speedfree
New Member
Gonna spin the yarn, for your amusement:
So I've been leading out this Friday evening after-work ride for the last few months. We meet up conveniently close to my house, then burn 80-100 miles before dark, then stop for a bite & BS/whatnot.
Last night was slated to be an epic loop, including everything from sketchy chip & seal shortcuts to five-mile-long epic twisty sections. We were on a milder pace since all the rain earlier this week has left inconvenient surprise piles of silt here & there.
About 25 minutes into a 2-hour ride, I lead the boys (two buddies, both on Aprilias - one RSV, one Tuono) down this twisty little cut-through that I haven't ridden in a long time. A half mile in, I see some random piles of hay that one of the local farmers has dropped in the road, and give the universal raised-foot "watch out" signal, and carry on. A few turns later, I only see one headlight in my rearview, so I slow way down & look back. I guess Alan (second in line, RSV) had noticed the same thing in his mirror, 'cause as I got stopped, he was whipping it around to go back & look for Ken. I followed suit.
When we got back to where the hay was in the road, Ken has stuffed his Tuono in the ditch. We weren't moving very fast, and it was a pretty tight road, so the bike was mostly OK. Ken not so much. Apparently, he had made the mistake of putting his foot down to try and save a lowside of a 400 lb bike, and twisted his knee pretty bad. He said he'd had lots of surgery on it & he thought he might've torn something loose, so he stood there while Alan and I wrestled his bike back onto the road and surveyed the damage. It didn't look too bad - bent framesaver, broken front turn signal, and some mud packed in here & there. Then I cranked it - it started pumping coolant onto the ground from a broken radiator where the lower hose fitting is brazed on. Shit.
Just then, this crazy-looking, real animated dude comes running out from the house across the road. "Man, y'all picked a good place to wreck yer bike - we got the motorcycle shop across the road!"
I'm like, "I think the radiator's got a hole - can we use your phone?"
"Aw shit - we can fix that! Just take it right across to the garage there! We fix stuff like that all the time!"
Note the exclamation points. This dude was animated. We're in the middle of nowhere, Madison County NC, and I'm simultaneously thinking "meth lab" and "maybe a local racer & a couple MX bikes?"
Just then the other neighbor shows up, and he says the same thing.."You boys couldn't a wrecked in a better spot...you know whose house that is?"
"Uh...no?"
"That's Jamie James' place - they oughta be able to fix ya right up!"
So as soon as the old farmer said it was Jamie James' place, a little lightbulb went on. I knew he lived out this way somewhere, and a guy at the machine shop I used to work at had told me he lived right over the hill from Jamie James, and I knew we were close to that guy's place. I then checked the driveway a little more closely & see the huge white unmarked truck & trailer "NOT FOR HIRE" backed up to what I thought was an immense two-story house styled like a barn...turns out that was the garage. The house was small by comparison, set back aways from the road up on a knoll.
The animated dude is Doug Crawford, Geoff May's old mechanic, and Jamie James' right-hand man. He told us he had literally "just rolled in from Reno," and if we'd help hiim get the rig unloaded, he'd throw the Tuono on the lift & we'd see if we could fix it.
So we did. Ken sat & iced his knee, while Alan & I helped Doug roll Moriwaki 250, Yamaha 125, and R6 race bikes out of the truck & park them in the "garage," which is really a huge, two story barn big enough to park the rig and about 40 bikes in!
At some point, this little bespectacled dude wanders in smiling, and queries Doug as to what's going on here? Doug explains he heard a ruckus out in the street, and ran out to find us pulling Ken's bike out of this ditch after he lowsided on the old farmer's mess in the road. The little guy says, "I told that old sumbitch that was gonna happen someday!" then turned to us, "You didn't take out my crawfish mailbox, did ya?" To which we just shook our heads - I hadn't seen the crawfish mailbox.
"I'm Jamie James. Seems like y'all had trouble in just the right spot. No worries - we'll get that thing fixed right up." And he rolls the Tuono on the lift & starts grabbing tools...seriously!
We yanked the radiator off, me standing there wrenching with Jamie freaking James, just BS'ing about bikes, racing, and women. He's rolling out story after story about the crashes he's had, keeping us in stitches the whole time. The radiator looked like it had just collapsed the tube, so we got that round again & seeing no crack, put it all back on, then cranked the bike back up. It turned out to be cracked after all, still pumping Water Wetter out on the garage floor, so Jamie & I pulled it all back off & broke out the JB Weld, after cleaning it with muriatic acid in his driveway. He's squatting in his driveway with a bottle of cleaner & Q-Tips, cleaning some stranger's radiator so we can epoxy it!
Doug made a pizza & beer run, and Jamie broke out a folding table while we waited for the JB Weld to set up. He gave us a tour of the garage, showed us some amazing bikes he's working on, including the Ragin' Cajun R1, and this crazy full-race Ducati 998 he's building for some guy in Florida. He was the coolest, most humble multi-time Superbike Champion I've ever met. He treated us like old friends from the first minute!
We hung out, ate pizza, and swapped bench-racing stories until 10pm! We got Ken's bike back together, but wanted to let the epoxy cure overnight, so he even offered to drive Ken home - an hour each way - in his Dodge Ram SRT-10 truck, so I didn't have to ride home, then drive back to get Ken, and make the trip myself. Amazing.
On our way out, he gives us all cards, tells us "Anytime y'all are out this way stop by. Hell, we may even go with ya!" F@&kin'-A dude, a ride thru my favorite twisties behind Jamie freaking James?!? Hell, yes. God is good.
