Related Posts - Motorcycles: A Magnificent Obsession

Part 1   http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=46840

Part 2    http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=47571

Part 3   http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=50371

Part 4  http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=51765

Part 5  http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=55723

Part 6  http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=56994

 Part 7  http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=59134

Picking up from Part Seven

Monte and Earl got the crates off the freight truck, dropping one crate in process, busting it up.  Instead of there being motorcycles in the crates there were many rag wrapped bundles in each one which turned out to be the parts to unassembled bikes.  After much cussing and drinking and work they managed to get the parts into Earl's garage.  Upon unwrapping them they discovered the parts were thickly covered with an anti-rust, anti-corrosion product called cosmoline.  Eventually they got the parts clean and laid out in the rough order of how they would be assembled - only to find that there were no assembly instructions and no Owner's Manuals. 

After more cussing and drinking and hours of work they eventually, late at night, got the bikes assembled.  So the two of them went inside for a celebratory nightcap.  Earl, however, had something more elaborate in mind, one of his peculiar conceits of playing the role of an upper crust elitist.  Monte's assessment of these conceits is that they arose because Earl had been born dirt poor in the Palouse of Eastern Washington, much as Monte had been born dirt poor and lived in Eastern Kansas, and this was Earl's way of reminding  himself he had "made it."

On this night it was a not the nightcap Monte expected but an elaborate ritual centered around fine Brandy, crisp Washington State Golden Delicious Apples and warm soft Brie cheeze, with good music and French cigarettes.

Part of the ending in Earl's living room:

So there we are.  Two guys who grew up dirt poor half a country apart, him a hard scrabble kid of the Palouse and me a tenant farmer’s boy from the rolling plains of Kansas, both of us filthy dirty sitting in two leather chairs, listening to Sinatra, sniffing and sipping VSOP Brandy from huge snifters, smearing Brie on crisp, juicy, genuine Washington State apples.

Neither of us say anything for the longest time.  Earl opens a drawer and comes up with an unopened pack of Gauloises, opens it and shakes one out for me and one for him.  Now, I HATED the taste of Gauloises, but this was his moment, his proof of conquering the Palouse and all the people who told him he couldn't, his proof that he could be as sophisticated as the best of all those who held him in disrespect as he grew up, all those who told him he would grow up to be nothing worth talking about – and I wasn’t about to spoil that moment.

We light up.  He lifts his glass, and I lift mine.  He is pretty sloshed by now, but his voice is still clear, his movements show no sign of being drunk, and he says, not looking at me but at someone a continent and decades away, “How do you like me now, you pricks?...................

"................   As I am riding away I look in my mirror and Earl is standing there in the driveway, Brandy in hand, Gauloise perched between his lips looking up at the starry sky.  I’m not sure what he was thinking but I imagine it was along the lines of non illigitamus carborundum. The kid from the Palouse was finally in a world of his making.  That was worth celebrating.  And I was glad to be part of it.

After a shower and a good night's sleep, which in those days was about six hours, and drinking a big glass of three Alka-Seltzers, I rolled the Honda out towards Earl's a little after noon.  I lived in Riverside, a small, poor suburb of DC near the University of Maryland campus.  Earl lived in Bowie, half way between DC and Annapolis.  Traffic was light and the ride woke me up fairly quickly and the Alka-Seltzer was helping stop the pounding in my head.  The headache was subsiding from a full head drum beat to knife thrusts  in rhythm with my heart beat just above my right eye brow. [Some things never change. My worst headaches today are still throbbing, stabbing pain in exactly that place.]

About 30 minutes later I pulled into Earl's driveway and up into his garage.  The door was up and there was a light haze in the garage and  the smell of coffee so I knew Earl had been poking around.  I went in through the kitchen, poured myself a cup of black coffee and sloshed in a bit of last night's left over brandy which Earl had thoughtfully left next to the stove.

Earl was sitting in one of the leather chairs in the center of the living room that faced the TV and Stereo, smoke rising above his head, half an ash tray full of butts on the lamp table and a cup of coffee in his hand.  He wasn't watching TV, reading the paper, or listening to music.

Without turning to look at me, he says, "Since you are already up, get me a cup of Brandy and splash in a little coffee, will ya?"

