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Tex was going around I-285, Atlanta's loop, about rush hour, 5:30 pm on a weekday a few years ago, coming back to Fla. from the Davenport meet, after Labor Day. Wife Lisa was with me on the Buddy Seat, and we were looking forward to maybe 6 or 7 hours to home.
Suddenly, the engine sang. It revved, but was no longer connected with the rear wheel. I shut it down and coasted to the shoulder. 'Looked around. Up ahead, the sign for the next off ramp read, "Martin Luther King Blvd."
Hmmm. 'Took a look. We'd flung the drive chain. Now what? Well, I got off and walked back up the shoulder to search for it. Rather than being all balled up in the weeds, or beat up by a hundred car tires by this time in the middle of the pavement car lanes, it was laying in one straight line, parallel to traffic, on the shoulder where I was. All that was missing was the master link, and I had a spare one. My hopes soared.
I got back to the bike and took a look. It took only a moment to make a quick diagnosis. Tex wasn't going anywhere under its own power. The rivets, all 98 of um, or however many that hold the chain sprocket to the r. brake drum, had let go. No doubt, I figured out later, because I had riveted them on by hand, not driven them in with pneumatic impact, when I replaced the sprockets and chain as a set, before embarking on the 2000 miles already covered in our cross-country trip.
So, I just had time to think about what a pickle this was turning out to be, when a beat up pickup truck slowed, and pulled over just in front of us. "This could be heaven, or this could be hell," I remember thinking. A long haired, bearded, black t-shirted man about my age opened the pickup's door and got out. The first thing out of his mouth was, "Is that a seventy four, or an eighty?" And he smiled.
I just knew in that moment that he'd been sent by a Higher Power to save us from what could have been considerable discomfort. It just always seems to happen like that. I smiled back and said, "Nineteen thirty seven seventy four yoo-ell," and he nodded in recognition.
We introduced ourselves. He went by "Mo," just Mo. It turned out to be a pseudonym he'd adopted years before, he told us later, and we never did find out, or need to find out, his "real" name. He had been well into the Harley scene in Atlanta for a long, long time. 'Said he worked at some dealership, and, after we loaded up Ol' Tex in his pickup using his ramp and tie downs, he took us to a different Harley shop, where they also obviously knew him (a pleasant reassurance to the strangers from out-of-state whom he'd picked up out on the road), and I bought another spare 530-size chain masterlink and some oil. He said he could take care of whatever was wrong with the bike.
Then he drove us to his house, a rental, he said; old, of white painted wood, with an ancient, swinging-door garage in the back yard. We rolled Tex off his truck and right into a well lit, fully-equipped shop. We fixed a couple of things that ailed Tex, and then Mo fired up his arc welder and tacked the sprocket expertly, all around the edge of the brake drum. He did it so I could grind the welds off later to replace it, or just re-rivet it on properly, while I tightened bolts and tended to some other little maintenance items on the Flathead that could use some attention after two-thousand miles on the road, two-up.
That done, Mo invited us to go over to an Atlanta biker bar he knew "for last call," (we'd worked for a while) and we secured his garage. Then Lisa and I loaded back up in his pickup and he took us off to your typical, little Harley-themed hole-in-the-wall bar.
We talked, listened to the juke box, and traded stories. One thing he told us was that where he'd found us, out on that stretch of the Atlanta beltway, wasn't anywhere near his usual way home. He couldn't explain what had made him come home by that way, and be in the slow lane, and espy our old Harley and us in distress that evening. We drank a couple of beers and talked until they got ready to close, and then we went back to his house, where he provided us his sofa and spare blankets and pillows.
In the morning, he cooked us all eggs and bacon and toast and coffee, and then saw us off just as the sun was peeking over the horizon. The snapshots he sent us later of our send off show how dark it still was. Ol' Tex was loaded with the two of us in helmets, gloves, bluejeans and leather jackets; the rear rack was loaded two feet high with the tent, groundcloth and sleeping bags we'd lived in at Davenport. Original leather saddlebags were full of spare clothes and this and that, and quarts of Harley oil, and a bulging canvas army toolbag was strapped on the front fender in front of the horn.
This was taken in Louisville, as we departed from there for Davenport,
but is how we looked on that trip, loaded to the gunwales.
(Lisa liked the helmet on like that; said it felt more comfortable)
I figured later that I had used every one of the liberal assortment of tools I had packed in that bag by the time we got home. On the way up, north of Atlanta, we'd had a flat rear tire, and tho I had the stuff to R & R the wheel, it was another pair of angels, a husband and wife, who stopped almost immediately, and and the man transported me and the wheel to a Honda shop he knew, while his lady kept Lisa company on the side of I-75.
It was a Saturday, I believe it was, and he was known at the Honda shop, and they let me patch the tube and air up the funny-looking (to them) old 18-inch Star hub wheel, asking "Jus' what make of tractor did that come off of, sir?" with smiles all around.
Do angels exist? Way more than possible if they were just chance occurrences, I believe. There are people sent, just as clueless as you are, who come into your life at just the right time, and perform little selfless, charitable acts and get a traveler in need back on the road. I'm convinced that there are. It happens all the time. We're just too busy with our hectic lives to take stock, and really notice the majestic creation that is this little water-covered speck in the vastness of God's great universe. 'Makes you glad to be alive.
God bless you and yours,
--Sarge, Flah.
