Jaguar Project (part three)

I finished the Jaguar, and put the bike on the street for the first time since the mid 1980's. Of course, there were a few minor glitches, but I got them worked out. The brake pads are hard, and they barely stop the bike. The shifter is a little touchy. I remember when I first got the bike that the shifter wouldn't stay in gear. The spring was weak, and the notch that holds the indicator lever in place was worn, and rounded. In my Dad's can of miscellaneous rubber pieces and parts I had found a large rubber washer that seemed like it was made to fit the inside of that shifter. It did the job, but, like I said, the indicator is still a little touchy. Nothing you can do about fifty year old brake pads. I did a damn nice job on that thing, if I do say so myself. It whirls along like a brand new bicycle.
Yesterday it rained all day, so I took the camera out into the garage, and tried to get a very cool, moody, low available light picture of the newly reassembled cruiser. Tried. Most of the pics were shitty, and I don't know why I was surprised and a little disappointed that the bike ended up looking just like it did when I started. The picture I posted is probably the best. Anyway...

I mentioned earlier that I found my three classic Schwinns during a brief period of good luck. Finding those bikes was the only thing that remotely resembled luck during that period of time. The rest of my life was on track for a major train wreck. That I pulled those bikes out of the fire is pretty remarkable in itself. I can count the good choices I made in that year or so on the fingers of one hand. And the bikes count for three out of five good choices, at that. Hell, those bikes kept me out of jail. Like I said, the bad decisions started with taking the job. I hated the job. But, as luck would have it then, I got introduced The Cowboy, and that only helped to set up the impending disaster.

The Cowboy was another one of the service crew at the base. He was a tall, raw boned man in his early sixties- gray, weatherbeaten, mustache, cowboy boots, and Stetson hat. Looked, and talked like The Marlboro man, pardner... Drove a new Corvette, and carried a sawed off, side by side 12 gauge in his coat pocket- right chamber, rock salt; left chamber, buckshot. He didn't drink, or get high, but he sold weed for a hobby. That, for me, was not a bad thing. But back then in the early eighties, cocaine was becoming a fad, and all the cool kids were doing it, so The Cowboy sold coke too. Which brings me to another less than wise decision that I made: hooking up with a gal who liked cocaine, and kinky sex. She had a budding sociopath of a daughter to boot...
I'll let you infer the rest. This narrative is about bikes.

I had walked out my front door and found the 1955 girl's bike. This was what I'd been hunting for. This was the real thing.
The first thing I did with the old beast was to soak every nut, bolt, and screw with Liquid Wrench. I let it sit a couple of days, re-soaking all the fittings, and then I began disassembling.
Despite the thick coat of barn paint, the bicycle was in very good shape. The fenders had dings, but the struts were straight. Of course, the horn, and light were ruined from corroded D-cells, but the tanks were undamaged. I actually got the old horn to work; the light was beyond repair.

I got a few cans of paint stripper and, piece by piece, started brushing it down. The thick coat of red paint peeled off easily revealing the bike's true colors- white, with rose pink trim, and the model: Starlet. I bought more stripper, and took the whole thing down to bare metal, and then fine sanded it all until the whole collection of pieces and parts was gleaming naked metal.

The painted frame looks like a single curving piece. Stripped of paint it reveals an assembly of beautifully bent segments of tubing, mated with elegantly brazed joints- shiny gold against the cold white steel, and ground so smoothly that a blind man's fingers would not detect a seam. As I disassembled the Bendix coaster brake, the brass shoes, friction polished like two pieces of gold jewelery, tumbled out into my hand. I think this is where I really began to fall in love with these old machines.

I hadn't painted anything with a spray can since I built model cars when I was in Jr. High. And I had never tried giving anything a two tone paint job. Original or not- white and pink was an unacceptable color combination for a bike I planned to ride around. I bought a bunch of rattle cans: forest green, and antique ivory. I'll have pictures up in a subsequent post, and I wouldn't have sidetracked into talking about the Starlet at all, except it was fixing up the Starlet that led to my finding the Jaguar. One coincidence set up another.

The house I was renting was a couple of blocks away from the San Gabriel River Trail. If you're not familiar with Southern California, that may conjure up an image of a serene path following the green banks of a flowing river. It is nothing of the sort. The riverbed, all but dry for most of the year, is a concrete culvert some hundreds of feet wide with smooth cement banks some fifteen or twenty feet high. The bike path runs along the edge of the trough, and if you're courageous enough you can dive off the path, and skate a bike up and down the steep walls like a wheeled surfboard on a concrete wave. Seal Beach was about two hours away, and that was my first destination once I got the Starlet finished.
I remember that I had just reached the end of the river trail. I was lifting the Starlet over the bike gate when another bicyclist noticed it, and stopped to talk. He knew someone who had some old bike like that- wasn't sure what it was. I gave him my phone number, (I used to carry pen and paper just in case.) and forgot about it.
Many weeks later I got a phone call from a stranger. Was I interested in buying an old Schwinn? When I saw the Jaguar I was too excited to do much bargaining over the price. I think he was asking $275. or $300. (remember- 1980 dollars) The only problem was that the bike was missing the front carrier, and the four-reflector rear rack. I had those parts sitting at home on the girl's bike that I had bought some months earlier.