He holds the cup up over his head and I walk up from behind and take the cup into the kitchen, fill it with coffee, dash some Brandy in it,  walk back and hand it to him, from the front.  Then I plop down in the matching leather chair, get out a Chesterfield and light up.

He takes a sip of the coffee and says, "This isn't what I ordered."

I just ignore him.  We had danced this tango long enough that he knew what I had done.  If he wanted to pickle himself before the sun was under the yard arm then he was going to do it without my help.

"Well, aren't we talkative this morning.  You hung over?"

"Nope.  Feel good."

"Then what's wrong?"

"Well, first, you're being too nice.  Second, you were in the garage earlier, and now you're in here.  Third, something's wrong out there or you'd be out there getting the bikes ready to go.  So I figure when you feel like it you'll tell me what it is.  Until then I've got coffee and brandy and cigarettes, the sun's shining, its not too hot, not too humid,  so what's not to like?"

"Your bike's got no spark."

"You sure?  Was the key on and is the battery full charged?"

"Everything is like it should be.  I checked the batteries and installed them, gapped the plugs in both bikes, checked the continuity."

"Did you switch your bike for mine?"

"Hell, no.  I wouldn't do that."

"Like hell you wouldn't.  If you wanted to dump some damn electrical gremlin in my lap you would.  How would I tell if you did anyway?"

"Well, your bike has a little gouge on the on the rear fender that was just painted over.  I noticed it last night.  Besides I have no reason to switch out bikes with you.  My bike hasn't got any spark either."

"Shit! Why didn't you say that?!"

Earl just grinned like the cat that  swallowed the canary and said, "Knew it'd get a rise out of you, and I just wanted to watch. Now let's go out and pull the points covers and see what we find."

We went out in the garage and I was still a little steamed for being had.  It wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last.  But a man has is pride.  Sort of.  After a while I was chuckling about it.

The points looked good. We turned over the engines and they closed at -10 TDC which, because they both did, we figured was the factory setting and I wrote that down for later if we had to re-time the engines.  The gap was right on at .032" on both bikes, so we figured that was OK too.  It was dawning on me that we were damned lucky to have bought two identical bikes.  With no manuals to go by we could compare settings between the bikes and make a pretty good guess at what were the factory recommended settings.

To make a long story short we took about an hour messing with the grounds, checking continuity to the engine circuit and found nothing.  I got frustrated and took the damned points out and went over to the bench and looked at them under a bright under car florescent light.  At first I didn't notice anything and then I noticed that the point contacts were shiny.  What the hell?  Both of the tiny contacts shined.  Earl pulled his points and his looked the same.

We got out some sandpaper and lightly sanded the points.  The shiny coating flaked off.  It acted like a lacquer and I think that is exactly what it was!  The Italians couldn't bother to put the damned bikes together but they could take the time to lacquer the point contacts for whatever reason, and that completely eluded us.  I was starting to think I knew why they could never win a war.

In any case, we put the points back in and while we had not moved the piston in any of this we checked the timing and it was still on, even with the removal of the thin coating of lacquer.  We buttoned them up, grounded the pulled plugs and kicked them over.  Nice blue spark zapped in the plug gap.  Bingo!

With that Earl said, "Let's eat something and then we'll come back and fire those mothers up!  So back into the kitchen to make sandwiches we went.  I was feeling pretty fond of me for being the one who found the reason for the problem, but I held my tongue.

I have earlier explained that Earl always ate this enormous breakfast that lasted him until supper time.  So when he says, "Let's go eat"  he means I will eat and he will drink and nibble.  Mostly drink.  So I fixed a sandwich and popped a beer.  Earl grabbed a malt liquor and a can of Beer Nuts.  Lunch.

We plop down in the chairs and Earl turns on a Redskins pre-season game.  They are so bad that neither of us really care but neither of us are very inclined to talk.  We are trying to figure out whether we had those suckers ready to fire up.

We had ended up taking a long way around a low fence, but we had now gotten to the place we needed next to get: running and riding the bikes. Were both pretty fair motorcycle mechanics.  Earl was better with cars, but I held my own with bikes.  We may not have been the very best, but we were damned good and knew it.  So what was this growing knot in our stomachs about?

Next: What can possibly go wrong?

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