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Written by Robert Higdon.
It isn't often that my school day consists of an uninterrupted series of light-hearted giggles but today was one such day. And, I hope, the next nine are going to be just like it, perhaps even better. I owe it all to a teacher and a book.
The latter is by Kenn Amdahl and explains modern electrical theory. The title is There Are No Electrons. The premise of the book is that what we have formerly considered the electron theory, as it applies to electricity, is a crock designed by physics teachers to make students unhappy. Since I barely wobbled through high school physics and never made it even to the end of the first semester of college physics (despite two tries), I was ready to subscribe to Amdahl's hypothesis without even reading his tome. After reading it, I was so impressed that I read it again and synopsized it in about twelve typewritten pages.
Essentially Amdahl claims that electrons are actually little green guys whose lives are devoted to partying with little green chicks. I use his words. When the ladies turn up the music, the green guys become so eager to join in that they become almost apoplectic. Some might see the distant allegory of voltage in this scenario. Other metaphors --- water most commonly --- have been used to explain electron flow, but once you have the picture of little green guys in your mind, it's tough to think of anything else.
Inexorably other parts of electricity succumb to the assault of the green guys and their urges --- capacitors, coils, transformers, etc. --- it doesn't matter. While some (notably my brother, the physics teacher) might argue that such an explanation doesn't even rise to the level of a Little Golden Book of Volts, all I can say is that when the teacher late this afternoon handed out a homework assignment consisting of 18 calculation problems in series and parallel circuits, to be handed in a week from tomorrow, I had all the solutions cranked out before we left class. The green guys helped.
The instructor, Chip, is also a delight. He is salty, affecting a gruff and battle-hardened demeanor. Theory as such seems to bore him to bits. His explanation of the construction of permanent magnets is that God and Honda engineers made them and if you want to know much more about them than that, you'd better ask One or the other. At least three times when discussing electrical components, he brushed them aside with a casual "They work fine and last a long time." It is clear he is there to demystify this subject, despite the unalloyed desire of a lot of the students to be scared witless. Chip hasn't mentioned little green guys yet, but this was just the first day of class, so I'm giving him time.
Thirty years ago I had a modern European history teacher at the University of Maryland, Gordon Prange. He was the author of "Tora, Tora, Tora," and would have written a better "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" if Shirer hadn't gotten there first. No one who ever sat in one of Prange's lectures will ever forget it. Rarely have I seen a man so obviously in love with his life's work, nor anyone so good at it. I can see him even now, standing in front of a packed room, screaming guttural German, and waving his hands in a perfect imitation of Hitler exhorting a mob to wax a few Commies for the Fatherland.
A great teacher can explain anything, can describe a spiral staircase without using any hands, and can make a 0645 wake-up call something to look forward to. I think Chip might be in that league.
Even though he is looking a little green to me.
Sometime today it will become winter and Daytona is exhibiting its version of White Christmas --- pounding rain. I have stood near Mt. Waialeale on the island of Kauai, supposedly the wettest place on earth, where rain descends at the rate of about 480"/year. Whoever made those measurements obviously never came near Daytona Beach, where my own measurements reveal that we have had 525" of rain in the past four weeks.
The Christmas season is also evident in Class #231. Order is a rumor; a dull, subliminal roar pervades the room until Chip finally regains control with a few snaps of his lash. If you are caught mouthing off, you will be the next one up at the blackboard to describe publicly the depths of your misunderstanding about volts, amps, and other mysteries of Ohm's law. As the laughter commences, so does the undercurrent of more mouthing off, whereby the process renews itself much as does a malignant growth.
The school administration long ago mandated that tomorrow's classes will end at 1700, not one instant sooner, and that there will be NO exceptions for travel routing via O'Hare, prison escapes, incoming mortar fire, or other acts of God.
Gullible, I believed the administration (since I am nothing if not obedient), and arranged to fly through Atlanta on Delta with a connecting flight back to D.C. My plane is supposed to arrive at 10:50 p.m. tomorrow night; if it is late by 11 minutes, I will automatically be re-routed to Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Anchorage, depending on rules I don't understand and wouldn't care about them if I did. All I know is that I am already screwed and do not expect to see my cats, Bud and Lou, before they have starved to death, cursing my name with their last breaths. Bud especially. She hates it when things don't go her way.
Today in school I learned that after I take a picture test next week on how to read an analog multimeter I will never pick up another one of those things as long as I live. Weeks ago, on Mike Kneebone's recommendation, I spent about $18 at Radio Shack for a digital multimeter, found that it works with the speed of Bud hustling to a bowl of food, and requires no adjustments for calibration, scaling, or anything else. Turn it on, stick the positive and negative probes on your tongue, and watch the resistance bolt instantly up to about 200,000 ohms. Jim Brown could manage only about 150,000 ohms with his analog tongue meter, convincing me that my little device --- 2/3rds the size of a pack of cigarettes --- was not only more accurate but easier to operate. And of course it also proved conclusively that I am a lot tougher than he is, since I have much more resistance. Or bile.
We have a quiz tomorrow morning on schematic symbols. It's a good thing that it will be given in the morning because by mid-afternoon I think 75% of the class will have disappeared to various doctor's offices throughout the country. It is amazing to see how happy so many students have become lately with the prospect of being ill tomorrow afternoon.
But I won't be sick. No, I'll be there until the bitter end, trying to test the truth of Ohm's law: If I can crank up 200,000 ohms of resistance on my tongue, that must also mean that I should be able to run 200,000 amperes of current into my nose and have 40 billion volts of electricity shooting out of my ears. What good is science if you can't test your theories?
I didn't actually mean to start a multimeter tongue fad here. It wasn't even my idea in class. Someone else told me to do it. I'm so afraid of electricity that I wouldn't have done it myself unless I'd seen someone else do it first.
But out of a joke there is a parallel life-and-death scenario, I recall (and I just thought of it at 0600, having seen the hour from the wrong side --- when I'm at school I normally get up, not go to bed, at about this hour). There is a tribe in Africa that would test truthfulness by planting a hot sword on the tongues of the members of the commune. The liar (or thief, or whatever) would be disclosed because his (or her) tongue would be dry. It's the same principle involved in walking over hot coals: The innocent skip right through; the guilty are headed for a hospital with third degree burns.
So with the multimeter probes on the tongue, I am confused. The meter should read higher when there is fear (dryness = more air = less fluid to conduct electricity = more resistance = more ohms), but the reverse has been happening. The more comfortable I was with the multimeter and the lab stuff, the fewer ohms I produced.
Ach. It's yet another thing AMI has devised to drive me nuts.
I write this from the fabled District of Columbia where the Great Silver Bird has deposited me for a few days before my return to Stalag AMI on the evening of December 27.
This morning's quiz was the identification of 32 hieroglyphs, also known as schematic symbols on wiring diagrams. It wasn't bad. Nearly everyone 4.0'd it.
For the remainder of the morning we learned the basics of reading wiring diagrams, which are overwhelmed with glyphs without number. In the past when I'd bought a new bike I'd taken those incomprehensible pages of schematics and ripped them from the owner's manual to reduce the overall weight of the bike.
I have now learned that there is information contained on such diagrams that is verily like a street map, complete with stop signs, one-way streets, and mistakes. A bike built according to one of the wiring diagrams we inspected this morning would run beautifully until you hit the turn signal switch, at which point the machine would erupt in hideous smoke. Chip Ream, our atomic guru, had not seen that error until a student noted the point. Then Chip laughed. So did we, because when Chip laughs, it's O.K. for us to do so too.
After a delicious hamburger lunch at the cafeteria, we were split into three sections. Our group returned to the skill lab where a number of large wooden boards with components zip-tied thereto awaited us. Our task was to take a multimeter and poke at the six components on each board until we discovered whether the target was good, bad, or in need of a bath. Dave Banes, our former carb instructor, supervised our efforts.
I'd never heard of most of the things on the board that greeted me, much less actually seen them --- dual-lead ignition coils, regulator-rectifier black boxes, and the like --- and I was determined to use my Radio Shack digital meter, not the analog ones that AMI supplies. The point of the exercise, which escaped me during the first hour as I randomly stuck red and black wires from the meter wherever my fancy struck, was that in another week or so we're going to have to sneak up to a living motorcycle, find those mysterious parts wherever they may be hiding, and find out whether they're good, bad, or merely filthy. And they will be running the clock and giving us a grade at the end.
When I realized that, my mood suddenly became a lot more serious. Curiously, it also became a lot more fun. Dave came over to me at one point and questioned me about a reading I was getting on the meter with a spark plug cap.
"You're in a desert in Somalia," he said. "That spark plug cap is good. You just saw it. And the secondary lead connections at the ignition coil are good. You should be reading 5,000 ohms. You're reading infinity. What do you do?"
For a second I thought about calling a mechanic like Dave, though I might have trouble finding a phone in Wadi Ghazimin. Then a glimpse of sun peeked through the storm clouds in the desert.
"The wires from the coil to the plug are bad," I said.
