Grind Marks

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Kevin Cameron has been writing about motorcycles for nearly 50 years, first for Cycle magazine and, since 1992, for <em>Cycle World</em>. (Robert Martin/)

Yesterday I wrote about a certain kind of rider, one who has grind marks on the fork caps of his very second-hand-looking daily driver. It was clear from some comments (which I’m always delighted to have) that a few readers found that obscure. The fork caps are the aluminum fittings screwed into the tops of the fork legs. They get grind marks on them when ardent riders push their learning process, crash with panache, and their tumbling bike chances to slide up the road, wheels uppermost.

In my experience, this kind of thing is not limited to racetracks at all. When I was hoping college would end soon one way or the other, like-minded persons with bikes were taking them to places like the Elliott Rotary and going ‘round and ‘round until they found the traction limit. They wanted to find it, and they found it. Mike Baldwin, before he hied himself to the track, would go out riding in the Connecticut countryside and come home with his jeans destroyed.

There was a footpeg hierarchy. Less driven riders could only dream of having a peg on the pavement, trailing sparks. I’ve written before of riders waiting for some service or other in my little shop and spying the belt grinder. Yes, it’s true: some of us are not Michael Hailwood reborn, and the only way our footpegs will strike sparks and our helmets will get those exciting grind marks is on the belt grinder.

Help yourself, I told them.

Attitudes toward the motorcycle change constantly. When I was first messing with bikes, life had a slightly unreal and statistical character brought about by not knowing if or when the letter would come from the draft board, morphing the recipient into a rifleman in Southeast Asia. It might be wise to tuck some fun under one’s belt before things got too real. One night I dreamed I looked down from an upper-floor lineup waiting to be checked for flat feet and saw my friends loading their TD1s, tools, and spares into their vans to go to the next race.

Then in the 1970s we had the bike shop and young men (and some less so) came in, saying things like, “Well, they let me go at work yesterday, so I decided to buy a bike.” Today the PC thing to do would be to pontificate on responsibility and prepping for the rainy day, but then we just sold and serviced bikes.

Bang, everything changed again. In the 1980s, fun was the last thing on the minds of young men (where did those good industrial jobs for non-degree-holding fellows aged 18 to 25 go?). They wanted solid achievement, Beemers if possible, with four wheels, child safety seat, and string-backed driving gloves to go with the Driving Machine. Every article of clothing clearly brand new.

Older men had to responsibly take over the task of buying bikes. It was the era of the CEO Harley rider, rolling up 300 miles a year as a member of the Riding Club of Greenwich. Bikes were in fact a blessing for those people, liberation from what the sociologist would call “class expectations.” In fact this was a real kind of freedom, unbuttoning the buttoned-down. The industry, performing its due diligence, soon discovered that what its new buyers wanted was more expensive, more interesting bikes. Begone, ye undignified crotch rockets such as Kawasaki’s most-bang-for-the-buck Mach IV 750 H2. I saw the new owners, taking the Harley factory tour in Milwaukee. Carefully dressed. No lint. But having a new kind of fun.

Harley-Davidson was lured away from its intended error called “Nova,” a V-4 it hoped would compete with Japan. Its Minneapolis ad agency put them straight: Harley is the flag, the heart of being an American, equivalent in gender certification to serving four years in the Marines. It worked. No one in the industry could understand how. Its intense customer loyalty brought Ford Motor Company into “commercial companionship” to investigate how Harley did it.

At present, we’re holding onto what we’ve got, washing and waxing as we go to sustain resale value. Some people pick the bikes they buy based on that alone. You’d have to be crazy to grind your fork caps, in either nature’s accidental way or on the belt grinder. You have any idea what those parts cost? And you’d hafta get someone to install them at a hundred dollars an hour. That’s OK. Competition from video games is fast leaving reality behind. I have no clue what’s next.

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