Suddenly, we have two Girls of Bikernet coming to the Cantina. So, what’s the story line. I don’t have one, but I’ll tell you my thoughts and see where it leads.
First, I was determined to write another Why Chop? story about a guy who builds his first chopper for love, romance or a girl. He’s not a great looking guy, athletic, or tough, but he wants to impress this particular girl. He watched her from afar and discovers the glint in her warm brown eyes when a flashy motorcycle or hot rods rolls past.
He studies her shapely movements and determines that motorcycles win. She is impacted by her peers who try to steer her towards Ivy League guys in sports cars. But he can tell she has almost a sexual appetite for bikes as if she’s dying to spread her Lucious legs and slip them over a vibrating saddle.
This young man needs to move fast. He buys a used bagger, gets an after-school job, searches for info and resources and meets an old guy who is polishing his hot rod. He’s about to enter it in a show in Minneapolis, the Donnie Smith Show, but the show is packed, and he’s forced to display the ’32 highboy outside the front door.
This kid helps the old guy with his gear and doesn’t know who he just met, Jon Kosmoski, the founder of House of Kolors paint, and a master builder, painter and artist. Jon, a friendly sort invited the kid into the show and makes sure he meets Donnie Smith.
Donnie’s been immersed in the custom motorcycle industry all his life and is a master with baggers. He shows the kid around and understands his plight. Love and metalflake paint have always gone together. He points out Baggers of the kid’s Evo vintage and shows him what he can do to refine it, make it handle properly and put that glimmer in his girl’s eyes.
The kid has a deadline. He feels the need to make an impression before school is out in June. There’s also an itch to show his buddies and the Ivy League crew what he could be capable of.
He delivers his bagger to Donnie’s shop the next week. Through the winter he works to earn the cash and every week sees his bagger progress into something he could never have imagined. Jon Kosmoski stops by the shop once in a while to show the kid pearlescent paints, candies, metal flakes and the three of them discuss the color scheme.
Jon offers to paint the sheet metal. The kid learns about machining, welding, sheet metal and fiberglass. Donnie hires him away from his other job and puts him to work in the shop. By February the kid is installing freshly painted sheet metal and tuning his ride with new electronics, sexy lighting and custom seating.
As the snow clears, he’s ready for the initial test ride onto the streets in the industrial side of town. He’s itching to ride past the school, but Donnie doesn’t advise that just yet and teaches him a solid break-in procedure. He learns how to test, feel for irregulatries, and tune each aspect of his new bagger. He polishes and studies each nut and bolt. He learns bagger alignment with the belts, chains, front end geometry and wheels.
He listens to the masters about love, lust and romance. By the end of March, the shop brothers have him on the edge of his leather tooled seat. The sun is out, and the girls shed much of their winter attire as they stroll to school. He has over 50 miles on his show-stopping vintage custom bagger.
The brothers including Donnie and Jon held him back all he could take, and he made his move on a bright, sunny, Friday morning showing up at the shop at the crack of dawn and rolling his glimmering bike into the street. The sun on his paint brings it to life like never before. He packs his school gear in his left saddlebag, puts on a new leather vest over a pressed Pendleton shirt and tugs on the belt to his fresh new denims. He carefully and meticulously straddles his seat and fires the evo to life. The vibration makes the metalflake paint dance in the sun.
He rolls slowly down the street to the intersection and leans to the right out of the industrial side of town and the sun seems to follow him as he cruises toward his high school and the long lane where the kids roam in from the surrounding residential districts. He stops at a coffee shop on the edge of the retail district, parks distinctively against the curb as if presenting his first-place trophy securely in the center of the family’s mantle.
He orders a coffee and sits on the outside cast iron bench just far enough from his glimmering steed to not look obvious. He waits.
His patience is tested, but he doesn’t mind. The pride in what he has accomplished is supreme. He studies every custom aspect of his bike with knowing admiration. Girl or no girl, he owns this masterpiece.
Suddenly she shows up with her friends across the street walking playfully along the sidewalk toward the school two blocks away. Joking and laughing with her friends, the glimmer of the blue hues under the fresh morning sunlight catches her fleeting attention. Then a flash of pearlescent paint mixed specifically for his bike by the master Jon Kosmoski pulls at her attention and she stares from the other side of the street as she stumbled, embarrassingly against the cracked concrete and looks at her feet as she composes herself to the giggles of her friends. They don’t get it, but she looks again at the magnificent motorcycle and then her gaze tracks to the young man sipping coffee and getting to his feet.
He throws his paper cup into the trash container, dons his leather gauntlet gloves and shades. Sliding onto his custom contoured seat he ignores the girls, fires the bike to life, pulls into the lane and nails it. She nearly stumbles again…
–Bandit
