Introduction
Think back to your favorite dog. The one to whom no dog since can measure up. The one whose collar & tags you still have. I had one of those. She visits me in my life and in my dreams. I still have her tags and they go on the Christmas tree every year.
Now I have a new decoration. It is the key from Big-Boned-Bessie. More on that later.
Getting To Know You
We met in the fall of 2005. She had been sitting in the BMW North American warehouse for a year. She was going in one of those NLT 12/31 or else sales. Morton’s put on the Laser pipes to de-civilize the affair and shifted the comfort bars to the non-comfort configuration.
While waiting for the mods to arrive and the ground to thaw, Good-time, Sackbutt and I made our yearly pilgrimmage to the DC Motorcycle show, en route to a gentlemens’ club on 18th street. Before leaving the show though, we came across the MARRC table. More on that later.
On the magic ice-free March day, I rode her home with a stop in Adams-Morgan to show her off to my hot new girlfriend. She was the first relationship after the break-up of my Suzuki twin-thumper. Suzie had been a sweet girl but never took a liking to John Lee Hooker. She took one low-side and that was all she wrote … off. Later, when I told Bessie that story, she scoffed. But more on that later.
Me and Army buddy Good-Time Guiseppe — proud new owner of an R1200RT — took off from our link-up at a fag café in Charlottesville, Virginia. This was our “Git-To-Know-Yer-Bike” (GTKYB) ride. We thrashed our just-past-600-mile-service bikes around gravel-strewn Monongahela switchbacks. Seems a miracle we survived that trip, 2 left feet & 2 new bikes.
I Feel Pretty
I immediately set to modifications, mostly to the ass area. This pursuit a result of being a short bastard with a truncated inseam. Pulled off the synthetic seat cover, shaved off some foam, staple-gunned the lot back together. Lathered, rinsed, repeated
Commuter Scooter
Bessie was also my commuter scooter. Every day, every chance, ATG ATT, we rolled into work – arriving a sweaty vanson-wrapped pepperoni.
Bessie Takes to the Track
Back to that MARRC table. Stuck in my mind like a rumble bee in me biking bonnet. It seems inevitable now — during that coming Fall, Bessie and I took a “Try The Track” day with MARRC in blue rented leathers of which Bessie thought not much. Not in her scheme of things. 2 stints in the classroom:
“It’s like crack without the rapid weight loss.”
2 sessions on the track:
Bessie wouldn’t be denied. I urged discretion. She snorted.
April 23, 2007 we were back at self-same track. Then 5/24. Then 6/20.
You know, when you’re bi-polar, you’re not known for predictability … and yet, that became my goal. I wanted the real riders on the track to know what i was going to do, where and when. I wanted them to be able to count on me being in the right place & time when they hung it out wide, passing me on the uphill left-hander that is “The Pistol Grip.”
Fear and Incontinence in New Hampshire
6/29 Sackbutt, Good-Time and I hit the road for New Hampshire. I was in the prototype phase of a new seat. this was Sackbutt’s GTKYB ride for his R1200GS. On the roads up through Jim Thorpe coal country, we rode a river contour line. In the leaf-filtered sun i’d shoot the straights into triple-digits while Lenny & squiggy rode as one should.
By the time we got to Nashua, my ass was on fire, my gonads smoking and my groin insensate from the design flaw in my prototype. I’d failed to trim the seat pan to the contour of the kayak foam. Its sharp edge cut into some south-seeking nerve. Upon arrival at the Octagon House …
One pry bar, 2 tubes of spline grease and a sack full of insults later, I disembarked with an unfortunate combination of sea legs, scurvy, rickets and put-away-wet bow-leg-itty-ness.
Sackbutt’s father is a sailor. In the Octagon’s garage-chandler’s shop, he had dingy foam. With his scrollsaw and my (mandarin-colored) Gaffer’s tape, I set to like a ball-point-pen combat-tracheotomist chanelling Bob Vila.
An inspired bit of slicing, dicing and strapping, that seat served me in the White Mountains, the jersey Turnpike, Tony Soprano’s neighborhood and the rest of our days together.
Upon First Making a Good Bike Do a Bad Thing
Just before lunch on July 27, 2007 we had our first low-side. Shit, it was a snake-bit day anyway. In left-uphill turn #9 of the Shenandoah, I fixated and forgot the vanishing point. Slip-sliding away. She bounced, rolled, kicked up an impressive cloud of red dust but shook it off like a Clydesdale.
