Hertfelder: First Blood

No one with any sense at all can deny that dirt riding is far more
hazardous than playing shortstop on a field that’s 50% dirt and
50% broken glass.

Most of us carry Band-Aids (some worrywarts even carry
tourniquets) but I think the ratio of use is 950 Band-Aids to one
tourniquet – and that’s used for tying down a bike with a
missing tie-down! This season I used a Band-Aid before I ever
got on a motorcycle.

First blood was drawn when I was pulling the loading ramp
from under a ’56 Beetle: The sharp end of a quarter-inch stove
bolt caught the inside of my wrist and went in about a turn and
a half.

After wrapping my wrist with a reasonably clean wiper rag, I
walked over to my daughter and asked: “How does it look?”

“Like a suicide attempt”, she said. Which proves that if you don’
t have your children’s respect before they’re 30, you never will.

That ramp is made of a length of pierced-steel flooring and has
served a succession of Greeves, Dots (devoid of trouble my
butt!), Sachs, Bultacos, IT Yamahas and WR Huskys. It was
given a torture test loading a Triumph Trophy, which it failed.

The quarter inch bolts that cut into my wrist were holding two
lengths of angle iron to support the sadly kinked edges. The
ramp is eight feet long, much shorter than the twelve footer
Stormin’ Norman uses so as not to exert himself pushing that
heavy Honda 125 into his van.

The shortest ramp I’ve ever seen was a three-foot length of
four-by-four. A New Jersey rider used to prop the thing against
the tailgate of an old GMC pickup and literally launch himself
and his motorcycle almost straight up and into the truck.
Whoooom, Bam! And he’d be up in the truck which was
wobbling on its springs, rattling its loose windows and pouring
rust flakes out of everything but the gas tank. He used to draw
quite a crowd. Most of them were waiting for him to miss the
ramp, but personally, I was waiting to see him go right on out
the bottom of the rusty bed when he landed.

Second blood this season might better be called “first burn”.

Mike Borreli and I were helping a young fellow who had a stuck
throttle (which is usually a carb slide). Normally, you’d have the
fellow ride for awhile using the kill button, hoping the slide would
break itself free on some stutter bumps or a nice railroad
crossing. But we were on a tight woods section and running on
the kill button was beyond the boy’s ability.

Mike and the owner thought I was holding the motorcycle. I
thought Mike and the owner were holding it. The only thing
actually holding the bike was a light breeze out of the
southwest. The motorcycle fell on me and put another brand on
my hide.

I think that made an even two dozen exhaust pipes that have
gotten me and now that they’re using radiators, I think I’ll have
to start a new list.

I’ve read many books that advise the best treatment for a burn
is to put ice on it. Now what I need is a book telling me where
to get ice

When I’m gritting my teeth in the woods, two and a tenth miles
from Ong’s Hat, and there’s no ice in Ong’s Hat either.

Third blood occurred while peeling off half a fingernail trying to
outsmart a staple gun.

Russ Hancock, the Meteor MC Club president, passed the
word that club funds had paid for 1,716 staple guns in the last
five years and would buy no more. Ever. This meant that those
of us who had left the guns stashed behind the spare tire in our
vans – where the rain splashes through the slots cut by flailing
snow chains – would just have to disassemble and fix the things.

Well mine looked like a mildewed chocolate chip cookie in the
shape of a staple gun. A blast of WD40 got some of the mold
out of it; along with two vicious looking spiders.

This staple gun, an expensive one, was held together with slip
pins held by Jesus Clips. For those fortunate enough never to
be exposed to these delightful devils, I should explain that a
Jesus Clip is a circular steel item that will withstand an
enormous amount of prying, and then suddenly fly off at the
speed of light because I’ve never seen after it left. Neither has
anyone else, and that’s where the clip got its name: “Jesus,
where did it go?”
As I pulled out the last pin, the staple gun simply exploded on
the workbench, leaving a smear of WD40 and some spider
household items marking the spot where it had been.

Fortunately, I keep my workshop in such as condition that
scattered pieces were easy to spot – anything not covered by
a thick layer of dust belonged to the staple gun.

Being fresh out of slave pins, I reassembled the gun with big 10-
penny nails planning to grind the points off and push them out
with the stock pins later.

Then Russ Hancock walked in and saw the staple gun,
apparently nailed to the workbench with 10-penny nails.

‘Good work,” he said. ‘They’ll have a hell of time stealing that
one!”