"They are indeed," Dave said with a trace of a smile.
And if I were Dave Banes I would then proceed to build a big fire, find some suitable rocks to melt, extrude the ore into fine wire with a spaghetti colander I'd fashioned out of a pith helmet, and make some new strands. But I'm not Dave and I will never be. Some things can't be learned in just one lifetime.
Yet progress is made slowly. It has to be. You don't want to disappoint people like Banes who believe you can be better than you really are.
"Curiouser and curiouser," said Alice (or the White Rabbit --- I'm not good at distinguishing little girls from rabbits, which accounts for that unfortunate incident in Taiwan a number of years ago, not that I ever wanted to go back there anyway) at one point in the story. Getting on the Mighty Aluminum Bird to fly back down to Daytona yesterday, I felt as if I were coming home. The real "home" had worn me out over Christmas; I think I was more tired when I came back to Florida than I had been when I left.
Waiting for me at the motel was Fred Rau's seven page fax of the proposed second story in the AMI serial. I had warned him that he was taking on a job of mythic proportions, trying to reduce these daily diaries into a condensed form for publication. Furthermore, I have no more use for editors than Fred does for lawyers, so a Mexican stand-off of Biblical proportions, to mix just a couple of metaphors, was brewing. I sat down a few minutes before midnight and began to read.
All I can say is that Fancy Publications, MCN's parent company, doesn't pay Fred enough. He took a month's worth of scribbles and turned it into a story that even I was interested in reading. Today I showed the draft to Jim Brown and Gerd von Doemming. They agreed between laughs that I had captured the spirit of AMI, though there was some sentiment that the victory might ultimately be tinged by at least a visit to the dean's office, if not expulsion from school. Like that would be something new. It took me eight years to get through college and I spent 20 years having federal judges yell at me. How are you going to threaten someone who has nothing to lose?
I staggered onto campus with four hours' sleep, and may have coasted through the what-is-the-reading-on-this-picture-of-an-analog-multimeter quiz. I don't know. All I did was decode the 5 volt scale, then used a multiplier on the calculator for everything else. I could explain it, but you'd be as bored as I was. Digital is the way to go. No scaling, no calibration, no tiny little numbers.
Unfortunately, this was not the day to be tired. Chip Ream, our erstwhile volt guru, despite near-violent pleas from the class for another day's vacation, insisted on following the school schedule. That required us to try to absorb the intricacies of four kinds of ignition systems. I hope my notes are readable because now, just two hours after classes are over, I can't recall eight words he said. It wasn't Chip's fault. I didn't bring a brain to class that was fit for sponging.
I may have gotten an apple-polishing point when we broke for lunch. Thinking of my little green guys who scamper around in wires looking for a party, I asked Chip a question about magnetic field growth and shrinkage in coils and if that wouldn't explain a weird point that had arisen in class about current heading to ground. He immediately accused me of having done some extra reading. Naturally I denied it. If he knew about the green guys . . . well, you can imagine.
The grades through Week #5 went on the board this afternoon. I hung onto 1st place, distancing myself from Norm Hammond by a few hundredths. Jim is in third place, just 0.02 behind Norm. Gerd had a killer week with a 3.91 and Steve Stenger continued his climb after that first weekly test where he'd misunderstood the instructions and hit the wall in flames with a 1.00. He's been steaming ever since.
The Christmas vacation screwed up our week's end. Now it falls on Thursday. So that must mean that our weekly test . . .
Oops. Gotta run.
The experienced test takers in our class --- Gerd von Doemming and me --- had a good week. There were no lab grades to taunt, torment, and terrorize us. Each quiz and test was like shooting fish in a barrel. As a result we 4.0'd the entire week, something neither of us had done before. A lot of others must have done the same.
This surprises me a bit. The two-week section of electricity has a fearsome reputation at AMI. Strangely, it may be a conspiracy between the staff and students who've already passed through the subject to instill the absolute Fear of Volt into those yet to come. If true, and it really might be, I can't understand it. Most people, myself included, find the concept of electricity shocking. Why anyone would want to add to that natural paranoia escapes me.
There isn't a lot of theory being taught. About as deeply as Chip Ream ever wants to go is to say that "This component works well and lasts a long time." It's his mantra. He even has the students saying it to each other now about everything: Chili dogs in the cafeteria, the pool table, the bars on Main Street. I'll never think of him again without remembering his phrase. And grinning while I do.
But, as usual, there are storm clouds on the horizon. We've been bombarded in pure saturation mode for two days with lectures about ignition and charging systems, material that hasn't appeared on any test so far but which will show up next Thursday when we walk into the lab, are directed to a bike, and told to report back on whether various components --- they won't tell us what they might be in advance, but they'll include such deathless items as ignition and pulser coils, every conceivable sort of switch, alternator output wires, or anything else that strikes the instructor's fancy --- are good, bad, or indifferent. This is the most brutal kind of test I can imagine, because we will have utterly no control. They point, they start the stopwatch, and we move.
And when I move, I had better know where to find the five components I am to test on a bike I may never have seen before, how to read a schematic to determine which wires are involved, how to isolate the unit to be tested, how to use a multimeter with two hands where a minimum of four is required, what the numbers on the meter mean (assuming that I am even able to find the rectifier or left turn signal wire bundle or the secondary side of the ignition coil), and write the results down in a form that the instructor can read.
Because I will have just 25 minutes to do it all. No mas.
Faithful readers can imagine my disposition when it dawned on me this afternoon what potentially might be involved in this exercise. Naturally I immediately walked over into a corner, sat down next to a bike with my multimeter in my lap, and began to sulk. After a few minutes, Jim yelled at me to hop over to a bike he and two others guys were shredding in an attempt to locate some kill switch wires in a veritable rat's nest of circuits. He had a wiring diagram in one hand, a meter in the other, and was calmly issuing orders to everyone the way only a former helicopter pilot can.
It took an hour or so, Jim dragging me to different machines as I kicked and screamed and held my breath until I turned as blue as the hot wire to a high beam switch, but tiny slivers of comprehension finally began to appear here and there.
Tonight it's not still clear what I learned in school today, but this much I know I'll never forget: Jim Brown works well and will last a long time.
Six straight days of electricity are beginning to take their toll. If it keeps up, they're going to have to start issuing toe tags with the Jonestown Kool-Aid. The only people who feel remotely comfortable tonight are the few students who have a career background in electronics. A century ago Georges Seurrat and the French pointillists revised the art of oil painting by eliminating brush strokes. Instead their works were composed of nothing but colored dots, millions of them. If you stand a foot from a pointillist work, you can see nothing else. But move ten feet back and you stand before a painting of a forest instead of trees. I hope that's what is happening here. What is required, I think, is an 8' x 6' wall map of ignition and charging systems. I can study it from across the room as I sit on the couch, drinking a beer and absorbing knowledge from afar almost involuntarily. In the column headed in bold, 50-point type with "IGN," I shall list the main systems with an outline of their respective characteristics and what is required to test them. The same for the column entitled "CHG." There aren't that many of each, but right now I'm too close to both of them to understand anything. So tomorrow I'll make a chart, type up the last two mornings of lecture notes (we've spent our afternoons recently in the labs poking at helpless bikes with multimeters), and wait patiently for knowledge to set in. Gerd and Steve Stenger are coming over for a study session Sunday afternoon. They have already expressed interest in my proposed Diagram of Existential Voltaic Fundamentals. Shortly before five this afternoon we were packing up the lab. Someone mentioned New Year's Eve. I heard Chip say, "I don't think Bob will be out partying. He'll be working on collapsing field ignition systems." I looked at up. He was smiling at me. But he was right. Thirty-one days down. Thirty-one per cent through, every day a clone of the last and a flawless prediction of the next. Get up at 0645 (or 0600 on weekly test days), slog through school until five, write a note about the day's events, answer e-mail, retype lecture notes, and read anything in the textbook that has to be read. Occasionally I buy groceries but only when I've run out of Dr. Pepper. If I had more time, I'd eat out, but I don't so I eat my main meal, usually a hamburger or the day's special, at school cafeteria. I have an oven in the room; I've used it once. The weekends are the same, except I don't have to go to school. So I study. Once a month I get a haircut on Saturday morning. It sounds hateful. It isn't. I can't remember many times when I've been happier. It isn't peaceful --- war zones not often are --- but a boot camp fraternity has grown up. We're all being hammered on the same anvil. James Watts told us on Day #1 that some of the people we'd meet here would be our friends for life. I had doubts then, but I don't now. And the Day of Total Comprehension cannot be that far off. It just can't. Those dots. Those millions of dots.
You'd expect pretty close to the worst with a bunch of bikers gathered at the Daytona Inn with a near-limitless supply of beer on New Year's Eve, and your expectations would be fulfilled, except that shortly after 2300 the beer ran out. The hat was passed and shortly another 1,200 million liters of suds appeared.
