Coming Full Circle by Ryan L. Allen

I had been spending my nights digressing back to my teens and childhood with grand memories and images of the motorcycles my father and I loved from long ago. I am 38 now, but when I was really young my dad was keen to notice that I loved to work on bicycles in the garage. It was always a strain on my mother in those years because she was wondering when I would clean up the garage and stop bringing greasy hands and shoes into the house. She later realized those brief moments in time sculpted me into the person I am today and propelled my professional career in architecture.  Those years in the garage did something no school or institution could ever teach me.

That inspired my Dad to tell me his stories of growing up with an old Whizzer that he got second hand (nine dollars I think) when he was a boy (10yo)  in Denison, Texas in the late 40's and how he strapped it onto an old Monarch bike he got. His dad would not allow such horse play but his mother would fend for her boys and she helped my dad hide his injuries from some stunt he pulled around town on the old Whizzer, riding it to the sticker bowl where they played baseball.  Then my father’s days of motorcycle dreaming were interrupted by The Little League World Series. He was the catcher for the baseball team that would travel all over to compete for the title. He missed the series by one game to Kentucky I think, it has been awhile since I heard the story.  My father grew up to became a working stiff and forgot about “sex on two wheels,” at least until I came along.

Well, my dad had me bitten with all those wonderful images of old motorcycles. He began to tell me stories of the Indian's of his days and those of before. My mother would have nothing to do with me having a motorcycle at such a young age. So my dad brokered a deal with her, we would just get something to start me off on a restoration project. I got this old 51' Austrian 2 stroke post war bike that had a cafe wedge style seat that came in many boxes of parts. My mom was sure it would never run so that put her mind at ease, just for a bit. To her surprise, I got the thing together and running. She was not happy.

        
My dad was always busy with work and was to become more of a coach on the project, although he was always there to share an opinion even if unwelcomed by me.  I’m a Taurus, so just like the bull, I was stubborn at times.  He would monitor my progress and when things needed to be done outside my abilities he would take them to a machinist, painter, etc. and have the parts made to our specifications. It only took me a year to finish. Half the year after school to clean up old parts and try to make sense of it and what was missing and the other half to reassemble. Looking back, I'm surprised I did not get lead poisoning from all the paint removal using just an old drill with wire brush mounted, a cheap paper mask and goggles.

I must have had the patience of Job, because as you know back then there was no such thing as the internet. I am sure the older generation remembers, it was lots of phone calls and the use of a Hemmings Motoring News publication to try to find parts.  It was people that knew someone that knew someone that had or might know where to get what you needed to restore the thing you were working on.  It was hard because there was a long distance phone bill that got attached to the cost of restoring old motorcycles back then. At the time, I was pretty young, around 10 years old doing this, and some people were giving me guff knowing it was just some little kid on the phone. Well, it was the most fun I can recall from my youth and it helped me develop better communication skills along the way.

Soon college days snuck up on me. All my motorcycles were sold off and I went to architecture school. I had so much of a leap in skills on the other students that it was a breeze for me. I already had years of drafting in school along with private art lessons. The time invested helped hone my skills for making parts that did not even exist because you just could not get your hands on certain things. So for me, the act of creating something from nothing was already well tuned.
    
A few years back I was hanging with a college friend in Oregon and he had stumbled across an old BMW that had sat for years. He was taking it apart and was unsure of her fate in his hands-breaking cooling fins off the heads and cylinders while taking the thing apart-I could sense the bike speaking to me saying, "please you gotta help me-do something". I offered to buy the bike from him and have it shipped to New Mexico. My friend said he could not sell it because he wanted to get the bike going again. I then left and headed back to Seattle where I was traveling to for work at the time. I received a call a few days later and it was my friend. He realized that he was doing more harm to the bike than good. He said he would pack it and ship it to me and it would be waiting for me when I got home. I was traveling at the time on another project in New York when the bike arrived at my house. 

After receiving the shipment, my friend called and asked if I was really going to "fix" the bike. I asked why? He replied, “Are you sure this thing is fixable? Because it looks real bad.”  I said, "I've fixed worse." It ended up that the BMW sat for some time because I was never home and was traveling all over working in telecom with deployments of every G network or DSLAM you could think of. The bike sat until I made a new life, working in Santa Fe.

At that point, it was back to straight Architecture. For three years, I was not happy, extremely bored and wondering if my colleagues really shared my values in the business. I had no Zen. After I decided to make a change in my life and in my professional career I took some time off.  I used that time for self-reflection and spent the winter finishing and restoring the BMW (now named Ilsa).  One day, while I was working on Ilsa, cleaning the carburetors, it hit me right at that moment, that old gas lacquer smell triggered some old memories of my childhood, it was deja-vous. I remembered talking with my Dad about Indian motorcycles, and the thoughts were almost haunting me saying; "when are you going to get back around to restoring Indians?"

Turn the clock ahead, and why I am up late writing this. About a year ago, my good friend Kirk rolls in with his “go big or go home” attitude and the chapters of the 10 little Indians began. He too was bitten by the Indian bug! Kirk and I have been talking and dreaming of the perfect project and searching for the right Indians for a while, with the Cannonball race in mind. Two nights before my wedding, Kirk calls at around 11:30 at night and says, “1929 101 Scout basket on ebay, buy it now or make an offer.”  Well, the seller took our offer and we later found out he also had a Wall of Death 101 for sale.  Two weeks after that, we flew out half way across the country and drove home with the booty.  We have been making the dream happen ever since, adding three more Indians to the collection. There are only certain people who can truly understand the infectious nature of antique motorcycles.  They are pure art to me, functional art, like architecture in many ways and I guess that is why my evenly divided right and left brain agrees so well on the subject.

Here we are; Cannonball 2014 bound and becoming Santa Famous!

Ryan L. Allen