, not that there’s anything wrong with the set up I’m using now, far from it but it seems like there should be more than one or two details separating bikes in your garage, otherwise, why bother? I like the idea of running a Panhead engine... other than the problems that such engines tend to have, namely the rocker shaft blocks, the 180º inlet and the many years of stress that preceded my acquiring such an engine. There is the S&S P-motor of course, plus there are other ‘copies’ floating around.
Looking at available primaries, I continue to dislike the stock primary from 1965 through 2012. The older ‘tin’ primaries are cool, but they are like all tin primaries; they leak. Then I remembered the Baker TTP (Tin Type Primary) setup, similar to the one on the cover of issue 109. I watched the prototypes being worked on during a visit to Baker, and I’ve liked the idea of the tin ‘look’, but still having a leak free rigid connection and a cool way of running a primary chain and wet clutch.
I was tossing this around when I wasn’t slaving over a hot keyboard knocking out another killer issue of The Horse when out of the blue, James Simonelli at Baker called me and asked if I was interested in giving their 4 speed/TTP testbed Shovel a ride! Hell, yeah!
Baker is about 90 miles from The Horse World Headquarters, basically head north on I-75 to Flint, get off on 69 and then it’s about 30 miles to East Lansing. As soon as James called me, the weather turned to crap, but the first decent day, I jumped in the truck and boogied over to Baker to grab the Shovel. James gassed it up for me and gave me the tour of where the petcock/key/starter button was and said ‘see ya’.

It’s tough to give a riding review without paying attention to the chassis, wheels, brakes or engine, but for the purposes of this piece, they are pretty irrelevant. Having said that, the 74” Shovel in this bike is SWEET. It’s one that James set up, but it’s really nothing special. It has a Keihin carb and hydraulic lifters and Cycle Shack muffled pipes, but it was really easy to start. When kicking, it would start halfway through one of my usual kicks. It was really easy to ‘straddle kick’ and it would light every time, but as I said, that has nothing to do with drivetrain. The kicker? Well, it’s a Baker, and that means it works!
The electric start setup does work really well, first thing in the morning was pretty much the only time I got to listen to it turn over more than once, it’s a more modern piece for sure, not nearly as asthmatic as the old AMF setups. I found myself liking the four speed more than I thought I would. I had a ‘real’ four speed before I got my 6 in a 4 Baker and I wasn’t over the moon with the way the gearing was spaced out. The Baker four, however, has the ratios nicely spaced (1st 2:50, 2nd 1:70, 3rd 1:25, 4th 1:1) and I could see being happy with this transmission. Of course, I’d have to get the N1 drum and jockey shift it, but it would work just fine. Physically, the Four Speed looks very much like the OEM part, other than the “Baker” on the back of the case, nothing jumps out. This transmission is also available with a real ‘Jockey Top”, should you be so inclined. The TTP was pretty much how I thought it would be, quiet, efficient and not in the way. Some HDs have the primary cover pretty much against your leg when you’re stopped with both feet down, the TTP gives you lots of room. Of course the stock bike may not even go into neutral at the stop light, but that’s no problem with the Baker setup, straight into neutral from first at a complete stop with a hot engine and driveline.
So, was it earth-shatteringly great? Was it a shining jewel that attracted onlookers wherever it was parked? Nope, it was a very good, efficient setup that worked very well. Unlike the components it replaced, it didn’t shift harshly, didn’t leak, didn’t bind up when hot and it worked every time. Not only that, it comes with the peace of mind that it’s all made in the USA and backed up by the Baker promise that will allow you and your old Shovel (or whatever pseudo mix of alternator engine you wish) to roll down the highway trouble free for many, many miles.
The polished kick only TTP is for sure on my wish list for my longbike, I could do a LOT worse that couple it with the four speed also.

