The Chopper

 I've waited almost all my life. It's a little strange I guess because most people I know wouldn't have. They'd have stalled off something else or borrowed the money or worked more or something...anything...but I never did. Something else always came first. Call it a failing of mine...doing something that was only for me has always been a tough one. Something was always more pressing than something I just wanted.

But that's not the story. I guess it all started with my older brother. He's 'First Family' and so was considerably further along in age and rebellion than I was when I first started to have real memories of him. He was a biker at the time and a trial to my parents and so of course I followed along.

It's a little hazy but I remember a purple panhead chopper with lace paint on a peanut tank parked in the yard. It might have had upswept pipes and a glide front end or that may be a conglomerate memory of more than one bike. There was quite a few of them. I do know there was a legendary Sportster that got its controls switched because he was left-handed that ended up vertical against the wall of the garage when the throttle stuck and the clutch was on the wrong side. I can still hear the crash.

There were frames being raked and fenders being sawed all the time. The neighbor kid had a V-Twin torn apart in his bedroom that leaked oil down through the ceiling into the kitchen...to his mother's dismay. I knew what 'Frisco pegs' and springers were in grade school. I copied all the biker stuff I saw on my brother's jacket onto my brown-bag book covers even though I had no idea what it all meant. My teachers probably thought I was on my way to prison by 6th grade. I'd been front to back through A.E.E. Choppers catalogs and 'Easyriders' magazines from my brother's stash a thousand times when Mom wasn't looking. She likely would have killed us both if she'd known...

It goes back so far that I have a vivid memory from the playground of Caroline Elementary of a comic book ad for a mini-bike chopper that I absolutely had to have. I dreamed of riding it to school (all of about 6 miles) one way or another before I even knew what a license was. If I could just come up with whatever it cost to buy it back then...shipping was free. Somehow my lawn mowing money never added up to quite enough.

In substitute, there were sissy bars on bicycles and hours tinkering to get a 24 inch wheel on the front of a 26 inch bike because everybody knew the front wheel had to be smaller. I hummed 'Steppenwolf' and 'Iron Butterfly' while I stripped the flats off seat and axle nuts with a 12" Crescent wrench. In summer, the garage was littered with Dads tools, scrounged up bicycle carcasses and a pack of kids trying to put the pieces back together. Tires were an endless challenge but pliers and hacksaws abounded. Some of the results were probably as dangerous as they were epic to us.

 I know I built a catastrophically poor-riding thing out of a Schwinn spider-bike with abandoned Z bars found on a shelf and silver-spray-painted electrical conduit hammered over the forks to make them longer. The front end refused to stay on the ground it was so off-balance. I know the front wheel wobbled about an inch all the time because truing spokes was sort of like black magic to us and the axle nuts were usually loose anyway. It had almost nothing for brakes and I believe I was on that quivery creation when I went down in loose gravel coming off a hill and scoured most of the skin off my front from collar bones to navel.  Didn't matter. I rode it till it fell apart.

It went a little sideways when I finally got my first actual motorcycle. Harley was the only thing officially allowed for choppers but Honda was what I could afford. All 100cc's of it. I sawed off the muffler (when I got out of the hospital after the first ride...but that's another story) and another Honda dirt bike followed. I loved riding in the woods and trails and eventually got a real license to ride on the road (legally for once) between trails. The worries of trooper cars and tickets subsided and again, I rode the thing to destruction but the chopper didn't materialize.

There came a very used blue Yamaha 650 twin with a Kerker exhaust for the first street-only bike. It was loud and sort of looked like a Triumph if you squinted right. Then the first actual Harley...an '80 Roadster that I financed and bought brand spanking new from a dealer in Syracuse.

 That was as close as I ever got to customizing when those same old Z bars ended up on it, a shorty exhaust got hung and 4 inch extension tubes went in the front end. I rode it to Florida twice that way and had my longest single-day mileage on it. I loved that bike but eventually traded up for a Super Glide and finally had a big-inch. That's the one I still have 39 years later. It's had a few changes but after so long, it still wouldn't take too much to put it back to stock. It's got a whole lot of miles and history on it and I would never let it go after all this time. We've been through too much together.

But it still isn't a chopper.

Somewhere in there was a short flirt with a Kawasaki Z1 with an 1100cc kit in it. That was in fact a true custom but it really wasn't what I was looking for and besides, it was probably going to kill me. It was insanely fast in a straight line but with about a 10 over girder front end, rigid frame, no front brakes and that engine...it reminded me of the Schwinn all grown up and overdosed on steroids. It was even green like the pedal bike. I sold it before the inevitable.

Through it all, the years of being a road captain for ABATE of NY, the MSF Rider Course instructing, poker runs, MDA rides, the miles and miles of road...assorted other bikes and adventures...all of it...there's always been that dream of a bike built the way I want it. I always have a picture of it in my head...the way I did when I thought of the one with the Briggs & Stratton engine so long ago...and by now it's a very 'old school' vision. 

It must be black of course, shovelhead motor, drag bars, not-too-radical glide front end, 2 into 1 turnout pipe, a touch of chrome on the engine, sprung frame because I'm old, open belt primary, possibly a suicide shifter just to keep it interesting and a fuel tank with range to go more than around the block. Just enough sass. It sorta looks like this but not really...this one isn't mine.

Nothing like the excessively excess look in style of late with the stupidly fat back tires, almost no seat, miles long front ends, ridiculously big engines and pipes that dump straight down. Extreme everything. Or the other one I see all the time...ape-hangers on a bagger with dub wheels. Everybody wants to be either the 'Mayans' or 'OCC' because they saw it on cable. It all went sort of mainstream somewhere while I wasn't looking. 'Sons of Anarchy' became a thing...I'm not sure what but it was a thing. Showpiece choppers of obscene price got 'commissioned' by sports stars who may or may not ever ride them from a couple of loudmouth drama queens because Discovery Channel. It's come a long, long ways from 'Easy Rider'.

Even Harley got in the game with 'factory customs'. They're selling corporate designed and approved bikes that start at up to $44,000...just add a few grand more in accessories and you've got your sorta-kinda-chopper. The good news is that most of the parts will fit and they might even throw in a tee shirt or a belt buckle. I'm glad they're making it work but I'm old enough to remember getting run out of the dealerships when they were only looking for dentists and lawyers to buy 'Glides. It wasn't always so cheerful.

In truth though, the new stuff is probably not much different than exhaust stacks, metalflake paint and 6 foot sissy bars were in another time. But I just can't. Trendy never was part of it and that was the point.

Anyway, back to where I started...I've been the strangest kind of biker. I've owned motorcycles non-stop since I was 16 but never the chopper I was after. I'm in my sixties now, kids are grown and gone and I'm sneaking up on retirement but the long, low bike in my head stays only there. After all this time, there's still a mortgage to pay, a furnace to replace, a roof that needs shingles, payments to make and all the etcetera etcetera's that have kept that dream out of my garage for about 50 years. I guess you always need a goal to work towards but time is getting a little shorter as the years go along.

I don't know if I'll ever realize that dream I dreamed when I heard a kick-start Panhead through fishtails for the first time...but hey...someday.