Lately, not content with yesterday's successes, I have begun to think of perils that lie in waiting. Normally the first ten introductory weeks are followed by "shop" --- 39 assigned tasks to be performed in five weeks. I'm told that it becomes so intense in that hell hole that the instructors have to lock the door to make students go to lunch. I wish I were kidding.
The final five weeks are training in your marque specialty. In my case, since they run the BMW group in alternate five-week terms, I'll be diverted before shop straight into the BMW section. The students I'll be with will already have been through shop. So I'll be competing with people who actually know how to change a tire. Great.
The rock that has separated me from the hard place so far, Jim Brown, won't be with me when I try to slip unnoticed into BMW training. Despite my best advice, Jim's going into Harley and won't be around to hold my hand when I fall into the remorseless clutches of Van Singley, BMW guru, the only instructor whose name is spoken with universal fear in the student body. Van knows how many folds there are on a '64 BMW R50 rubber fork gaiter. Sooner or later, I am told by people who've been there, he will expect me to know that too.
Explosives and rockets and firecrackers and gee-whiz-bangs were going off at the beach last night as midnight neared. One kid imbibed more than his fair share at the patio party and threw it back up onto the floor, thus ensuring that he will be remembered for the remainder of a year that has just begun as the guy who couldn't hold his liquor. It's not important to him now because he's still stupefied, but it will become terribly important to him tomorrow when he senses through a pounding headache that his reputation is tarnished indelibly among the people who cannot help him anyway.
I've spent a lot of New Year's Eves like that. What I did tonight instead of getting stupidly drunk was to slither up to Sean Lee, five weeks ahead of me and a future classmate in the BMW specialty when he finishes shop and I simultaneously finish the ten-week basic course. His grade point average is astronomical. I asked what he wanted more than anything in life.
"I'd like to work at Bob's BMW," he said.
I looked at him. I thought of how on that awful weekend a month ago I'd come back to school, determined to grab Jim Brown's help by promising him eternal wealth and fame. Had Jim not saved my quaking butt, I wouldn't now be in Week #6, much less thinking of Week #11.
"You keep Van Singley out of my face and show me what makes a BMW tick instead of tock. I'll not only make you rich and famous," I said. "I'll get you a personal interview with Bob Henig along with my unqualified endorsement."
"And how," Sean asked, "will you do that?"
"Because," I said, "before I became a student-wrench, I used to be Bob Henig's lawyer."
When you're young and stupid, you get drunk on New Year's Eve. When you're old and tired, you look around for the kids who are smart and eager. They can help you. You can help them.
And things will then have a way of working out all right.
The weekend brought unrelieved fog for Daytona and a ripping case of the flu for me. I'm sure I picked up the "foreign" bugs when I went home for Christmas. It never fails: Take a trip, get a cold. Yesterday I slept for about 16 hours off and on. When that happens, it is a certain sign of fever. I'd guess it was about 125oF at the worst.
I awoke this morning at 0600 and tried to study for the ignition and charging systems quiz. It was hopeless. I couldn't focus on anything. Every five minutes I was back in the bathroom, blowing my shredded nose. The quiz could have been worse --- 2.95 when almost everyone else was taking an easy 4.0. I knew the material before the test and afterward. There was just a missing half-hour in there somewhere. Big deal.
I somehow got through the rest of the day, wandering Zombie-like from assigned place to other assigned place, came back to the motel, and began to watch a Simpsons' rerun for about ten minutes before I fell asleep . . .
Tomorrow at this time Class #231 will have officially completed one-third of the course. Whatever it takes, I intend to live to see that day. It may be close, but I think I can make it.
Sneeze.
This was our eighth day of volts. In addition to endless hours of lectures, we have also had at least 20 lab hours sticking probes into components on boards and on actual motorcycles. On Thursday afternoon we will come into the lab, be directed to a bike, and told to report on five electrical systems. I think this is going to count no more than any cheap quiz, but we will have spent 24 lab hours preparing for it. Everyone says it's a steaming beast.
You'd expect I'd have a grip on this by now. But I don't, not really. This afternoon I came up to a Yamaha dirt bike with blood in my eye, determined to test the rectifier, ignition coil, and three other things within 25 minutes flat and get it right. True test conditions. I readied my digital multimeter, planted my feet, and hit my countdown timer.
Within thirty seconds I had the rectifier by the throat and was getting bizarre readings on the diodes in both directions. Rats! It's a Yamaha and uses selenium diodes which render my digital ohmmeter useless. I've known that for a week and today I forgot it yet again. So I headed for the ignition coil, but discovered that this was the only combustion engine in world history manufactured without one. Why was it at AMI when it should have been in the Smithsonian Museum?
"Look under the tank," Jim Brown said helpfully.
"Not a word," I said. "I'm trying to flunk a test."
I yanked the tank off, remembering not to put it on the floor (a certain loss of points if they catch you doing that), and headed for the coil. What's this? One stinking wire coming in, one stinking spark plug wire going out? How in the name of Volt can I test this?
And just then a wave of utter tiredness washed over me. I sat down on the floor, turned off the meter, sighed, and leaned back against the wall. For a moment I was filled with some of the most helpless resignation I have ever felt. I could barely move. The engine was trivial, a joke. One cylinder. One spark plug. One coil. Stick a lead on the spade going in, another to ground. Read the meter. Stick a lead in the spark plug wire, another to ground. Write down the readings. Get good grade. I knew that. Once.
In mid-afternoon I snagged Van Singley, who'd been running our stint in the lab today, and said, "When am I going to know these systems instead of having constantly to think about them?"
"It'll come," he said.
Right. But this morning on a written quiz about testing the systems we've been testing for nearly a week, I came within a hair of forgetting a test value about stator wires that I thought I'd never, ever forget. One moment the knowledge is there. The next moment it's headed for the bus station with a one-way ticket to Salt Lake City.
Maybe it's just the flu. I went to bed last night before nine and slept for 10 straight hours. But calling in sick is unthinkable. I'd never catch up. If they didn't lock us out of the labs for breaks, I'd just stay in there and stick probes into motorcycle parts that by now must certainly feel nearly as sad as I do.
Those poor parts. Born to be a nice coil, to juice a spark plug up to frightening voltage levels, to die happily in a fiery roadside crash at the hands of a teenage squid. And now this. Stabbed and prodded ceaselessly until there is nothing left to stab or prod. Worse, to be zip-tied to a board, ripped forever from the happy companionship of your wiry friends. Examined, cursed, and forlorn, the very leper of broken motorcycle parts. Poor little things.
I know how they feel.
Packaging is everything. I remember when General Motors was having trouble selling the Chevy Nova in Spanish-speaking countries. Then they found out that "no va" in Spanish means "It doesn't go."
Then there were the Gerbers' baby food bottles that were stacking up unsold in stores throughout Africa. When people saw the smiling babies pictured on the containers, they thought that there were chopped up children in the jars.
Chip Ream has been packaging electricity to us by the tried-and-true spoon-feeding method: "Open your little mouths, let the airplane fly in, and WOW! That was a big load of food for thought that just landed, wasn't it?" Chip smiles happily and we try not to throw anything up. He was going to make us the biggest, fattest, happiest, electrically-oriented babies in the entire State of Florida.
The grades for the first week predictably were off the scale. Everybody was achieving new highs. We thought we were smarter and fatter and happier than any babies who'd waddled through AMI in years. Volts? Nothing to it. Gimme some more food. Here comes Chip with another beef Wellington (serves 60) and the answers to tomorrow's quiz, disguised as a "review" session.
At first you don't realize you're full. True, your diapers are getting a little snug. Then it occurs to you that Chip is going to keep shoving that food at you every four minutes, whether you like it or not. Finally the thought of another planeload of even Baby Ruth candy bars coming your way is enough to make you look up the number for the child welfare authorities.
Monday the roof started falling in. Chip wasn't "reviewing" things much and maybe the overload circuit was kicking in. After the charging and ignition system quiz on Monday, the classroom looked like a Bosnian free-fire zone. Yesterday was the component test. More hell on earth. This morning was a ten question quiz on schematics. Afterwards students began filtering out of the classroom with Xs in their eyes. I hadn't had a grade worse than a 3.0 in six weeks. This week my average is 2.95, and while it's not Fat City, it could have been a lot worse.
Maybe there can be too much of a good thing, even knowledge about electricity. I keep thinking that we just don't have time to reflect, to organize the information we are hearing, to play "what if." As soon as we manage to swallow something, Chip shows up with another lemon cake with Ohm icing.
We had a two-hour tutoring session tonight. Chip, obviously concerned that his bloated babies were contemplating mass suicide by sticking their multimeter probes into wall outlets, was his old self. He "reviewed" tomorrow's weekly test. He explained switch continuity blocks for the 15th time. He led us back over solutions we had vowed to remember this morning but had forgotten after lunch.
Lunch? Did I say lunch? Please. Don't remind me.
I haven't cried since my father died but I cried tonight.
During our morning break someone told me that there was a telephone message for me. I went to the receptionist's desk. She handed me a message that Robert Hellman, editor of the BMW Riders Association magazine On the Level, had left just minutes earlier: "Ed Culberson died last night."
