All in the Family…
You know that little handwave we raise at each other when we’re riding down the road? You know what that means? I do. Yesterday, my friend Holly was returning from a long trip to Texas. She’d done over 4,300 miles on her Dyna and was on the last leg, coming up to the base of the Siskiyou mountains. She was about an hour from home — her own bed, a nice cup of tea, quiet after all those days on the road, — but she passed a guy crouched down next to what appeared to be a broke-down shovelhead.
She didn’t even think twice. She just turned around.
It was a young kid, a student from Portland State, who was trying to get home, but apparently his plugs and points had just given out on the side of I-5. It was almost 5 o’clock. Holly knew she couldn’t make it to D&S before we closed, so she called and had them set the parts on the counter. Then she called me. I was an hour north of home, coming down I-5, so I told her to just meet me at the shop and we’d get the parts and figure out what to do next. She said the kid needed to get to work in the morning, so she would just crawl back on her bike and ride the parts down. Then she called David, a bike-riding friend in Yreka, and he came with a truck and hauled the kid and bike to his house so he wouldn’t have to wait on the hot side of the road.
About that time my dad called (he was checking on my beagle) and said they were getting ready to head down to Shasta that evening. Now, Dad’s the big guy at D&S. He’s owned it for 35 years, is retired these days, but loves nothing more than helping a Harley traveler. Would he mind dropping off some parts along the way? No problem. So, he and mom met Holly and i at the shop. Mom took a good look at the points (shovelhead points are single, she said; panhead points are double; she used to run that parts counter) and — after looking over Holly’s bug-splattered bike, and hearing a few road stories — they headed south.
Last I heard, our young friend Jay was headed north with a fresh set of points, plugs and a hotwired headlight. Seems they broke his when they were getting it out of the truck, so David took the seal beam out of his truck, duct-taped onto the shovelhead, and sent the kid on his way.
I’ll think about it the next time I pass a bike on the highway. I see you, I recognize you, and if you need me, I’ll turn around, ride an extra 100 miles, and even give you the headlight right out of my truck. That’s what that handwave means…