Summer Beauty

   It’s the day after my umbilical hernia operation and I’m sitting at my computer desk saying little prayers that I won’t cough because it feels like someone shoving a pitchfork into my belly button.

The operation went well, even though it was performed at Centerpoint, a hospital which I’ve heard nothing good about. I was given something called Propephal, so when they wheeled me into the operating room, plugged it into my IV and told me to count backwards from ten, 3 seconds later I woke up in the recovery room with an hour and a half sliced out of my life.

I ascended slowly into consciousness passing the time with the recovery nurse, Cindy, who showed me pictures of and told me stories about her cat, Artemis. With a cat named Artemis I realize I’m making an elaborate assumption in how I spelled her name. It could as easily have been spelled Syndi but I know I’m phonetically correct and that’s good enough for me.

A month ago I bought a 1981 Honda CB900 Custom motorcycle for $1000. It was cheap being 39 years old and a trade in at the local BMW Motorcycle shop. I found it while looking for a BMW in my price range of $4000.

    I didn’t buy it right away. I had no intention of buying that bike until the A/C went out on a hot night and I had to spend my $4000 motorcycle budget replacing it. I was desperate for a motorcycle so I scraped together another $1000 that I probably shouldn’t have spent, and bought it.

The CB900 Custom wasn’t my first choice. What I was looking for was a vintage BMW motorcycle but they’re difficult to find within my price range. I had owned a 1975 BMW 600cc motorcycle in the mid 80s that was prosaically named R60/6 and I loved it.

I bought the BMW after owning a heart breaking chain of stylish but incredibly factory flawed British motorcycles. A company called Lucas Electrics had a monopoly on supplying the ignition systems of all British motor vehicles at the time. The legacy of Lucas Electrics was brilliantly illustrated at a motorcycle swap meet by a t-shirt depicting a knight in full battle armor, with the name LUCAS emblazoned above and below a caption saying, “The Prince of Darkness.”

Riding a BMW R60/6 was like driving a two wheeled station wagon. It had a fairing and a long flat seat. Girls thought it was ugly until they sat in the saddle and took a ride. Over long distances with my friends who brought their girlfriends, all the girls wanted a turn on my bike because it was so comfortable. They wouldn’t let anyone take pictures of them on it, for good reason.

I like old BMWs because they’re simple. Function over form. Famous for being reliable, easy to maintain and being driven for record setting numbers of miles before needing to be rebuilt or retired. The maintenance to keep them happily puttering down the highway is simple; barely more than what’s required to keep your lawn tractor in tip top shape. I use the lawn tractor as an example because my dad heard me driving my Beemer down the street and he said he could have sworn someone was coming over the hill on their John Deere lawn tractor.

The 70s BMW motorcycle was as ugly as home-made sin. They were tall. I owned a 1975 R60/6 and had to tip-toe at stop lights and I’m 5’9”. The cylinders poked out the sides which made them very wide, so you won’t be doing a lot of lane splitting but those cylinders were in the wind for a reason: insanely efficient cooling. They never overheated. They were just asking to be abused and neglected and because the cylinders were horizontally opposed in a ‘boxer’ formation, it was the smoothest twin cylinder motorcycle you would ever ride.

If you own a BMW motorcycle the one thing every experienced owner would tell you is that you never start a riding season without adjusting the valves. It’s a simple thing to do and all the tools you need are in a bag in a bin in the easily accessible under seat compartment. It was like a little trunk. You could change a tire or rebuild the engine with what was provided in the factory tool kit.

Being the man that I am, I rolled my old BMW out to prepare it for the first ride one spring. Knowing how unpredictable Missouri weather is, it could have been mid January. Anyway, instead of taking off the valve covers and adjusting the valves as I should have and have done for many years leading up to that day, I decided to see if it would start. I knew better but I kept telling myself that, if it started I would shut it off before it got warm and adjust the valves. After all, it only takes 20 minutes.

Of course it fired up immediately. Because it had so eagerly burbled into life, I decided to ride it around a little before adjusting the valves. The weather in Missouri changes fast. It might drop down to zero degrees that night and I might not get to ride my bike for another month. So I threw a leg over the saddle, blipped the throttle, opened the choke and headed to my sister’s house for a visit.