I stepped back and softly said, "Oh, no." I'd known it was coming. Ed had been fighting Lou Gehrig's disease for more than a year. Toward the end he could no longer even speak and had to communicate by fax. His wife, Nell, acted as the interpreter.
At Christmas I'd faxed him a copy of the latest column I'd written for OTL. It was a story about my recently having bought a beat-up BMW '86 R80G/S, a clone of the bike Ed had ridden through the Darien Gap, the trackless jungle between Panama and Colombia. That section was, and still is ten years later, the missing link on the Pan American Highway. Ed swore he'd ride that road from the Arctic Circle to the tip of South America. It took him two tries, but he made it.
In the story I wrote how I'd bought the bike because it reminded me of "Amigo," Ed's immortal bike, now a resident of the AMA museum. When I didn't receive an immediate fax back from him to thank me --- he was so gracious that he'd have done that even if he'd hated the story --- I knew that the end was probably near.
What bitter, awful irony. Clement Salvadori told me last year that the most remarkable thing to him about Ed's big ride was that he'd done it with no more mechanical knowledge than that possessed by an ordinary fifth grade girl.
So I am at AMI, trying to correct that very failing and knowing that I would no more try to shove a motorcycle through a jungle than perform root canal on my own teeth. Ed couldn't stick a multimeter near a rear brake switch without smashing something, but at least he could ride through areas where most people cannot even stand upright.
Fifteen minutes later I was in the lab for the five component quiz for which we've been preparing for what seemed like eight years. I drew a Yamaha, automatically making my digital ohmmeter useless for testing rectifiers, and Chip Ream started the 25 minute countdown.
The rectifier was bad. It was good yesterday, so I knew they'd played switcheroo overnight. The stator was bad; same story. At that point I was getting neurotic. Didn't this bike have anything that worked? Finally, a good ignition coil. Yeah, and the horn switch was solid. I glanced at my own countdown timer. Four minutes to go. This is what working at flat-rate is all about?
I came to the last component, a rear brake switch. Step on the brake, the brake light winks. What could be simpler? Even Ed knew that. So I go to the schematic, find that the yellow and brown wires are the usual suspects, move straight to the tail of the bike, stick the probes on the appropriate wires, and get readings that are off the chart. What the hell? I'm out of time. Bad switch. Case closed.
Not a chance. Even on Yamahas the brake switch is near the brake, not the brake light. Chip shook his head in wonder. "You know better than that," he said, writing a 3.0 on the sheet.
I just smiled wanly. Ordinarily I'd have joked that the devil made me do it, but not today. A guardian angel, not the devil, made me bomb that test, to remind me of who I am and that angels really do sit on our shoulders. Outside the lab, I smoked a cigarette. When I was sure no one was looking, I looked at a cloud and said, "Thanks."
Because I won't soon forget the brake switch. And I won't forget my guardian angel either. Given the choice, I'll remember Ed.
Twelfth Night, the end of the physical week, and the first day of Week #8 for Class #231. It was a typical one in the eternal war.
There were some victories:
--- When one of the graded quizzes was handed back, I heard a voice behind me say, "Bob!" It sounded like something you'd hear if you spoke into a wide-mouthed gallon jar, a joyous reverberation, resonance, and echo. Jos� Luna, a Brazilian student, smiling as broadly as anyone since Eisenhower, was holding up his test sheet, proudly pointing to a 4.0. It was his first one. He'd been struggling for a long time, solely because of language problems. When the rest of us learn that a wye-wound stator coil is also known as a three-phase AC alternator, can you imagine what it must be like for Jos� to choke that down? Could I learn the equivalent names, plus 50 others every day, in Portuguese? Sure I could. Give me ten years.
--- Joe Snyder, combining Hollywood looks with some real brains, continued to rise on the GPA leader board. He missed one question all week. I missed three on the first quiz.
--- Gerd von Doemming aced the hands-on component quiz. When last seen he was mumbling thanks to Allah in each of the six languages he speaks. Portuguese, unfortunately for Jos�, isn't one of them.
There were some defeats:
--- Nick Caputo washed ashore on the weekly test, missing weird questions that will never be asked of anyone except an AMI student. Someone in the class might understand electricity better than he does, but I don't know who it could be. If my bike ran out of volts and the staff wasn't around, I'd start looking for Nick.
--- Jim Brown and Rich Bowles both bombed the Ohm's law quiz, making errors so stupid that I can't mention them in public. Minutes before the test began, I overheard Jim patiently explaining the theory to a hopelessly lost and confused classmate, who immediately went back into class and got a better grade on the quiz than Jim did.
And there were some ties:
--- After 8 years AMI and Darryl Traver, the principal Kawasaki instructor, parted company, effective today. Replacing him will be a former AMI instructor of whom Dave Banes speaks most highly. If I were going to Kawasaki, that would be good enough for me.
--- Every time Steve Stenger, the former manager of a national chain of pawn shops, would get close to nailing a test to the wall, a lurking green guy would ambush him. When Chip Ream, during a lecture this morning on rehabilitating basket-case bikes, began to explain hock shop theory, I looked back at Steve. He was smiling like a cherub, as usual. Steve never raises his hand and never asks questions. He just answers them, invariably correctly.
Moments before we broke for lunch, Chip told us all to shut up. He said that he'd been told by our earlier instructors that Class #231 was a good one and that he'd enjoy having us move into his cell block. He hadn't believed it. But, he said, the time he'd spent with us had made it a "joy" for him to come to school each day.
It was a joy for me too. Which accounts for the fact that I had to stand in line at the end of class to shake his hand and thank him.
So what is his parting gift? He turns us over to the non-stop talking Dave Banes, who immediately after lunch calls the class to order, tells us to shut up (except that unlike Chip, he really means it), and proceeds to flatten us with a lecture about ignition points amounting to 9 pages of scribbled notes before the break.
He's The Carburetor Man. And he's back. Help me, Allah.
If this were August, it'd be the dog days. But then if it were August I wouldn't have terminal flu. Unlike Chip Ream, I'm not working fine, nor do I expect to last a long time.
For Class #231 there's an aura of the aftermath of a siege, as if we have just been overrun by the Huns and Visigoths. The students seem to have been replaced by Pod People. At breaks they lie on the grass in the yard, looking like extras from the torching of Atlanta scene in "Gone with the Wind."
And for four hours a day Dave Banes prowls around the former battleground, shooting the wounded and anyone who begs for water.
I think the recent electrical war took a lot more out of us than we at first realized.
They finally had the sixth week grades up this morning, now that we're in the eighth week. Posting our grades was the least of the administration's problems --- when computer systems were switched ten days ago, the staff discovered that the first casualty was in the finance office: No paychecks.
Gerd von Doemming, Rodger McRae (sliding past Jim Brown into third place and just 0.03 behind Norm Hammond), and I coasted through with 4.00s. There are now eight people in the class with GPAs over 3.50.
Even with last week's 3.24 disaster, I'll hang onto first for another week, but it can't last. The closer we get to the end of this five-week term, the uglier I'm going to look. In shop the highest average in the class last week was 3.03. I asked Sean Lee what had happened.
"I'm not sure," he said. "I think that every time we ask a question, our grade drops."
Ominous. If someone blasts a 60-foot hole in the back wall of the shop tomorrow morning, at least he won't lose any points for asking a question about hydrogen gas.
On the ride this morning over to school I felt like Amundsen attacking the South Pole, which probably meant that it was 45oF. By the time I arrived, I was frozen solid and my sinuses, blown out along without my Eustachian tubes after more than a week of Lingering Death, were in need of another drain. I staggered over to the men's room.
In one of the stalls I ripped off a couple of feet of paper to blow my nose. As I glanced up, I saw a box of air freshener pellets hanging in a corner of the stall. Someone had written on it, "AMI Breath Mints."
Below that someone else had written, "Works Fine & Lasts a Long Time."
Dave Banes began a lecture yesterday afternoon, commencing a review of everything anyone would ever want to know about motorcycle tune ups. He finished it off in mid-morning today. If I were going to do 15% of the things that he mentioned, it would take me six months to finish the job, at which point it would be time for another tune up. Roll the rock up the hill, watch it roll down the other side. Roll the rock up the hill . . .
After lunch our class was split up, the low numbers going into the lab to practice valve adjustments and the higher-numbered half scheduled for a lecture by Chip Ream on periodic maintenance. Say what? Isn't that sort of like a . . . well, tune up?
I'll give him this: Chip launched into the subject with his usual vigor, seemingly unafraid that there were 30 students in the class fully prepared to slit his throat and feed him to the sea gulls if he said another word about oil changes, suspension adjustments, or work orders. If we hadn't been so hammered into aerated pulp already, I'm sure we'd have done it.
There was a high point. Chip drew a picture of a chain's master link on the board --- he called it a bird --- and labelled it in a way that would make it absolutely impossible ever to forget which way the closed end of the link should face on the chain. I immediately stood up and took two steps toward the door.
