Parlez-Vous Mikuni?

Parlez-vous Mikuni?

A SoCal Yankee in King Louie's Court

ALLAN GIRDLER

ZEN WISDOM TEACHES THAT the answer is the reason, and the reason is just so much BS—that is, if the object of your attentions says yes, you don't care why, while if the answer is no, debating the reasons won't change the answer.

Which is to say, why bother?

So I didn’t.

What mattered was that there I was, deep in France, on parade in the home of champagne, riding my 30-year-old, home-restored Harley-Davidson as redwhite-and-blue as it’s possible for a motorcycle to be...and when we came ’round a comer of the old city and the crowds saw and heard the Harley, we got The Wave.

Honest. We’re talking 1500 motorcycles from 32 countries, but even in a crowd like that people got on their feet, turned toward us and, well, made a fuss. They grinned, clapped and cheered. I got the V sign and enough high-fives to make the NBA guys jealous.

For a second or two, I wondered why? And then I thought, what the heck do I care why? What mattered was that I was glad to be there.

Where, why and how begins with the summer of 1998, when I was in school and walking across the commons at Cambridge (the American Cambridge, that is), and followed some brass hoofprints to a memorial. The tracks, I read, trace the route of one William Dawes, the other chap who made that midnight ride:

The Eighteenth of April, ’75 Hardly a man is now alive,

Who remembers that day and year... The occasion, as we history fans know, was when King George’s Redcoats decided to pre-oppose the

Second Amendment: i.e. the Colonials had guns, and as it’s deucedly difficult to oppress an armed population, the ruling class sent soldiers to collect their assault muskets-oops, little too political there. Anyway, two future Americans risked their lives by giving the alarm. Paul Revere was the star of the poem. William Dawes was left out. Nobody has ever explained why, but when I read that Dawes had conned his way past the guards and that his route went right past our pad in the student ghetto, I took the bizarre notion to pay belated tribute.

Like any old-bike guy, I stash parts before I need them. I had an extra tank and tailsection, so when I got home I called Dawne Holmes, as good a painter as there is, and sure, she said, I can do a paint scheme of an American flag flowing at the speed of a galloping horse, send me the parts.

I did, and she did.

Then I read in a magazine about an international Celtic festival, held every year in Brittany, the west coast of France. Being a Celt on me da ’s soid, I’ve been going to Scottish games, bluegrass concerts, military tattoos and Cajun picnics all my life. Like the music, the food, the dancing and the people. Next, the AMA magazine mentioned an international FIM-backed rally, to be held that summer in the champagne center of France.

Click. One plus one plus one, eh? I’d always thought how much fun it would be to take my street-tracker XR-750, the iron-top version from 1970, which I assembled from used parts 15 years ago, on a tour of a place like France. Here was this festival and here was this rally. I’d never actually shipped a bike

overseas, but the AMA could help, and I assumed there’d be fellow Yanks if I needed to call Home and Mother.

In any event, the AMA signed me up for the rally and sent me to Warren Goodman, who runs a travel service specializing in motorcycles and thus knew the knots in the ropes I didn’t know. Motorcycles aren’t popular with airlines, but Goodman has a deal with Lufthansa, which meant I got a deal on the shipping if I shipped myself on the same line. So what if my tour of France would begin in Frankfurt, Germany?

Guidance turned out to be useful. I arrived at the LAX shipping office on Friday for a Monday flight, having paid for the ticket and sent in all the papers. But the airline hadn’t heard of me. The first person called a second person, the second person brought in a third person and they all swore they knew nothing until oh, look here, that envelope on Mr. X’s desk! The paperwork had been there all the time, it’s just that nobody’s job description included opening the mail.

Next, the customs man said he didn’t care if I’d been told to be there one day before, he himself liked three days and weekends don’t count. “Is this a rule?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said, “it’s the way I like to do things.”

The folks at Lufthansa said they’d have the bike at the customs office first thing Monday. They surely did, but at noon, when I was waiting to board, I was paged and told the

motorcycle would not be on the flight and I guess Mr.

Customs Man showed me, by golly.