Jaguar Project Part Four

JWM

Jaguar Project (part two)

I started reassembling the machine today. This is the fun part. First , pack the headset bearings, then put the forks back on the frame. Get the front and rear wheels hung, flip it over and put it on its feet. Pack the pedal crank bearings, and put the chain wheel back on. The crank threads turn backwards so you always have to think twice when you go to adjust the bearings.There's no instruction manual for these old bikes, but then again, you don't really need one. These are simple machines. Anyone with a glimmer of mechanical aptitude can work on one. Nonetheless, it is an axiom of all machines, that they come apart easier than they go back together. There are hundreds of parts to one of these things and every one of them goes exactly in one place, and it goes there in exactly the right order, or you have to stop, go back, and disassemble. None of it is really hard, but you do have to pay attention.
Mount the gooseneck, and handlebars, and it's beginning to look like a bicycle again, but this is the easy stuff. The Jaguar is a three speed, and there are tanks, racks, light, horn, fenders, and levers to mount, cables to route, adjustments to be made on both brakes, and the shifter.

I didn't get it finished today. In a way, that's an accomplishment. In years past I would have caught the burn, and worked all night until the bike was finished, or I was too exhausted to tell a wrench from a hammer. Today I took my time, solved a couple or three minor problems, and quit while everything was going OK. So now- well- at least I'm here in the den after a bath and a meal, and not out in the garage in the cold and dark on an obsessive burn to finish the project TONIGHT! I've mellowed just a little over the years.

Taking that job with the utility company had been a bad move. At first it sounded like a very cool gig- out all day driving around the city, going house to house servicing simple machines. Work at your own pace...
It sucked, and I hated it. But it gave me the opportunity to search around in damn near every neighborhood in the southeast corner of Los Angeles County. You see- I had this picture in my mind's eye. I'd get a call at some old house, and back in the corner of the garage, behind a bunch of junk would be that mint old tanker, and I'd ask if the guy would want to sell it and... Over a year went by. I didn't find shit. By this time I'd moved out of La Habra, and rented a house nearer to where I worked. Some of the other guys at the base knew I was looking for old bikes, and once one of the guys actually spotted one, and got me a phone number. Another letdown. It was a girl's bike from the sixties, a Hollywood, or a Starlet, I think. Anyway- it was a middleweight bike with chrome fenders. At least it had a front carrier, a half tank in the frame, and a fancy four reflector rear rack. But it wasn't what I was looking for. I already had one girl's bike. Nonetheless, something told me to buy it anyway. Besides it was cheap. By that time I'd pretty much given up on the idea that I was ever going to find some rare gem of a bike when I was out on a service call. It never did happen. I just gave it up, and quit looking altogether.

There is a thread that runs through a lot of new age baloney, but that also shows up in more respectable spiritual practices- The thread goes something like this: When you pray, or wish intensely, or imagine a thing that you wish to come to pass, you create a sort of energy in the cosmos. But that energy does not get released until you stop the imagining, wishing, praying. You know the old story- as soon as you quit looking for a mate, you find the love of your life. Maybe there is some truth to it. It seemed to play out in the Great Bike Hunt. As I said, I never did find a really great old bike when I was out on a service call. The first true classic Schwinn quite literally came my way when I stepped out my front door to go to work. It was trash day. I opened my front door, and the first thing I saw was an old guy rolling up on a bike to search the trash for aluminum cans. He was on an ancient bright red girl's Schwinn. Full balloon tires, tank, rack, light, chainguard, fenders, trussbars, all intact. Did I say bright red? Both tires, and everything in between- right down to the spokes and chain was brush painted barn red. I bought it on the spot for fifty bucks.