"Hold it!" Chip yelled. He knew exactly what I had in mind. "No photographs!"
I ignored him and got the camera out of my locker anyway. But there's no way that, even if the shot comes out, it will ever see the light of day in any family publication.
At the break a couple of students in the other section told me that they'd spent about 15 minutes practicing valve adjustments, then hunkered down in a corner to study for the three quizzes we have scheduled for tomorrow.
Mercifully it ended. At 4:55, having written the last, final, terminal, and ultimately endmost words about tune ups on the board, Chip looked at his watch and said, "Well, my timing's getting better at delivering this horrible lecture. Go home."
He didn't need to ask us twice.
We had three quizzes today. The first one had a question that required us to name the number of degrees from top dead center that a 1926 Brough Superior's #2 exhaust valve would open if the timing had been retarded to counteract weak springs in a centrifugal advance. Well, maybe it wasn't that exact question, but it's close enough. Naturally I hit the canvas face down with a strained chuckle and a 3.0, hoping for better things in the afternoon.
The first afternoon quiz contained exactly five questions. Miss one and you've got a 2.0. Fortunately, the level of difficulty was about -8.4. The last question was no worse than this:
Daisy Duck's boyfriend is:
1. Machine Gun Kelly
2. Donald Duck
3. Bill Clinton
4. Saint Thomas Aquinas
Chip Ream has been joking for a week that the term "residual magnetism" has a strange and hypnotic lure for students. No one is quite sure why that is, but given a multiple choice answer with "residual magnetism" as one of the possibilities, no matter what the question is someone will choose it. So in a spirit of comic relief, for Daisy Duck's boyfriend I wrote in "residual magnetism," then scratched a bold line through it. I smiled at the thought of Chip's face, reviewing the quiz tonight, when he came to my paper.
Then I answered the question seriously: I wrote "3."
We switched quizzes with our neighbor to grade them. I'm tired of grading Jim Brown's 4.0s, so I handed mine to Norm Hammond. Occasionally Norm screws up and dives to a 3.9.
"Three?" he laughed. "You scratched out `residual magnetism' to write in `3'?"
I stared at the paper, transfixed in horror. I don't care how many girlfriends Clinton has. There is almost no way that one of them is Daisy Duck. No explanation could possibly be offered for that answer.
"It started as a joke," I offered to explain, but gave up.
The final quiz was another laugher. I changed one answer at the last second to save a 4.0. They caution us not to do that, since 70% of the time a correct answer will be exchanged for a wrong one. Maybe. But today alone I changed five answers in 25 questions. In every case the original answer was wrong. I'm ragged, worn out, and getting measurably worse with each passing day.
The grades through the seventh week were up this morning. I dropped a couple of clicks but still hung onto first by 0.04 points over Chuck Fort, coming out of the pack and crushing the past two weeks with a 3.99 average. He's the former head tech for a multi-line car dealership. I used to wonder when he'd catch fire. I've stopped wondering.
No matter how well I do tomorrow on the valve adjustment lab quiz and weekly test, I think my ridiculous run is over. If there's any justice at AMI, next week's leader board will at last be headed by someone who has a clue about what's going on.
And I bet he knows who Huey, Dewey, and Louie are too.
Between Daytona Bach and northern Georgia there's only one road with any curves. It's the Bellevue Avenue Extension on the south side of the city airport, not far from the race track. Last night at about 1800 Ryan and Jeremy were testing its meager limits with their sportish bikes. Jeremy passed a car, then realized that he was on top of a hard right-hander with, in Ryan's words, "some serious revs." Ryan opted not to pass and his reward for that judgment was not to be Jeremy's roommate today in Halifax hospital.
Jeremy low-sided, possibly because of some loose sand (the road is always filthy), shot across the highway in the purest form of Newtonian motion, and slammed his right leg into a metal traffic post. The bike's faring disintegrated. When last seen the CBR600 was on what was left of its side, ricochetting from tree to tree on its way to the ocean five miles to the east. Ryan told him that the leg was all right. Later at the hospital Jeremy said, "You lied to me, man."
Ryan dutifully assisted the police investigation. "He was doing about 50 mph," he suggested.
"Come on, son," the cop said. "The lady he passed said he was doing at least 115."
It's a bad fracture, compound and comminuted, but luckily below the knee. Ryan feels that Jeremy's spirits are pretty good. Though in semi-shock when they were putting him into an ambulance, he saw the nurse's left hand.
"So you're not married, huh?"
The AMI spirit never sleeps.
That's not to say that some of the school's students don't, especially when it counts. During the valve adjustment lab quiz this morning, two students who shall remain mercifully nameless took 2.0s for loose valves and another grabbed a zero for making adjustments at top dead center exhaust instead of TDC compression. Don't ask me how.
You had to work to screw that test up. I saw Dave Banes breaking into a sweat trying to pull some feeler gauges out. He gave the student a 4.0.
Too tight? Not for Dave. I (having tortured valves on my Beemer exactly twice) am 1.2 million behind Dave in Total Lifetime Valves Adjusted. Nonetheless I thought I should share my experiences with him. Possibly Dave hadn't met someone whose fine measurements had been achieved by trying to stick a thumb under the rocker arm.
"I'm using the `go/no-go' method," I said. It couldn't be easier: You need 0.07" clearance? Try a 0.06" feeler; it should slide easily. Then try the 0.08" feeler. If it won't fit, you're done.
"Not in here you won't," Dave said. "That's for shim and buckets, not for this type of valve."
We went back and forth a while.
"They're just like my Beemer's valves," I said.
"BMW owners are not known for the precision of their tuning," he rejoined with a tight grimace.
"Too tight and you fry them," I said.
"You could be off half a hundredth with go/no-go," he said.
"Van Singley (the BMW instructor) said it was OK," I said.
"Van isn't giving you the grade in this class," Dave said, concluding the argument with unassailable logic.
I got my 4.0, but I hope someone loosened those poor things up before we left school today. I'd hate to have them feeling as bad tonight as Jeremy surely does.
We spent the first half of the morning doing circuit construction: Extracting and redrawing isolated circuits (charging systems, ignition systems, etc.) from full schematics. It sounds boring but it's actually kind of fun. For a change I saw the full value of the exercise right from the start so I plunged in with almost no whining.
After the break we had a lab demo from Dave Banes on how to adjust points. They used to have those things on motorcycles and cars back around the time of the Civil War. I know, I know --- there are 50 billion bikes out there with points and I'm training to be a mechanic, not a 1994 BMW P-D repairman. Still, I am believer in high tech. I used to go out with the niece of Walter Brattain. He won a Nobel prize for inventing the transistor.
The infamous nine week test is next Thursday, a huge multiple guess morale-breaker that covers everything from Day #1 forward. Fortunately Chip Ream has promised a three-hour "review;" without the prospect of that I could easily drop into a dangerous mood.
Saturday night I had nearly run out of excuses to study for the nine week test. But wait! Maybe I should do one last circuit construction, a schematic of my BMW's charging system. Out come the shop manuals with the wiring diagrams and a while later my elemental drawing was sitting before me, as clean as your basic hound's tooth. I stared at it with a growing sense of awe. I saw the dreaded blue wire, looking like any other innocent line on a piece of paper.
Not innocent at all. It was the wire that brought me to AMI. Leaving Belize City last January, my bike stopped cold on the road with a battery more dead than last week's beer. For the rest of the afternoon and nearly all of the next morning the three guys I was with, all very good shade tree mechanics, tried to find out what had made my charging system disintegrate. I was literally five minutes from sticking the bike in a crate and air mailing it back to Dulles so my hometown wrenches could have at it.
Then John Lyle looked at a wire coming out of the voltage regulator, a light blue thing that looked perfectly normal --- until you rotated it. The wire had frayed through, though the insulating material still held it together. The trip was saved, but I couldn't stop thinking about it.
In March, during Bike Week, after having had a tour of AMI earlier in the afternoon, I ran across Van Singley at the BMW campground north of Daytona. We'd never met. When I saw that he was an AMI instructor, I mentioned the blue wire to him and how it had changed my retirement plans: If that pig wire could stop me, how could I hope to ride solo around the world?
"Don't worry about that," Van said. "If you come to AMI, we teach you how to track down a problem like that down in 15 minutes."
It was nice to hear, but I never believed him. Not then, not before I came to AMI, not through the first eight weeks here. Not until last night when the blue wire was on the paper, revealed at last, naked and evil. My bike's charging system has six controls (field coil, diode board, regulator, charge light, kill switch, and ignition switch), 23 connectors, and 11 wires. If the controls are good and the connectors connected, you look for a frayed wire.
I'm betting it will be blue.
Years ago at the ninth hole of the Kemper Open I saw Jack Nicklaus miss a shot that even I could have made. He knew he'd scrubbed the eight iron as soon as the ball erupted from the fairway. It hit the edge of the green's embankment, paused for a moment, then rolled back down a huge hill. One foot was all the difference.
