Miles Davis - CruiserCustomizing Newsletter Editor

1. Motorcycle Addiction by T. W. "Buff" McGovern

The year was 1965 and there I was: a twelve-year-old boy tightening the pedals of my CCM bicycle. I remember the scenario well: a friend of my parents named John Spack rolled up on one of those little Honda single-cylinder scramblers. You must know the model … it's the one with the muffler mounted halfway up the frame. In my young mind I couldn't stop thinking, "Is that bike cool, or what?" It was the defining moment of my life: from then on I was hooked on motorcycles. John Spack visited a few more times on the Honda after that, and even took me on the back for a couple of rides. When I was thirteen I got John to show me how the controls work, and soon enough I was riding it around our back yard. I overcame "the wobbles" and managed to stay up, never crashing it. I was pretty good at riding and could see my future unfolding, and that would mean motorcycles!

Soon enough I had worn a doughnut shaped circle in the grass. Next, after plenty of pleading and begging, I was told I could take the bike around the block if I would "Be careful." I was outta there like a cat with a pack of Dobermans on his tail. By the time I was fourteen I had maybe a dozen or so spins around the block to my credit. Now I was begging for a chance to ride the Honda around town. Back then the local constabulary was quite a bit more tolerant. I returned from my first solo motorcycle adventure three hours later grinning like a weasel in heat. When John saw me coming back, he advised, "Son, you'd better get a bike of your own and quit wearing out mine!" My life had now changed: I was a motorcyclist. John has passed from this world now, but the influence he left upon me was indelible.

When I was eighteen I went to British Columbia to work in a sawmill. It was then that I bought a bike of my own, a Yamaha 250cc enduro that was just right for Western Canada's beautiful mountain trails. Soon I wanted to cruise the highways, so I upgraded to a 650cc Yamaha XS. As girlfriends and jobs came and went, I moved from one province to another, finally settling in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, three hundred miles north of the Montana border, to build houses.

Once I settled down, I formed a plan: I wanted to have a different motorcycle for each day of the week. By 1976 I started holding on to every bike I owned, at least the ones that really meant something to me. By 2002 my stable of bikes included a `74 Honda Elsinore for dirt, a '76 Gold Wing for touring, a '76 Honda CBX 6-cylinder for raw power and torque, an '83 V65 Magna for cruising and an '87 Yamaha FZR 1000 crotch rocket for my speed fix. All of which now brings me to the "X"…

I had always cherished the idea of owning a V-twin, but not one that would require tinkering and fixing each weekend, if you catch my drift. My dream bike would need to have a h-u-u-u-ge bulletproof engine, yet it shouldn't set me back the price of my house. After all, I am a single parent of twin sons. Some years earlier I had bought a couple of dirt bikes for my boys Aaron and David when they were eight. And we did a lot of riding Saskatchewan's badass prarie together. It is said that the land here is so flat that if your dog starts running in a straight line, you can see him go for three days. With the boys, I put more miles on the Elsie than in all the years up to then, and the Elsinore just kept on running fine. By 2001 the boys had outgrown the trailies, and didn't want new ones, so I took the dirt bikes to our local Honda dealer Grondin Ltd. for a consignment sale. There on the showroom floor was a new VTX 1800. Its huge V-twin mill caught my eye, and over the winter months I would often be seen at the dealer's just ogling the bike. I might even have set some sort of record for sitting on a bike without starting the engine! In May the dealer Ted suggested, "Buff, this ride is you. You gotta have it!"

Running home to my twins, I asked them if they wanted new dirt bikes. "No," they responded, "but new skateboards and inline skates would be neat." Back at the dealership, I said, "Ted, I need to take the big X for a ride." He tossed me the keys and said, "Stay on the lot." Driving in circles and figure eights, I found myself smiling once again like a weasel in heat. I was a few months shy of passing half a century, but the feeling I had was just like my first ride on the Honda scrambler thirty-eight years earlier. I walked into Ted's office and handing him a blank check, ordered, "Get me a Memphis Shades windscreen, Cobra pipes, and I want my new VTX to be blue."

In June of '02 my beautiful VTX arrived and what a joy it was riding the gargantuan V-twin the three miles home. I immediately installed the Cobra pipes and Memphis shades windshield. The OEM muffler, which I still have, is so large that my cat could use it for a litter box. Or it could make a nice wall hanging…

I rode the VTX all summer, but she was just begging for customizing. Come winter, she needed a new back tire, so I stripped her down, got some airbrushing done, added a few bits of chrome here and there and ordered some goodies from Big Uwe at Cruiser Customizing. In 2003 I entered the Big X in three car shows and scored First Place in the Mild Custom category each time. Winter is not exactly riding season in Saskatchewan, so in the winter of '04 I decided to strip her down once again and complete the customization. The humongous V-twin has the power to bring out the teenager in me, so to make a long story short, I had already gone through two rear tires. The big X was customized in a snow leopard theme with her name, Precious, painted on the fender. As a result, in April and May of this year I returned home with two more trophies. The riding season has just begun, and I want to get in a few more shows. Sure, I ride the Magna and the FZR, but the VTX will see a lot of asphalt this season. When I am asked if I ride it or just show it, I point to the odometer which has 9,000 miles on the clock and still ticking.