Black History Month

Talk Back 118

OK, on the face of it, you may well ask what the hell does Black History Month have to do with Choppers? I know the majority of you probably roll your eyes every time you see that phrase, maybe even question what the reaction would be to a ‘white’ history month, although it could be argued, that 99% of the history books are Euro-centric.
Anyway, I got an invite from Harley-Davidson to attend a tour they were putting on for journalists, to get attention for their Black History Month exhibit in the Harley Davidson museum.
If you’ve never been out to the museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I can highly recommend a look around the many exhibits there. For some reason, in the early 1900s, they decided to start keeping one of every bike they produced, and every different model year after that. The result is a staggering collection of pristine vintage bikes that are 100% accurate, as most of them have never been restored. If that 1936 Knuckle isn’t the way you think it should be... you are wrong.
The other journalists attending were not even motorcycle press, they wrote for ethnic magazines, such as Ebony, and other African-American publications I (for some reason) have never heard of. So, I was like the token white guy of the group (although there was another, a writer for “Urban Baggers” out of Spearfish SD), but I got along well with them all, and I was a useful resource, since they had very little knowledge about motorcycles in general.
The first day was torturous, we were ferried out to a dealership and ‘treated’ to the sales spiel, most of which I allowed to slip by until he proclaimed that EVERYONE, sooner or later, ended up on a bagger. Nope, not this guy. They let us play on a bike on the dyno, so I at least had some fun pegging the speedo on it.
The next day was the museum tour, which is always cool, it’s worth going just to check out the statue by Jeff Decker outside the building. Randy Smith’s .45 Magnum us still there too, the real HD board trackers are super cool. Sugar Bear was there with his killer Panhead “Gorjus”, and no matter how you spell it, that bike is unbelievable, and pretty much still as he built it in 1969.
The BHM exhibit featured a drag bike built by “PeeWee”, one of the “Defiant Ones” MC out of LA. What was even cooler was that he was at the museum, as well as his grandson. It’s always cool to meet the ‘real deal’ from back in the day, I don’t care what color you are, a lifelong passion for bikes makes you OK in my book. The other part of the exhibit covered the first African-American owner of an HD dealership. William Johnson ran one from 1964-1970. Interesting when you consider that during segregation, black people were discouraged from buying new HDs.
Day three was easily the best for me, we were bussed to Menominee Falls where the Pilgrim Road factory sits. It is here that all the engines and transmissions (except for the V-Rod) are built. It’s not just an assembly plant, raw castings are shipped in and machined into useable parts and then put together. It’s an interesting mix between robots and people, and fascinating to see the whole process from raw castings, to completed powertrains. A couple of things jumped out at me, such as the mainshaft castings for the six speed big twins. All the gears are cast along with the shaft, the splines and gear teeth are all cut into it and the ends get heat treated for strength. Cool stuff, but what if a gear chips a tooth? Yep, gotta replace the whole damn thing! I guess I didn’t realize the crankshafts were pressed together like that either, there’s no way to replace the crankpin on a Twin Cam engine, hell, you can’t replace a rod! The flywheels, shafts and rods are all crammed together in one operation that will require junking the whole thing should one part fail. They don’t even balance the flywheels any more, they do make sure they are tracking straight at least.
I didn’t see any, but I guess they still make the Evo engine there, although they told me that the Evo remanufacturing program is carried out at S&S these days... which has a hint of irony about it. All in all, I liked the tour and realized a whole lot more of the entire drivetrain is made in the USA that I would have thought.
In the afternoon, the other journalists went home, and I had lunch with Sugar Bear and the museum curator. It’s always good to get the behind the scenes stories to these things. Afterwards, we went over to the corporate offices at Juneau Ave to visit a friend of Sugar Bear’s and to get a sort of mini tour of the office building. We were walking by the CEO’s office (Keith Wandell) and he saw us and called us in. For the next hour, we had an informal chat that was quite interesting. This is the first time I’ve actually met the CEO of any large corporation, so I had no basis for comparison I guess, but he was a very sharp man with a keen sense of the ‘big picture’ without the self-importance you would assign to someone like that if you just heard about him offhand.
The next morning I flew out of the frigid Wisconsin air back to the frigid Michigan air just in time to wrap this issue up before heading off to the Indianapolis V-Twin show, a full report of which you can expect next issue!

Issue #117 MARCH 2012

The true hardcore chopper jockey likes to think he is immune from fashionable trends, unaffected by the latest ‘cool’ style, untouched by the ephemeral stylings of the West Coast cliques... but is he?