Suddenly, the engine sang. It revved, but was no longer connected with the rear wheel. I shut it down and coasted to the shoulder. 'Looked around. Up ahead, the sign for the next off ramp read, "Martin Luther King Blvd."
Hmmm. 'Took a look. We'd flung the drive chain. Now what? Well, I got off and walked back up the shoulder to search for it. Rather than being all balled up in the weeds, or beat up by a hundred car tires by this time in the middle of the pavement car lanes, it was laying in one straight line, parallel to traffic, on the shoulder where I was. All that was missing was the master link, and I had a spare one. My hopes soared.
I got back to the bike and took a look. It took only a moment to make a quick diagnosis. Tex wasn't going anywhere under its own power. The rivets, all 98 of um, or however many that hold the chain sprocket to the r. brake drum, had let go. No doubt, I figured out later, because I had riveted them on by hand, not driven them in with pneumatic impact, when I replaced the sprockets and chain as a set, before embarking on the 2000 miles already covered in our cross-country trip.
So, I just had time to think about what a pickle this was turning out to be, when a beat up pickup truck slowed, and pulled over just in front of us. "This could be heaven, or this could be hell," I remember thinking. A long haired, bearded, black t-shirted man about my age opened the pickup's door and got out. The first thing out of his mouth was, "Is that a seventy four, or an eighty?" And he smiled.
I just knew in that moment that he'd been sent by a Higher Power to save us from what could have been considerable discomfort. It just always seems to happen like that. I smiled back and said, "Nineteen thirty seven seventy four yoo-ell," and he nodded in recognition.
We introduced ourselves. He went by "Mo," just Mo. It turned out to be a pseudonym he'd adopted years before, he told us later, and we never did find out, or need to find out, his "real" name. He had been well into the Harley scene in Atlanta for a long, long time. 'Said he worked at some dealership, and, after we loaded up Ol' Tex in his pickup using his ramp and tie downs, he took us to a different Harley shop, where they also obviously knew him (a pleasant reassurance to the strangers from out-of-state whom he'd picked up out on the road), and I bought another spare 530-size chain masterlink and some oil. He said he could take care of whatever was wrong with the bike.
Then he drove us to his house, a rental, he said; old, of white painted wood, with an ancient, swinging-door garage in the back yard. We rolled Tex off his truck and right into a well lit, fully-equipped shop. We fixed a couple of things that ailed Tex, and then Mo fired up his arc welder and tacked the sprocket expertly, all around the edge of the brake drum. He did it so I could grind the welds off later to replace it, or just re-rivet it on properly, while I tightened bolts and tended to some other little maintenance items on the Flathead that could use some attention after two-thousand miles on the road, two-up.
That done, Mo invited us to go over to an Atlanta biker bar he knew "for last call," (we'd worked for a while) and we secured his garage. Then Lisa and I loaded back up in his pickup and he took us off to your typical, little Harley-themed hole-in-the-wall bar.
We talked, listened to the juke box, and traded stories. One thing he told us was that where he'd found us, out on that stretch of the Atlanta beltway, wasn't anywhere near his usual way home. He couldn't explain what had made him come home by that way, and be in the slow lane, and espy our old Harley and us in distress that evening. We drank a couple of beers and talked until they got ready to close, and then we went back to his house, where he provided us his sofa and spare blankets and pillows.
In the morning, he cooked us all eggs and bacon and toast and coffee, and then saw us off just as the sun was peeking over the horizon. The snapshots he sent us later of our send off show how dark it still was. Ol' Tex was loaded with the two of us in helmets, gloves, bluejeans and leather jackets; the rear rack was loaded two feet high with the tent, groundcloth and sleeping bags we'd lived in at Davenport. Original leather saddlebags were full of spare clothes and this and that, and quarts of Harley oil, and a bulging canvas army toolbag was strapped on the front fender in front of the horn.
This was taken in Louisville, as we departed from there for Davenport,
but is how we looked on that trip, loaded to the gunwales.
(Lisa liked the helmet on like that; said it felt more comfortable)
I figured later that I had used every one of the liberal assortment of tools I had packed in that bag by the time we got home. On the way up, north of Atlanta, we'd had a flat rear tire, and tho I had the stuff to R & R the wheel, it was another pair of angels, a husband and wife, who stopped almost immediately, and and the man transported me and the wheel to a Honda shop he knew, while his lady kept Lisa company on the side of I-75.
It was a Saturday, I believe it was, and he was known at the Honda shop, and they let me patch the tube and air up the funny-looking (to them) old 18-inch Star hub wheel, asking "Jus' what make of tractor did that come off of, sir?" with smiles all around.
Do angels exist? Way more than possible if they were just chance occurrences, I believe. There are people sent, just as clueless as you are, who come into your life at just the right time, and perform little selfless, charitable acts and get a traveler in need back on the road. I'm convinced that there are. It happens all the time. We're just too busy with our hectic lives to take stock, and really notice the majestic creation that is this little water-covered speck in the vastness of God's great universe. 'Makes you glad to be alive.
God bless you and yours,
--Sarge, Flah.
Paps
Great story Sarge. I myself have had similar experiences on the road when out of nowhere an Angel of Mercy shows up and makes a difficult situation tolerable. I don't forget it either. It's taught me to always stop and offer a hand. Some need it, some don't but they all appreciate when you stop and offer. Enjoying the ride. Bill
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