Campboy hasn’t been the same since our cross-country ride in ’97. In fact, I haven’t been quite the same, either. But Campboy is much worse than I am . . . at least in my opinion. Campboy started a bike project following Laughlin this year that he thought would solve his problems, at least with motorcycles. I knew otherwise!
Campboy burns through motorcycles like teenage girls burn through boyfriends. Since I’ve known him (a little over three years) he’s owned eighteen bikes, mostly, but not exclusively, Harleys. He’s had four imports, two Sportsters, three Softails, two Dynaglides, two baggers, an FXR, two American Eagles, a Titan and a Milwaukee Iron built Knucklehead. Campboy's newest bike, i.e., the subject of this story is one of the two American Eagles.
Campboy and I had dinner together in June. I hadn’t seen much of him during the first part of 1998 – we’d visited in January, at my home in Northern California, but only for a couple of hours. I don’t call him, since he never answers his phone and seldom, if ever, returns messages. It has occurred to me, as well as to others, that the only messages he does return are threats on his life or suggestions to attend major riding events like Sturgis or Rolling Thunder.
Campboy is generally up for the Black Hills Motor Classic and he intended to discuss his plans to make a grand tour that would include Sturgis as one of his many milestones. Campboy’s ability to come up with a plan is far greater than his ability to follow through; so I take everything he says with far more than a single grain of salt.
We met for a drink at a local bar prior to dinner; the conversation quickly turned to the itinerary for the grand tour. His project bike would soon be ready and he intended to break it in by riding from Northern California to Seattle, taking a freighter from Seattle to Anchorage, riding through Alaska and freightering back to Seattle, then riding to South Dakota for Sturgis, continuing on to Maine, running down the eastern seaboard to Florida, taking in Biketober Fest in Daytona and finally continuing to the Florida Keys where he would rent an apartment and spend the winter in a tropical clime.
Campboy told me that he planned to travel with his sometimes, bordering on erstwhile, lady friend during this entire trip. It seemed his intention to use this trip to mend a badly bruised relationship with her. It was long and significantly overdue for resolution. Campboy ran wild and crazy for well over a year, while keeping said lady friend on-the-hook. She was a sweet gal, was totally dedicated to whatever he wanted and definitely didn’t deserve the treatment that she was getting. It was my opinion that it was time for him to fish or cut bait.
After Campboy described his itinerary I asked about the bike he intended riding on this major outing. At the time I knew he had an FXR, a Titan and an American Eagle BMC. I anticipated that he would buy another bagger, probably a Road King and would use it for the nearly twenty thousand-mile trip he planned and schemed over. Boy, was I wrong – Campboy informed me that his latest project bike, which started life as a perfectly good American Eagle BMC, was being transformed into a touring machine and, until he was convinced otherwise, this would be his road bike.
For the record, BMC means “Big Mike’s Choppers” and, at the time, was American Eagle’s entry into the custom hardtail market. In about 2000 Big Mike and American Eagle went their separate ways. Both companies have continued to survive in the highly competitive custom bike market.
I made a few rude comments about Campboy’s thought processes regarding his plan to use a hardtail frame for such an application. I think I told him that he must have shit for brains, if he thought he could ride a rigid chopper the was he rode touring bikes. I suggest the inevitability of him and girlfriend pissing blood for the remainder of their miserable lives should he actually ride this bike across America. I know, I wasn't cutting him any slack.
Campboy insisted I was missing the point and the modifications he incorporated into the BMC would make it road worthy as well as comfortable.
Whatever . . . I think that his fantasy had grown out of a spoiled childhood, a misguided youth, and far too many hours watching Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in the film classic Easy Rider. We concluded our evening by falling back into a horribly superficial conversation characterizing most of Campboy’s relationships. Campboy left that night promising to return when his project bike was complete.
Right, I began holding my breath!
In the world I live in, motorcycles fall into three categories: touring bikes, sport bikes and profilers. Unless you can afford several bikes, you generally chose your ride based on your primary use and then modify it to satisfy your expectations in the other two categories. For instance, if your primary purpose is touring, you might start with a bagger, modifying it to enhance the handling (i.e., sport bike characteristics) or add custom paint and chrome (i.e., profiler characteristics). You always make tradeoffs in these three categories to obtain the best of all worlds in a single machine.
