Techno-Warp 4.0 - The Vicious Cycle

Are You in a Techno-Warp?
Chapter 4.0
The Vicious Cycle

4.1 Richard Greenwood

In kindergarten I met a five year old boy who was to become a life-long soul mate in our mutual love of gizmos and gadgets. The great thing about Richard Greenwood was that he was adventurous. Speed and adrenalin were mothers-milk to him.

I was content to build and occasionally launch our model rockets. He wanted to ride in them. He wanted to be an astronaut and eventually became an aeronautical engineer. He has sky dived over 1000 times. When not working on jet engines and jumping out of airplanes, he scuba dives, motorcycles and flies his own airplane.

Some of his thrill seeking inevitably rubbed off on me. How could I remain unaffected when I was the one he asked to throw the small cargo parachute into the air as he, holding the cords in one hand, jumped off of my parents’ porch? Not to worry, he survived. But in his zeal to get the chute inflated quickly, he pulled down so hard on the cords that he managed to land thumb first and broke his thumb.

How could I remain a quiet, bookish gearhead when Rich somehow acquired a seemingly endless succession of go-carts, dirt bikes and motorcycles?

My parents were horrified by all of this. They viewed “motorcycle” as a swear word and thought anyone who had one was a suicidal hillbilly. This is why I had to tread lightly when, during my sophomore year of college I decided to take the plunge and get a motorcycle for myself.

4.2 My First Motorcycle

My strategy was to go slowly so my parents could become accustomed to the idea. I had the brainstorm of getting a Trike, a three-wheeled Harley, the kind used by traffic police. I knew that in my mother’s eyes, three wheels would appear much safer than two. (The opposite is true. They tip over easier because they can’t lean into turns.)

In a further strategic move, I decided to buy it in pieces and assemble it myself. Then, my parents would have plenty of time to get accustomed to the idea. How could they refuse me a motorcycle I built with my own hands?

Rich and I found just such a “basket-case” in a local paper and bought what was basically a pile of junk for $150.

Three wheelers look like a motorcycle from the seat forward, but behind the rider is a big box with wheels and fenders on each side and a lid on the top. In my new acquisition, the dismantled engine parts, front wheel, front forks and gas tanks were all piled in that box in no particular order. We borrowed a truck to get it home, rented a garage for $15 a month, and settled down to the task of assembling 300 greasy metal pieces together into a real working vehicle.

In retrospect, I cannot fathom our chutzpah. Why did we think we could do it? After all, we weren’t mechanics. Yes, we did take one semester of Auto Shop at Lane Tech. Yes, as a child my dad and I built a plastic “Visible V8 Engine” model from a kit. But this was a whole new level! We didn’t even have an instruction manual!

At nights after school in our dimly lighted garage we took turns holding parts up to the light and saying things like “I think this is from the transmission” with the other one saying “No, it looks more like it is from the carburetor”.

As the puzzle slowly came together, we would discover that we were missing key parts and would then scour the phone book for places we could find pieces for an old discontinued Harley “45 flathead" engine. We traveled to a barn near the Wisconsin border for a crankcase cover and a specialty shop on Chicago’s South Side for clutch pads.

We eventually found Ken Lively, a grizzly biker who we revered as the definitive expert in “flathead” engines. He helped with honing the cylinders and fitting the piston rings.

I learned biker lingo and could throw around terms like “hardtail”, “suicide clutch”, “chopper”, “springer front end”, “flame job”, “cams”, lifters” and much more. We talked cars, too. “hemis”, “fuel injection”, “nitro methane”, “burning rubber”, “brake torquing” and "power shifting" were our fixations.

Rich was at the center of all of this. He had a black ‘61 Ford Falcon with the rear end jacked up so high we had to avoid certain overpasses. We listened to eight-track tapes of the Doors in it, dimly recognizable over the deafness-inducing blumberings of his “glasspack” mufflers.

Rich’s never-say-die attitude kept my spirits high even when the job seemed too much to handle. He always seemed to come up with a solution, however crude, to whatever mechanical problem we encountered. He was my driving force in the odyssey of building my chariot.

Rich worked with me almost every night, then at about 2AM we would go, completely filthy, to a local all night restaurant. We drank coffee and smoked cigars, our hands blackened with grease. Sitting there in those vinyl and chrome booths we somehow managed to feel like kings, on top of our world.

So I am at a loss to explain what might have posessed me to take my first ride without Rich. One night near the end of the summer, it was well past midnight. Rich couldn’t come that night, which was pretty rare. I suddenly realized that I was done. There were no more parts to install. Everything was “hooked-up”. The fuel lines, drive chain and brake cables were the last things to go and there I was....finished.



4.3 The First Ride

I had been so absorbed in the building process for so long, that I actually lost sight of the idea of riding the contraption! I was shocked and terrified. I had never ridden a motorcycle before!

I sat on a greasy milk crate for a long time, debating with myself under the one naked light bulb in the otherwise dark and quiet garage.