The reality being, if everyone was unaffected by trends, choppers would have never progressed past the 1960’s styling of Benny Hardy’s Easy Rider bikes, although even that is an arbitrary point in time. You could argue that the original “strippers” (which was what they called them at the time) were the only bona fide ‘choppers’ and all that extended front end stuff was just part of a fad.

This argument was brought to light recently on our online forum “Back Talk”, over at thehorsebc.com. I was bringing up the fact that I’m tired of seeing the exhaust ‘wrap’ on every other bike these days. There was a picture of a nicely done Shovelhead with nice paint and polished metal, but with a pair of shorty wrapped pipes. It just took away from the rest of the bike in my opinion. Let’s face it, eight times out of ten, that wrap is either hiding nasty welds or crappy chrome. I’ve done it myself, several of my Shovelhead exhausts have been pieced together from scrap pieces and then wrapped to make it look ‘professional’... sorta. I know some builders make perfectly fine exhausts and then wrap them because that’s the ‘look’ they are going for. The point is; this wrapping of the exhausts only popped up a few years ago, and lingers on today, much to my chagrin.

But trends do come and go, we’ve been guilty here at The Horse for helping propagate them. Feature bikes with 230 rear tires for instance. Suddenly, fat tires were sexy, the 200 and then the 230... people like Billy Lane were on the cutting edge building cool bikes utilizing them, and we were featuring them. I don’t think we ever featured a bike with a wider tire than 230... I may be wrong, a lot of strange stuff got through in the dark days before the reorganization here at The Horse during issue #68, but once they started the 280 and then 300 wide... it was just too much and soured the whole concept for many, including me. I’m sure many of you remember the Exile project I had with the 230 rear and 200 front. I did like that bike, I’ll admit. I even wrapped the perfectly good Exile pipes on that one.
There was a hot moment when red rims coupled with whitewall tires were all the rage, it didn’t last very long, but they still pop up every now and then.

The list is endless, big metalflake, “Period Correct”, mid controls instead of forwards, apes, Z bars etc. etc.

This leaves me with the dilemma of choosing which bikes to put in the magazine. Am I qualified to be the arbiter of what is now ‘in’ compared to what is ‘out’? Probably not, but I have to do it just the same. Most of you don’t have to worry about such things and that’s the way it should be. I try and get a mix of home built bikes as well as some pro built stuff to inspire the home builders. Face it, if there is a bike in the mag with something innovative and cool, the likelihood is that someone will copy it for their own build, and that is how these ‘trends’ get started. Although there is precious little new these days, a look around Sugar Bear’s museum of photographs is evidence to that. Stuff you would have sworn was dreamed up in the seventies had already been done in the fifties, the early L.A. scene was WAY ahead of the rest of the country. Everything from upswept fishtails to twisted springer legs was done by the innovative African-American bikers way back then. We owe them a lot... perhaps everything. The stuff they did was subsequently copied and spread around the country and the influence can be seen today.


So yeah, you may think the ‘trends’ don’t affect you, but they do. And that’s probably not all bad, the new trends may not be for you, but something may come along that appeals to you someday. Even if most of this stuff is not ‘new’ per se, it at least keeps everything rotating so the whole scene doesn’t just stagnate. For now, we can sit back and smirk at the bagger crowd, who are being sucked into the whole ‘swoopy’ thing with ever increasing front wheel sizes, always good for a laugh!

