It’s a lifestyle, really, the Cheapness. It’s not just the Jagrolet, nor the Craigslist naked ZX-9. It’s everything. The front yard hose is the one the guy next door gave me when he moved just before the Housing Bubble got going--1996 or so I believe. It’s just developed a hole—the hose that is--but just in the right spot, so I can angle it to irrigate the Bird of Paradise while I’m washing the truck. The truck’s actually pretty good, but the radio quit working and we haven’t got around to fixing that yet. Or the female buckle of the driver’s side seatbelt. No worries, you just plug into the middle belt’s buckle, the thought being that if anybody’s riding in the middle of the front seat there will be a person strapped in on either side to grab them before they can fly through the windshield. The person who gets stuck in the middle is always the smallest and weakest and should be easy to grab, and if not, well... there’s your natural selection.
We don’t drive the truck much anyway. We’re working from home a lot, okay a little, and everything we need is pretty much within bicycle range, when there’s a bicycle that’s rideable. The ex’s Dyno beach cruiser is the nicest birthday gift I ever gave her. It’s got to have a few thousand miles on it, about 50 yards of them under the ex. The bike’s the nicest thing she didn’t take in the settlement. The biggest difference I can find between a good bike and a cheap one is the quality of the wheels. Look at the wheels on my boy’s Chinese cruiser the wrong way, and they potato chip instantly--or if you ram into curbs a lot like he does, that’ll do it too. The hard part’s keeping air in the tires. I got an excellent tire pressure gauge at a Harley-Davidson launch, possibly for the first Buell. When was that anyway? 1994? Still works great, but the clear plastic lens got busted years ago, so I try to keep it face down in bottom of the tool box. I try, but whenever I look for it, I usually find the gauge face up under whatever plumbed or hydraulic thing is leaking at the time.
Still works anyway, and in fact we rely upon it to set tire pressures in my GF’s tires when she goes racing and I go pit-crewing. Ayeee, it’s the racetrack where the impecuniousness hits home; there’s no clearer venue where the haves are so clearly separated from the have-nots. In other public places, once the cars are parked, the wealthy tend to keep it somewhat suppressed. At the track, it all comes out, and in the case of racing, it’s more like G.W. Bush’s haves and have-mores. At the top of the scale are the people in the new motorhomes towing big trailers full of fresh bikes and tires and gear, traveling with a mechanic and chef. (Our old semi-pal Jeff Stern just won his third Toyota pick-up from the Willow Springs Motorcycle Club, to park in front of his opulent motorcoach. Way to go, JS…)
People pulling trailers behind their pickups come lower on the scale. And on the bottom, there’s K and me with everything packed in back of my `95 Ranger pick-up—including K’s nearly bone-stock ZX-6R. Willow Springs took our EZ-Up canopy’s will to go on living, so we’re often hunkered beneath the shade of a patio umbrella stuck in one of the truck’s rear stake pockets. If the weather’s nice, it’s not so bad. But the weather’s never nice. And it’s a damn shame because K could probably be really good, given slightly better working conditions and a better motorcycle. Or, the elephant under the rug, a wealthier BF.
Twenty years ago I would’ve turned this thing around and said, “but nobody has more fun at the track than we do”, and that was true for the first few outings. The difference is, having bucks means you get to keep on having fun at the races. Having no bucks means you burn out a lot faster and take up a different pursuit. Too bad not many of them are as exhilarating as riding a fast motorcycle around a track.
Life is a supertanker. You make a slight miscalculation or two 20 years ago and there you are, leaking crude oil and wishing you could go back and do a couple things differently.
Next time, let’s go with the double hull.
