Thanks old man By: Beemer Dan He had a strange look in his eye as he gathered himself to go, it had been a very mild season of work. He was done tho, for now. As I watched old man winter leave, I couldn't help but wonder why he had been so lax in the usual work of making my daily commute an utter mess. Not that I'm complaining, I'll take a sunny day over a snowy one any time. It was just odd.

Thinking back to the early ninties, when we would get three feet of snow in the city, entire weeks where the rule was "If I can dig the bike out, I'm gonna ride". There weren't many days where I couldn't dig the bike out of whatever arctic embankment it had been buried in overnight, but it would sometimes take more than an hour to do so. I remember countless nights with my old R100(The Melenium Pidgeon), trying to push start it because the entire bike seemed to have gon into a coma. Push starting an old BMW "R" bike is more than a chore. The "leg saving" cylinder heads can become your worst enemy if you aren't careful, as they take half of your running space beside the bike. To make matters worse, I had a pair of GSXR clip-on handlebars, so I would have to run beside the bike with my top half hunched over the bars and my bottom half way out behind to kep from ramming my knee into a valve cover. All this gearhead yoga was generally performed on ice in temperatures of 20 degrees of less. Sometimes it would be snowing, sometimes I'd come out to see the bike with a few inches of the white powdery stuff already on it. The problem with all this was, usually the battery
was so drained, and the motor so cold, no amount of push starting was going to work. Kickstarting the bike was out of the question, since my bike didn't have a kicker (somehow, that was one of the much needed modifications I never had the cash to make).

So I had this method, more of a voodoo ritual actually, to get the bike started. It consisted of knocking the gearbox up to five and pushing the bike for a couple of blocks. This would get just enough juice in the motor, and just enough juice in the battery, to warm up enough for the electric start to work. Sounds like a mess eh? I almost threw my back out a couple of times in this proccess, and ended up with more than a few bruises on my knee.
In retrospect I guess a trickle charger with a really long extension chord would have been easier.

After getting the bike started is was the game of trying to get home without the bike sliding out from under me, and cars from sliding over me. I had many spills, most of them didn't end up hurting me or the bike much tho. Crashing in the snow is alot like having a pillowfight with god I guess. It didn't really matter how fast you were going on impact, snow is pretty good at taking the momentum. If you hit a snowbank hard enough you'll compact it down to ice, kinda cool eh. The ice in the road on the other hand, is pretty much Newton's first law in action:

"Objects in motion will tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by another force."

Surfaces with minimal friction such as icy roads are great testing grounds for this. Ever slid for two blocks with no road rash on the leathers? It's pretty strange, doesen't hurt much either. Of course trying to dodge cars, fire hydrants and pedestrians is kind of difficult.

The cars were usually less of a danger in the winter, they were baffled by the concept that a motorcycle was on the road, and would usually give me plenty of room. I guess it's like seeing a porcupine walk by a couple of bears, even if one of the bears has never experienced a porcupine, he will usually figure the spikey little guy has a reason not to be afraid, this can make the bears a little nervous sometimes, and they will avoid any contact.

I remember going to work, it was late afternoon, rush hour. There was about a half foot of the slickest sleety snot snow on top of the previous days ice. I was driving down a pretty busy three lane one way, cars were spinning out all around me. I'm still not sure what I was thinking, who could be that determined to waste an evening bussing tables? Anyhu, I got to the intersection of 13th and Grant, from there 13th does a steep downhill for a block and intersects with the busier five lane Lincoln Street. As I started down the hill I realised that the light would not be green by the time I got to it, I needed to stop. The brakes were pretty useless, I was doing 35 mph down a sheet of glass covered in butter. I tried pulling in the clutch lever, to keep any more power from going to the rear wheel, this of course freed up the wheel to go faster. Now halfway down the hill I was going 40mph, there were busses and cars jamming up the upcoming intersection, had to think fast. I remembered that cool move Kaneda did in Akira: drop the clutch, lock the front wheel, whack the throttle, power the bike sideways, lock both brakes, steady with your foot as the bike does the powerslide. Somewhere between the "lock both brakes" and "steady the bike with your foot" parts the bike caught air, I'm not sure how tho. The bike went up a few feet off the ground, maybe a really sideways endo or something. Next thing I knew I was sliding down the hill on the front fender and little cafe style "S" fairing. My only thought at the time was something about the icy road doing bad things to the factory double-pinstripe paint on the "S" fairing. Next was the bike coming down, cyclinder head first, on my ankle. The bike ran out of momentum, I looked up to see I was at the intersection, my light turned green. I pulled myself out from under the bike, which was pretty much upsidedown. A big guy jumped out of his car to help me pick the bike up, I wasn't having much luck since my ankle felt like there were two headed dogs chewing it off. With his help we righted the bike, at which point he noted that I was fucking nuts, smiled and drove off. I rode the bike back to my apartment and called in to work. I told them my ankle was swollen from a bike wreck and I wouldn't be in. As they began toargue with me I hung up the phone.

It has been a few years since I've had any nasty spills like that, it has also been a few years since the winters have been that brutal. I now have a new BMW moto, the battery holds a charge and always starts, of course it has a little too much tourqe to go bashing through much snow. Maybe Old Man Winter figures I've paid my dues, or maybe he's just saving up the bad stuff for next winter. Whatever the case, I'm glad I survived anonther winter, and glad that it's finally spring.