An Afternoon On, and Off, a Motorcycle

It seems like I just replaced the clutch cable on that bike, and I was just about to lubricate it again -- I bought a new bottle of cable lube on Saturday. But the clutch gets a lot of work in these mountains, and I see now that it has been almost two years since the last time I replaced it. So it is not too surprising that it snapped today while on a very remote road in Transylvania County. In the right country you don't even need a functional clutch to operate a motorcycle, but in the mountains the extra control it provides can easily be the measure of life or death.

Truly, for a mishap, it could not have gone better. The cable did not snap while traveling through twisty mountain roads, but just as I was re-starting the bike from a stop by Fork Creek above its confluence with the West Fork of the French Broad River. (The latter river's name always makes me think of Paint Your Wagon.) There was thus not even a moment of danger, just several hours of inconvenience. But what a place to be inconvenienced! There was no rain today, blue skies, a pleasant breeze, and dappled shade by the water. Unsurprisingly among such good fortune, I even found a four-leaf clover.

What I did not have was a cell phone signal. After a long time, a fellow passed by and allowed that he would call a wrecker once he got somewhere where his phone would work. Two hours later no wrecker had appeared, but two sets of bikers had stopped to check on me. The first set took my wife's number and promised to call her to let her know where I was, although I knew she wouldn't get the message until she got off work. The second set left me some water, which was a good thing to have in late June.

Finally in the third hour a fellow who looked like a young Arlo Guthrie but with a Musketeer mustache stopped his van to ask me if I needed help. I told him I was beginning to doubt that a wrecker had been called, and asked him to please try as soon as he got somewhere he could make a call. He was as good as his word, and in fact drove all the way back out there to tell me that he'd done it and that the wrecker would be by in forty minutes or so. Eventually it was, just as he said.

I had plenty of time to reflect on how smart it would be to carry a spare clutch cable in my saddlebags. I could easily have fixed the bike with the tools I carry on it if I'd had a spare. It wouldn't have taken five minutes. I shall do that from now on. Live and learn.

As we were headed up the mountains toward my house, I saw a blue truck go by that looked familiar. "That there," I said to the wrecker driver, "is my wife come looking for me." Sure enough it was. She said the bikers had left her a voice mail telling her which road I was on, but not exactly where, so she'd been driving around asking people if they'd seen me.

"You mean the scary looking guy with the braided beard and big muscles?" one group of young men replied.

"Yes, that's definitely him."

"Well, he's down by Fork Creek. I didn't stop to ask if he needed any help because he just seemed like he was relaxing by his bike."

As indeed I was, dear reader. Indeed I was.