#ChrisKallfelz

Flying into central Ohio in the middle of winter is less than inspiring, unless you happen to live there I suppose. I thought about that on my approach to Columbus International through a typical thick gray overcast that gave way to a marginally more translucent view of gray fields, gray highways, and gray buildings; the kind of views that could only inspire Russian novelists and other upbeat types.

If you stick around long enough it is hard not to be increasingly reminded of one’s own obsolescence. I have stickers on a clipboard I carry to riders meetings at the track that are older than a good many of the racers there. I will admit a preference for those things that demonstrably work rather than those things that are demonstrably new – I was late to the dawn of the replaceable knee puck era in the early ‘80s, I slept through the neon ‘90s never fully appreciating all the pink wheels and leathers, and the Y2K speed hump leathers craze left me flat. But the last thing I was expecting late last year was to be laid bare by an Art Linkletter quote proffered by none other than MO’s esteemed moto-Jarhead, Gabe.

“Whatever Boelcke told us was taken as gospel!” ——Manfred von Richthofen

Our first Christmas together she gave me a gift; it was a two-drawer toolbox she had found on sale somewhere. As toolboxes go, it wasn’t anything special, it wasn’t some budget-busting Snap-On deal with drawers mounted on precision bearings crafted by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it was just a simple stamped metal no-name box with a small “When the Green Flag Drops, the Bullshit Stops” sticker on it that made me chuckle. Up until then her biggest concern had been whether to major in dance or in history. What did she know about toolboxes or green flags?

The extravagance in which my surplus emotion expressed itself lay on the road. So long as roads were tarred blue and straight; not hedged; and empty and dry, so long I was rich. – T. E. Lawrence, The Road

In a little less than a month this nation’s most prolonged and painful presidential gestation period will come to a merciful end. Predictions of the impending apocalypse aside, I hope we will return to our normal state of disharmony and discord, the less consequential kind that can be addressed productively with a large Snap-On toolbox and a shelf full of shop manuals. We can get back to a world of fixing things that actually entails making something useful again rather than the amoral political machinations “fixing” implies.

“This settlement immediately stops the sale of illegal aftermarket defeat devices used on public roads that threaten the air we breathe,” said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “Harley-Davidson is taking important steps to buy back the ‘super tuners’ from their dealers and destroy them, while funding projects to mitigate the pollution they caused.”

Nelson Ledges Road Course in the wet was stickier than Summit Point Raceway in the dry. This was one of the first of many epiphanies I had in 1986 in my first full season of racing with WERA. I had shed my international orange “I am a Hazard” t-shirt along with my provisional novice status the year before with crash-free races at Pocono and Summit Point, and I was now a full-fledged novice racer free to crash with impunity so far as my license status was concerned. An option I would avail myself of at first opportunity.

California Superbike School’s Keith Code accurately summarized the existential conundrum of every road racer when he asked rhetorically, “You have 10 dollars worth of concentration, where do you want to spend it?” I’d maintain that the wisdom revealed by Code’s question goes far beyond the race track; it applies to life in general, and is confirmed every time I see a miscreant in a mini-van texting while purportedly driving.

An intensive care unit (ICU) is a great place to think – there is so much time on your hands at all hours of the day and night, and you get to meet all these really nice people. The problem is you really can’t focus on much, the shadows dance against the wall and change. I blame it on the Dilaudid, or Plato, or life itself. Much of my waking hours early on were filled with a kaleidoscope of images from the past, in some cases the distant past: people, places, and bikes for the most part, and questions.

We live in a contentious time, and, no, I’m not talking about the present-day election cycle. We daily encounter a world where the outrageous garners our attention, where “news” stories are presented to us in an inflammatory fashion, where the purveyors of this new-age “news” seek to stir our emotions rather than to inform us or make us think: A new age of the aggrieved and the angry.

“The secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius!”

The year was 1982, and I needed a new helmet. After years of use my Bell Star smelled like a barn and had acquired a patina that evoked images of the Anzio landing. It was all scarred up and it stunk. I think a mouse had been nibbling on the liner as well. It was time for a new lid.

MO’s regular Wednesday contributor’s columns are intended as an alternative to our usual straight motorcycle reviews and discussions. There is always a motorcycle connection to them, however tenuous, but they are first and foremost intended to be free-range editorial space. Last week we presented John Burns’ take on a current hot-button issue, and his “Guns And Moto” column touched off a blaze of controversy resulting in more than 130 reader comments. It also struck columnist Chris Kallfelz, who claims he tried to put Burns’ piece out of his head but wrote this column anyway. He expresses a different view of the gun issue. 

All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray
–The Mamas & the Papas