Nice work, Dan! Thanks for sharing it with us. Case
"To the extent that one's behavior is controlled by static patterns of quality it is without choice. But to the extent that one follows Dynamic Quality, which is undefinable, one's behavior is free." (Robert Pirsig, LILA) Hello everyone A building in the town where I live came up for sale early last year. I put in an offer on it, back then, but the owner turned me down flat. He didn't even counter. I got the sense that he thought I was trying to take advantage of him since I'm a Realtor. But I really wasn't. In early January of this year though, he called me wondering if I was still interested in buying his place. We came to a meeting of the minds and the building is now mine. It is down the street from where I live, right down the alley. The building is solid brick three layers thick and over a hundred years old. The downtown section has faded ever since the Interstate went through a few miles to the east back in the middle '70s. Hell, the whole town has faded for that matter. The town used to be on the main drag between two large cities. It was actually a thriving little burg at one time. Back then, I'm told by old-timers still living here, there were a couple grocery stores, a clinic, a number of bars, a butcher shop (in the building I bought), a drug store, over a half dozen churches, and several other businesses. There were schools here too. Now they bus the few kids left living here a dozen miles to the nearest city. All that's left is the post office. Well, to tell the truth, they closed down the building that housed the post office last year. Something about the heating system spewing noxious gases into the air making it dangerous to inhabit the building. Now there is a big white and blue truck that comes and parks in front of the old post office. It says: Post Office On Wheels. They don't sell stamps anymore and they won't weigh your packages for you either. You go to the truck and pick up your mail through a slip hole at the bottom of the window. If you want to buy stamps you have to drive 6 miles to the next nearest town. All the downtown buildings are shuttered, turned into residences, or burned down and never replaced. There are many vacant lots with weeds growing through cracked crumbing concrete that used to serve as floors in the stores where people came and shopped. There used to be factories on the outskirts of the town, foundries and assembly plants with big warehouses to store all the goods that they once manufactured here. Generation after generation lived here and loved here and worked here and died here. Now the town itself is dying. It is the way of things, I suppose. When I'm feeling adventurous I weasel through a break in the wire fence to wander among the ruins, exploring the cavernous insides of the old factories. They are walled off into little nooks and crannies with stairways going nowhere. Upstairs, broken windows allow the wind to blow into the buildings stirring up dust devils that dance across the rotting wooden planks that serve as a most treacherous sort of flooring. They creak and bounce when you walk across the floor. Best to watch your step there as that first drop's a doozy. I feel like an archeologist who has stumbled upon a long lost ancient city. Some of the buildings still have old fading signs pinned on their sides and rusting machinery hulking in shadows. You can see daylight coming through the roofs. All the old factory buildings are dilapidated and empty now save for the pigeons roosting there, leaving their white droppings running down the walls and settling in piles. Broken loading docks sit waiting for trucks that will never arrive. If I am in there at dusk and I don't look directly at them it seems like I can see the ghosts of workers still laboring there in the twilight. I bought a home in the residential part of town almost 3 years ago as the prices of real estate in this depressed area are very low compared to other areas in the state. I was able to pay cash for my home which allows me the luxury of no longer having a mortage payment hanging over my head. A house farther east would cost 3 times what I paid. It is rather amazing how that has freed up time to Dynamically do what I want instead of statically doing what I have to do in order to survive... to cover that nut every month. The drawback is that a person has to drive twenty five or thirty miles to get anywhere. There is no work here. I've been selling real estate in a town thirty miles away, running myself ragged showing houses all over the place, and it seemed like all I was doing was making money to put into the gas tank, keep a decent vehicle on the road, and pay my dry cleaning bills. I'm still selling real estate but I can see no reason why I can't sell out of my home office instead of driving thirty miles one way. Especially if I can get another stream of income coming in here in town to go along with my publishing, eBay, and consulting businesses. I've always wanted to own a bar or a motorcycle repair shop. I quit drinking some years ago and the desire to own a bar has faded. But a motorcycle repair shop... now that is something I'm still interested in. So after closing on it, for the last month I've been fixing up the old place that I bought, outfitting it with tools and lifts (hydralic and air), and gearing up for business. I managed to acquire a complete set of motorcycle repair manuals on CD at eBay for a good price, and a good used air compressor. I already had most of the tools I need. I opened for business last week. I tore down and reassembled my first Harley. I've rebuilt several of my own bikes in the past but they were rice burners. And they were mine. I found there is a world of difference working on your own bike versus working on someone else's bike. If you tear apart your own bike and run into a gumption trap like a stripped allen head, hey, just leave it for another day when you're feeling up to tackling it. When someone is depending on you to finish their bike when you said you would, those gumption traps have to be tackled head on, right now. Not next week or next month. Now. A gnarly old biker dude wearing a worn black leather jacket that said "Hell's Henchmen" across the back in blood red lettering found his way to the shop by following the directional signs I put up out on the highway. He needed some work done on his '82 Sportster. The pushrod tubes were leaking oil and the bike was running rough; it wouldn't hardly stay idling when he came to a stop, and it wanted to backfire when he got on it. I took it out for a ride and I saw what he meant. You had to keep the choke on or the bike would die on you. It wasn't much fun to ride like that. The bike was dirty. The owner obviously wasn't a neat freak. To find the oil leaks I put a catch pan under it and sprayed brake cleaner on the engine to wash down the accumulated grime. I happened to have it idling at half choke while cleaning it and the bike