My flight, routine and pleasant by the way, got in the next morning. My XR arrived on the evening flight. I’d been told collecting the bike would take several hours and to have deutchmarks to pay for the gas that German customs would have for me because I’d been required to drain the fuel tank. Customs was perfectly quick and cheerful, so I said here’s my marks, how ’bout some gas?

They didn’t have any such. When you were told to drain the tank, they said, that didn’t mean drain the tank, that meant have enough fuel to get to the station ’cause we don’t have any gas.

Not to worry. There is an unofficial international motorcycle club (or so I thought, stay tuned) and one of the guys in the Lufthansa warehouse rides a Kawasaki, so we siphoned fuel and away I went. Except that I didn’t know where the gas station was and ran out again. I flagged down the first bike and, again, the club ruled.

The guy packed me to the station and back and then led me to the hotel.

The good news was that next morning, bright and early, it was raining, a problem for which I was ready. I had a tankbag with rainsuit, overboots, even covers for tankbag and backpack, along with the spare oil, top-end gaskets, clutch cable and reserve 19-inch tube.

Off we went. Superhighways are now worldwide, and so are the markings. I hit the main road, picked the name and number and rode in that direction, no problem. Well...the engine seemed a bit soft in the midrange, surely because I fitted new pipes and hadn’t done the jets to match.

At the first gas stop, a guy asked how come my license plate was tom to shreds? Geez, I dunno, but it was ripped and bent. Must have happened in the airplane, I mused, funny I didn’t see it when I got the bike back. I removed the tattered remains, figuring if I was stopped, I had the registration and insurance papers-and anyway, what else could I do?

Turned out there was no need. The autoroute is like the interstate, except: 1 ) They have better lane discipline and the slow drivers get out of the way; and 2) the cops aren’t there to Observe and Collect. The police I saw were carrying automatic weapons and patrolling the airports; no time to serve as enhancers of revenue or hasslers of the public.

Nobody noticed, in sum. The whole trip was so casual in fact that I pulled off for gas in Germany, and when I got back on the road I was in France. No papers, no search, no quiz. This European Community business has made some changes.

Then, I really arrived in France.

The people there have lived there since all Gaul was divided into three parts. (Don’t get the joke? Ask anybody who took Latin in high school.) They already know where places are and they don’t need much guidance.

Next, there are two kinds of names.

There are the names on the map. There are the names on the sign. Back to language. If both parties could guess what the other was saying, we could talk. The gal at the tobacco store (Did I mention they still smoke in Europe, like chimneys, in public, legally? I myself don’t mind, having the sensitivity of a sled dog, but there are them as don’t) deduced that I needed a big, black magic marker. And I interpreted she was sending me out the door, to the right, down and across the street. I found the store and marker and painted my license, IRONXR, on the plate where the license used to be, just to show good faith. Oh yeah, another American told me the damage was probably done by a kid trying to, literally, rip off the plate-great souvenir, a genuine California license plate. This rider’s plate was riveted on.

“My XR is 30 years old and was built, literally, at home by someone who doesn't know squat, namely me.”

They are not the same names.

Which is to say when I got to Epemay, Champagne Country headquarters, I checked my rally instructions and was told to report to the “Palace of Festivities.” There was no clue as to where that was. The place was aswarm with bikes, though, and I got a guy to lead me cross-city to the palace. Signing in, 1 learned that I hadn’t paid for my hotel-what 1 already had paid was the down payment and the balance was due. Now. In cash. French cash. Nor could they tell me where an ATM was, but again, another rallyist led me to the city square where there were three or four banks, all with money machines.

Here’s the main point of riding in France: The French don’t speak English. Well, they speak English the way I speak French, in that they took it in school for a couple of years and have a basic vocabulary, but they say it wrong and because they say it wrong they don’t understand it when they hear it.

I’ve been in 18 or 19 of the world’s 24 time zones, close to the Antarctic Circle and inside the Arctic Circle and until now I’ve been able to do fine with Please, Thank You, Where Is? and How Much? in the language of the day. But now I was really in France, and there was, as they say in the movies, a

failure to communicate.

The rally, meanwhile, had begun. I’d wondered, just what do we do at an international rally?

