Article By: Xavier Muriel
Originally Published In The May 2019 Issue Of Cycle Source Magazine
Greetings from Daytona Bike Week 2019!!! It’s the week leading up to the annual running of Billy Lane’s Sons of Speed at the New Smyrna Speedway. This year racer field has more than tripled in size compared to the first running in 2016 with only eight racers. Saturday will host 45 plus riders, making it the biggest so far. Pit passes and spectator tickets have been sold out for weeks. This means a lot more head to head action and yes probably some scary moments with every racer going after the BIG WIN. As usual, the energy level and cast of characters here at Choppers Inc. is well, let’s just say, something to behold! I’ll do my best to paint a picture so you can visualize. At some point almost all the racers stop by the shop to at some point some to hang and shoot the shit, but in all reality most of them need Billy’s incredible knowledge of these vintage motors, which doesn’t always leave a lot of time for actual work.
Every so-called ‘’just needs five minutes of your time’’ question turns into 45 mins and when you multiply that times ten people, well you get my point. So, Billy has enlisted the help of some of the best in the biz. Here’s where that picture comes in. There are 10 bikes that all need some sort of work, from severe issues (broken cam rollers, cracked cases, and jugs, etc.) to minor tuning issues or minor welding. Now, these aren’t Billy’s personal bikes, his are ready, but like I said before, Choppers Inc. is the go-to place for knowledge and parts. Every bike is being attended to by a slew of professionals including the likes of Berry Wardlaw from Accurate Engineering. Berry is a V-Twin Guru and incredible machinist as well as an all-around bike guy. Wardlaw’s motors were used by many builders back in the Discovery Biker Build-off days.
Steve Broyles, who has run his own shop Stevenson Cycles for decades now and knows his way around a 1912 Indian like nobody’s business. Tom Keefer from Franklin Church Choppers who has come on the scene strong not only racing but also as a builder of these relics. Rick Petko of the famed OCC days, who is now doing his own thing… is wrenching on whatever needs to be done. Nick from Mad Pen Cycles a newbie to this genre but has jumped feet first into the fire and is killing it. He fabbed a set of foot controls for Billy’s Flying Merkel racer and did a fantastic job. And last but not least, one of the founding fathers of chop Arlin Fatland, who I had the honor of working side by side with on a pair of handlebars.
It’s only Wednesday, and we await the rest of the gang to show up. It’s pretty cool; you never know who might walk through that door next. As I was working on one of Billy’s customer’s Knuckles, I stopped and remembered something I’ve been trying to really work on lately, and that’s being “In the Moment.” You see, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve really begun to understand what my ol man was trying to tell me all those years ago, but I was too much of a snot nose, know it all kid to grasp it those life lessons. I have so much knowledge about a great many things in this life by all the elders assembled in this very room at my fingertips. Not just motors and measurements and little tricks they’ve learned along the way but the real shit that matters as well. For starters living as long as they have and overcoming whatever life threw at them, business successes and failures, marriage to the same woman for as long as I’ve been breathing, loss and birth of children.
They’ve watched fads come and go, so-called master builders that were nothing more than fly by night actors, watched friends in the industry pass on, one by one to whatever disease took them home. THIS IS THE REAL DEAL… I found myself in some very deep conversations with these icons. With one, I listened as he told me stories of the good ol days and what the rally’s used to be like before it became all about the mighty dollar and took away the real essence of what the culture used to be and what it has become. When it was just dudes and bikes that’s all, it’s funny how all the great ones always say, “the kids today just don’t get it,” I find myself saying the same thing… but mostly about music. But I can understand and completely agree with his statement. It will NEVER be like it used to, and to some, it’s only right that evolution of an idea and concept grow. I ask myself to what degree and to the death of what ideal?
Which leads me to my next deep chat with one of these keepers of the grail, he spoke of a time when a man’s word and integrity was all that was needed to be regarded as a Good Man, when you did what you said and were always there for your brethren… NO MATTER WHAT. He touched on the pack that you ran being very much like a small army. You rode together; you died together. No one was stabbing you in the back for recognition in today’s “here today, gone later today’’ digital media world. He told me that nothing will ever, ever take the place of an honest day’s work and using your hands AND your mind to create and problem solve. Not to be solely reliant on machines, because that’s not how the real pioneers did it. After all, wagon wheels weren’t drawn on CAD; these are moments that you just can’t buy, they only happen if you’re willing to stop and listen, really listen to someone who has been there and has a little something of what you want.
It got me thinking to what the real lessons are for each of us, yes they are as different as every snowflake, but it still takes the common elements to make those flakes. I guess as I get older I’m always thirsty for more knowledge and it seems to me that there are so many people out there, in all walks of life who are willing to dispense that knowledge IF, and only if I ’m willing just to stop and breathe for a minute and lend an ear. They say knowledge is power and though I believe that to be true, I also believe it’s what you do with that knowledge that really counts, and maybe passing that on is what really counts. Until next time Be Kind to One Another and Safe Riding.