Jaguar Project Part Three

JWM

The Jaguar Project (part one)

The picture actually represents the second part of a four part project: disassemble the bike. Take it down to nuts and bolts, fix what's broken, and give everything a thorough cleaning. Part Three: Put it back together. (not as easy as part two) Part Four: Ride it around. The first part, of course, is finding a bike like this one, and replacing all the missing stuff. I had that mostly done by 1980, but I never quite got around to part two. Thirty years later, I'm finally getting around to it. The bicycle is a 1961 Schwinn Mk IV Jaguar, the classic cantilever frame boy's bike updated for the space age with middle weight tires, four reflector rear carrier, a three speed gearshift, and stainless steel fenders. Here's another shot of the Jaguar:


After years of searching for a classic Schwinn, I found the '61 Jaguar, a 1955 Starlet, and a 1950 model B-6 during a brief burst of luck that lasted from the spring of 1979 until the fall of 1980. I rode it around for three or four years- actually took this heavy metal cruiser on fifty mile rides. It did service as a living room decoration for about a decade, but it's been crated up, and buried deep in the rat's nest of my garage since 1997. This was the second acquisition during that burst of luck so many years ago, and the first in line for a total overhaul now.

Of the three bikes, only the Starlet came into my care intact. The Jaguar here, and the B-6 (we'll get to the B-6 later) were missing major parts when I got them. And it took a wildly improbable web of coincidences to get all three machines into my hands, and help me spin together the missing pieces that put them within nuts and bolts of being 100% original.

I was nine years old in 1961. Back then I had an Evans 26" middleweight with a half tank, and rear carrier. Bikes like the Jaguar, and the the B-6 were around, and kids rode them, but back then they were just- you know- bikes. No one really paid a lot of attention. The first time a full dress Schwinn caught my eye was some time in the late seventies.
I'd been surfing at the Huntington Beach pier, and I was waiting to cross Pacific Coast Highway at the light at Main Street. A guy rolled up to the crosswalk on the gaudiest, most outrageous, and stone gorgeous thing I had ever seen on two wheels (without a motor, that is). I had to stop and ask him what it was. The bike was a fully restored 1948 Schwinn Autocycle, painted God and Country red white, and blue. It was big, round, heavy. Bulbous tires. Built in horn.Tanks. Racks. Lights. Springs. Curvy steel draped in gleaming sheet metal and dripping with chrome, and reflectors. This thing was Mae West with fenders. It was cool incarnate, and I knew right then and there that I was going to have one come hell or high water. But where did you go about finding obsolete bicycles?
Well. Sometimes you find them right around the block from where you live. Soon after, someone opened a small, what was then not-quite-antique shop on La Habra Boulevard just a few blocks away from the apartment I lived in. The place was called The Nostalgia Store, and sold all sorts of goodies, and trinkets from the 1950's. It seemed like an odd idea- keep in mind, that stuff was barely twenty years old at the time. The store didn't last long either. Anyway- point was- the coolest thing that the guy had was a perfect 1950's Schwinn Panther. For three hundred bucks. That was the price of a decent used car, or a good used motorcycle. No way. So I checked want-ads, and garage sales, and auctions. All I found was a 1950's Co-ed. A girl's bike. No, I wouldn't find my first full dress Schwinn for a few years to come. Not until I'd quit surfing, left my old job, and moved out of La Habra altogether. My new job with the utility company would have me in and out of neighborhoods, houses, yards, and garages all over a big chunk of L A County. If there were Old Schwinns out there, I would find them.

JWM


Jaguar Project Part Two

Imaginary Pan

Labels for this post:
e.g. scooters, vacation, fall

I know- I did that one already- the bit with copying the little labels for this post label. And I used it as an excuse to start BS'ing about motorcycles, and ended up writing about a hapless road trip I took back in 1973. Well- it is Fall. I could use a vacation, and an oddly wistful sort of dream has taken hold of my imagination. I say "oddly wistful", because I've been dreaming about motorcycles, and "wistful" is generally better suited to dreams of lost loves, lost youth, and all things nostalgically lost in nostalgia.

Still, I keep dreaming about a Panhead. I want a 1952 Harley, and I want to build. (With the emphasis on build.) a '70's "Frisco style" chopper, along the lines of the Captain America bike that Peter Fonda rode in Easy Rider. I'd like to get an old FL, and disassemble the thing down to nuts and bolts, and resurrect it in the image of all those badass machines that the outlaw clubs rode when they terrorized hippies back in the day...

There's always a lot of free brain time at work, and The Project has become The New Favorite Toy for my brain. I muse on everything from the danger inherent in riding a chopped out bike with the old style foot clutch and suicide gearshift, to the ethical question raised by taking a vintage machine and customizing, rather than restoring it. I think on peanut tanks, sissy bars, how far to extend the wide glide... I can play with this stuff in my head for hours.

