1948 Harley-Davidson FL Panhead

Shaking my head with my arms folded, I watched him cycle the kickstarter a couple of times until he got the crankshaft into the right position. Then he stepped up on it and slammed it down.

"Blub."

"Blub, blub."

"Blub, blub, blub, potato potato potato..."

It started up on the very first kick.

I thought for sure it wouldn't.

"When you put it all back together right, that's what it's supposed to do", my step-father said.

The year was 1984. I had just graduated high school.  He had just put his beloved 1948 Harley-Davidson FL back together, and I was really amazed it started up on the first crank.

Earlier in that year, my step-father had finally gotten serious about putting it back together. He had been up late into the evenings and sometimes early mornings, cleaning, scrubbing, painting, and bolting together a motorcycle that had been taken apart down to the smallest piece and stored away into crates, boxes, and coffee cans.

He originally got it in the early 1970s.  It had actually been his only means of transportation during his college days in New Mexico. It probaby started in 1968 with a motor he found at a junk yard. He would work, save his money, and either go back to the junk yard or send away for parts he couldn't find anywhere else. A couple years later, he had himself a completely restored bike.

Soon after, he enlisted in the Navy, and put his FL into storage at his grandparents house in Rifle.

I remember the day he brought it back home.

It all started in the the Summer of 1975. My mother had met him in a bar in San Diego. One evening, she came home from work and told me she and I would be taking a trip to Colorado in just a few weeks. She said she met a guy who planned to drive to Colorado in his van to retrieve his old motorcycle. We spent a few days driving there, and a few days driving back.  I was just nine years old at the time.

When we brought the bike back to San Diego, he moved in with my mom and I. I used to watch him take the bike apart piece by piece. His plan was to clean it all up, repaint it, and put it back together.

Nine years later, it finally happened.

For much of that time, however, he hardly worked on it.  He'd have moments of cleaning the carburetor and trying to hammer a front rim back into a perfect circle.  And I always there to watch and ask questions.  I used to pester him and bug him and ask if I could help.  Most of the time, he didn't want me messing around with it.

Along the way, I gained a half-brother.

There were times when I grew really angry at my mom and real father.  Each of them had remarried to different people and gave birth to new sons.  I felt replaced, abandoned, and unwanted.  I became so resentful inside, I found it difficult to make friends.  I spent my junior high and high school years alone.

But my step-father did buy me a used 1979 Kawasaki KZ400 for $50.00 as a high school graduation present. It was third-hand, recently wrecked, and not running.  It wouldn't be another year, however, until we took that bike apart and put it back together.

What really impressed me the most about him, however, is that he remembered where each and every nut, bolt and washer belonged on his Harley, even after all those years of being in storage.  I mean, they weren't even labeled, nor did he bother to keep nuts, bolts, and washers connected together.  It was a testament to a rider's intimate knowledge of his own bike.

He spent probably the next year riding that old FL. He'd take it to work and take it out to bars. The last night he rode it he was drunk off his ass. He had come back home from a bar with a buddy. The two of them wanted to continue riding down Ortega Highway (state route 74). My mom begged him to not go, and he finally relented and stayed home. I don't remember him riding the bike after that.

Maybe a few months later, he sold it for $4,500.00 cash.  I think he was pissed at my mom.  She was never supportive of him riding.

By that time, we had rebuilt my KZ400 and I was riding it to college and work. I'd take it out at nights and pick up chicks. It was my only means of transportation as well.

The truth is that my step-father and I never had a close relationship. He was far more close to his son than I. But he did leave a permanent mark on me with respect to motorcycling. Somehow, growing up feeling alone and replaced created a bond with my motorcycle that I can't quite put into words.  I wish I still had my KZ400.

My half-brother posing on the Harley

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How to Fight a Helmet Ticket in California

Richard Quigley

Roughly seven years ago, one of the more well-respected figures in California motorcycle rights organizations died. Richard Quigley is not a name the average motorcycle rider knows about, but if you've spent a lot of time championing the rights of motorcycle riders, you've certainly heard of him.

Quigley established the group known as "Cal BOLT" (California Bikers of Lesser Tolerance).  He was known for fighting the helmet law...

In 1999, he decided to start riding his motorcycle wearing a trucker's cap, instead of the typical head gear other riders tend to wear. Between the years 1999 to 2006, he had been stopped over 100 times by police, cited only 34 times for helmet law violations, and managed to get 25 of those citations dismissed or declared unconstitutional. 

Each time he was stopped, he turned on his pocket tape recorder and then proceeded to interrogate the officer's understanding of the helmet law and what a "DOT Helmet" actually is. His intricate knowledge of the helmet law and how the DOT is involved with helmets, along with these tape recordings, is how he managed to get so many tickets overturned.

Before he died, he left behind a wealth of information on how to fight a ticket for not wearing a "DOT helmet".

He pointed out the flaws in California's "safety helmet" law and how riders could exploit it to win their case in court.

