Motorcycles, Trains and Nostalgia on Friday Morning

I went to scenic Bow, Washington this past Friday for a meeting. I got up early enough to get cleaned up and leave my house by 6:00am, so I could take a nice long ride before I had to be at the meeting 60 miles away by 8:00. I was going against traffic, so I could deviate from the most direct route with ease.

I fired up my black 2002 Triumph TT600, 'La Sombra Negra', and suited up for the ride. I almost always dress in a full set of leathers, not so much for the look (even though it is somewhat imposing) but mostly for the protection. Cows don't get rashes, after all. Anyway, the morning was dawning warm, with a light sheen of low clouds slightly obscuring the rays of sunlight. This was in spite of the weatherman speaking of rain showers being about all day. Here in Seattle, we're blessed with the catch-all weather prediction: 'Mostly cloudy with showers and sunbreaks'. I gotta ask: How the fuck can the bastard weathermen in this town sleep at night? I mean, really...I could fuck up the weather just as much as they can, and I can't get on TV. If I ever meet Jeff Renner I will find it very hard not to stomp him like a gnat...

I caught myself smiling in the reflection of my car window, and smiled back. I was looking forward to this ride. After setting out, I ran north on I-5, tunes cranked up in my helmet, barely any traffic, feeling fine. You can't pay money for feelings like that. I breathed deeply, the cool morning air tickling my nose with the sweet aroma of late spring and the liner of my helmet. 75mph is a wonderful thing in the morning.

Just before Everett, my low fuel warning light came on, so I exited on Pacific Street. To my good fortune, a BNSF freight train was leaving Delta Yard, so I pulled over to watch her cross the grade and head for Seattle. As I caught the glare of the SD40-2's headlight, I found myself flooded with memory of this area. I had lived in Lake Stevens until about 2 years ago, and loved to sneak out of the house after the wife and kid were asleep and cruise down to Delta and Bayside yards to watch the switching engines roll back & forth to sort the cars. Whatever it is about trains that I love so much I don't know. Maybe its the fascination that these little steel rails can take you to so may far-off places; or maybe its the juvenile urges of a little boy playing with trucks, cars & trains.

Whenever watching trains roll by slowly, I always thought of Sparta, New Jersey and the NYS&W tracks twisting through the Walkill Valley...when Greg Simmons and I would be at my house, and we'd hear the horn of the diesels making the crossing in Ogdensburg. Frantically we'd scurry to my 1978 Ford LTD Wagon like roaches running from the light and race off to the trestle at the old Sparta station, which lay about 2/3 of the way through a broad curve. The trains would have to slow down to about 10mph which was coincedently slow enough for one of two stupid--VERY STUPID--teenage kids to hop onto a running-board ladder and hang on while the other stupid teenage kid hopped back in his car and took off for West Mountain Road. Meanwhile the train would straighten out and head west through Woodruff's Gap and bent to the north towards North Church and Hamburg...gaining speed the entire time. Meanwhile the other kid is driving like he's taking his pregnant girlfriend to the hospital to reach the rendezvous in time.

Shortly after Lake Grinnell and before North Church, there was a section of track parallel to a large, wide dirt lot that was about 3/4 of a mile long. I think there was a rock quarry here at one time or another, as New Jersey limestone is second only to Indiana in its quantity. This vast patch of dirt is where the rendezvous occurred. The driver would line up the car next to the tracks at the end of the lot from which the train was to come....and then wait. When the train came by, all hell broke loose. Whichever one of us was in the car tried to time his acceleration to speed up enough to allow the other to HOP OFF THE TRAIN ONTO THE ROOF OF THE CAR WHILE DOING ABOUT 30 MPH!!!! This was about a 4-5 foot leap out and down, and we always used my wagon because of the roof rack. It gave us something to grab on to.

Frankly, this took skill---and practice---and seldom-exceeded levels of stupidity. We found out that you needed to pay very close attention to where your partner got on, or you were liable to run out of room before you could line up for the leap. Twice I took the ride to Hamburg...9 miles away...before the train slows down enough to hop off without breaking limbs. Once, while driving, I pushed it too far and drove off the end of the lot into a stand of reeds and had to call Luba out of a drunken stupor to pull my wagon out of the mud. Greg had a hell of a long wait in Hamburg that night.

Its a wonder we were not seriously hurt throughout this series of stupidity. Oh, we did suffer minor cuts, bruises, abrasions, contusions and blisters (from hanging onto that ladder). I am content to never know how seriously fucked up we could have been.

Wait a minute---Didn't this story start out with me taking a motorcycle ride? On, yeah...well after watching the freight train, I gassed up and headed for Arlington...a small town along the banks of the Stillagaumish River. Like a lot of towns in western Washington, Arlington was originally a logging and rail town, with mills and rail connections to Seattle. Both the Milwaukee Road and Northern Pacific served Arlington in its heyday, but now all but one of the the mills are long gone. A rusty, rough and weedy spur of the BNSF slithers through the valley to reach it from Marysville to the south. How long it will remain in service appears thoroughly dubious. The NP main no longer exists north and south of town. South of town, several on city and county councils are trying desperately to turn the train bed into a bike trail. Main Street is still much the same as it has been for 30 years, but that belies the real story. The town is changing for sure. Lots of money is flowing in as Seattle gets more and more expensive. Real estate has easily doubled in value here since 1980, if not more, and people are flocking to the suburbs. Arlington, while probably too far for most to commute to Seattle, is welll within reach of Everett and several communities of housing have stared springing up in and around the city limits. Here and there within the old town, signs of this new influx of money can be seen...the new traffic circle; new sidewalks along a few of the side streets; shiny new trash receptacles EVERYWHERE.

I headed through town and north along highway 530, towards Darrington. A dump truck I regretfully found myself behind turned off relatively quickly, and I was free to pace myself as I wished. Not too fast to get a nasty ticket, but fast enough to challenge the road.

Rolling into Darrington at just a few minutes past 7:00, I fueled up again just to be safe and headed off north after a smoke and a cup of coffee barely 10 minutes later. This is where I knew I could open up the Triumph. I had ridden this road several times before and, with the exception of conditions, could almost recall every corner in order. Frankly, I don't live for the speed, but I live for the corners. There's nothing like the feeling of a bike wrapping itself around the shifting of your weight to the inside of the curve, then having the little minx stand up and wheel off down the straightaway like a slot-car set on 220. I don't think I ever shifted out of 3rd gear more than twice in the stretch from Darrington to Marblemount, in spite of assuredly exceeding 100 mph more than once. My redline is 14000 rpm's and I hope these Limeys meant it.

Arriving in Marblemount I turned west and relatively complacently rode into Mount Vernon and on to my meeting at the Skagit Valley Casino. I arrived at 7:55, had a smoke and cruised inside for my complimentary continental breakfast.

What a great way to start a morning. :)

Yup, this confirms it.

After hacking down about 30 minutes of 'From Russia with Love', I've become so irritated by Roger Moore that I've resorted to watching Univision. I don't speak Spanish, but find it thrilling to imagine that I'm in Mexico and I understand what the hell these people are talking about.

When watching Univision, I can't help but stare at the audience members. I wonder where they return to when the lights in the studio go down. What misery awaits their arrival after their image has been transmitted a few hundred miles into space and back to my house?

Perhaps I'll switch over to CCTV and try and catch the latest 'Hong Kong Update' in Mandarin.

Better not. I'm liable to be up all night.

You gotta be kidding.

I'm sitting here in the living room, typing away and listening to a television show called 'The 100 Greatest Americans' that my wife is watching, and I gotta say the folks in charge of this damn show fucked it up royally. Bobby Kennedy ranked lower than Martha Fucking Stewart?!! Teddy Roosevelt didn't even make the top 25! AAAAAAHHHH.

Well screw it. On to oblivion we go without so much as missing a step. Where is all the reverence for creating a list of the 'Greatest Americans'? And I love the fact that the writers feel its necessary to infer that its just as hard to speak out today 'against the establishment' as it was for Frederick Douglass to speak out against slavery. Where in the hell to they get this crap?
I'm more and more convinced the press has it out for GW. Allow me to paint the scene:

So they are flashing pictures of the demonstrations in New York during the RNC last year, a picture of President Bush, and the voice-over says:

"So you think its hard to speak out against the establishment these days...you should have been around when Frederick Douglass was alive..."

Then Matt Lauer rambles on about the life of Frederick Douglass while they shove in one more quick 2 second clip of a young man being dragged away by riot police.

The writer of that little storyboard is obviously trying to associate the Bush administration with the slave masters and segregationists who would have rather bashed in Douglass' head than allow him to write. The comparison is innacurate, inflammatory and irresponsible.

Where and when is it hard to speak out against the 'establishment'? Those worms they showed being the 'victims' on TV have every right to speak out. I can say anything I want right here and not suffer consequence of it, unless I threaten to harm others or profess others to do the same. Is that what's so hard to speak out against?

Get a permit, and protest anything you want, folks. Nobody will stop you.

Now that I've gotten my bitch out, I'll watch Barbara Bach kick some ass in 'From Russia with Love', even though Roger Moore is my least favorite Bond.

We were on the edge of the desert....

...when I suddenly found myself a white male in the United States of America.

Odd.