John Mahaffey, Nicklaus' playing partner, meanwhile was under a bush on the far side of the rough. He couldn't stand straight up and could not take even a half backswing. His caddy handed him a club and a body bag. Mahaffey choked down on the iron and took as much of a hack as he could.
The ball flew from the jungle a foot off the ground, smacked the edge of the hill almost exactly where Nicklaus' ball had hit, leaped into the air, and bounced forward to within five feet of the hole. Slowly Mahaffey looked up from his crouch, oblivious to the screaming crowd, and stared straight at Nicklaus with a grin. Nicklaus smiled back and nodded. The brotherhood of The Pro.
After the morning break we were herded back into the live engine lab for another practice session with setting points. Tomorrow we will have 15 minutes to do one set. The next day we'll have 25 minutes to do two sets on a four-cylinder engine. I grabbed all the necessary tools while Jim secured a suitable machine.
This was to be under rigid test conditions, we agreed.
"And you can't look at your notes," he said.
"That's not a rule," I griped.
"It is now."
So I started my countdown timer. Thirty seconds passed.
"Stop looking at your watch," Jim said.
I did both sets of points in 21 minutes. "Your turn," I said. "Beat that."
He finished both sets in 9:58.
I shook my head. The man is a born wrench. I've stood two feet from surgeons, watching them perform all sorts of operations. Their hands glide smoothly, almost without detectable movement. Nothing is hurried or done in panic. When Rip Riva, an obstetrician, would run into a nest of trouble, he'd start singing.
That's the style that Brown uses to float over a machine. I can see his hands move, I can watch him at work, but I don't know how he does it. It's the nature of magic. Harry Houdini must have started that way.
Norm Hammond wandered over. He wanted to be timed. As soon as he started, Jim looked up at me.
"What's he doing wrong?" Jim asked.
I said that Norm was skipping a step.
Norm laughed blithely, continuing to work in a casual fashion. A few minutes passed. Norm cranked the engine around and the ohmmeter jumped right at the "fire" mark. One set in the bag.
"Don't do what he's doing," Jim told me sternly. "You can't base a procedure on a lucky shot." Norm laughed again. Jim wasn't being critical of Norm; he was protecting me from myself. The first corner I cut will be the one that goes down a blind alley and I'll seize up. Jim knows it. Even I know it.
Norm finished the second set. Eleven minutes and change.
Two lucky shots? I doubt it. Jim smiled. Norm returned it. They're good. I'm not. They know what they're doing and where they can cut corners. I followed the painted stripe everywhere it leads.
Because that's what rookies are supposed to do.
After my recent successes in circuit construction, I was looking forward to the quiz this morning. When Chip handed it out, I instantly recognized it as a charging system on a platter, made for a 4.0. I missed a zero by a hair. I knew what I did wrong and why and it didn't help a bit. I was losing control.
We then went into the live engine lab for the quiz on setting one set of stinking points in 15 minutes. In practice I did two sets in that time, dead bang on. During the test I battled the mother of all backing plates. But I struggled through it without obvious panic though, by the time the bell rang, the points had developed a slightly crummy gap. It should have been 0.016". It was closer to a foot. And the timing was off a bit. I judged that it was so far advanced that I couldn't have fired up the engine if I'd thrown gasoline on it. Don Parker gave me a 3.0, more as a reward for being cute, I suspect, than for skill.
At lunch I wandered around, trying to find a small animal to kick. This is the ultimate frustration, knowing the material and knowing how to handle the task but under the gun being able to do neither. I gnashed my teeth and muttered to myself. It seems to have been like this for two solid weeks. I can't shake it.
After lunch we had yet another quiz, this one on lubrication systems. I could have missed five, had absolutely no idea about two of them, and wound up with a 4.0. I don't know how. What I don't understand about oil slingers and dry sumps and storage tanks is staggering.
With the lubrication behind us, we could sit back and listen to Don Parker rattle on about fixing broken bolts for the remainder of the afternoon without worrying about a test tomorrow. There isn't any room left on the schedule tomorrow for another test, what with another micrometer quiz, the second points adjustment lab, and two quizzes on carbs and electrics in the afternoon. So I fought sleep and wrote maybe ten words of notes.
Until I heard Don's voice. "Now I need a volunteer to come up here and show us how to insert this helicoil." I snapped awake, realizing that the Red Alert was flashing. I know Parker's style. But years of practice have taught me how to avoid being called on when I'm not ready: I stare directly at the teacher with a defiant frown.
"Bob, come on up here," Parker said happily.
"Not me, Don," I groaned. "I'm already having a very bad day."
So there I was, standing in front of 55 people, naked and defenseless, with only a tiny helicoil to protect me. I can't set points anymore, I have forgotten how deep ground wires have to be buried, and everything I'd ever stored up at AMI has begun to leak back out of my ears. So give me something new to screw up, Don, with an audience of hungry lions. Why not skip the helicoil and just toss me to them? I'll never be more ready.
The demo went all right. I'm just grateful that helicoils don't have explosive charges built into them. Today was definitely not the day for me to be playing with things that go "boom."
If they're trying to break me, it's working. Today I felt as if I were being bitten to death by a duck.
We started off in the skill lab with Lanny Young, a teacher whom we hadn't been with in weeks. "Today it's Mics V," he said cheerily. "You know the drill. You've got just under two hours. Go to it."
Micrometers again, the identical test we'd taken back in 1971. No worries, I thought. I'd gotten a 3.7 on that one and thought I couldn't do any worse. The problem was that I'd forgotten how to read the thimble gauges on a vernier micrometer and I'd left my handouts at the motel. Maybe it would come to me.
What drives me crazy is the radio. Maybe listening to classic rock-n-roll soothes the average student, but my view of "classic" is something older than two weeks. Naturally I was the only person in the room who'd never heard the music; I could tell because the guys behind me were singing along with their own obscene lyrics.
Things felt consistent. That was the way Gerd had felt in Mics IV when he'd eaten a 1.2. The grades would be ready after lunch.
Then we were back in Don Parker's clutches for the final round of the points drill, two sets in 25 minutes. I swore this morning I'd grab those damned things by the throat and make them dance the chicken. Not even bothering to let Jim have a shot at practicing, I sat down with a decent head of steam and began grinding away by rote. It worked well for a good two minutes, at which point the backing plate again refused to pop the points open.
"You morons!" I started swearing at the pieces of carbon and metal. I wasn't going to go through this again. Although there had been a pretty good whining chorus among the students yesterday, all blaming bummed out engines on their scores, I knew that in the right hands these machines could be levelled. Besides, I was tired of blaming inanimate objects for my problems, though I still enjoyed swearing at them.
Jim fixed the thing up and gave me a few more pointers. The left set of points required a pretty liberal gap or it would never fall into line, he said. I didn't know why he said that but I didn't care. I had a 0.016" feeler gauge. I'd measure with my fist if that's what it took to make that ohmmeter jump.
Don told us to approach the starting gate. Go. Jos� Luna, the Brazilian who can do no wrong with his hands in the lab, but still is terrified of written tests, raised his hands in an loathsomely short time. Give the man his 4.0, Don, and watch him light up.
In just over eight minutes I had both sets done. Jim wandered into the room. I made a "safe" sign. He smiled. I rechecked the left gap. It was fat, but in Juliet's words, I was "past hope, past care, past sorrow." There was no way to reset it without starting from scratch. Sure. I wheeled the crank around to the 2-3 set. It looked advanced. I played with it a couple of times without appreciable effect, cranked it back to the 1-4, hoping that the Gap Fairy had left a smaller opening. She hadn't. Enough. I raised my hand.
"The 1-4 is wide," Don said. He cranked. "And the 2-3 is a little advanced."
"Quit complaining and give me my 4.0," I said.
"You'll take a 3.5," Don said.
"That I will," I said. I went outside to call my stockbroker. On top of my other sorrows, Ben & Jerry's ice cream is in cardiac arrest.
Jim wandered out of Mics V with a four on his face. He's on fire. Every day he gets better; every day I go farther into the tank.
Two quizzes awaited us in the afternoon: carbs and electrics. Forty questions total, but Chip Ream would be doing the reviewing for each one and that alone was worth the price of admission. I'd gotten up at 0530 to review carbs this morning. It was bad. I wasn't sure any longer what they were supposed to do. Something about air, I thought.
I'll never understand AMI's philosophy about these quizzes. Since 1978, because of EPA's infinite wisdom, you cannot find a bike with carb floats that don't connect together. You cannot do anything to such floats except admire their simple box-like beauty. They don't get out of alignment, so you don't have to measure them or nudge them or smack their little plastic faces when they act up. They never do. They just float.
And that's assuming you can find a bike with carbs anyway. I know they still make them, but even Harley is going to fuel injection. And we've had a half-hour in nine weeks about that.
Chip was almost apologetic about discussing floats. But he suggested there might be . . . oh, say three questions about them. Lord. Fifteen percent of the test about something so irrelevant that even the teacher was embarrassed to discuss it?
