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June 15, 2005
Jim
I was responsible for turning Jim onto Lambrettas. He and I lived at this flophouse on Rausch Alley known as the Crossroads and he had admired my SX200. He knew that Lambretta's were what you wanted; Vespa's were simply too tinny. I took Jim over to the Batcave and before long he had a Series II TV175 of his own. He would smoke Winston's and talk about how he was going to ride it to Seattle and visit his kids, who had gone with their mom when she left him.
Jim had a pretty impressive résumé, but he was frank about the mental collapse that had thrown his life into chaos. Many people at the Crossroads had similar stories: bad luck or bad genes (or a combination of the two) had landed them there, at the last rung above homelessness. For me, after living in the Rambler, it was a step up. For others (like Jim) it was a step down. The scooter, however, was a very large step up from the bus: For Jim no less than the rest of us, it symbolized freedom.
He spent long hours every day at the Batcave fixing up the Series II. His purposeful ignoring of its cosmetics was refreshing. When the sidepanels were rusty, he primed them and left them unpainted. The primer attracted dirt, but it protected the metal underneath. He was content to leave the passenger seat uncovered; he wasn't taking on passengers. While the piston broke in, Jim would go on rides with us to Palo Alto or the airport.
He did make the trip to Seattle on his scooter. Evidently the scooter performed flawlessly. He described motorscootering long distances as more like flying than like driving. But something had changed in him: His cynical distrust of institutions had morphed into something more paranoid. It was going to take more than riding a scooter from San Francisco to Seattle to win back the love of his family.
The Crossroads had fallen into receivership and the new manager was an untrustworthy and greedy lawyer; I worked for him anyway. Eventually we all claimed some rights as tenants and got a small settlement. I lost track of Jim as I built a new life around working in cafés and flirting. The next time I saw him he scared the Bejeebles out of me: His hair had gone totally wild and his always penetrating eyes seemed even more so. He smelled of the street. "Eric Webster" he declared with some finality. We talked for a while and parted. Several years later I was living on Clementina Alley (still south of Market!) when I saw him again. He looked cadaverous. His eyes were all that spoke. In them I looked for recognition but saw only fear. I shivered as if I had seen a ghost. It was the last time I saw him.
At the Crossroads one night, Jim and I once argued over which version of "Mr. Tamborine Man" was better, the Byrds' or Dylan's. In typical mod fashion and with the hubris of youth I claimed the former. Jim thought otherwise. He claimed that the Byrds owed their careers to Dylan. Come to think of it, he was probably right about that too.
Posted by Underblog at 6:33 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
June 8, 2005
Shifting Hope
Thucydides said that hope was the worst thing, because when you rely on hope it means that all your other options are exhausted. You can hope for mercy when the battle is lost, but you plan a victory. So I do not want to get too hopeful that my gear shifting problems with the Letta 250 are over. But they may be. It can find neutral and it takes more than one click of the shifter to find it sometimes. Now I need to reassemble a scooter that has been disassembled for far too long.
If the 250 can be made to run once more, one of the two Letta's can go on the block. The 275 runs great, shows well and is an all-around excellent scooter. But the 250 and I have a much longer and deeper history. Plus, she is in need of a paint-job, and I can paint her any color I choose when the time comes. More rationally, selling one of the scooters will make the move to Albuquerque cheaper and liquify some inventory. Liquidity is always good and no less so now in the face of an uncertain future.
All of this makes it hard for me to avoid falling under uncertainty's curse, and hope that all goes well with the rebuild.
Posted by Underblog at 1:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 4, 2005
Batcave Lessons
When I first got my Lambretta back in 1984 (?) changing a tire was a daunting task. And for a while, Lambrettas were the only vehicles upon which I changed tires (the Batcave was nothing if not a specialty shop). Then I did the Heinkel, which did not have the Lambretta's split rims. I have since replaced the first Maicoletta's OEM tires with Cheng-Shin's (imported from the UK), the Trail 90, and now the Letta 275.
It's hard to mess up changing a tire, though I cannot say that I look forward to the job. I had had the Letta on the lift earlier in the day to replace one of the Letta's more quirky pieces: a hose connecting the exhaust pipe muffler with the gas tank. I guess the idea is that the exhaust gas pressurizes the tank just so: the bike will run but poorly if the hose is not connected. I suspect that the faulty hose (it had become pinched between the swing arm and the frame stop) was contributing to the stalling I was getting on the way home on Thursday.
The simple job of changing the tire (swapping out a bald Cheng-Shin for a new Shinko) made use of a varety of tools I seldom use: the air wrench to quickly loosen and tighten the wheel nuts, the 2½ ton lift, the tire levers from the Moto Morini's BMW toolkit. How grateful I am to have them all in one place. Moreover, I am grateful for the lessons Walter Alter taught me about making sure the bead was visible all the way around the rim, and pressurizing the Hell out of the tire to get it to sit straight. How he would have liked to have the lift and / or the compressor in his shop. Of course, he probably would have liked a toilet too. Recently, Walter has been occupying himself with ever larger projects.
Despite my inability to adequately sort out the gearbox in the other Letta, there are some easy jobs of which I am capable of performing. Changing tires and replacing hoses seem to be about my present limit.
Posted by Underblog at 4:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack