Appraisal

June 25, 2009

My accident sure has me churning out some long-ass posts.

An insurance adjuster visited my motorcycle this morning and took some pictures. He wasn't very experienced with motorcycles, he told me, and had absolutely zero experience with vintage bikes. He was having a hard time figuring out how to put a price on the damage. Someone at the garage spoke to him and answered his questions as best they could, but the garage where I park the bike isn't particularly well-versed with 40-year-old bikes, either. The best thing for me to do was do what I was planning to do all along — from the moment I shook away the bluebirds and stars that were circling my head — I called Hugh at Sixth Street Specials.

Sixth Street Specials has been around for over twenty years, and if anyone would understand the peculiarities of valuing, and more importantly, fixing a vintage pretzel, it'd be Hugh. I spoke to him briefly on the phone and gave him the basics. "Bring it by," he said. "We'll sort you out."

Easier said than done since neither I nor the bike was in running condition, so I arranged with my garage for a tow for both the bike and me.

"Lots of accidents," said Rudy, the driver, when we met at the garage. Rudy is a pleasant young guy from the Dominican Republic whose accent makes it nearly impossible for me to understand. I think he has a little trouble understanding me, too, but that's nothing new. "Djew know dat guy, de reely tall guy weeth de big bike. De reely big bike," said Rudy, standing bow-legged and raising his arms high to indicate straddling a fat bike with ape-hanger handlebars.

"Hmm—I'm not sure," I said. There are a couple of big choppers in the garage. And the way Rudy mimed riding the bike, it could've been any of them.

"De guy dat don't wear a shirt when he work on his bike? I know djew know him."

"Oh, yeah, that guy, sure," I said. The guy was tall, all right. Six feet four at least. A handsome model type with a well-chiseled chest that he wasn't shy about showing off. He had an attractive girlfriend, too, whose shoes were as extreme as her boyfriend's bike.

"He dead," said Rudy.

"What?" I was shocked. I didn't know the guy very well, but I knew him well enough to say hi when I saw him. He worked on his bike a lot, and while its orangey-brown sparkle paint job and doublewide rear tire wasn't really my cup of tea, his bike had style — not a bike to go unnoticed. "No way," I said. I couldn't believe it.

"Si," said Rudy. "Same weekend as your accident."

We got in the truck and started driving to Manhattan. Rudy told me as much as he knew about the accident — that the guy was heading to New England for a court appearance and got as far as the Bronx. before the crash. The guy's girlfriend was on the back and suffered some broken bones. And that the guy was wearing what is often referred to as an eggshell helmet, which, evidently, offered as much protection as the name implies. Rudy admitted that he didn't really know the whole story. "I think, I think," he kept saying. ( I teenk, I teenk. )

(It turns out our communication gap was larger than I thought. The guy who was killed is not the guy I thought it was.)

Rudy double-parked the pickup truck outside of Sixth Street Specials and waited while I hobbled out of the truck and struggled up the shop's stairs to find Hugh.

"Just a minute," said Hugh, who was busy working with a customer in the back of the shop.

A guy was using a drill press near the front door, and I chatted with him while I waited. He saw my bike out the shop's window. "Nice 500," he said, but his tone became a little more serious when he noticed the bike's front end — noticed it from a good fifty feet away — "Ooh. It's bent up," he said, and then took a look at my foot and put two and two together.

"Yeah," I said, anticipating the question. "It's all part of the same story."

The guy fetched a chair for me. "Here," he said, "Have a seat."

I sat down and, while the guy took the part he was working on to the other side of the room, I looked around at all the ephemera hanging on the walls — faded photos, wind-torn banners, creased magazine clippings, and posters. I looked at the assorted tools, engine parts, and frames resting on the benches and the floor. Taped to the column nearest the door was a series of sun-faded photos that appeared to be taken from a roof. It was a sequence of about seven or eight pictures of the World Trade Center as the second tower collapsed into a cloud of dust.

"Hey," said Hugh, his Scottish brogue apparent with just one word. "What do we have here?" he said, wiping his hands with a rag and nodding towards my foot cast.

"What you might call a mishap," I said.

"Sorry to hear that. You're okay, though, right?"

"Yeah," I shrugged. "I'm okay."

"How's the bike? Let's have a look, shall we?"

He walked through the open front door and sprang down the front steps while I lagged, fiddling with my crutches, trying to stand. I hopped down the stairs in time to hear him whistle. At least I think it was him, it might've been the guy who was now coming out of the shop's basement to have a look.

"Who ran the light?" said Hugh, piecing together the accident immediately. "You or him?"

"Him!" I said. "A stop sign."

"Where, in Williamsburg?"

"Yup."

"I knew it! Every time I ride around there, I fear for my life."

Hugh and his guys set up a ramp, then climbed into the truck bed and began unfastening the tie-downs. Once Hugh realized that getting the bike out of the truck wasn't going to be as simple as rolling it down the ramp, he stopped for a moment and took a long look at the front end. "Yer lucky to be alive, Jamie. Seriously."

Once the guys wrangled the bike out of the truck and into the shop basement, using a dolly under the front wheel to deal with the fact that it was completely uncooperative, Hugh emerged from the basement. "We can talk out here so you don't have to deal with the stairs again. Just let me get a pen and some paper."

One of the guys brought a chair outside for me to sit on, and when Hugh returned, he took a seat on the stairs. The sun felt good shining on my face. I haven't been out of the house much lately, and even if I had been, it's been gloomy and gray for weeks. Until today. We spoke about the prospects of returning the bike to its former glory, stopping now and then to watch the girls breeze by in their summer clothes.

"It's like this all summer long," said Hugh, waving his hand back and forth, up and down the street. "The girls walk past here on their way to and from the park down there. I'm telling you, this is the best seat, right here, all summer long."

A girl paused at the corner to wait for the light, and our conversation paused right along with her.

"Okay," said Hugh when the light changed. "Where were we?"