In my life, I have learned to be the type of person who adapts to change relatively easily. This is quite the contrary to most people who live in and around Pittsburgh, PA. Most of them have gone to the same job as their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers. They’ve rooted for the same football team and lived in the same neighborhoods; there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe my mother’s influence in my life helped my ability to adjust to change more easily. After the first two or three midnight moves with trash bags being flung off a fourth-floor apartment before the sheriff comes the next day will definitely help you adjust. Either way, I have been able to look past the chaos surrounding sudden change to see what’s beyond. Understanding why things change and where it goes from that point forward is critical for personal growth. While the world at large spins wildly out of control, the changes popular culture goes through is another topic that I cannot comment on in this short offering. Motorcycle culture, on the other hand, provides me with a comfortable platform to do so.
You see, when it comes to motorcycle people, at least in the United States custom culture end of things, we have always been a blue-collar-based segment. Let’s face it, choppers and bobbers are not the typical hobbies of royalty, and with good reason: Participation in it requires getting your hands dirty. Now, before you get ahead of me, this is not a grant to qualify anyone’s level of participation. Yes, some guys think that bolting parts on qualifies as bike building, while others feel that pouring your own head castings is what you must do to be considered a builder. For me, anything you do to change your bike from stock makes you a player in the game, period. I often think back on where all this started for me. It was the mid-eighties, and I was a typical broke kid from a broke northeastern steel town. Just getting a bike, a used bike, was a big deal.
Nevertheless, I would toil over pages of Easyriders and SuperCycles for ideas of what I would do if I ever got a chance to build the perfect motorcycle. Obviously, my dreams far outreached both my finances and my abilities. So, most years, I settled for a trip to the one local aftermarket shops in the area where I would score the annual new pair of Dunlop tires, usually on sale, a fresh set of chrome slash cut drag pipes, and one custom item per year. These were things that, in small ways, got me closer, in my mind, to that perfect bike. You know, maybe drag bars one year, another year, it might be a bobtail rear fender, or if it was a full-out windfall of cash that year, maybe a springer front end. Any way you look at it, we were far from the likes of scratch-building a bike, and my group was made up of guys who were die-hard enthusiasts. They lived and breathed everything around their bikes, so this was just the norm. When someone did make a run at a full-out custom build, for most of us, it was like seeing the Hope Diamond. Today I have more bikes than I’d like my wife to stop and think about, many of which are of the Hope Diamond variety I spoke of. Not because I am flush with cash but because I have made a commitment over time that this is what I do. I don’t have a collection of guns, hunting or fishing supplies, no boats, or fancy cars, I am a bike guy and a maker to boot. So that means that over the years, I have stockpiled tools and knowledge to make my own things rather than just buying because that’s just not how it always was.
Now the part of this that applies to change is that the industry has shrunk. The number of younger people who are into picking up the torch for this culture also has shrunk, but the passion I have for it is squarely where it has always been. I have no disillusions that I will be rich and famous from it. I’m not looking for a TV show or acclaim from the media. It is simply how I like to spend my time. As things change, I see that many of you that stuck around feel the same way and are doing and making. You are spending your time learning. This, my friends, does my heart good because the real treasure in this lifestyle is in the doing. If you take your time and set your mind on the task of learning how to change your motorcycle with your own hands, you will find a whole new world that puts things in a better perspective. The lessons you learn in accomplishing tasks in pursuit of the perfect motorcycle will carry through into your life and give you the idea that if you can solve problems in your garage, then the rest of your life can be approached similarly.
So go out there and change it up! No, I’m not suggesting you start packing the place up for a midnight move, but don’t wait a minute longer to see what you could do if you only take the first steps.