About ten miles into my ride, a grin spread wide across my face as I whizzed north on I435, something whacked left my knee very hard. It felt like a baseball. I began to suspect it had something to do with my motorcycle when it immediately began to splutter and cough.

When I pulled to the shoulder and rubbed my knee I noticed that the left side spark plug wire was dangling in front of the cylinder. It was odd that the spark plug wire would pop off. That had never happened before. So I tugged it towards me thinking I’d plug it back in and continue my ride. To my dismay the spark plug wire was still connected to the spark plug.

I thought maybe it had just come loose, but I found out it had been forcefully blown out the spark plug hole, destroying the threads in the head. I was screwed. The exhaust valve had collapsed and when the piston compressed the exhausted gases against the closed valves it forced the spark plug to blow. All because I wanted to ride before adjusting my valves. It was a mistake I would never make again.

So I ran over to the BMW shop and plunked down a $1000 for that old Honda before I lost my nerve. Having been a single father for so long I knew fortunes changed quickly and if I didn’t get a motorcycle right now it might never happen. The A/C going out may be the first in a chain of catastrophic events (like a world-wide pandemic) and I might never own another motorcycle again in my life.

My son Zack took me to the shop while I negotiated the deal. When I was sitting astride my shaggy bike I told him to head home, that I was going to cruise around a little.

The bike had a fairing and a windshield with the added bonus of what are called ‘lowers’. ‘Lowers’ attach to the bottom of the fairing and divert air away from the shins so you can stay warm while riding in cold weather. What I didn’t know about ‘lowers’ was that, at least on this motorcycle, they divert the warm air passing through the engine directly between your legs, which is a bonus in cold weather, but it was 90 degrees that day. I wouldn’t be able to cruise for long, vowing that the first thing I would do when I got home was remove the ‘lowers’ until the weather cooled off.

After removing the fairing ‘lowers’ I checked the oil, only to discover that it was more than 3 quarts low. In a bike that only holds 3.75 quarts of oil that told me a lot about the guy who traded the bike in. I happened to have some oil so I topped it up. Because it was so low I decided to change the oil. I was disappointed because I bought the bike just to get me through this riding season. It had been 15 years since I ridden a motorcycle and I needed a fix.

In my search for a new oil filter for a 39 year old motorcycle I discovered that you’re supposed to use a special motorcycle oil. I was skeptical so, of course, I had to research the reason why I was going to spend double the price per quart for this special oil.

It turns out there is a good reason. It’s because the clutch is submerged in engine oil for constant lubrication but, because a clutch requires friction to operate properly, the oil can’t be TOO slippery.

Jeez mon.

I didn’t realize this was going to be such a long ride, so, if you’re still with me, you might wanna pack a picnic basket.

In my search for an oil filter I ended up being forced to go to a local shop owned by a woman I despise. She and her father bought the shop a few years ago and I vowed to never spend a dime there, but it is the ONLY shop that caters to dorks with old motorcycles. I won’t go into details, but the woman used to sell my wife cocaine. Lots and lots of cocaine.

I could have easily found what I needed on eBay or Amazon but I needed to get things done quickly. As all native midwesterners know, the weather here changes fast. I needed to get my face in the wind quickly, while I still had a chance.

When I entered the shop I could hear the vile woman’s broken reed tenor sax voice from 50 feet away while she sat at the parts counter and prattled on about a TV show.

Because I’m fat now and fully bearded I was sure she wouldn’t recognize me until I handed over my debit card which has my very recognizable name emblazoned in all caps across the front. Had I been in my right mind I would have stopped at an ATM and gotten cash so she might never have known I was there.

It was only mildly reassuring to see that this woman was likely not going to see her 70th birthday. She, honestly, looked like she had already gotten passed that birthday and maybe a few more though I knew she was my age. I was pretty sure she was still smoking cocaine and a variety of other chemical comforts by the jangled sound of her voice, so she might not mind not not seeing 70. Getting old is boring if your only hobby is television.

So I changed the oil. I was trying hard not to get too attached to this bike, thinking that, once my finances recovered from my recent woes, I would budget for the bike of my dreams, again but I made the mistake of asking my son to give it a name.

My son Zack is very much into learning Japanese and about its culture and this is a Japanese motorcycle. In fact, he rather liked its style which surprised me.

