Motorcycle Shop
(a tip of the brain bucket to Marc, Frances, and the OCD family. Also, a quick thank you to my cousin, Lori Bonati-Phillips, for inspiration)Someone forgot the heat shield
So there I sat, waiting for the gas to cool down
Looking across a wide field
The mountain road a lost cause, a frown
Men in smocks with bikes on lifts
Pistons and parts, those inventive industrial gifts
That get us down the road at speeds that blur
Pirsig has passed on, but his ghost is somewhere in this room
Is there Quality here, Phaedrus, or is my bike doomed?
An ancient R60 sits nearby, its pinstripe lines on black and chrome still alluring
Sometimes, old girls are sexier and more real than the young ones
This history book is still sitting where I left it
Everything about this oil-tinged place recommends it
3 comments:
Those slash-2s were still current when I started riding. If you rode one today, even if your usual mount were not all that "state of the art," the BMW would seem antique. Strange kickstarter, clunky and slow shifting, merely a hint of brakes, and...they were said to "lift their skirts" and accelerate apologetically away. They steered heavily, if memory serves, and the sidestand, when down, hid behind the leftside cylinder, easy to forget. If you did forget, at the first left hand bend you enjoyed that sky-ground-sky experience and destroyed your bike. They were dependable and felt all of a piece and finely put together, much like a Mercedes-Benz automobile today. But agile and fast did not apply. Oh, and the brightest light was the neutral one.
I don't want to ride one again today, but I enjoyed rereading the poem!
Grandpa Louie’s spirit lives on ... did you ever see the photo of him and the kids on the old Indian?
Yes, Steve sent that pic to me. I have it in my office.
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