Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
posed to get along without a tachometer by listening to the pipes—audible pipes would run
another five to seven hundred.
At eighteen to twenty-one grand, depending on dealer surcharge over MSRP, the rig had
admirable low-end torque on the bigger power plant but still wanted to fold in the curves. The
sales guy held back on an explanation or defense or any response at all, as if familiar with the
deal-killers. But it wasn't a deal. It was a mugging. Worse yet: “This thing has no taillight.”
“Oh, that. You don't need one.”
“I don't need one?”
“Yeah. I mean no. Harley Davidson figured it out. You don't really need a taillight.”
“What about the guys who got creamed from the rear. I bet I can get a taillight.”
“Yes! They got a kit. Two, three hundred is all.”
“Plus the labor to tie it into the wiring harness.”
“Well, sure, you got to tie in. How you gonna get power?”
“You just run it back from the battery?”
“No. You take it through the fuse box, because, you know.”
“Yeah. What's installation on the taillight?”
“Uh. I'm not sure. Let's walk back to service and find out.”
“I'm out of time right now.”
“You save two hundred on the turn signal relocation kit if you get the taillight kit.”
It was over, because instinct overrides appetite, or you just keep getting fucked.
In Honolulu soon after, I stopped at the Triumph dealer. Holy moly, the Triumph Speed-
master could track. Look left; it went left, no bulldogging, coercing, hoping or hoisting. Or
folding at the swing arm. So this was engineering, what the motorcycle geeks kept talking
about.
In coming weeks I thought the Harley salesman would call to
give me a taillight
. This is
the rationale of an addict.
But it didn't matter, because it was over.
Motorcycle of the Year went to the Triumph Speedmaster, for engineering, balance, quality
and value—beating out Honda, Kawasaki, Ducati, Yamaha, BMW and the rest.
The business also tracked well, but the gallbladder inflamed as annoying emails an-
nounced that year's Fall Smoker, the gathering of guys for the annual debauchery tour of the
Pacific Northwest.
I hadn't gone in seven years and would not go again. The guys embraced online, reuniting
in unspeakable joy. Liberated at last from what we'd fought clear of decades ago—home, wife
and kids—they would hit the road one more time, stopping a mile up to burn a fatty and
remember when. Some nicotine would enhance the best feeling in the world. Non-smokers
smoked. Smokers smoked more. The weed bag shrank like a puddle in Death Valley in a scene
so repetitious and tiresome that it felt like vengeance but not redemption. The Fall Smoker
