Ode to an old biker little VFRC and long

I once had a biker friend who told me stories of his youth. He started riding
motorcycles at a young age, in the early days of the sport, and his name was
Fred. He had several Harleys, at a time when Harleys were the best bike made -
the 30s and 40s. His favorite was his Harley 75. He said that he had once
been riding with friends and they entered a street corner far too fast,
and the street bars touched down and ripped up the sidewalk blocks as he went
by. Sheer strength and skill kept him from crashing.

Another time, he was riding in the dark, on a road in Manitoba with a fellow
motorcyclist. The road was under construction, and a sign informed them of this.
After some time at a reduced speed, the construction never seemed to
materialize, so they decided that the road was smooth enough, it must be ok to
speed up. The companion was following. A few minutes later the faint
illumination provided by the candle like glow from the
headlights tweaked Fred's warning radar. They were definitely overdriving the
headlights. He said they quite often cheated by following a car and using *its*
illumination to see better, because the old Harleys had terrible lights. He saw
a shadow, and realized that there was something very amiss with the roadway.
There was a tremendous chunk of road completely missing, a deep pit that
spanned 15 feet longditudinally, and covered the whole width of the road. At 60
mph, with virtually no warning, there were no alternatives. He had to jump the
gap. It was deep enough that at a slower speed, there would be no
way to clear it. Fred was a strong man. He worked as an ice man for the Alberta
Ice company, before the time of refrigerators, when people's fridges were ice
boxes, and huge, very heavy blocks of ice were carried up several flights of
stairs by ice men who delivered them to houses, and split them up with picks and
tongs once they got to their destinations. AT 220 lbs of muscle, and 6'1 tall,
he looked like a linebacker. Back to the road: Fred coiled, and heaved on the
front end of the
Harley as hard as he could, raising the front end in the air at the instant
before it ran out of ashphalt to run on. It was enough. The front wheel cleared
the pit. The rear wheel smashed into the lip of the roadbreak on the other side
and bucked rider and machine high in the air. Several up and down tankslappers
and vertical oscillations ensued, all the while, Fred holding on as best he
could. He finally got it under control, and came to a
stop. The companion rode up, and asked if he was ok. He said yes, and the
companion said 'you had to be 10 feet in the air. I saw your tail light go way
up and down a few times, and I knew something was really wrong so I hit the
brakes. That was quite a ride!!' He said that the rim had a 90 degree dent in it
from the edge of the hole, right up to the flat spot (where the rim bends about
90 to the spoke area), and that he and the friend pounded it straight with
rocks, then at the next town they came to, took the wheel off and had a smith
cut the steel out of the rim and put two triangular gussets back in place of the
wrecked portion. He rode it for a few years after that still.

One of Fred's friends was a Honda factory wrench, building motocrossers for team
Honda, and later for his own son in the late 70s and early 80s. He serviced
bikes for various people, and on weekends Fred would take his youngest son along
with him to go visit the mechanic, as the mechanic was also a heavy equipment
shop owner, and worked on tracked vehicles that Fred's company owned. The
mechanic would ask the boy if he wanted to test ride some of the smaller bikes
in his shop, to which he'd always say 'sure!!!!!' with a wide eyed grin. Fred
had no bike for many years, but the mechanic knew he was licensed and they had
often talked about riding with one another, and one day when Fred showed up, the
mechanic had bought a new Honda CX500. The mechanic gave Fred the key, and said
'go take a ride.' While Fred hadn't really ridden in 20 years, he hadn't
forgotten how, and so he went out, and came back with a smile. I guess he also
sometimes allowed his son to take the controls when he was 14 and had a
learners permit. Apparently in Alberta, at that time, a
learners was valid for both motorcycle and car, and the only stipulation in
learning was that a licensed rider had to be on the back of the motorcycle with
the learner. So Fred rode on back while the son drove. Fred still didn't buy a
bike at that time, as he was busy in life with other things, but he borrowed the
mechanics bike at every opportunity to take a weekend ride.

Fred said that when he was 21 or so, he went to pass a car which had a nervous
driver at the wheel. He was 2 up, with a friend. The driver was
watching in the mirror, and as Fred switched lanes to pass him, the driver
switched lanes also. So Fred switched back to the other lane, and the driver did
likewise. After several iterations of this, Fred was extremely close to the car,
and the nervous driver suddenly slammed on the brakes. Fred's Harley hit the
rear end of the car, and his passenger went over top of him and bounced on the
roof of the car, falling off unhurt. Unfortunately for Fred though, the
passenger forced Fred's knees under the handlebars, and his leg impacted the
bumper of the car. He awoke in the roadway, with his leg out at 90 degrees from
the normal angle, as if someone had grabbed him at the knee while laying flat on
his back and swung the leg out towards his ear, he told me. He grabbed hold of
the leg with both hands and yanked the knee back into place, then hopped on one
foot to a car where he was driven to the hospital. Doctors
wanted to fuse the knee, but he would not let them. He laid in bed for weeks,
and rehabbed the knee himself by sitting in a rocking chair with his foot
against the wall, pushing back and forth. The muscles on the inside of the knee
were torn completely away from bone, and atrophied away, but he never put side
loads on it (such as skiing) and never wore a brace, and walked all his life
afterwards, without a limp.