killed right away when I sprayed cleaner on the baffles. That seemed to mean something but I wasn't sure what. But I did see the oil leaking out the the bottom of the pushrod tubes. That didn't seem a good thing. I could see where the tubes were bent, like someone might have been prying on them with a screwdriver in an effort to stop the leaks. I decided a trip to the Harley store in the next county was in order. I explained my problem to the kid behind the counter (okay, he wasn't really a kid but anyone under 30 seems like a kid to me these days). He listened attentively and then told me that the bike killing when I cleaned it was indicative that it needed new base gaskets. The pushrod tubes leaking meant the seals at the bottom were shot. The rough idling probably meant the carburetor needed re-jetting. He seemed to know what he was talking about so I bought what he told me I needed and went back to the shop to get started. I didn't know what to charge so I looked in the book. The book tells what a "real" mechanic should charge. I called him up and quoted the old biker dude a price that he seemed happy with. It ended up that I put so much time into the bike that I didn't make any money on the job. But that's okay. I figure the experience will stand me in good stead whereas I would probably just spend any extra money I might have charged in a day or two. And I know it is pretty common these days to gouge the customer... to tell them a price and then say: hey, guess what? It's going to be more. But I don't want to run a business like that. I never have and there's no reason to start now. After I had the engine all in pieces on the table in front of me I suddenly found myself wondering why on earth the owner of the bike had put so much faith in me when I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know if I could get the engine back together. And if I did somehow manage to get it together, I seriously doubted if it would run, much less run right. What did I know about motorcycle repair? Absolutely nothing. I had to ask the kid behind the counter at the Harley store what to do. What if he was just a poser too? So rather than stopping work late that afternoon I felt compelled to continue as I knew I would never be able to sleep that night knowing of the task that lay in front of me the next day. I had visions of a long line of motorcycles, all belonging to the Hell's Henchmen biker gang, roaring into town looking for me because I had screwed up their leader's bike. Of course I had no way of knowing if the owner of the bike really did belong to the Hell's Henchmen or if he was the leader. My mind was working overtime. I knew that I couldn't my best work when I was as unsettled as all that. I pulled down the straw mat that I have hanging on the wall (so the mice don't chew on it; Horatio and Hamlet, the twin tiger-striped cats I keep in the shop, aren't doing their job) and sat in zazen for a half hour. I followed my breathing as my mind cleared. Then I disappeared. When I rose from sitting I just put the bike back together. I didn't think about doing it... I just did it. Actually I wasn't there any longer. The bike assembled itself. That's not really right either. So for the sake of clarity I'll say that I did it. Otherwise I know it doesn't make sense. The really cool part came after the bike was back together. I couldn't even make myself wait to put on the gas tank. Instead, once I got the engine together, the carb assembled, and the muffler on, I filled an empty bottle with gas, stuck a tube in the top, turned the bottle upside down, and ran the tube to the line going to the carb. I turned on the key, opened the gas cock, gave the throttle a flip, choked it a bit, hit the ignition button, and it started right up. It sounded good... it sounded very good. I revved the engine. It sounded really, really good. Great response, no sign of any leaks, and no backfiring or rough idling. I grabbed the droplight to double checked for leaks. Nothing. I revved it again. I couldn't believe how good it sounded! Strong and throaty. I let the gas run out of the bottle and shut it down. After putting on the gas tank and adding some finishing touches like waxing and wiping down all the metal to get the fingerprints off, the bike was ready. I looked out the window. It was dark. I thought, oh, it must be around 8 or 9pm... but no... it was 2am! I hadn't eaten a thing all day or even taken a break since my zazen. I was totally engaged in working on that old Harley. Time had no meaning. The space between me and my work ceased to exist. I remember I had the same feeling years ago when I was deeply engaged in my work on LILA'S CHILD. Time and space just disappeared. There was no separation between "it" and "me". I guess that is where art lies. I don't know for sure though. For I found that there is definitely a fine art to working on a bike. Oh sure, you can read the manuals and look at diagrams for reassurance. But there is a feel that goes into staggering the rings just so by sliding them into plade with a fingernail, putting on the ring compressor (carefully so you don't tear the gaskets), setting it at just the correct tightness and just the right placement, and guiding the base over the piston rings with a little twist so that everything slides together just right that no amount of reading can tell you and no diagram can show you. It either works or it doesn't. Period. The book tells how many foot/pounds to torque the head bolts but the torque wrench I have must not be quite right because the bolts didn't feel tight enough when I did it by the book. I'm sure if I'd left them that way the bolts would have shaken loose and the gaskets would have leaked. Those old Harleys do like to rattle. I put down the book and torqued the bolts by feel. It just felt right when I was done. And it was. I had that feeling when I worked on my own bikes and I remembered it. Or rather my body remembered, I guess. I don't really know. I just know the bike started up and sounded great. I was greasy and filthy. My hands hurt. My back ached. My legs were sore. I felt weak from hunger. My mouth tasted like something had died in it. I knew that I'd worked three times longer than a "real" mechanic would have worked doing the same job. But I felt good, really good. I fed the cats, locked up the shop, walked the block down the alley to my home, took a long hot shower, had a bite, crawled into bed, and slept. No dreams, just a really good sleep. The next morning, late morning, I called the biker dude and told him: come get it, your bike is ready. You should have seen his face when he saw his clean machine sitting there. I had moved it into the sunshine so he could see how it sparkled. He said he couldn't believe it was the same bike. He took it out for a ride and came back smiling. I have a feeling I will be getting some good referrals from the old boy. Thank you for reading, Dan moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
