The Bike Whisperer

June 21. 2007

Recently, the odometer on my Triumph began acting wacky, with the high number turning backwards as I sped along: 20,000…10,000…0…90,000…80,000. The speedometer was replaced sometime in the eighties, so I've never known the bike's exact mileage. I’d previously had a rough idea; however, I watched that “rough idea” spin into oblivion. I swung by Sixth Street Specials to have a chat with Hugh and see if he could give me some advice about diagnosing the problem before I dug in, meddled with it, and screwed it up further.

I parked alongside a half dozen old bikes, including a Triumph with a cafe tank that I often see parked on the street near my apartment. Hugh was on the outside, spray painting a ratty pair of exhaust pipes and chatting to a couple of guys. One of them wore a baby in a backpack, and the other was the owner of the bike I recognized. "Is that your bike?" I asked the guy.

"Yeah."

We shook hands and introduced ourselves. "Jamie," I said.

"James," he said.

That should be easy to remember, I thought.

"I see your bike all the time," I told him. "Parked in Brooklyn, around the corner from where I live. Do you live out there?"

"Yeah," he said. He said more than just yeah, but that's the most I could understand because he mumbled a bit, like me, and had a British accent.

"I think I saw your bike with a different gas tank on it," I said.

"Oh yeah, I have a dozen gas tanks for it. I'm always changing it. Always something different."

"I think I saw it once with a blue and white tank."

"Oh no, that's my wife's bike."

Hugh stopped spraying for a minute. He turned and shook my hand. "Don't listen to this guy," he said to me. "He doesn't know a thing about bikes."

James laughed. "I saw Hugh stomp on a timing gun earlier," he said. "Threw it on the ground and stomped it to bits. He looks okay now, but we don't know when he'll go off again. Very unpredictable, he is."

Hugh explained that he took out his timing gun to strobe time a customer's bike earlier in the day, but discovered that the tool was broken. "Someone — the last person to use it, I'd say — didn't tell me that it was broken, and when I went to use it, it fell apart. What's one to do then, but throw it to the ground and smash it with yer boot. It's the only thing that makes sense. If the one who broke it had told me it was broken before I took it out to use it, then I would've been prepared. I would’ve used a different one, or bought a new one."

"Did you figure out who broke it?" asked James.

"I've got it narrowed down to one suspect."

Hugh's one and only assistant was in the shop, a safe distance away.

"You didn't do it, did you?" Hugh said to the baby in the backpack.

"No," said the baby's dad. "I can safely say he didn't. Though he's the prime suspect in several other minor crimes, I can tell you that."

"I'm afraid you've been supplanted as the number one male in the house," Hugh said to the dad. "Father's Day, that's all you get from now on. One day a year. It's all over for you, my friend."

"You know what?" said the dad, "I told my family that anything they're thinking of getting me for Father's Day, whatever it is, to take the money and put it in a special college fund for this little guy, instead."

"What are you, stupid man?" Hugh said, shaking his rattle can a few times and spraying a few short bursts of paint onto the exhaust pipes. "What'd you go and do a thing like that for?"

The father shrugged and laughed, then said he was late for something or other and walked off to wherever it is fathers walk off to. To change a diaper, perhaps?

"Did you see Jamie's bike?" Hugh said to James. "It's a beautiful machine, innit? Tell him what you said when he pulled up?"

"I said, that's a C100T," said James.

(It's a T100C, but close enough.)

"That's right," said Hugh. "It's not every day you see one of those in fine fettle."

James walked over to my bike to have a closer look.

"What can I do for you today, Jamie?" asked Hugh.

"I see you're busy," I said. "But I just wanted to ask you a quick question when you get a minute."

"Oh yes, very busy," he laughed, shaking the spray can a few times. He looked at his watch. "Okay then, time's up."

I told him about my odometer and asked his advice. He gave me a few simple ideas about what might be the trouble, but there was no way to be sure without removing the rear wheel to have a look at the worm gear that drives the speedometer. "That's what I would do, first, anyway," he said. "Otherwise, if it turns out your clock is broken, there's a place in Mamaroneck, Nissonger, they're called. They do nothing but fix old Smith's clocks."

James came back to say so long, nice to meet you, etc. He was going to get lunch, I think he said. I told him next time I see him sitting on the curb working on his bike, I'd stop and say hello.

Before I left, too, I asked Hugh about the exhaust pipes he was painting.

"It's for my flat track racer," he said. "That beater in the shop. Just some old pipes to get me around. They see many crashes. Many, many crashes."

"The last time I was here, you mentioned a friend of yours with a 750 that you were hoping to beat. How did you make out?"

"Did I? I don't know. I'm not very good and get beaten by a lot of people. I did win one recently, though. Won three in a row. I was very happy with that. Haven't done well lately, but I'll take those three."

"Do you go every weekend?"

"No. Once a month, maybe. Twice if I'm lucky. I have to be responsible, y'know. Can't be running off having fun."