It started with an off hand purchase offer to a friend who was in possession of a 2008 KTM 990 Adventure with a motor that had failed. You know that offer, nondescript, under breath, not really thinking it will every happen but if it did you can figure a way to make it happen...but you'd prefer to not really have to make it happen.
As I drove home the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I notice I had a voice mail. My friend has left a message asking me to call him back.
..."Hey Gus, you had to open your big mouth."
"You're going to have to be more specific" as my mind races to remember the sarcasm, digs on society, offensive jokes and any number of things I have said...I am sure I am being called out on a grand lie that I'll have to embellish now that I have been called out...it is just what good friends do. Continue the lie.
"You are the proud owner of the 990. Let me know when you want to pick it up."
"Crap! Really? Um....I'll have the cash by next Monday."
After a bit of jawing...laughing...etc, we hang up and I internally think "shit." I just bought a bike in boxes. I have a winters project. I have to call the Domestic Associate (DA). "Shit".
I had the cash to him a bit sooner, in fact the minute Thanksgiving was over...Idiot with a Wrench was beginning to start all over.
History
Let's go back in time when I first started riding. You begin your riding career as an opportunist. You borrow a bike of your buddies and if you don't auger in and destroy their prized possession you start your search for your first bike. Mine was a 1977 Yamaha XS 750. The next thing that happens is you begin to search for your first reliable bike because at your first bike price range, not much is reliable, but the next price point will be better. At least that is the lie that as handed down from rider to rider, friend to friend, generation to generation. If we riders did not, we would never have a chance to sell our mistakes to the next generation. So it goes.
As a young man, my dollars did not meet my aspirational motorcycle goals. But I had a friend (hmmm...friends with boxes of motorcycles. Maybe my choice in friends is off. Maybe my friends see my head as a '$' rather than the bag of fat that adorns my shoulders) who had a late '70's BMW R100 in crates that he would sell me "cheap". I was very proud of my purchase. I brought it into my home, into my new new home with a basement that had a corner that I had started to build up as my shop. I was going to make my next bike from a box of pats rather than purchase a fully assembled motorcycle like all those chumps out there who don't understand the value about to be realized.
2-3 years later I was hinting to an acquaintance about this wonderful project I had in my basement, a late 70's BMW R100 that I'd be willing to let go, it is almost 95% there, it just needs someone with time. We were moving the motorcycle from my basement to his truck...the cycle had started. Not the motorcycle, the cycle of failure, deceit, opportunity and lost dollars.
Over the next few years I had accumulated mid to late '70's Honda CB / CL and SL 350 parts. Motors. Frames....I was going to become a restoration expert of old Honda's. I was going to be a tinkerer, a mechanic, a trend setter to what is today known as a cafe racer builder. I was going to wear engineer boots, have tall cuffs on my jeans, maybe an arm or 2 of tattoo's and I would reluctantly go to my bucket of parts to help a kid out sourcing an obscure bit, with indignation and spite however. But I'd write in my blog about cafe racing that some kid wasted my time and I gave him an off year part that he won't know until he learns from the school of hard knocks.
The accumulation resulted in a basement, garage and neighbors garage filled with 4-5 motorcycles that didn't run, would never run under my watch and a disturbing behavior in people that knew me:
"Hey Gus, I heard you collect old CB 350's? I have one in my basement that I'd let got for $100. Want it?"
"Sure!" I'd say thinking about my greatness and the good fortune washing over me. The Seller was thinking "Finally got rid of that damn 350, for double what I paid".
A little while later, there was a young man with a beard, tall cuffs on his jeans, a giant chain attached to his wallet hanging around his right butt cheek and a wad of bills that he was trading me for a basement, garage and neighbors garage full of '70's Honda CB / CL and SL 350 parts. The wad of course was not near the amount of money I had into my now defunct future lifestyle. But the space and removal of shit...um...projects that would never get done was more than enough to wish him well with a hand shake, exchange of money and an under breath "good luck sucker" as I waved goodbye to him from my now empty garage. Lesson learned. I'm a rider, not a wrencher.
Next- The Dark Years....KLR 650's and how I learned to hate the Killer.
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