After a few hours he told me that her name would be Natsumi. It means ‘Summer Beauty.’ I think that tells you all you need to know about what Zack thinks about my new/old motorcycle.

And now I love the damn thing.

The bike has hard bags that are great for carrying a few bags of groceries and a 12 pack of beer, so I rode it everywhere. I had no reason to drive my van unless I was taking more than one person somewhere or it was raining hard and after I’m able to get a rain suit to store on the bike, that’ll change.

When you drive a bike everyday you begin to notice things. Because I tinker with things I am always tempted to set things right if I think there’s something wrong. As I’ve stated a few times in this ever expanding document, this bike was to be a Bic lighter. It was to be cheap, functional and, ultimately, disposable.

Natsumi (sigh) has a four cylinder engine and a shaft drive. It’s the most low maintenance motorcycle that I've ever owned. You really don’t even have to adjust the valves unless the bike has lots and lots of miles on it.

Natsumi does have a lot of miles on it. Sort of. It’s within arms reach of 60,000 which normally wouldn’t bother me but the crankcase was so low on oil when I bought it that I think those may have been some very hard miles.

But I rode her to work everyday. I rode her to the grocery store and to doctor’s appointments. After a few weeks I didn’t even check the weather preferring to take a chance that I might get rained on.

I was so happy.

I didn’t buy the bike to be a racer. I would get it into top gear and go the speed limit. I would exceed it by a few miles per, just to stay with the traffic, but I wasn’t a speed demon. But I knew what she was capable of.

Driving home from work one day I ended up at a light behind a drugstore cowboy on his iron hobby horse. He was one of the new breed of Harley Davidson cultists who thought you can buy a seat at the cool kids table by spending what amounted to a home loan on a new motorcycle that sounded like it was assembled in the garage while his parents were on vacation. It sounded like the time the muffler fell off the wife’s mini van.

As a good, law abiding motorcyclist, I pulled up behind him at the light. Not next to him, but right behind him. And, as a typical Harley rider with those cool riding gloves on, he kept twisting the throttle so no one would forget that he was the cool one, not even for a second. I kept seeing him eye me in his mirrors when they quit vibrating.

When the light changed I allowed him to blast his way a few hundred yards ahead just to stay out of the wake of his unfiltered exhaust. When the left lane cleared I signaled and passed him. I wasn’t speeding. I had my feet up on the crash bars and casually rode past him.

Before I could pass a few cars and get back into the right lane I heard a clunk and a roar and the Harleyist blasted past me in MY lane on MY right side. Unless you know each other and are riding together, you NEVER ride past a stranger in their lane. Big no no.

I tried to ignore Ratso Rizzo on his factory rat bike but he wasn’t gonna let me. So I asked Natsumi for a little more juice and she gave it politely and willingly and I blew past the guy without downshifting. I think he was shocked because he didn’t hear me coming.

Ratso tried to catch me for a little while but I just kept twisting the throttle, just enough to keep him in the mirrors. Eventually he fell back, probably thinking that he might exceed the factory limits on his motorcycle in an attempt to prove that no ancient rice grinder was going to outrun him.

Because Natsumi turned out to be such a pleasantly accommodating motorcycle I decided to look into the reason the top end was so noisy. Because it had been run so low on oil I figured it needed attention.

And in the process I broke the engine.

I’m not going to go into the details because every step I took makes me cringe. Hindsight being 20/20 and the year being 2020 I should have known better. I should have left well enough alone. I keep my fingers crossed that a microburst doesn’t pass through and knock a tree down onto my beloved Natsumi.

Because my funds had been nearly depleted I decided to do something I haven’t done in more than a decade: I used a credit card. I searched for and found a used engine on eBay that had less than 20k miles on it, with good compression. It cost me $765 dollars to have it put under my carport.

Because I had an operation scheduled that would limit my ability to lift heavy objects for a time, I needed to pull the old motor and install the newer motor into the frame. I didn’t have to get it completely finished, just get the heavy lifting out of the way. When the pain has lessened I can install the exhaust pipes, carburetors and connect the starter. I should be on two wheels again in a week or so. I’m not going to push it. This surgery is going to end up being expensive and I don’t want to screw it up.

And that’s the news from Lake Woe-is-me, where the kids are lazy, the house is a wreck and dad is stuck at his computer while he recovers from surgery . . . which is where he is most days, anyway.