As it turns out, California Vehicle Code 28702 establishes safety requirements for motorcycle helmets.  However, it doesn't actually require helmets to meet the safety standards of the federal Department of Transportation.  It only says that manufacturers must certify that their helmets meet the DOT safety standards.  If anything, the law requires that these helmets be labeled as compliant (DOT sticker).

The law also requires that the helmet have some kind of strap to secure the helmet on.  It doesn't say that it has to be a chin strap.  Just a strap.

The California Highway Patrol also says it's legal to manufacture your own helmet.

The court system has also ruled that helmet law violations are "fix it tickets", and you cannot be fined.  Which is how Quigley got many of his tickets thrown out.

So, Quigley used to ride with a truckers cap with the letters "DOT" sewn into the back.  The cap had a strap that tightened around the head, just like any other cap.  Quigley argued that his cap was tested against the DOT standards, and was found to comply, because that's all that needed to comply (just your word).

You can read the full details on how to beat a helmet ticket in California at this page...

http://www.boltofca.com/LegalDetails.html

I point this out because a guy like Quigley went through a lot of trouble and hassel by the Man just to give the rest of us motorcycle riders some ammunition when getting hasseled ourselves.  Even at his funeral, at least one motorcycle officer came by to pay his respects to a man who knew the law so intricately and had the guts to take a stand.

What Quigley left behind works only when a cop is citing your helmet as not being "DOT".  It doesn't work if you've been cited for not wearing any kind of hear gear at all.

The truth is that most of us don't want to spend the time fighting a helmet citation.  We don't want to break out tape recorders and argue at length with a cop about the helmet law.  We'd just rather pay the ticket and be done with it, and that's what local governments want you to do also.

But maybe you'll find yourself with the time to fight it in court, and will want to have all that ammunition with you.  That's what Cal BOLT is dedicated to helping you with.

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One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure

I-15 northbound, past Lawrence Welk Resort

Riding the freeways just isn't the big boredom that it used to be for me. As little as a few years ago, I didn't care to ride the slab. I always wanted to take the little highways that ran through mountains and canyons.

But these days are different. Today, my motorcycle is back to being my only means of transportation. It isn't just for recreation anymore. As a result, it changes the way I think about motorcycling. Now, it's my daily vehicle. It's no longer a toy I keep around for the weekends. Freeways are just a fact of life in San Diego, and riding them on my motorcycle is a fact of life.

Instead, you learn to find the fun in riding freeways, just as much as I find the fun in riding through downtown. Motorcycling is no longer a thing I do to get away from domestic life, it's completely engrained into my domestic life.

I remember seeing a rerun of Anthony Bourdain's "Parts Unknown", the one where he discovers the restaurants of Korea Town Los Angeles. He hooks up with an ecclectic Korean-American painter named David Choe.

The show depicts Choe in his studio garage surrounded by bikini clad Korean hotties as he feverishly swashes black paint across a canvas in the same fervor as a hip hop rapper spitting saliva into a microphone. Choe talks to Bourdain with a kind of youthful attitude and anger found ad nauseum on MTV.  Bourdain wants to get inside this guy's head to figure out what makes him tick, because only a hometown boy like Choe knows where to find the down to Earth eats that Koreans go to enjoy.

Sizzler in Murrieta, CA

So it comes to no surprise that Choe takes Bourdain to a Sizzler for the salad bar buffet.

Bourdain's facial expression was that of amusement and that of "You're joking, right?" But as it turns out, Korean-Americans are enamored with the corporate American fare. To them, day-old lettuce and frozen chicken wings is exotic Western dining. It's the stuff completely opposite of kim chee and bulgogi beef, and it's stuff romanticized on such American media as Roseanne and The Simpsons.  And the fact that they can eat all they want for one low price, leaves the matter without question.

So there's Bourdain, sitting at a table of formica and naugahyde, being taught how to stuff meatballs into a crispy taco shell topped off with nacho cheese sauce.  Bourdain holds the taco up to his mouth and pauses, the same way he pauses when he's about to eat pig testicles in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He takes a bite and nods his head a few times in approval.

According to Bourdain, it was the first time he had ever been to a Sizzler.

Whether its meatball and cheese sauce tacos at Sizzler or some strange hog entrail stew in an European town, the experience is all the same. It looks gross, it smells sick, and it'll probably make you barf later on. But it's not to say that one is more exotic than the other.

SR-163 southbound, San Diego

Riding the superslab through California might be as uninteresting and dull as eating the salad bar at Sizzler. But there are still people elsewhere in the world who dream of doing so. And when they finally get here and ride the Interstate, it might turn out to be anticlimactic, but it was something they could boast about back home.

Perhaps for Sash and I, riding the freeway this afternoon and having lunch at Sizzler was nothing exciting. But then again, it's just living for us, the same way it is for Czechoslovakians eating pig testicles.  But there are still people who envy us for doing so.

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