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UPFRONT

Allan Girdler

A CRISIS OF IDENTITY

How much things have changed, I didn’t appreciate until the morning I got a letter from an old pal. Two previous lives ago, he and I were newspaper reporters, covering the same events for rival big city papers. We were professional rivals and personal friends, I suspect because the only people who knew how good a job we were doing was us.

He’s just written a book, about sports cars. Back in those days I drove a 1948 MG. For those who aren’t familiar with the model, a 1948 MG was about equal to a 1948 Triumph Speed Twin: Lovely to look at, delightful to hear, but if there had been accurate road tests back then, the specifications tables for both machines would have had to contain something like;

Top speed................................-Sort of.

and

Suspension......Not so’s you’d notice.

Not your terrific long distance car, in other words. But when we were leaping from story to story around a large state, he and the other chaps would get to where the action was and stay there until the last dog was indicted. Not me. No matter how far or how long, I drove that pretty little coal wagon from home every morning and back every night.

He asked me why, and (his letter said) he’s never forgotten the answer. He wrote to ask if he could quote me, after all these years, because my reply perfectly suited the theme of his book.

What I said was “I love to drive.”

That was me in ’63.

Later that same day I was sitting, bolt upright, hands at 10 and 2, seat and shoulder belts lashed tight, eyes straight ahead, in our parking lot.

Around the corner came John the mail boy, in the company truck. “Geez,” he shouted, “Allan’s driving a car!”

He’d never seen me drive a car before. Things have changed.

Why I was in the car is complicated. This was the weekend of Laguna Seca, vintage bikes in action at last and some support classes in the form of Kenny Roberts and students. (Nice of the track to give the crowd something to watch when the old bikes have done their show, I think.)

I had to be at the track early, and I had to get home Sunday night because my wife and I were going on vacation Monday morning. “If you don’t get back on time,” she said, “I don’t know if I’ll go without you or wait.”

Which means, any husband will tell you, I would be well advised to get back on time. Sunday night, that is. With a 400mile trip and a bike with 200-mile range, and the Sunday closings and all, the solution I came up with was to borrow a car from our companion publication Road & Track.

Not just any car.

A VW Rabbit with diesel engine. Good mileage, I was promised, and the little box would go at least 400 miles between fills, so I could make the return non-stop, no problem.

Or so I thought. The company librarian, who knows cars and owns a Triumph Tro-

phy so he’s actually one of us, brought the VW to our shop, which is why I was taking lessons in the parking lot.

“How do I operate it?” I asked.

“It’s just like a gas-powered Rabbit,” Chuck said.

“I’ve never driven a gas-powered Rabbit,” I said.

This from a man who used to hold an international racing license for cars.

When I was racing cars, and taking cars seriously, bikes were a hobby, something to fiddle without effort. Then one day I realized that I was having more fun riding my 250 than I was having racing my sports car, so I sold the car and started riding the bike to work and to the woods, and the kids got old enough for bikes . . .

I am not a moderate man. When I was a demon driver I always had two or three cars. When I became a father, I fathered five children. When I got married I stayed married. Due to the nature of my job—we test 50-plus bikes a year and I ride them all—I don’t need to own a motorcycle. So I have two and am negotiating for a third.

Committed. That’s the word I want, committed.

But not blindly so. The mailboy had never seen me drive a car but that doesn’t mean I don’t. I own a car and a truck and I see nothing wrong with that.

I may not be up to speed when it comes to modern motor cars, but that didn’t mean I was unaware that driving an economy sedan 800 miles would be an exercise in boredom. I expected to be bored and cramped and trapped in traffic . . . and I was.

What I didn’t expect was loss of identity.

I like bikes. I think bikes. I see bikes. During this trip, every time I saw a nice one, restored Indian Scout to dressed Yamaha 11 to John Player Replica Norton, encased in the car as I was, I had no way to convey my appreciation. I saw people going to the races and had no way to share> my anticipation, to let them know we were on the same wavelength. I was in fact a bit embarrassed to be riding in the sedan while everybody else was out there on two wheels, having a better time than I was. At rest stops I dared not speak, for fear of sounding like the people Henry Manney always meets, the ones who say “Usta have one myself.”

How could I say I ride? If I ride, what< was I doing conducting a mobile road block, a mobile road block that rattled like a connecting rod just before it flings itself through the cases?

Then I saw one of my heroes, well, heroines. An FLH80, cream and tan, full dress. It was Hazel Kolb, the lady who rode, around the continental U.S. and then did such a good job for us all on TV.

I wanted to say hello.

How? How could I let her know the wild-eyed man in the noisy car was one of us, not one of them?

All I could think of was to pull my CW jacket out of the back seat, hold the emblem up against the window and honk the horn.

It worked. We had a nice chat and she rumbled away on her Harley to the admiration of all who looked on.

I motored away, feeling more and more like a man who wasn’t who he is.

Finally I got to Monterey. The town is crowded on race week and the best I’d been able to do was arrange for a semifirm reservation, in somebody else’s name. By all rights I should have gone directly to the hotel and checked in, to be sure I’d have a place to sleep. '

Instead, I went to the track. John and Pat were already there, with the staff truckj used to haul photo gear and (by prearrangement) my bike. I slid to a stop, flung open the van doors and rolled Red Rooster II down the ramp. With the aid of a passerby, Craig Vetter as it happened, I executed a deft bump start and began riding around the pits.

“You really like that thing, huh?” said Craig.

Well, sure.

But more to the point, I was glad to be home. 19