The answer begins with a conclusion, that the international rally has mostly lost its excuse for being. Fifty years ago, let’s say, when roads were rough, bikes were fragile and even Harleys had toolkits, getting from, oh, Stockholm to St. Tropez was an achievement. So when a bunch of riders managed to get to a central point, they’d done something, so all they did then was whoop, holler, buy another round, fall down and go home.

But now, Lord have mercy, you push the button on your Gold Wing or K1200 or 600 Supersport or whatever, hit the autoroute with no stops, no

lights, fuel on credit every 50 clicks and breeze

through the borders. Challenge isn’t the word we need here. Cruise is more like it.

That’s not to say you can’t fall off an Alp, or find a challenging road, or even enjoy the cruise.

But in rally terms, what we did was take part in a series of processions and parades, then jump on a bus-really, as in a bus trip to Paris and to Euro Disney and to the vineyards and the Reims Cathedral. Most of the rallyists were camped at an athletic complex outside town, where there was dinner with concert each evening. I know it’s cliche, but in fact the Italians laughed and shouted and hooted their horns, the Irish whipped out guitars and sang, the Swedes painted their faces blue and yellow, the Germans ran around trailing flags and the Brits brought along their own drinks, in case the caterers ran short.

The European Community is good neighbors, but it’s not yet one world. Thank goodness.

This sort of solved another language puzzle. I’d wondered why people spoke to me in French. I mean, I was wearing a T-shirt that said “Old McDonald’s Hog Farm, Grand Junction, Colo.,” or “Motor Maniacs, Fresno,” which I thought would serve as an identity. Wrong. The French don’t use English as a language, it’s a fashion, along with sneakers and jerseys. One critic commented that in France, English is “300 buzzwords and not one verb.”

More language barriers: My XR wasn’t running quite right and I should have replaced the left front brake pads, so when I got to Epernay I began looking for a shop with parts. There were plenty of dealerships, but when I

asked Parlez-vous Mikuni? or Avez-vous Grimeca? the parts men went blank. I whipped off the carb needle and said La! and the man told me, in slow English, “That needle isn’t broken.” I said, “Je savvy that, je desire...oh, hell, what’s French for richer?” until finally we’d hit the parts storeroom and all the Mikuni stuff would be for current Suzukis, no help at all.

My daily sanity was saved because I did have two French friends who spoke real English. One was Eric Corlay, the photographer, who’s been to the U.S. and rides a Dyna Glide and knows his stuff. The other was a lovely young lady who simply walked up to me in the town square and said, “Hi.”

I didn’t know whether to twirl my mustache or defend my honor, but it turned out she was neither on the make nor the take. Her name was Alaine, the French and feminine form of my Celtic, masculine name, and she lived in Epernay, likes motorcycles and came to see the show.

Very helpful, as in she read the day’s instructions in French and then told me, in English, where the free lunch was.

She also got me to the parade on time, which as already mentioned was tremendous fun. Not to weaken my own point, but my best guess as to why the crowd loved Americans is that they really do like Americans, plus the area depends on

tourists as much as on actual champagne, with a side issue that most of the motorcycles on parade were, well, ordinary. The English had a couple of old ’uns, a Vincent and a James or two, but after you’ve seen Gold Wings and BMWs from England, Finland, Germany and Holland, Gold Wings and BMWs from Italy fail to stir the blood.

Here begins the bad and scary part. Three bikes in the parade had problems and I have to admit I was just a bit smug, as in they were new, production motorcycles and mine’s 30 years old and built, literally, at home, by someone who doesn’t know squat, namely me, but ran fine and the new ones didn’t, ha ha.

Yeah, well we know about last laughs, eh? These guys had component problems-a switch, a regulator, a battery-and all

“I’d gone through a quart of oil in 50 miles. Clearly, this wasn’t something I could fix by the side of the road, nor was it going to heal itself.”

they had to do was visit the nearest dealer, a couple of clicks away, and replace the components. Easy. I mean, sure, it took two Finns with no French and some English, two mechanics with some English and no Finnish, and me, lots of English and some French, to get through the voltmeter check and the battery replacement for a new Suzuki 750, but it was done on the day and off the Finns went.