We mumbled and circled the boxes and went outside for a break. The grades were up in the lounge for the 8th week. The wolves are closing in on Our Student-Wrench Hero. My 3.66 leads Jim and Chuck Fort by 0.01 point. I looked at the sheet and smiled, knowing that the streak was over. I'm having another modest run and Jim hasn't seen anything under a 4.0 in a week.
Lanny had the micrometer grades after the break. Everyone did well, it seemed. Jim took another 4.0. Even I got one. Jos� stared at his worksheet. A 4.0. He couldn't speak. There was something about the mics that drove him berserk. No longer, I guess.
More 4.0s rolled in on the carb quiz, Jim's sixth straight in two days. I took one too. Jos� tapped me on the back, smiling almost to the point of chipping a tooth.
Chip then reviewed the electrics quiz, another 20 questions, but the grades headed to ground. I don't know what happened. Five minutes before the test Chip practically said, "The answer to #1 is `Never.'" So I glared at it in total confusion and wrote, "Always." I missed two others for a 2.5 and Jim screwed up a pair. Had there been a wall around, we'd have all had to take tickets to walk into it.
So tomorrow is the weekly test, the infamous 9th week barn burner, 60 questions covering everything from Day #1 to ten minutes ago.
I'm really sorry about this, but if I can find a re-run of "Taxi," I think I'll sit back for a while. Better than that, I'll look for an all-night "Taxi" festival. Or the best of "General Hospital." Or "Hee Haw." Past hope, past care, past sorrow.
Juliet, wherefore art thou?
Neil Hayes, the instructor who runs the shop, was our lecturer this morning, finishing up round #2 of troubleshooting. The man is all business, rattling like a machine gun and rarely cracking a smile. In 3.5 hours I took 13 pages of notes, some of which may be legible.
And he has a propensity for talking about things that bubble with sulfuric acid (like batteries), catch fire (like batteries), or explode in your face (like batteries). Finally I turned to Jim and said, "If he says one more word about batteries blowing up, I'm putting a flywheel magneto in my bike." I wasn't quite sure what a magneto was, but I began to realize why Neil didn't smile much. Boiling acid isn't usually the foundation stone of great comedy.
Almost everyone's mind was on the 9th week test anyway, so maybe they didn't really hear what a battery is capable of. For a change I had slipped into a state of tomb-like lethargy. I had gotten to the point where the thought of opening up my notes for the 18 millionth time was too grotesque to consider further. I figured with 60 questions I could take a dive on a bunch and still sleep at night.
Chip did his usual review. He is so thorough about previewing material that it almost seems that studying is superfluous. But I've found that after the first few test questions, you had either better know the material cold anyway or you're going in the tank.
At one point I could have sworn I heard him say something about fuses protecting a circuit from voltage overloads, but I didn't write it down. Even I know that you stick a 10 amp fuse in the bike to keep the wires from melting. The scientific explanation is that volts and amps don't get along all that well anyway, as Elizabeth Ohm learned to her sorrow. She was the inventor of the first battery. It blew up.
So I was going through the test like Genghis Khan through Samarkand and I come to question #15. It asks: What kind of ignition system is this? a) BPI; b) flywheel magneto; c) atomic bomb; d) Zippo lighter. The picture looked sort of like the points plate I'd been staring at for days, so I circled BPI (battery points ignition).
The next question asked what sort of charge was cranked out by the system in answer #15: a) AC; b) DC; c) Washington, DC; d) Master Card. My brain began bubbling with an angry, battery-like fizz. I first saw this junk in the second week of class with the stinking air and fuel screws. Miss the first question and double your fun by taking an automatic miss on the second. I checked DC, since that's what batteries put out, at least when they're not spewing acid in your face. Naturally the system was a flywheel magneto that cranked out AC, but I didn't find that out until it was too late.
There was a "name this ignition system" on a schematic. I saw a box --- I'm not making this up --- labelled "pointless regulator," so even with a battery it clearly wasn't a BPI but a TCI, QED.
There was, however, that other thing which, if I'd looked at it, bore the unmistakable fingerprint of a nasty set of points and condensers, but it wasn't labelled "pointless points." At least I knew it was a battery system, since half the diagram had been eaten away by pointless acid.
Three wrong, and my reign as GPA leader over. I congratulated the guy who almost certainly will take over my valued first place spot, Jim Brown. The only question he'd dropped was about fuses, volts, and amps but didn't complain about Chip's misstatement. Jim's known what fuses do since he was six. All I know is that without me, he wouldn't be where he is today: He'd be a lot farther ahead.
And I'm not sure what it's going to cost to go retro, but tonight I'm looking through the Yellow Pages for "Magnetos, Used."
I have spent my life around physicians. They all remember the first time anyone called them "Doctor." It always happened during the first year of med school. They'd be walking through the hospital in a white coat when a lady would call out, "Doctor, can you help me?"
They say that their first thought was, "Who is that woman talking to?" Then they'd realize: she thinks I'm a doctor! It is, they say, an unforgettable experience. All because of a white coat.
Today was as good a day as I've had at school, the start of 2.5 days of troubleshooting in the live engine lab where we will do 11 static (motor off) and dynamic (motor running) tests on real bikes.
"And," Don Parker said right off the bat, "don't coming whining to me that the bike doesn't work. This is troubleshooting, remember? So fix it. Then test it." He gave us a brief explanation of every drill. Don said we could do some of the work on our own bikes, so I volunteered to do the radiator leakage test on mine. I was confident it would pass easily, since it's air-cooled.
Jim and I hauled our bikes around to the back of the lab. My mighty Beemer cranked out 140 psi and his wretched Hog, which should have delivered maybe 100 pounds when new squeaked out close to 180. I was going to check my ignition coils but I'd just filled the bike last night and didn't feel like lifting 75 pounds of gasoline in the tank to reach them. It was then I remembered why real mechanics hate it when you bring your bike in for a tune up with a full tank.
On a roll, I grabbed the timing light --- I'd seen one once, but today this one felt like an old pal --- and aimed it into the most private parts of the engine. The idle rpm was off some, but at the spec reference of 3,200 it was so perfect that I actually heard the sound of one hand clapping. Or maybe it was just a loose valve.
We synchronized my carbs, since Jim's bike has just one and is pretty synchronous already. At idle the mercury levels on the carb sticks were off a bit, which I'd anticipated by the timing light results. At 3,000 rpm they were Siamese twins. I decided to fix the right carb by dropping it to the level of the left. When I rode home after school, I realized that while I had achieved a pair of nicely synched carbs, they were also idling at 2,200 rpm, twice normal.
So I'd adjusted the wrong way, big deal. When I got back to the motel, I grabbed the screwdriver and cranked them both down to a reasonable rpm rate. They can await a re-synch until Monday. At least I know which way to go now, and I didn't know that this morning.
I put the screwdriver away and began to walk across the parking lot to the room. Marvin, the owner of the motel, called to me.
"Hey, I know you're a bike mechanic, but could you help us?" A lady had a dead battery; they were trying to defibrillate it with jumper cables from his battery. He'd already hooked up his side.
My first thought was, "Who is Marvin talking to?" Then I knew: He'd seen the blue T-shirt, the AMI rookie uniform. He doesn't know, I thought. He thinks I can help, that I'm a real wrench. I have never jump started anything in my life. But he doesn't know that.
Think, Robert: Positive first, then negative. I connect the cables to the lady's battery. Fire, Marvin. Now, lady. Nothing. I have an open or a bad ground. Turn 'em off, folks. Brush the leads together. Nada. It's on Marvin's side. I looked at his battery. The terminals were covered with rubberized junk, probably to prevent jumper cables from working. I scraped it off with my fingernail. Reattach cables. Now, Marvin. Now, lady. Vrooooooom.
I'm going to remember this day for the rest of my life. Today a man called me "Doctor." And I made him well.
With three days now remaining in the five-week term, a short timer's mentality has taken over the student body and student mind. That is particularly true of Class #231, again split up this week into two sections. My group has spent the last two days in the lab, trying to perform 11 different tasks on various motorcycles. If you know what you're doing, and most of us do at this point, there isn't any reason not to be able to finish in the allotted time.
So Jim and I found a way to screw up one of the tasks today. It was in the session with the "growler," a device which is supposed to test for short circuits in armatures. I know what an armature does, but it's easier to explain what it looks like: A cylindrical piece of metal with a nest of wires wrapped in it, about six inches long, two inches in diameter, and weighing about 200 pounds.
You take an armature and stick it in the growler. When you turn the growler on, you will stop wondering how it got its name. Your job now is to rotate the armature in the growler with one hand, which is impossible, and with the other hand hold a lengthy feeler strip lengthwise just over the armature's surface like a dowsing rod.
The theory is that if there is a short circuit in the armature, the resultant magnetic field created by the growler will grab the feeler strip and slam it down onto the armature as if true love has struck them both. It is also considered excellent form to accompany the growler by making loud "Grrrrrr" sounds.