But that's all it is. Head play. It's a mental weed of sorts that feeds on traces of hope. The hope, in this case, would be finding my way to a financial situation that would allow me to indulge in the project. So I've been playing George to my own Lennie, and fertilizing this mental weed with bullshit. And it's a cover, too. As long as I'm filling my brain with this kind of stuff, I'm not letting my brain fill up with big picture stuff. And you know how it goes- the bigger the picture, the scarier the stuff. So I'm keeping stride with a day's work, and cursing this primitive goddamn pile of gears and iron for not starting after the zillionth kick, and then I remember to turn on the gas, and it fires right up, and everyone laughs, but right now I have to lock the upper field gate, change a couple of lights, and get the trash cans out in time for the first lunch...

I like doing this. Working the day shift is fun, and Stephen King Elementary is a particularly sweet routine. And I've been here for a couple of weeks already on what's looking like an open ended assignment. Short version- the regular day man had planned on retiring after this school year. Unfortunately, he had some heart trouble. He'll be OK, but it's doubtful if he'll be able to return to work. In the mean time, I'm filling in until further notice.

That's the hard part. Filling in. I've been filling in here and there for three years, now. I do a damn good job, too. Doesn't matter. Filling in is as far as I'm going to get in this outfit. I get all kinds of happy talk about what a good job I do, but they hired out the last two openings to guys cold off the street. Nice enough guys, but younger, and dumber to boot. And I've already followed up their work. They're doing an average job. Nothing special. So I know I could work this day position for months, have the plant buffed up like an antique car, and everybody happy with the service. But when the regular guy does retire, they'll tell me, "Thanks for all the hard work", and hire someone else for the job.

It's a U.T.O.L., a Universal Task Of Life. This one is called: Face it, dude, they're not hiring guys your age. They're hiring young men with families to raise, not old men trying for one last career before the boneyard. Hell, I'm older than the guy I'm filling in for. But I don't face it. I do the same thing I've done all along: bust my ass trying to do an exceptional job, and fail at suppressing the hope that I could still get a full-time gig out of this.

And- you know- it's not really about the Panhead. It's what full time work would mean- health insurance, life insurance, - shit we just can't get or afford. And less for me than for my wife. If she got... I'll just leave it there; I don't need to get all melodramatic. You know. So I think about building the chopper, and let the daydream grow like a weed on the false hope that I'm going to get anywhere on this job.

JWM

Life In The Best Of All Possible Worlds

This post is a boast. A throwdown to every dude and dudette in the Coonosphere. This is a rocket at Rick, and Robin. A bomb at Ben, and Bob. A jolt to Julie and Joan. Know ye now, that the women are on notice, and the men are well, and truly pwn3d. I hereby stake an unequivocal claim on the loftiest and most rarefied reaches of high ground. And I mean like Himalayaville, Daddy-O.
I.
Rule.

What, you might ask, has catapulted your usually humble, and somewhat self effacing host to such ecstatic transports (not to mention annoying alliterations)? A winning ticket on the pick six? A sure shot at fame and fortune? An NEA grant for my cat litter sculpture of teh preznit?

Well, actually it's my wife who gets the kudos. Take heed here, Julie and Joan. Eat yer' hearts out guys. Here it comes.

I've been working this week. Friday morning started as it always does: Mary gets up in the dark to make coffee and oatmeal. I follow a few minutes later, pour a cup, and take half an hour to achieve consciousness while sitting on the couch with the cat. Mary stirs me when breakfast is ready, feeds me, and gets me out the door. It's a sweet enough way to start the day. But.
This Friday I fumbled my way to the table; she set the bowl of cereal at my place, and joined me with her own a moment later. She sat down, turned to me and said, "You've been working hard this week. How about tonight I take you for dinner, and then we can see this new movie I was reading about- Zombieland. How does that sound?"

Keep in mind that it was early, and my blood caffeine level was barely high enough to simulate awareness.
Zombieland?
My wife had just offered to take me to a zombie movie.
It would be well to note here that my wife is sixty one years old.

"That sounds good," I said.

Truly momentous events overwhelm our ability to comprehend them. Their impact is felt not like a blow, but rather more like a drug that requires some time to take effect. It took a while before I began to really realize what had happened at the breakfast table. And this realization was starting to remind me of the time back in the 60's when I tossed down half a dozen diet pills just to see what would happen. Sweet euphoria swirled around the wistful sadness that comes from viewing the Human Condition from afar.

My wife offered to take me to a zombie movie. I knew that just as I was reveling in the anticipation of burgers and fries, followed by a couple hours of guns, guts, shit blowin' up, and zombies gettin' blasted every which way from hell, (not to mention babes and cars!) that there were legions of men out there who were staring down the barrels of vegetarian dinners and chick flicks in the vain hope of getting...
Ah, well.
So, guys. I know you all have lovely women in your lives.
But eat your hearts out anyway.
And ladies take note. I have handed you the key to all sorts of renewal in your marriages.

And Zombieland?
Hands down, the all time greatest movie of all time.

JWM