Sport bikes handle great in tight corners, accelerate and brake well but generally carry only a modest amount of luggage. A touring bike is comfortable for extended rides, carries a large payload but sacrifices handling, performance and looks.
A profiler provides its owner with a platform to make a statement, to be seen and to stand out in the crowd. The best Harley profilers are undoubtedly built around a hard tail frame. A profiler carries little or no payload and is demanding, with respect to both handling and wear-and-tear on the rider. In fact, profilers often contain negative handling characteristics. Their long front ends are difficult to manage at low speeds, they can “pogo stick” while cornering at speed, and they often drag foot pegs or floorboards, primary cases and kickstands in even the most gradual turns. But profilers look bitchin’ when they’re goin’ slow or standin’ still.
Most of us attempt to integrate the characteristics of touring bikes, sport bikes and profilers into a single unit, and Campboy is no exception. You could accomplish this using several approaches; take a bagger and attempt to streamline it, add custom touches and luggage capacity to a sport bike, or try to enhance handling and increase luggage capacity to a profiler. Campboy's new bike took the last approach.
I remember, we concluded our acrimonious evening with me biting my tongue. I attempted to snap Campboy into the realities of riding a solid mounted motor in a rigid frame. I suspected Campboy would reach the obvious conclusion prior to initiating his cross country trip, make a panic run to one of several Harley dealerships he frequents, and arrange for the purchase and delivery of a Road King or an Ultra Classic to make the trip. I provided my “two-cents” regarding the concept flaws of Campboy’s folly. We said our good-byes and Campboy promised to bring the chopper by for my inspection prior to his departure.
A little more than a month passed before I heard from Campboy again. He called early one evening in late July to inform me that his project was complete and he was riding the short distance to my house to show off his masterpiece. He muttered something about arriving at my house within a couple hours. Campboy’s two hours turned into four and then six with no word from him. He eventually pulled into my driveway and I opened the garage door and directed him to pull inside. He turned off the ignition and the bike began cooling down with the characteristic crackle resulting from a change in heat coefficients in a very new engine.
With the exception of the frame, Campboy’s new bike was totally reworked from the original American Eagle design. He started by balancing and blue printing a ninety-six inch S&S motor. It turned out to be one of the sweetest and smoothest sounding stroker motors I’d ever heard. The motor contained a number of JIM's performance goodies including roller rocker arms and lifters. It had an SU Eliminator carburetor and short staggered Vance and Hines exhausts. The motor was completely chromed and was far more exposed than the original American Eagle design, primarily due to the installation of a three-gallon Sportster gas tank that replaced the original five-gallon Fat Bobs. The Sportster tank was mounted high on the frame tube in classic chopper style. The front end had been lengthened ten inches over the original design, which brought it to a total of sixteen inches over stock.
I was sure low speed handling characteristics caused this beast to be a nightmare and that the simplest u-turn would take close to forty acres to complete.
Campboy replaced the 21-inch front with an heavy 18-inch, 80 spoke unit, and as Arlen Ness taught me long ago, choppers don’t have front fenders. The handlebars and controls were modest, no need for ape-hangers when you’ve got a 16-over front-end and he kept the original rake. He replaced the original bare to the frame seat with a sprung-style bicycle seat. The thought being a sprung seat would make the bike more comfortable and rideable. He modified a traditional P-pad with additional padding. Campboy installed a short sissy bar with a luggage rack that could be removed to clean up the looks of the bike when it wasn't packed for the road. The bike, i.e., tank and rear fender was painted classic glossy black with an anarchists circle, done in red, located at the center bottom portion of the tank.
Overall, the chopper was a beautiful bike and would have been a great machine for cruising the Las Vegas Strip or trailering to Laughlin or Sturgis. The intended purpose of this ride was where the entire strategy broke down. Instead of profiling, Campboy intended to actually RIDE this bike. The project progressed slower than he expected so the front end of the trip (the part to Alaska) had, mercifully, been scrapped. Campboy altered his itinerary and was now planning to ride to Sturgis before departing for the remainder of the cross-country trip through Maine and down to Florida.