Therefore, I have taken to my midlife crisis, with zeal, in an effort to blow it all. If I get through this and still have all this success I've had handed to me, then it will truly be mine. I feel like the guy David Byrne sings about that asks himself: 'Well...how did I get here?' Great song, by the way.

Goddamn Catholic upbringing won't allow me to believe that I've really earned all this shit.

So anyway...this morning, after faking my way through a rather uneventful morning at work, I brought my truck home and grabbed Spedly's 1980 Honda CB900 Special and rode it back to the office. It was raining. I felt fantastic. Nobody that looked upon my dirty leathers and this evil-looking, drop-barred, noise-belching contraption barreling down the road would believe that I am responsible for overseeing the livelyhood of about 50 people. What fun. I cranked up the bike and kept it in 2nd gear at about 45mph...creating a roar that I'm sure would have disturbed any small forest animal within 2 city blocks.

"Fuck them," I thought, "They need to know who's in charge here, and the louder this damn thing gets, the more clear it becomes who has their finger on the trigger."

So I rode the rest of the way back to the office, never shifting out of 2nd.

As I showed up at the store, I rode into the detail area, where Spedly should have been. Only...NO SPEDLY. I asked Peter where the hell he was, and he shouted out that he just called. Evidently the fucker had broken the clutch cable on the Blue Devil (the club's 1991 Honda Nighthawk 750), and was trying to get something together and get his ass to work. I momentarily thought about trekking off to his house, which wasn't far away, but decided against it. I barked for Peter to have Spedly see me as soon as he gets in, and rode off to the main shop.

I returned to my office, worked on a couple of pricing spreadsheets for the new accessory guide, and then parked myself in the service drive to watch the goings-on. I just couldn't get into anything today, so I trekked across the street to detail in an effort to locate Spedly. Whilest over there, I bummed a smoke from Peter and we talked about the workload and how there weren't enough cars to keep all his guys busy. Build-out will end shortly and he'll be bitching about how there's not enough time in the day to get the work done. Sometimes working with people is like swinging a pendulum and then getting it to slow down after you get it going. They're never happy.

Whilest we were chatting, Spedly finally pulled up. I broke off the banter and walked out to him, motioning him to cut the engine. Spedly is a very dear friend of mine, even though I am technically his supervisor. I got him this job detailing cars and, whilest he was a terrible risk, he has managed to do all right for himself. Overall he's made pretty good progress on developing decent work habits and sufficient desire t make a paycheck. What I still hold hope out for is that I can positively affect his decision-making process in the rest of his life.

Now, remember I told you that he's a very dear friend of mine when I say this...Spedly is poor white trash. His plight really is nobody's fault but his own, as is the case with the majority of his ilk. Responsibility is a word lost upon him and his wife. I digress...

"You need to come with me. I need to show you something." I said with an overbearing tone of seriousness in my voice whilest looking at him over the top of my glasses.

"What?" Spedly held his hands out like he was trying to prove his innocence.

"Just come with me, pal." And I started walking back across the street, Spedly in tow.

"Did I screw something up?"

I didn't answer.

"I'll finish that Camry right away."

I love it when silence does its job. The boy was telling me stuff I didn't even want to know in an effort to stave off the impending unpleasantry I was obviously going to lay at his feet.

As we turned the corner to the back shop, he started laughing when he saw his CB sitting in the impromptu 'Motorcycle Parking' area next to the compressor room. It looked good. I enjoyed the look on his face. He was excited.

Spedly acquired this bike to replace his failing CB750 back around the first of the year. Since then, its been moored in my garage for a complete run-through. Lono and I went through that bike pretty thoroughly, with Lono doing most of the work. We polished every piece of aluminum that would come off the engine, solved nasty fuel leak in the carbs, adjusted the valves, rebuilt the frontend, installed new bars, seat cover, fixed the air suspension, changed every fluid, took out dents and damage to the fuel tank and side covers, painted said tank and side covers, painted all the hardware, modified the turn signal and headlight mounts, replaced the stock tail light with a Harley tombstone (just to piss off the Harley guys), and reconditioned the finish on all the instrument cluster cases. I know I'm missing something, but fuck it. I finally got everything dialed in and running just two days ago, and decided to motivate Spedly a little bit.

The sinister purpose of the ride to work this afternoon was to torture Spedly. The benevolent purpose of the ride to work this afternoon was to motivate Sepdly. He has been dragging his feet for 6 months to get the title switched over, and now the bike is ready. So I told him, in no uncertain terms, that if the damn thing wasn't switched over in 2 weeks, I was going to Bob's and changing the title into my name and riding it in front of him until he gave me the money it cost to license. I know its a heartless thing to do, but I'm just the bastard to do it. And it has to be done.

After all, the boy needs direction.