The Blue Angel Syndrome
The Blue Angel Syndrome
LEANINGS
Peter Egan
THANK GOD FOR GENTLE NEW SLEEP aids that let people over 50 drift off into peaceful slumber and wake up feeling refreshed, or I'd be lying around all night twitching like a downed power line in a lightning storm.
Which I mostly am, anyway, despite these wondrous pills that encourage butterflies to flutter around town, fly in your window and scatter the pixie dust of quietude on your brain like a dump-truck load of sand.
In the past couple of months, you see, I’ve learned through the grapevine that several of my old motorcycles might just be available for re-purchase. And there is nothing that keeps this dude wider awake than that.
The owners of these bikes aren’t actively trying to sell them, mind you, but they have, well, moved on to other things (as I once did) and intimated they just might be willing to let them go.
Big trouble and the stuff of “night demons,” as an old Army buddy of mine used to call them, just before he flipped out after listening to a Screamin’ Jay Hawkins album once too often during a full moon and they took him away.
And whenever these demons strike, of course, I call up my friend Mike Mosiman in Fort Collins, Colorado. I think of Mike as the World’s Cheapest Psychiatrist, and not just because he has a toll-free 800 number, but because his defective brain works just like mine. It’s as if Sigmund Freud were a member of the Ducati Owners Club and your local HOG chapter, with a soft spot for British bikes and old BMWs.
Last week, for instance, I called Mike and told him I’d developed an incurable nostalgia for my old black-and-gold bevel-drive Ducati 900SS-mainly because a photograph of the bike fell out of a file folder and I foolishly taped it above my computer screen. Bad idea.
This is a motorcycle Mike bought from me about 12 years ago-which is how we met. He drove his truck all the way from Colorado to Wisconsin to pick it up. Mike kept the Ducati for about a year and then sold it to his buddy, Tom, a bike and car collector who still has it in Fort Collins.
“I don’t think Tom rides the 900SS much any more,” Mike told me, “and he’s been selling off a few of his motorcycles to buy old Miller race cars. He just might sell it back to you. I’ll give him a call and ask.”
Then Mike chuckled to himself.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Well, we just keep buying the same bikes-or some version of them-over and over again. Look at my garage. I bought a new Harley Electra-Glide standard last fall, and it’s my third FLH. Last week, I bought another KTM 640 Adventure to replace the one I shouldn’t have sold three years ago.”
“Same here,” I admitted. “My three bikes have all replaced a previous version of the same model.”
“We should just find good examples of the bikes we keep returning to,” Mike said, “and then hang on to them.”
What ensued, of course, was an earnest discussion of what those bikes should be. (Yes, this is what passes for intellectual discourse among people of my ilk.) In short order, we came up with a verbal list of motorcycles we keep coming back to. My own choices included the following perennial favorites:
1 ) Triumph Twins, of both Sixties and current vintage. I’ve owned six of these over the past 40 years-and bought one back twice. To my eyes, at least, they remain the bedrock of perfect proportion, style and size.
2) Norton 750 and 850 Commandos. Often unreliable, yet always irresistible. My next one (inevitably) will be Commando number four.
3) Honda CB400F, the one with the swirling headpipes. In the 1975 road test, Cycle World correctly described this bike as “lyrical.” I’ve had three red ones, but they also look great in dark blue. Like the one my friends Stu and Linda Evans are thinking of selling.
4) Ducati 900SS of both the beveland belt-drive generations. I’ve had three of each and always sell them for something more comfortable or practical, then immediately miss their spartan, spidery lightness and good looks.
5) Harley FLH. If you gotta ask why... you’re probably smarter than I am. I never should have sold my greenand-black ’95 Road King. I love these things. The next one will be number four.
6) Harley XLCR Cafe Racer. Never was a basically useless bike more fun or charismatic to ride. Actually, all pre-Evo Sportsters share this raw, locomotive-like appeal.
7) BMW RIOOS and RS. The ethereal long-distance trickle-charge of quiet pleasure. My buddy Jim has my old RS, but is looking at the new Triumph Tiger as a modern replacement. I am encouraging him. I already bought this bike back once before and would probably do it again.
There, that’s pretty much it. These are the motorcycles I keep returning to, like Emile Jannings going back to the faithless but fatally attractive Dietrich in The Blue Angel. When I don’t have them, I hang around beneath their apartment windows at night, leaning on the lamppost and smoking a cigarette. I can’t see any of them without having my hair stand up on the back of my neck and my financial computation gears go into overdrive. Their appeal seems eternal.
Then why, you might well ask, did I sell any of them in the first place? The simple answer is always, “Money.”
Money for roadracing, track days, crosscountry trips, off-road adventures-or rent, food, house payments, tuition or medical care. Or just something new and different (that I will long for later). It’s the classic battle between doing things and having things. Hey, the world is full of hard choices.
But it’s also full of second chances.
These usually reappear as night demons, black and shadowy as bats. With gold trim. Other bats are dark blue, smoke silver, metallic green and Italian red. □