“Well, you’re done.”
“Yep.”
“It’s been a lot of work.”
“Yep.”
“Looks pretty impressive, doesn’t it?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Bet it will run if you start it.”
“Yep.”
“Well, go ahead and start it.”
“Nope.”
“Go on! What’s the problem? It can’t tip over, for God’s sake! It’s got three wheels!”
“Uh-huh.”
“You can drive it. Just turn the handgrip to gun the engine. The clutch is a pedal down at your left foot You know where the brakes are. Do it!”
“But Rich isn’t here. What if something goes wrong?”
“What can go wrong? Besides, you don’t need Rich. It’s your bike, not his!”
“But I don’t really like to ride. I just like to build!”
“You’ll like it once you get used to it. Go on. At least sit on it!”
“Okay.”

With a gulp I mounted the steed. I put the key in the lock. I turned it. The headlight went on, an encouraging sign. I put my foot on the kick start pedal. With unspeakable fear I rose up, putting my weight above the pedal. I hovered there as if poised over Niagara Falls in a barrel. I pushed, hard.

Of course, nothing happened. I tried again. And again. I tweaked. I fiddled. I adjusted. I tried again. The engine occasionally sputtered, showing signs of life. A little more futzing and one more kick and
“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

The engine was screaming at the top of its exhaust manifolds! It was racing at top speed making a deafening roar in that enclosed little garage. I had forgotten to put on the muffler!

I dove for the ignition key and shut her down. Thank God I had no pre-existing coronary problems! That episode would have put me over the edge! I had to sit for a while and calm down. My body instinctively went into what would later be known as Lamaze breathing.

Then, halfheartedly I tightened the needle valve on the carb to lean out the air-fuel mixture. I loosened the stop on the throttle cable to lower the idling speed. I put the muffler on, hoping for a quiet, unobtrusive little run down the alley.

The adjustments were done quickly and once again there was nothing left to do but check the result. I opened the garage door and pointed her out. This was getting serious! I tried all the grips, pedals and levers to get accustomed to the feel. Then it was time.

I turned the key. I rose up and came down hard on the kick-start pedal. She awoke with a loud roar, blowing past the muffler like it wasn’t there. There was no turning back now. I pressed the clutch, tank-shifted into gear and slowly let the clutch out. The bike lurched forward like a shaky old stagecoach. I turned down the alley and slowly wound out the engine. We gained speed. She sounded noisy but good, the trademark power gargle of the Harley Davidson piercing the night like a sharp crowbar. We upshifted into second. We were cruising! I was riding!

Garage doors, chain link fences and garbage cans whizzed past me a bit too swiftly. The street lay dead ahead. I remembered that I was not street-legal. No plates. I wasn’t ready for the road.

4.5 Disaster Strikes

Impulsively I cut a hard right turn into a parking lot. I felt an unfamiliar rising feeling as my right wheel left the pavement with the force of the turn. I realized that the bike was going to roll over! In desperation I put out my left foot and dragged it hard on the pavement. It worked.

The bike righted itself with a thump. I felt excruciating pain in my foot. I looked down and couldn’t believe my eyes. The left wheel had rolled over my foot, then savagely wrenched it backward to a point, like a ballerina’s.

My foot was painfully lodged between the rotating wheel and the hot muffler. The monster I created was going to drag me off of the seat and grind me into the tarmac. Turbocharged with adrenalin, I managed to wrench my foot from its torture chamber.

The bike was still moving. I made a U-turn and headed back to the alley, aiming between two steel gate posts. BAM! One of my rear fenders hit the post as we careened by. The bike was wider in back than I had realized. I hung on as we screamed down the alley toward the garage. With my hands on the brake levers I made the turn into the garage. Guess what? No brakes!

We rolled over piles of old parts, crates and tool boxes. We crashed head first into the pine shelving on the back wall of the garage. The shelves shattered into a million toothpicks. I was launched over the handlebars and found myself draped on the headlight as the trike finally came to rest.

Slowly I peeled myself off the headlight and crawled out over the rubble. Primally embarassed, I closed the garage door and turned out the light. I sat quietly in the dark for a long time.

The next afternoon I limped back to the garage to survey the damage. Wally, the neighbor from across the alley, stopped by. He had always taken a personal interest in our project.

“Did you start the bike last night?”, he asked.
(Gulp) “Uh, why?” I retorted cunningly.
“Because I heard some noises and I thought it was you,” he answered.
“What did you hear?”
“There was a really loud motorcycle going up and down the alley. Then there was a loud crash. Then there was silence. I thought you killed yourself. So I threw on my clothes and ran out into the alley but there was nothing. No bike, no lights, nobody there, nothing. It was really weird. So I went upstairs and went back to bed. Was it you? Was it?”
“It was me, Wally.”

I told Wally the story, then watched his eyes get big as we looked at the destroyed shelving and a toolbox which was flattened like a piece of paper in the middle but normal at both ends. We looked at the bike. It was relatively unscathed. All Wally could say was “Wow.”

Then I called Rich and gave him the full account. All he could say was, “That’s great, man! That’s really great!”

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