Occasionally, I am told, there is an excellent chance that the growler will deliver a shock that will try to slam you back to the 19th century, but it didn't happen to me and I'm hoping it was a joke because I'm going to have to do the whole exercise tomorrow again. We hadn't realized that the armatures were numbered, so our carefully tabulated results don't mean anything since they don't relate to anything except tests of random armatures.
The highlight of the day was the performance of yet another invasive and humiliating test on my poor bike. After ripping the ignition coil off and sticking multimeter probes into its sensitive parts and running it through a coil tester, trying for 15 agonizing minutes to make it melt, we concluded that even more fun could be had by running the Beemer through the exhaust gas analyzer.
We rammed the "sniffer" up the pipe and waited for the EGA to reveal the count of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide. The results were okay. We showed Don Parker what we'd done. He immediately dropped to his knees with a screwdriver and starter rummaging around the bottom of the right carburetor.
"I think he's lost his mind," I said to Jim.
But he hadn't. Like all the AMI instructors, Don is comfortable working on machinery that ranges in complexity from a BB to a nuclear reactor. He was playing with the air-fuel mixture screws. I didn't even know the bike had such things. In 30 seconds he had cut the hydrocarbons in half and the CO by two-thirds. And the engine sounded better too.
Well, maybe Parker doesn't know anything about biomedical devices. I think I'll tell him tomorrow that I can't face the growler again because of my pacemaker. He might believe it. You never know.
But then again, he might just watch me more carefully. If I started to twitch, he'd throw me on the table, cut me open, and start looking around for a malfunctioning part.
And with my luck, he'd probably test anything he found on the growler.
Riding to school this morning, I rolled up behind a common squid at a traffic light. By the way he revved his whining engine as he waited, I could tell that the Ancient One in the car to his left was going to get a surprise when the light turned green. And she did. The squid came off the light with his wheel in the air for about 25 yards, impressing himself totally and nearly throwing the Ancient One into fibrillation. A real show. I gritted my teeth.
The long light at Nova turned red just as we rolled up. The squid didn't appreciate that a quick right turn there followed by a U-turn and another right equals a straight line, which I took, watching him recede in my rear view mirror. Two lights later I caught another punk just as the first one whined past me at 8,000 rpm with his brakes locking up.
Now there were two of them at the light with maybe 260 mph of total potential, 18% blood-testosterone levels, and 50 functioning brain cells between them. Naturally they leaped off the line on the green light like rats fleeing an electrified grid. I shook my head some more, developing a real headache.
I think there are more cops per capita in Daytona Beach than anywhere this side of Burma, but none to be seen this morning. Both of them arrived at AMI a full ten seconds before I did, having irritated who knows how many commuters in the process. And they'll do the same thing every morning and afternoon for five months. Between them and the "Loud Pipes Cause Deafness" crowd, is there any wonder why motorcyclists have something of an image problem? I'm about ready to vote the damned things off the street myself.
Fortunately the growler was in a good mood this morning so I finished that effort off and turned in my lab sheets. Don Parker showed us a lengthy infomercial about how to put a drag bike together from parts found in the ordinary home. This was created by a fellow who happens to sell those particular parts if your home lacks such essentials as 39mm Mongo carbs with titanium fittings.
Our sections then switched. Our group headed after lunch back into Chip Ream's care for a 2.5 day lecture on management. It is not billed as a brain-squeezer way to end our ten-week term. Basically Chip gave an example of Sam working at $40 an hour flat rate. If he gets the job done in an hour, he makes $40. He also makes $40 if he completes the task in ten minutes or six months. Everyone got that? Good. Then we have a test. What is one plus one (in round numbers)?
After the break Chip cracked down. Our second quiz forced us to multiply one times one, then subtract one. By the time of the weekly test in a couple of days, he should have half the class in the hospital. That one won't be an open book exam. I'm not kidding.
We were given our assignments for the next five weeks. As expected, I'm going to BMW with four other students. Van Singley, the Beemer guru, told me that he has a lift ready for my bike.
A lift? Wait till I tell the poor thing. "And now we're going to put you way high in the air and you remember all those things we were sticking in you the last few days? Well, we're going to do that all over again, plus about 900 more things you don't even want to think about."
It might have been worse, I guess. The bike could have been a Ninja and spent a lifetime wheelying away from traffic lights in Daytona Beach. At least it got to see Guatemala before it croaked.
We have spent a couple of days studying flat rates, dealer expenses, payroll taxes, collision estimates, and miscellaneous reasons why your next bill for a minor tune up on your 1979 Honda 250 Rebel will be $1,872.91 (California residents add 71.2% tax). One student volunteered that he was going to start his own Harley shop when he graduated.
"Where?" Chip Ream asked.
"Here," the innocent student replied.
The look slowly spread over Chip's face, the one he gets when he again remembers that teaching at AMI is not always a fulfilling experience. "What will your flat rate be?" he asked, not caring about the answer. I could see what was coming.
"Maybe $75."
"And maybe you'll go broke when the other dealers are charging $42," Chip reminded him.
"So I'll charge $39," the fellow countered.
"And go broke because you lose money on every job that comes in," Chip said, putting on the blackboard a list of monthly expenses that, when divided by a reasonable number of working hours, would produce bankruptcy in a matter of minutes. In the section of the class occupied by the entrepreneurs-to-be, long faces began to appear.
"Look, if you're good at this, you can make a ton of money. You don't need a college education. You just have to be a good mechanic. Others have done it. You can too."
Dave Banes had a favorite story about a shop years ago that charged $20/hour. If you wanted your bike worked on by the good wrench, however, you had to pay $30/hour. And people stood in line to do it. The "good" guy was Eraldo Ferracci, who specialized in making bikes run better than the factory specs. Last year his three bikes started 1-2-3 on the grid at the Daytona 200. Or maybe it was just 1-2-4. It doesn't matter.
"And," Chip continued, "there's Rob Muzzy. Just a mechanic. Anyone know what he makes?"
"Seven figures," Rich Bowles said with some hope.
I can't prove it, but I think the grades went up on the next quiz. There seemed to be a more dedicated purpose among the students after Chip's pep talk. I was impressed. If I could meet Ferracci, he might be able to introduce me to Sophia Loren.
The ninth week grades were posted after lunch and the coroner spoke: The king is dead. Long live the kings. After seven weeks at the top, your humble scribe has been dethroned and now resides in third place with a 3.63. Jim Brown and Chuck Fort are tied for first with 3.67. As usual Norm Hammond, Joe Snyder, and a half-dozen others are nipping at my heels. It's about time. The charade was great while it lasted, but it's satisfying to know that there is still a place for merit in this world. The meritorious people have taken over. The Top Ten is looking mighty fine to me right now.
Tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. we will be half-way toward the graduation podium. My guess is that either Chuck or Jim will give the valedictory speech, if they have one. And my money's on Jim. Anyone who would deliberately turn off the key to a helicopter while still 200 feet off the ground to demonstrate to a petrified student an unpowered rotor landing can obviously handle pressure. And few people I have ever met seem to care about it less.
Ah. On Friday Mr. Brown goes to shop and I go to BMW training. I've done some sublimely dumb things in my life, but bribing Jim to carry me in the past seven weeks wasn't one of them. Not even close.
This is the half-way point. There have been times (not many, but enough) when I didn't think I'd reach the end of the tenth week. Somehow I did. Tomorrow I will be free of my blue AMI T-shirt that designates my rookie standing. This afternoon at the break I marched into James Watts office and said, "I insist that you give me my white BMW training T-shirts right this minute. I've taken 4.0s on six straight quizzes this week and there's no way you're holding me back, even if I zero the weekly test. Which I won't."
Watts considered my non-negotiable demands carefully and told me to get out of his office. I'll be back tomorrow morning. They owe me those five shirts.
This morning we had a couple of quizzes on writing up collision estimates. It's the sort of test that if you write down the cost of a rear footpeg ($48.27) instead of the front one ($48.35), you're looking at a basic zero because all of your figures from that point will be junk. I got through the quizzes with blind luck and by checking everything four times.
In the late afternoon we had the weekly test, ten questions about troubleshooting and ten about management. As is customary on AMI weekly tests, there were questions that Sherlock Holmes would have loved. "When you eliminate the impossible," he once said, "whatever remains, however improbable, must be true."
I have missed questions about compression tests on every quiz I have taken almost since Day #1, but today I was ready. So when I eliminated the impossible on question #6, what remained, the compression test, had to be true. So I checked it. But I got 19 others right for a 3.5 and a 3.88 for the week, minus what the sadistic Don Parker will do to my 11 troubleshooting lab tests.
At the end of the day Chip Ream thanked us for being such an attentive, hard-working class. Not one of us will be forced to repeat. He said that he would gladly hire every person in the room to work for him, although he admitted that some of us probably wouldn't last a week. Then he wrote on the board: "Class 231 is (was) the best!"
We clapped happily, knowing that even it is true, we had a lot of help along the way.
© 1994, 1995, 1996, Iron Butt Association, Chicago, Illinois
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