Satisfied with modified

It's pretty rare that I can keep anything bone stock. Rarer still is the time I actually complete a modification project.

With this in mind, I spent my Father's Day working on a motorcycle I bought from a neighbor down on Frost Road about 2 years ago. He bought it for someone special who decided to go with a pretty sweet Burgman super-scooter. I think she's real pleased with her decision and, honestly, I'm glad she didn't want this bike. It's my kind of bike. Sort of. I'll explain.

Piglet, 1974 Honda CB125

For a long time I was a Harley guy. I so, so wanted a Harley. My Dad had some in his lifetime and I've always turned my head at the sound of those bad-a## twin pipes. Harley bikes seem to embody what I love about motorcycles; machine, man, wheels, period.

One day, a bicycle mechanic, bored or otherwise, looked at the rudimentary machine before him and found it fit to endow with a gasoline powered engine (did you ever notice it was bicycle mechanics that came up with the neatest stuff?). Why? You couldn't exactly carry your groceries or transport your family to church on Sunday. Essentially the confounded contraption was useless for anyone other than the rider. The tractor received a power-plant and fed a nation. The boat, a boiler and piston and the oceans were conquered. The glider took wing and under power of an internal combustion engine (at the hands of two bicycle mechanics, no less) and shrank the world. The motorcycle remained selfish. Singular, solitary, useless for mass transit.

All at once the sound of the motorcycle punctuates with gleeful exclamation the phrase, "No back seat driving". The bike, by virtue of engineering and design, is free of editorial sighs of disapproval from the traveling companion customary with other means of transportation. It's a machine, that's pretty much all there is to it.

Back in the day, the bike resembled the mechanized dinosaur it was. The Harley, before it's popularity with the silver-haired, comfort seeking CEO's of the baby-boom generation, remained true to this archaic design.

It was with great joy that I realized my love affair with the Harley was only skin-deep. It was the look I wanted, not the label. And, I found the look in the Brit. brat "café racer".

The café racer is a return to the selfishly styled dinosaur of years gone by. A machine with two wheels meant for nothing more than moving through space, often at remarkably dangerous speeds.

Classic café racer styling isn't hard to spot; a typical commuter bike stripped of it's fairings and dressings that hide it's meat-eating heart of iron, hidden wires and tight, down-turned handlebars (oft referred to as "clubman bars").

For more on café racers check it out here...

Now, I'm not fully smitten with café racers. But, the do personify much of what I love about a "real" bike. Really, what I love is the derivation of the café; the "rat bike". Specifically, a child of a marriage between rat and café.

Hence, how I came to spend my Father's day. Piglet, our beloved bike from down-the-road (so named because I couldn't afford a Hog, so I got the piglet...), underwent the beginnings of a great and worthy transformation from street bike to a rat/café cross.

With the help of my trusty sons and some wrenches we began the transformation. Fenders were the first to go.

The 'Before'

After the fenders, the seat, side covers, and just about anything else that isn't needed for the bike to actually run.

Teach them to modify at an early age...

Slowly, piglet was beginning to look like the bike I've always wanted, a dinosaur. With the removal of every accessory, every amenity, we stood back and smiled at our glee-filled destruction of the mediocre.

"Hey, Papa, what about this, uh, whatever-it-is?"
"Remove it."

Yep, the goal, a bare bones machine. Trouble was, I hate the handlebars. Elijah's light went on, "How about the bars off that old bike behind the house?" Such words rang as much music in my ears. With the twist of a few screws we had the set of bars we needed to give Piglet that low-profile look we were so desperately seeking.

Poor-man's clubman bars.

Joy of joys, the rat bike was now in sight. and it was only 5:00PM. I love this. The obvious question arose, "What about a seat?". Indeed, the rat bike or café racer is a solo operation. With this in mind, I had been toying with the idea of using an old tractor seat Jalet traded for some years agone. How perfect would that be? Tracing backwards on the time-line of development to the tractor for the saddle on our stripped down horse. The seat is a perfect fit.

The picture-perfect posterior placement mechanism

It's about as far as we could take it for one day. With a few hours' work and some clean-up, I found myself back "in like" with my bike. The modifications were cost free at this point. Next on the list is to have some machining done on the handlebars, place the battery and hide the wiring.

We've put our thumbprint on this machine. Like it or not, it's our Piglet.

Piglet, 1974 Honda CB125

Anyone looking for some vintage CB 125 parts?

Suspended Homelesness

The world is different a thousand miles from where I live. Startling, I know, but it's true.

Many years ago I spoke to a person from the middle of our country about their local mainstays; things you see on a daily basis that become meaningless. In my part of the world it was log trucks and saw mills. The Pacific Northwest is rife with them. No doubt it has some connection to the dense crop of potential 2x4's covering virtually every inch of the Willamette Valley's hills.

To my surprise, log trucks and saw mills weren't mentioned by the flat-lander. I asked where the mill was in their town. They didn't have one. "You mean, there is a part of the world where trees aren't thicker than grass?", I thought to myself.

Over the years, that one short conversation has had a profound impact on me. It slowly changed my thinking of the world in a way that would include the possibility that not all places were like my back yard.

Still, it's easy to be surrounded by what seems normal and forget that somewhere, thousands of miles away, the world is different.

I commute 140 miles, round trip, every other day. It's in that commute that I've come to notice cars. There's zillions of cars on the road at any given time. I am just one in an entire country of people that are in motion.

When I say 'in motion', I don't mean in that ubiquitous terminology spewed in political speeches or motivational conferences, I'm talking real-live, honest-to-God, moving through the air motion.

We - me and my fellow patriots of the country of Car - are suspended a short distance from the ground, homeless, place-less, neither here-nor-there at a speed unthinkable to our grandfathers every moment of every day. We are sleepless in our motion.

All one has to do to be a member of this country of Car is get in to their vehicle and drive. It's impossible, where I live anyway, to imagine not using a car.

This sparked my thinking about where there are routes, roads or trails that a car seems out of place. A place where motion is achieved by foot only. A place where you are not disconnected from the firmament for even one moment.

Where is this place? I suspect it's the better part of this great planet. Fact is, the country of Car is a country inside a country. My bet is that you'll only find the country of Car when you visit rich nations.

Getting from point to point quickly and easily is reserved for the wealthy, I guess. How fortunate we are to have the country of Car, or are we?

First Gear

For the wandering photographer backroads are the place of dreams. Wide open roads that mean wide open potential. Like an empty canvas to the painter the ending of the pavement is my beginning.

This blog is the beginning of a project long overdue. In the late eighties and early nineties I began archiving the people and places of the backroads in my surrounding area. These people, their way of life and their stories cause me to reflect on my own life.

This will be the home for some of those reflections.

Stay with me as I try to 'get it together'.