That, my friends, is a true story, and it happened to me.
So I've been leading out this Friday evening after-work ride for the last few months. We meet up conveniently close to my house, then burn 80-100 miles before dark, then stop for a bite & BS/whatnot.
Last night was slated to be an epic loop, including everything from sketchy chip & seal shortcuts to five-mile-long epic twisty sections. We were on a milder pace since all the rain earlier this week has left inconvenient surprise piles of silt here & there.
About 25 minutes into a 2-hour ride, I lead the boys (two buddies, both on Aprilias - one RSV, one Tuono) down this twisty little cut-through that I haven't ridden in a long time. A half mile in, I see some random piles of hay that one of the local farmers has dropped in the road, and give the universal raised-foot "watch out" signal, and carry on. A few turns later, I only see one headlight in my rearview, so I slow way down & look back. I guess Alan (second in line, RSV) had noticed the same thing in his mirror, 'cause as I got stopped, he was whipping it around to go back & look for Ken. I followed suit.
When we got back to where the hay was in the road, Ken has stuffed his Tuono in the ditch. We weren't moving very fast, and it was a pretty tight road, so the bike was mostly OK. Ken not so much. Apparently, he had made the mistake of putting his foot down to try and save a lowside of a 400 lb bike, and twisted his knee pretty bad. He said he'd had lots of surgery on it & he thought he might've torn something loose, so he stood there while Alan and I wrestled his bike back onto the road and surveyed the damage. It didn't look too bad - bent framesaver, broken front turn signal, and some mud packed in here & there. Then I cranked it - it started pumping coolant onto the ground from a broken radiator where the lower hose fitting is brazed on. Shit.
Just then, this crazy-looking, real animated dude comes running out from the house across the road. "Man, y'all picked a good place to wreck yer bike - we got the motorcycle shop across the road!"
I'm like, "I think the radiator's got a hole - can we use your phone?"
"Aw shit - we can fix that! Just take it right across to the garage there! We fix stuff like that all the time!"
Note the exclamation points. This dude was animated. We're in the middle of nowhere, Madison County NC, and I'm simultaneously thinking "meth lab" and "maybe a local racer & a couple MX bikes?"
Just then the other neighbor shows up, and he says the same thing.."You boys couldn't a wrecked in a better spot...you know whose house that is?"
"Uh...no?"
"That's Jamie James' place - they oughta be able to fix ya right up!"
So as soon as the old farmer said it was Jamie James' place, a little lightbulb went on. I knew he lived out this way somewhere, and a guy at the machine shop I used to work at had told me he lived right over the hill from Jamie James, and I knew we were close to that guy's place. I then checked the driveway a little more closely & see the huge white unmarked truck & trailer "NOT FOR HIRE" backed up to what I thought was an immense two-story house styled like a barn...turns out that was the garage. The house was small by comparison, set back aways from the road up on a knoll.
The animated dude is Doug Crawford, Geoff May's old mechanic, and Jamie James' right-hand man. He told us he had literally "just rolled in from Reno," and if we'd help hiim get the rig unloaded, he'd throw the Tuono on the lift & we'd see if we could fix it.
So we did. Ken sat & iced his knee, while Alan & I helped Doug roll Moriwaki 250, Yamaha 125, and R6 race bikes out of the truck & park them in the "garage," which is really a huge, two story barn big enough to park the rig and about 40 bikes in!
At some point, this little bespectacled dude wanders in smiling, and queries Doug as to what's going on here? Doug explains he heard a ruckus out in the street, and ran out to find us pulling Ken's bike out of this ditch after he lowsided on the old farmer's mess in the road. The little guy says, "I told that old sumbitch that was gonna happen someday!" then turned to us, "You didn't take out my crawfish mailbox, did ya?" To which we just shook our heads - I hadn't seen the crawfish mailbox.
"I'm Jamie James. Seems like y'all had trouble in just the right spot. No worries - we'll get that thing fixed right up." And he rolls the Tuono on the lift & starts grabbing tools...seriously!
We yanked the radiator off, me standing there wrenching with Jamie freaking James, just BS'ing about bikes, racing, and women. He's rolling out story after story about the crashes he's had, keeping us in stitches the whole time. The radiator looked like it had just collapsed the tube, so we got that round again & seeing no crack, put it all back on, then cranked the bike back up. It turned out to be cracked after all, still pumping Water Wetter out on the garage floor, so Jamie & I pulled it all back off & broke out the JB Weld, after cleaning it with muriatic acid in his driveway. He's squatting in his driveway with a bottle of cleaner & Q-Tips, cleaning some stranger's radiator so we can epoxy it!
Doug made a pizza & beer run, and Jamie broke out a folding table while we waited for the JB Weld to set up. He gave us a tour of the garage, showed us some amazing bikes he's working on, including the Ragin' Cajun R1, and this crazy full-race Ducati 998 he's building for some guy in Florida. He was the coolest, most humble multi-time Superbike Champion I've ever met. He treated us like old friends from the first minute!
We hung out, ate pizza, and swapped bench-racing stories until 10pm! We got Ken's bike back together, but wanted to let the epoxy cure overnight, so he even offered to drive Ken home - an hour each way - in his Dodge Ram SRT-10 truck, so I didn't have to ride home, then drive back to get Ken, and make the trip myself. Amazing.
On our way out, he gives us all cards, tells us "Anytime y'all are out this way stop by. Hell, we may even go with ya!" F@&kin'-A dude, a ride thru my favorite twisties behind Jamie freaking James?!? Hell, yes. God is good.
That, my friends, is a true story, and it happened to me.
