Rabbits and Hats
It’s Thursday night. I’m talking with my friend Dennis at our local club meeting. I’m describing my recent visit (with the Four Stroke Single National Owners Club) to McPherson College in McPherson, Kansas, where you can get a degree in Automotive (and motorcycle!) Restoration, and to the Kansas Motorcycle Museum in nearby Marquette.
At (four-year) McPherson College, we watched six guys build a Model T Ford from parts in about 12 minutes. The engine/transmission unit was together but the rest of the car was in pieces spread around the floor. In twelve minutes the car was completely assembled, water in the radiator, the engine crank-started, and the car driven a few feet. Amazing to watch.
At McPherson, so that you can choose a correct period finish for your restoration, you learn the history of auto paint. You learn about interior materials from the last century-plus. You learn how those little upholstery buttons were made through the years. You learn to use a complete machine shop. You learn new-world and old-world techniques.
While you’re working on a project, you may travel to study original or restored examples to see how everything goes together - vital if you started with boxes of unlabeled, 100-year old parts.
You can choose among six sub-majors resulting in a Bachelor’s in Science or Art. You learn business skills and English skills to help you conduct your business or that of your employer.
The next day we rode 25 miles to tiny Marquette where we walked among what appeared to be several million dollars worth of restored and not-so-fussed-over motorcycles. I could not have chosen a favorite, but the US four-cylinder bikes, of which they had several, stick in my memory.
The cast-iron engine of the Indian inline-four was entirely smooth on the outside, not a fin to be seen. Knowing as we do that those bikes were used for police work, thus often ridden at not much more than walking pace, how did they cool themselves? All that heat-holding iron...
So I’m telling Dennis about the college and museum, and it occurs to me to mention that the Trailblazers, a club of old Southern California racers and desert riders, is having its annual banquet soon. They’re honoring Sammy Tanner, ‘60s and ‘70s star flat-tracker.
Dennis didn’t seem interested in the Trailblazers (pioneer motorcyclists meeting annually since 1940) or in Sammy Tanner, the celebrated “Flying Flea.” I know that Dennis is interested in road-racing vintage motorcycles, owns several Bultaco racers and other European bikes.
I realized at that moment that I’d rather spend five minutes with Sammy Tanner than five hours in a motorcycle museum. I do like looking at old bikes, especially models that I owned years ago. But a bike, even an old MV, Harley KR or Manx, is just a thing, a tool, only animated when someone sits on it and makes it work, conjuring up the magic.
Without the riders who used them so brilliantly they’re just evocative furniture you’re prohibited from sitting on.
Old bikes with racing histories such as the Hailwood-Sports Motorcycles Ducati or a John Cooper Manx or Sammy Tanner’s (C.R. Axtell) Gold Star, are rabbits and top hats. The rider was the magician.
In 2010 I got a press pass for the Indianapolis MotoGP, allowing me access to the paddock, if not the pits. In the paddock, I stepped to the back of a line at a porta-potty and realized that the guy next to me was Gary Nixon. Imagine. Gary Nixon.
I’d never met Nixon, only read about him and his legendary exploits and wildman attitude, but I’d been on the same racetrack at the same time with him, in 1965 in Ohio. He passed me in a corner as if I’d been on a bicycle. I was riding a Ducati 250 single, going as fast as I dared.
All these years later, Gary Nixon and I talked about our prostate adventures and how we were always aware of the location of the nearest public restroom. He was totally approachable and ready to laugh. I could hardly believe my luck at a chance meeting with one of my heroes. I did not, you’ll be relieved to hear, tell him about the race track in Ohio and my old Ducati.
In the ‘60s when I lived in San Francisco, I met lots of racing stars. I’ve written about meeting Bart Markel. I had lunch with Evel Knievel. I met Ascot standout Elliot Schultz. I’ll never forget meeting those guys.
Now, Gary Nixon is gone. Marco Simoncelli is gone, Bart Markel is gone, Freddie Nix is gone, Calvin Rayborn is gone. You’ll have names of your own absent favorites.
Can’t ask those guys how it was out there, much as we might yearn to do so. It’s too late to make a human connection with them. We can however connect with riders we encounter in our travels, at motorcycle meeting places....anywhere.
A few weeks before the Kansas weekend, I invited a sportbike-riding friend to ride to McPherson and Marquette with me. I told him what I’d heard about the college and the 12-minute Model T assembly. I mentioned the motorcycle museum and the highly regarded Kansas barbecue.
The route isn’t challenging, I told him. It’s 450 miles each way on straight Midwestern roads. But it’s a good bunch of guys, the Four-Stroke Single National Owners Club, I said. You’ll like ‘em.
I don’t really care about a good buncha guys, he said. He knew as he said it that I’d be taken aback, and I was. I was stunned.
I do care about a good buncha guys. I’m not saying I don’t like old bikes. But when I walk by old racing bikes on display somewhere, I think of the magicians, the good guys who made those magic motorcycles famous - not for what the bikes were, but for what they did.
When I see those bikes or any bikes, I think about the riders. So when I see racers or recreational riders, motorcyclists all, I try to create a place where their lives can touch mine.