The morning after the rally I headed for Paris. I’d swapped brake pads and because I couldn’t tune the carb to the new pipes, I tried tuning the pipes to the carb. Seemed not bad and there I was on the autoroute, humming along, even passing rallyists with sidecars, all systems go.

Then the endcap and discs fell off one muffler, as I was told (in French) too late to find the parts. Next, the air cleaner fell off, except I saw it go, stopped and was walking back to the bike when the gendarmes arrived.

Did I need any help?

Non, merci, je retrevay les parts perdu, I offered and they went on, not mentioning or even (I guess) noticing the missing plate.

When I rolled up to the next tollbooth I was enveloped in smoke. Blue,

oil smoke. From the rear cylinder. I’d gone through a quart of oil in 50 miles. Pretty clearly, this wasn’t something I could fix by the side of the road, nor was it going to heal itself.

Eric had given me the number for the Harley-Davidson folks in Paris. I called and a really helpful woman managed to scare up a guy with a van, a plank and some clothesline, and we trucked the XR into the city. She told me of a hotel within walking distance and I schlepped on over, lugging my backpack with clothes, my tankbag with raingear, tools and parts and my bagged helmet.

Alone, stranded in a city I didn’t know, in a country whose language I didn’t speak. Can’t get worse, right?

Wrong. Next day I began calling H-D dealers to explain the problem and add that I could do the

work and get the parts. All I needed was a place to work, maybe a couple of tools like a torque wrench, and an address where the parts could be sent. The trouble is in one cylinder, I said, so it can’t be all that major.

I don’t know, nor will I ever know, how much of this got through. Anyway, I went

to the nearest agency, which I’d been told was an old-time Harley place. The dealer told me no, in order:

1 ) They had all the work they could handle; 2) vacation begins next week;

3) my bike wasn’t sold in France and they don’t have parts; 4) they no longer work on Pre-Evo engines.

The attitude wasn’t French, per se. Worldwide, Harley-Davidson is not really in the motorcycle business. The Motor Company is in the recreation business-none of the three H-D dealerships within easy reach back home will work on pre-Evos, either. What they will do is order parts for me, and they will and have told me the names and numbers for the independent shops and the guys who’ve bought up all the old parts.

Those guys are there, in France and all over the world. Max Bubeck, the Indian collector and wizard, was in France at a different rally about this time and there wasn’t a rider at that rally who didn’t know where to get Indian, Harley, NSU, I-don’t-carewhich-brand parts. But I didn’t know that, then.

Two sour grapes: First, when I got home it took me an hour to find one circlip had come loose on the rear piston and broken the rings. Say, two days to get the spare cylinder from my pals at Accu-True in Newport Beach, with piston to match, another couple of hours putting the cylinder back on, and I’m putting around France, as planned. Second, I was riding the bus at the Celtic festival and La!, there was a Harley shop, with Shovels and Flatheads and Arlen Ness and J&P catalogs.

But I was in enough trouble, stranded in Paris with a dead XR, as it was. Faith had gotten me there, so I put faith on hold. I rented a van, hauled the bike back to Frankfurt and put it on the plane, drove back to Paris-twice across the border, take notes, with no hassle at all-then rented a car and went to see, oh, Cannes, Nice, the painted caves at Lascaux. Then to Brittany for the festival, which was also more fun than we have room for here.

Took the bus to the station, the train to Paris, the Metro from one station to the other station, the train from Paris to Frankfurt-oh, they took my passport on the train as we went from France to Germany, after I’d crossed the border undetected three times-and then flew to L.A., where my son Joe collected me and the XR. I’d been in motion about 30 hours straight. The XR breezed through customs, ours and theirs, while (I guess) my sacks of parts and tools earned me two more passport checks and one quick rummage through the contents.

Not your normal summer vacation, I suppose, except that I didn’t get to do what I wanted to do, and not doing what I’d planned cost more than I’d budgeted.

The moral, which every story must have, comes from the helpful woman at Harley France. “Why did you bring such an old bike?” she wailed as the umpteenth dealer told her to tell me to get lost.

Then she caught herself and proved that enthusiasm transcends culture.

“But of course,” she said, “It’s

yours.

As they say over there, when they figure they’ll see you again, Abien.