Six of us clustered around the oily rag spread on the pavement; Toque, James, and the kid. Dusk had fallen deeply and Toque had his car pulled up to the corner, the headlights illuminating the bank of four motorcycle carburetors lying on the rag. James fiddled with the mixture screws, mumbling through his cigarette. "you're bike is gonna run so much better man, so much better when we get this cleaned up. It'll be like night and f---ing day." The conversation drifted to off-roading, and then eventually tapered off to silence.
"I love motorcycles man, I love 'em." James spoke what we were all thinking. Simplicity, purity, camaraderie in the challenge of keeping them running. It doesn't take much. Here we are tuning up the carburetors on the kid's GS750 in a church parking lot with two flathead screwdrivers, some slivers of coathanger wire, and an evening breeze filtering through the eucalyptus trees. And enough beer to float a boat. No, it's more about the enthusiasm, with one experienced bicycle mechanic chewing on a cigarette and Toque digging through his toolbag. Here's that pair of pliers. We're all here sitting around here like cowboys around a fire, cleaning their tack, in the middle of the desert. We're all sitting around this oily rag staring into the dying glow of the headlight beams while James performs his voodoo magic on this mistuned bank of carbs.
I'm gonna miss this kinda thing. The beer, the pliers, the cigarettes, the jumbled tool bag, the furrowed foreheads in the headlight beams. I'm gonna miss it...
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