Shed mafia
Somewhere, between the kitchen and the door leading to the laundry, there's
a set of bookshelves. The company that made them is next to a bike shop on the
main drag to the nerve centre of my city.
They're huge, the bookshelves that is. About eight feet tall, or 240cm, and
about the same long. Partner Ms M, she of the CBX550, ordered them as a custom-made
job, and I hauled them home on the bike trailer.
Her collection of WWII books is there, along with some motoring and motorcycling
encyclopedia. And some nice literature.
The best is a dog-chewed collection of John Steinbeck's greatest hits. This
column, by the way, is named after a Steinbeck book –– Travels With
Charley, which we'll discuss at a later date. My current favourite of the collection
is Cannery Row. It's about a bunch of well-meaning, often clumsy, bright, modest,
men. They're very much like my favourite group of motorcyclists.
They have the social graces of a ballerina dancing on ice with razors for soles,
and the tactical sense of Custer. But when things turn to shite, the bike won't
start, you're miles from nowhere and someone's offering you a puppy to keep,
or a fight, they're the people you want around you.
It's a tenuous thing, knowing who you want around you when the trip turns ugly.
Logic says you want police, ambulances, medics, whatever it takes. I'll take
my chances with motorcycling's equivalent to Cannery Row.
One of them is Dr Gange. He's rebuilding the Guido outfit –– has been
for nearly a year. What started as a paint job has developed into an exercise
in creative engineering.
For example I gave him a stereo to install and he designed, tested, then redesigned
a theft-proof mounting system. One that pops the controls out of the sidecar
dash with a push on the unit's underside. It's counterweighted, invisible when
not in use, and encased in a one-off steel cage that would take hours to break
into.
Gange is part of a shed mafia that includes both types of engineers: those with
formal qualifications and those without. Some race and build classic bikes,
some rebuild vintage trucks. Some do neither.
An afternoon spent with them can involve large quantities of beer, a spot of
yabby-hunting, a ride in a Haflinger, or an exploration of the yellow Lotus
tucked away in the back of the air raid shelter.
There's a lot of bullshit spoken, which is supposed to be a boy thing though
I don't think it's an exclusive licence. Girls do it too –– the topics
are different.
What strikes me about the Dr Ganges of this world is their plodding, creative,
patience. Left to me, the problem of mounting the stereo would have involved
a two-minute search of stereo-mounters in the the phone book. Mounts R Us would
have got the job, at great expense to the management.
That the problem ended up with the good Doctor was fortuitous. Turning up at
Chez Gange with a six-pack of Tooheys Red under the throttle arm, I was staggered
to see scrawled designs on notepaper. And to receive a dissertation on what
counterweighting springs did and didn't work (with the offending non-performing
springs provided as evidence).
Or receive a lesson in how to countersink sockets for the sprung ball-bearing
locators.
Something inside me started to shout, "Get a fuggin life!" The economic
rationalists, and therefore thought rationalists, of this world will be shouting
applause by now. They can all get rooted.
In the greater scheme of things, creating a theft-proof and counter-balanced
mount for a stereo in some dingbat's sidecar is idiotic navel-gazing. It's unimportant,
will not change the Prime Minister's chances of re-election, contributes little
or nothing to the exchange rate and will have no impact on share market indexes.
However I believe this is science and exploration at work. Something which adventurous
tinkerers such as Marie Curie would have approved of. Exploration of the minutae
of life, even if it does involve stereos and sidecars, is a worthy exercise.
There may not be a cure for cancer involved, or the discovery of atomic behaviour.
But the thought processes are just as vigorous and creative.
Chance says that if enough people are working on stereo-mounting systems, one
of them will come up with a cure for cancer by mistake.
In the meantime, I'm happy to cut Dr Gange loose. It's an act of faith, on the
basis that anyone with his design and construction skills is exactly the sort
of person I want by my side if or when things go wrong. Him and the rest of
the shed mafia.
Guy "Guido" Allen
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