Fast forward many years. Fred is now 77, the year 2004, but apparently he still
looks like a linebacker - strong and healthy. I pull up on the VFR outside his
house, and his wife and he come out to greet me. It is my last day in Calgary,
Alberta, after having done a tour from Portland OR through the rockies to get
there. Fred pulls his pristine 81 Goldwing out of the garage, and explains the
finicky starting procedure to me. 'It took me a long time to figure this out,'
he says. 'I flooded the hell out of it several times when I first got it. You
have to apply the choke to the second notch, and then just touch the starter -
just a blip. Then you reduce the choke to about an eighth of an inch off the
stop, and hit the starter again, and it fires instantly and runs. I ran the
battery down
several times trying to get it started until I devised this procedure,' he says.
I smile, and nod. He warms up the Wing, and dons his helmet and a pair of calf
roper gloves, and his navy colored leather jacket, which
he bought in Nepal and had custom made for himself out of gazelle hide, I think
he said. The tailor said they had to kill 3 gazelles to make it for him, he told
me, laughing. He wears an old pair of workboots, and what appear to be work
jeans in a navy color, but has a nice Shoei open face helmet, and a pair of
Serenghetti Driver aviator frame sunglasses, a gift from his son which he always
wore when outside. His wife snaps a picture of the two of us, and we pull out of
the driveway and head West down the Trans Canada highway towards the Rocky
Mountains. 20 miles away, we stop briefly, and he asks how I'm doing, and I say
fine, and I ask if he would like to trade bikes for a few miles so that he can
see what the VFR is like. He declines, saying he doesn't like to ride other
people's machines, but I know better, I think he found the idea of the riding
position and power of the VFR to be intimidating. I try to tell him it's a big
pussycat in the hands of a skilled rider, but he doesn't change his mind, that
he's seen too many people wreck other rider's bikes. We continue riding, and
later stop for lunch at a small cafe at the side of the road called Chief
Chiniki
restaurant, and afterwards say our goodbyes. He returs to Calgary, as I
continue west towards BC where I was then going back to Portland via the
Rockies.

I wrote about that trip on the list. He told me a couple of
weeks ago, while reminiscing about our ride that day 'I had the Wing up to 140
on the way home.' I smiled, and thought, the old guy still has it. He was
a very careful rider when I saw him ride, but of course, the stories you usually
hear about riders are not the ones where they were careful, they're the ones
when the rider flirted with death for a second or two. I'm certain that there
was nobody around when he hit 140, as he wouldn't do it, after all those years
of experience, if it endangered his life. He had gotten wiser about picking the
risks, like most older motorcyclists. He still had great reactions and reflexes,
even at an advanced age.

I got word yesterday that Fred died of cancer of the stomach at 78. He was
diagnosed with it 30 days ago. He would have been 78 at the end of May.

Goodbye dad. I love you and hope you are on endless twisties in heaven right
now.

Randy Foo
'98 VFR
Portland, OR.

PS. My dad's cancer was caused by Montezuma's revenge. 1% of people who come
down with Helicobacter Pylori infections develop a rare form of stomach cancer
that is not visible to ultrasound or the exams that a person normally gets for
an annual physical. A simple blood test for colon cancer can be an early
identifier but doctors almost never order this. By the time you are infected
and showing symptoms, it could be too late (as it was for him). Only an MRI,
endoscopy or CT scan will show this type of cancer. I urge people to be tested
annually if they've had H. Pylori infections. Your loved ones will thank you.

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Godspeed, Fred.

-m-
1998 Honda VFR800 Interceptor
2000 Honda CBR600 F4

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info.rockies@xxxxxx wrote:
> Goodbye dad. I love you and hope you are on endless twisties in heaven right
> now.
>

Thanx Randy, it sounds like your father was a great and worldly guy.
It's great you had a chance to ride with him and share the experience
with us.

I'm truly sorry for your loss.

--

-travis
'00 VFR - Yellow Submarine - Southern NH, USA
Custom Mirror Extenders http://users.adelphia.net/~tbsbjs/mirext.html
Dual-Star Heated Grips, High mount MIG Indy, Sargent seat

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