#116 February 2012 Perspective

I sometimes sit here and think about writing these editorials, and it reminds me that my life isn’t in any way special or interesting. I mean, I read George’s accounts of his struggles as a starving artist, and he’s out there living the life, and I don’t know if I could handle living like that. I see people at events, such as the Smoke Out and in Daytona and Sturgis, that seem to be there just to get attention. I have no idea if these people have real jobs or what, but they are all over the place and show up in every pictorial of events everywhere. They are probably good people and are either independently wealthy or just work real hard between events. Everyone’s lifestyle is different, there isn’t really one monolithic “biker” lifestyle that we all have to adhere to as if it’s the Pirate Code or something. Most of us are somewhere between a weekend warrior and the Sons of Anarchy, and most of us move up and down the scale as life happens.
For instance, in 1983 I was homeless in Austin, Texas. I had a wife, a seven month old baby daughter and a 1971 Ford Torino.. period. This was the beginning of December, and an unusually cold snap froze the “freeze” plugs out of the engine block. We were stranded. I got jobs as a day laborer so I could get a room at the Live Roach motel every night, and used the hand towels for diapers etc. At the time, nothing was farther from my mind than trying to find a bike to ride. The immediate emergency took precedence. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t look lustfully at some new Shovelhead riding by the job site. It just meant is was out of reach at the time. I’d say the lowest point of my life was that Christmas, having to share a motel room with three others because there wasn’t enough work over the holidays to pay for it ourselves.
It took a while to drag myself out of that one. We ended up back in Michigan, and I got the truck driving job that finally provided enough income to start thinking about picking up a bike. A friend of a friend had a 1969 TR6R Triumph Tiger for sale, and he wanted $400 for it. It was complete, but needed work. Sounded like a bargain to me, so I sent the money to the house (I was still on the road) and asked the wife to pay for it. Well, suffice to say the money never made it to the owner of the bike. Apparently a new dancing dress was more important, and since I don’t dance, maybe you can see where that was headed. Anyway, after the divorce, I picked up the 1971 Triumph Tiger, the engine from which drives my chopper to this day, and I started probating for the local M.C. These guys were far from the SOA mold, but we certainly met and partied with clubs that were a LOT more serious about the whole thing than we. I learned a lot about brotherhood and respect during those years, and despite the constant politics, had some really good times. We were never affiliated with any of the national clubs, although there was always the rumors abounding that we may be “persuaded” to pick sides one day. Myself, I could never see why they would want to bother.
Wife #2 occurred during that period, and wife #3 soon after. I found a local driving job that allowed me to have a life, be involved with my three daughters’ lives and get back into building bikes, including reading the old Iron Horse and sending in the occasional picture and a letter, hoping they would be published. I began building the Shovelhead that would eventually appear on the cover of #115, and in 1998, after a few disappointing issues of IH after Snow left, the May 1998 issue began the resurrection when Hammer took over as editor. This was cool stuff, and this was happening right here in Michigan! Scott “Genghis” Wong mentioned he had started an Internet message board, and after some effort (there was no “Google” then), I managed to find it. Here I became acquainted with Hammer and some of the other players from the magazine. They set up the “Back Talk” message board soon after, so I was prepared when Princeton Publishing (The IH parent) went into bankruptcy. The struggles to launch THBC dragged on for a while. Hammer seemed certain that it was going to happen, but others not so much. Through all of this, I was pretty much an observer. I had met Hammer and some of the others at a swap meet in Grand Rapids, but as usual, I had no marketable skills to offer. A couple of issues in, however, the guy doing the website went AWOL for quite a while. This was the opportunity I was waiting for. They posted on Back Talk that they needed someone who knew HTML to update the website, and I immediately volunteered! Let me tell you, I had no more HTML experience than the next person, but I saw it as a foothold in the magazine, to be a part of the thing that had been a part of me for so long. I did a bunch of research on website building and began to update the site as needed. It looked pretty crappy at times, but they put up with it, and I managed to worm my way into writing the occasional article as well as the online stuff.
My relationship with the magazine remained like this until the original Smoke Out in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The camaraderie present at that first “event” was outstanding (it still is), and I ended up riding back as far as Cincinnati with Hammer, me on my Shovel and him on the 113” ‘Major Threat.” After only seven or eight years of loyalty later, I was awarded the job of editor here at The Horse. I’m not trying to downplay how special this job is. I’ve been a pretty happy guy ever since I started here, I’m just saying that my day-to-day existence isn’t worthy of basing an editorial on, ten times a year. The job is special... I’m not. I’m just a regular guy who goes to work every day, worries about the bills, struggles to understand my 14 year old daughter who thinks the world is against her, is happy about my marriage to Nurse Nut and stresses about the finances to put the project bikes together. Life is alternately good, great and suckass, usually all in the same day, but it beats the hell out of being homeless. Hopefully, I will never find myself in that position again, but at least I know I can beat it.