I could only shake my head in amazement. Subsequent conversations with girlfriend confirmed that he intended to ride from Oakland to Las Vegas, pick her up and then depart for Sturgis; packing her during the entire trip.
Campboy had historically been so unreliable about departure dates and times that I didn’t include him in the Sturgis planning that I was planning with Bruce, my riding partner that year. Bruce and I etched out plans in stone; we’d let Campboy know when we’d be in Green River, Wyoming, and if he showed up, great. If not, we’d ride on and meet up with him in Sturgis. We decided to leave the Bay Area on Friday and hoped to meet Campboy sometime Saturday afternoon.
I received a mysterious call from Campboy’s girlfriend. He was delayed leaving Oakland for the ride to Vegas. Girlfriend would now be flying to Oakland, where Campboy would pick her up from the airport and they’d head out from there. Good, there was a chance they’d be ready to leave on Friday afternoon and we’d make the two hundred mile run that evening, get a good night’s sleep and ride the remainder of twelve hundred-miles to Sturgis on Saturday and Sunday.
It didn’t surprise me when I hadn’t heard from Campboy by departure time. Bruce and I hit the road as we’d planned, and I began to think it was all for the best. In my mind, there was no way that a hardtail chopper packing double could keep up with two guys riding late model baggers. Bruce and I rode hard to Reno, stopped to see the girls at the Mustang Ranch and then decided to keep on heading east. We stopped sometime after midnight in Winnemucca, grabbed a cheap motel room and set our alarm for 6:00 AM. We were up and back on the road, still a little road weary, but giddy from the thrill of knowing we would be in Sturgis by Sunday evening.
Between Winnemucca and Green River I wondered, every now and again, how Campboy was progressing. I thought we might receive a message from him or girlfriend with an estimated arrival time in Green River.
Bruce and I arrived in Green River before the sun went down, found rooms and checked in after we ate. In less than twenty-four hours we’d ridden nearly 900 miles, not bad for our first day on the road. I check the messages on my cell phone and up popped a message from the girlfriend. She did fly into Oakland but paced the airport lobby multi-colored carpet for eight hours before Campboy got around to picking her up. They began the ride to Reno, taking a full eight hours to cross 200 miles. They checked into a Reno casino and collapsed for two full days. The realities of chopper riding had finally sunk into Campboy’s thick skull.
Meanwhile, Bruce and I continued our rambling sojourn to the badlands, arriving, as we’d planned on Sunday afternoon. We spent the next four days seeing the sites and cruising the rally attractions while Campboy recovered from his first dose of chopper touring. He finally watched the blistering boil the asphalt in the Reno parking lot and decided there was no way he could make it to Sturgis. Hee turned tail and headed southeast toward Las Vegas. According to girlfriend, the 445 miles to Vegas was one of the worst trips she’d ever made on a motorcycle. Parts flew off the chopper, temper flared and Vegas didn’t get closer. Fortunately, Campboy and girlfriend made it back to Vegas but the bike didn’t. They ran out of gas about a hundred miles short of their destination, somewhere between Beaty and Indian Springs. They locked the bike up the best they could and hitch-hiked to Glitterland.
Campboy was devastated, all the planning and anticipation for making an epic 20,000-mile journey was reduced to less than 700 miles, that took the better part of a week to accomplish. Campbor retrieved his wild ride from a desert ditch and made one final ride on his dream machine; a short trip to a local bike builder. He immediately had the hard-tail switched out for a Chopper Guys rubber mounted Softail frame.
I’m sure there’s an acid moral to this story. Maybe it’s to be sure to choose the proper tool for the job, or know the extent of your own capabilities and limitations, before you start something that could end up in disaster. Campboy learned a lot about motorcycles, riding, and the biker lifestyle with this adventure. Several of us, who knew him during this timeframe found his exploits, both his successes and his failures, quite entertaining. This was one of the best.
–Raoul
1 Apologies to Terry Roorda, currently editor of Thunderpress magazine. He developed a character in the mid-1990’s he called Campboy while writing for City Bike magazine. In his article, Campboy was an uninitiated rider who had not been properly instructed in the ways of bikers or the culture he was attempting to live in. In many ways, my friend suffered in the same way … so I lifted the name from Mr. Roorda’s story entitled “Campboy’s New Boots.”
