The outside of the salvage yard is a maze of carcasses in seemingly endless rows,
at once homogenous but wildly different in detail, each having variations of a black
steel skeleton, aluminum motor and rubber tires. Stripped like this and left to the
elements, they are making their slow journey back to the earth in their orderly rows,
their surfaces scoured by sun and water and furred with the slow fire that never
sleeps. It takes an imaginative mind to place these heaps back on their wheels, to
see the way they might once have looked when they were mighty.
As certainly as the elements and eventually a searing cauldron will reclaim these
bikes to base materials, so it is certain that each was once responsible for some
of the most potent moments of a human life- what bike isn't? Somebody brought each
of these machines home, took each of them to the unraveling road the first time,
ran a soft cloth over the candied surfaces of paint and, most likely, at least once
just sat and listened to the motor cool. For at least a moment, each of these machines
carried someone who was most likely having the best time they ever had.
From the jumbles of black tubing and skewed, naked handlebars the shapes of individual
bikes jump to the foreground and are again lost from sight- the rangy frames and
large motors of cruisers and tourers, and the grasshopper legs of battered dirt bikes,
and rows and rows of standard bikes, so many with their front tires bald and their
forks bent back into crescent moons of pitted chrome. Under foot there are gas tanks-
long separated from their bodies by scavengers bent on the tender ignition coils
beneath, some are like fading easter eggs, and some are like discarded flourishes
of crumpled cellophane.
After making my hawk like rounds of the exterior yard, I approach the gatekeeper
and ask for a chance to enter the next domain: the indoor storage areas. If the rows
of stripped machines kneeling in the yard are like a cemetery maze, then in here
is the crypt. The boneyard is a ragged economic enterprise, which could never afford
to electrically light this space- instead, the radiant and unexpected weather assists
me from the far side of yellowed panels of corrugation in the roof. There are no
recognizable bikes here- just boxes on shelves, and curtains of bodywork stretching
into the dark. Once a few paces away from the relative bustle of the showroom, the
storage area takes on a library quiet, and suddenly the act of rooting through a
milk crate full of master cylinders sounds like someone hurling an armload of empty
soda cans down an air duct.
This is not chaos. All around and stacked to the ceiling is a kind of order that
transcends written record keeping and goes straight to a stuff-lover's psyche: like
things with like things. I make my way to the parts that interest me, referencing
things that catch my eye with my constantly updated mental checklist of things that
I need. So many things are close, and so many things appear perfect until they are
picked up and flipped over, or coaxed from under a dozen similar pieces, only to
be placed back where they were found. The smells are familiar from anyone's garage,
but vast and swirling everywhere- sweet carb cleaner, malty cooked oil, dust and
cardboard, gasoline, and the unique gritty paste, formed by motor oil and road grime,
that seems to darken almost every surface.
Another door beckons, and the space opens into the largest of the warehouses- a space
so large that water remains puddled on the floor from the last rain, and birds can
be heard rustling in the rafters. I follow a trail of dark bike silhouettes, at first
noticing a string of strange details- small tail lights, weird forks, and suddenly
I realize I am in the presence of complete, rare motorcycles older than I am, hanging
suspended all around the walls of the room to save floor space for more bikes below.
These are the ones that languished in the backs of garages, safe from the perils
of the road but outliving the owners who knew what they were or could ride them,
and so, complete but unwanted, they are hoisted into the eaves, up closer to where
the yellow shafts of light come through a thousand tiny holes, and to the rustling
wings of the birds.
The fading light calls me and its time for me to be back on the road. I wind my way
back out of the boneyard offices, out to the parking lot where my bike waits- clean,
straight, and with all necessary parts present and working. Somewhere steel is rusting
and someone is getting a new bike, and someone else is saying goodbye to an old one.
My bike and I are going for a ride.  |