I still have that dream of owning a different bike for each day of the week, and I have six now. My twins are nearly grown now, and when they venture out on their own, I'll have a lot more time to enjoy my bikes. I also have a vision of owning a radical muscle chopper for my seventh bike. But it would take winning the lottery to get Paul Jr. over at Orange County Choppers to build me a "real" cat bike with feline paws for spokes, a 300mm rear tire, a 200 cubic inch V-twin engine, and a Siberian tiger skin seat. Well, we all have our dreams, anyway. There was a story I read about an engineer in Australia who chopped off the front two cylinders of a P-51 Mustang airplane engine and mounted it in a hardtail frame with a 30" over springer front end. So if he can do that, then anything is possible…

I close now with thanks to everyone at Cruiser Customizing. I've won a trophy from every show I've entered. The crew at CruiserCustomizing.com have all been really great in helping me to finish my project and enjoy my passion for motorcycling. To those of you who have figured out that I am addicted, you're damned right! And to all of you who ride motorcycles: Be free, ride safe and God bless.

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2. Backfire
With apologies to Jeff Foxworty, we asked you in last month's CruiserCustomizing.com Newsletter how to tell real bikers from the posers, and - quite frankly - your responses were overwhelming. Now any rider who understands the poignancy and depth of our members' wise replies will surely discern the genuine motorcyclist from the imposter. And who knows? If Mr. Foxworthy himself learns of CruiserCustomizing members' moto-centric wit and wisdom, he might just throw his leg over a V-twin and deliver a few of the following at Sturgis or Daytona.
C'mon and ride with us, Jeff, because:

YOU MIGHT BE A BIKER IF…

…your best towels are not in the bathroom, they're all in the garage. (loucale)

…you have bags of cat litter, but no cat. (IGHSTARRIDER)

…you won't allow passengers on your bike, but you'll spend an entire weekend making a seat on the bike for your cat or dog. (StogieD)

…you keep a clock that sounds off like a motorcycle engine every hour on the hour, whether at work or at home. (ARROWHEAD)

…your favorite color is chrome. (r1patton)

…you dry your bike by turning the throttle after a rainstorm. (skaidawg)

…you manually disengage the turn signal when driving your car. (rodsandy)

…you throw your leg over your favorite easy chair when you get home.(justme443)

…you have turned grocery shopping into an act of creativity which requires nineteen bungee cords. (Warrior_04)

…you know what it's like to get a fat lip and black eye in a hail storm. (Warrior_04)

…you've learned the contortionist's art of leaning back to cover your license plate when riding through intersections. (Warrior_04)

…you consider sidewalks as passing lanes. (Warrior_04)

…you get more upset about bug splatter on your pipes than on your shirt. (loosegrandprix)

…you've been know to lie in the dirt in your Sunday best to clean your white walls and spokes. (Hey, why waste money on dry cleaning when you need that new chrome air filter cover. Besides, your suit can be dusted off in about three seconds.) (loosegrandprix)

…your best framed photos are of flame jobs. (loosegrandprix)

…when it comes to working overtime for accessory money, you feel great. Overtime work for family gifts? Hey, time for a break! (loosegrandprix)

…you use 5W20 motor oil, both in the crankcase and on your hair. (No Name)

…you've been asked about your preference for chewing tobacco when it's just a few leftover bug parts stuck in your teeth. (PwrPulse)

…your wife orders, "Check up on the baby" and you head for the garage. (Auggie)

…you wake up on December 25th hoping that the snow has melted and find yourself wishing that Big Crosby would take his White Christmas and shove it. (HarleyDave22)

…you think a tachometer is far more important than a speedometer. (StogieD)

…your wife suggests a cruise vacation and you whip out you WhiteHorse Guides to cruising America's highways. (yreka3)

…you wear four hundred dollars worth of leather to protect you beer belly and a two-dollar, red, paisley bandana to protect your head. (No Name)

…you've named your sailboat Knot Riding. (jehedrick52)

…you define quality time as a long ride alone on your bike. (bobert0670)

…you try to lean around corners while driving your car.(CodeRider)

…your bike gets stored in the bedroom during winter months.(CodeRider)

… you undergo symptoms of withdrawal when the bike is in the shop. (CodeRider)

…you understand that a relationship is getting serious when you install passenger pegs. (Hook026)

…your wardrobe consists of twenty-six tee shirts, all black. (Hook026)

…your closest friends are all named after reptiles.(Hook026)

…you refer to biker magazines as "literature".(Hook026)

…you've gone "shopping" for flowers for your girl friend and got arrested for trespassing.(Hook026)

…you add to the weatherman's forecast a wind chill factor of 65mph. (SloopJonB)



However, you definitely ARE a biker if…

…you comprehend the self-effacing humor in the above "Foxworthies" that our CruiserCustomizing members were kind enough to contribute. At least one was not only funny, but it was remarkably profound as well. Sagacious CruiserCustomizing member bobert0670 wrote that you are a biker if you define quality time as your solitary ride! This is the sort of thing Mark Twain, who called golf "a good way to ruin a walk", would have said had he ever thrown a leg over a bike. After all, what are those beautiful two-wheeling iron, paint and chrome machines for? Riding! And by riding alone, we learn many new things about ourselves, how to relate to the world, how to improve our lives, how to accomplish more in what time we have. Yes, some riders even contemplate the intertwining spiritual fabric of nature and the Universe and find God on two wheels. True, as bikers we may appear to others as fodder for Foxworthy, but our bikes are better than John Robbins as self-motivational tools. Through our rides we come to decisions, find answers, dispense with lower emotions and take charge of all that is important in our lives. So, before I get teary-eyed - from laughing or whatever -- let me end here with a big Thank You to all the CruiserCustomizing bikers who were kind enough to share their elixer mix of good humor and road lore. We apologize that we could not use every one we received.

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