One bump start from Roger, a new-to-us GSXR left peg and an de-deranged banjo bolt got us sorted.
We kissed and made up. We enjoyed more laps until the mini-tornado. E-Z-Ups all down, wet leaves all over the track – game over. Oh, and that was in the days where I refused Bessie a trailering, so we put the mirrors back on
August 2nd, 2007, back at Summit Point, Main Circuit this time. Brother BMWs,
• R1200R — J’s Mutant Ninja Mutton bike, shorn of all body work, all its vital organs on display
• R1200ST — A’s Ayatollah of Torque
both still dusty from Bonneville Salt Flats speed runs.
After lunch we got back on the track …
I showed ‘em – how to low-side on the concrete-tarmac seam of turn #1.
I righted a rightly-disgusted Bessie, flooded her, then got the Ride-o-Shame, high up in the bed of the crash-cart pickup, me and Bessie proudly parading through pits like the Pope-mobile. But that was only session #4 of 7 that day. Bessie to me
Sessions 5, 6, 7. Sans incident.
I was still refusing Bessie a trailering, so we put the mirrors back on. After a pitcher of root beer and a molehill of mussels at the Turf Motel’s Rib Room
Like Hanging Out with the Cool Kids
Winter of 2007-8, class was in session. Bessie caned me every failed verb declension and muffed downshift. Every bed-time was Keith Code or Reg Pridmore in the room in their pajamas. Bessie stood over my shoulder while I gouged the eyes out of the Honda Element during the trailer-hitch insertion.
2008
She got me through the 2008 track season without me making her do any bad things. Wish the same could be said for 2009. But more on that later.
Bessie Gets Some Strange 2009
If July 27th, 2007 was a snake-bit day, all of 2009 was a snake-bit year. Under the influence of the women-folk in my life, I burned off the summer in floors and paint in pursuit of property value. Property value v Track days … hmmmm.
As balm I checked tvracer.com and watched the Isle o Man, AMA, SBK and MotoGP races. Every time we saw Casey Stoner hanging on for dear life on that raging-bull Ducati grinding, popping and bucking its way out of a corner, Bessie pawed at the ground, snorted out her dual laser pipes, said
30 Cold, Tired, Rain-Soaked Rally Hours Chasing Ambulances in Gods’s Country
Late to join Good-Time and Sportbike-Killah-Millah, just past the point of no return came the rains.
Inbound it was a 9% rain-soaked, tires-won’t-warm, washboard mountain of West Virginia switchbacks. At Canaan Valley it was a slurry of rain, ice-slick-grass, motor oil, like Woodstock on wheels.
I got into camp and promptly dropped Bessie in the mud. Had to make the slump o shame to the campfire and ask for help righting Big-Boned-Bessie.
It was a foul-mouthed, foul-breathed, fetid, fungal time. Everything that wasn’t soaked, smoked — the men, the women, the bikes, the campfire, the tapped-out airheads. We had 2 campfires, 1 gun, 2 knives, 1 ganja guy, 1 medicine man, 1 looker from Toronto, 1 Naval Academy grad gone wrong and 1 bottle of Italian Irish whiskey.
R80 indian medicine man Ken lost one saddle bag in the Woodstock mud. We helped strap it dodgily onto the seat.
After coffee from the fertility goddess at Hypnocoffee, we smoked up, looking down on the river. Ken rolled his own before heading back to California.
“Yep”
He got his Son House on and sang it in between drags. I handed him the Shuffle w my road mix.
“You want me to send it back to you?”
Back To The Track, Jack
The dumb condo got as done as it’s gonna get.
I methodically put it all together. Got the gear laid out. 1 quart of Mobil 1, 1 case of Red Bull. Told Bessie I’d spring for a trailer, even. New scrubbed-in tires, affairs in order, house not a mess, well-rested, trash took out, palm trees watered.
August 29th, 2009, Session #2, Lap #2, Summit Point Shenandoah Circuit
I made a good bike do a bad thing.
First mistake was riding to follow the guys ahead of me into the Pistol Grip. I got Bessie squirrely in the corner. I was leaned over too far. All bomb-sighting bombardier, I saw the tank oscillating out the corner of my right eye.
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I thought I’d throttle her upright but
Bessie bucked me off like the proud heifer she was.
Fare-Thee-Well Trusted Steed
Her ashes go in her stock exhaust cans.
Her bones go to the knacker’s.
Her key goes on the Christmas tree.
scrotocycles.rip 