“Wha?” Hacksaw said into the phone, dazed and half-awake.
“Wind ’em up,” the voice on the other end barked so loud Hacksaw had
tohold the phone at arms length. “We’re splitting from the cantina at
noon. You’ve got three hours to be on time. This is your last
chance Hacksaw. Don’t fuck up or you’re out of the club!” The phone
suddenly clicked off.
Hacksaw got his nickname from his being the only guy in the club to
chain his motorcycle to a tree during a run, only to find he had left the
key at home–twice. He’d had to hitch a ride to town to buy a hacksaw
blade to set his scooter free.
He scrambled out of bed. He had another problem. Luck and
time were not his friend, ‘causin’ him to lose the loyality of his
brothers. He glanced at the clock. Suddenly it appeared to tick
faster. He grabbed a sock, but couldn’t find the other. As he
reached under the bed for the hiding sock, and grabbed a fresh pile
of warm cat shit.
“God damn it, Ojo,” Hacksaw said tripping over his one-eyed
alley-cat. Ojo lost his eye in a fight with a pissed
off Chiuahua.
Hacksaw had a new extended steel tank from Independent Gas
Tanks painted for his chopper that had to be mounted. All he had to
do was flush it out, install a petcock, install the cross-over line,
bolt the tank on, hook up the gas line and fill the puppy with fuel,
and he’d be good to go. If all went as planned.
It was 9:00 a.m. by the time he pulled on his Levis, and a
sweatshirt and headed for the garage.
Hacksaw’s girlfriend, Cindy, dropped by for a little breakfast
grab-ass. He heard her calling his name from inside his house. “Out
here, in the garage,” he hollered to her over his shoulder as he
searched for the right tools to do the job. Suddenly he was nervous.
He needed every minute to install the tank and get across town to the
Quervo Cantina to meet his brothers.
Cindy was a tiny lil’ thing with a bodacious rack and a bubbly
personality.
He eyed her deep cleveage and almost dropped the tank as he scrambled
to lay out a soft cover on a backyard table so he could work on the
tank upside down. He held a blanket in one hand and the polished
slippery tank in the other and fumbled while eyeing the fresh daisy
bouncing around him. He couldn’t get destracted. “Make some coffee,
and get ready, we’ve got to be on time.
Cindy stood there pouting, She was a symphony of tantalizing
poontang.
“Gotta’ move Baby,” he said almost dropping the fresh paint job
on the unforgiving surface of the rough wooden picnic table.
He clean the 1/8 inch pipe threads of paint, primer and Bondo
residue. In his hurried attempt to remove the residue some slipped
into the interior of the tank. He sloshed gas around the tank with
some of the holes plugged to prevent being drenched in the toxic
fluid, but as he attempted to remove the harsh fuel without damage to
the new flame job, it ran down his leg. He wrapped the
petcock with Teflon tape which bunched up when he installed it. The
Pingle petcock had a perfectly smooth, round surface with no way to tighten it
except a 7/16 box wrench over the spigot. As he tighten the petcock
firmly to prevent leaks from his crappy Teflon job, the spigot popped out of the
body of the petcock. He removed it and rewrapped it with the sealing
tape. He looked at the broken part then to the clock–almost 10:00
a.m. Sweat started to pour down the sides of his face. He wrapped the petcock with
rubber and torqued it down with channel-locks which peeled up the chrome. The
petcock tightened slightly, hopefully enough.
He installed two 90 degree 1/8 pipe nipples to either side of the
tank with Teflon tape, but couldn’t get them to line up properly. The
clock seemed to shift gears, running faster. He turned the tank over
and set it on the Daytech stretched frame. He bolted the tank to the
frame. The holes lined up. The bolts didn’t cross thread–a minor
miracle.
He was getting close. Cindy went for gas. He had to release
the nipple from the Mikuni carburetor, reposition it and install the
new line and clamps. If he turned it to the optimum position for the
petcock, he couldn’t adjust the mid-range air mixture screw. If he
moved it beyond the air mixture screw, the line to the petcock would need to be
two-inches longer. He looked at the clock. It was now in high gear.
Nothing went right. The gas line he had was too short.
Cindy returned with a frown. She locked the keys in the car
with the gallon can of gas. Hacksaw found another chunk of gas line,
cut it, and installed fresh clamps. He hadn’t ridden the bike since
Sturgis. A couple of months. Would it run?
He grabbed for a hanger and a pair of needle nose and headed
to the street. Instructing Cindy to find a gas cap. She pouted and
dug into several boxes of parts. After burnin’ through 20 minutes he
returned to the garage with the gas. She beamed with pride as she
handed him the stock cap. It didn’t fit. She dug. Another cap didn’t
fit. It wasn’t a left handed bung. He sanded the plastic threads. No
go. He cleaned the threads on the bung–no dice.
He spilled more gas on his jeans trying to slouch enough gas
into the tank to get them to a station. Another half hour passed.
Cindy kept digging for more caps. She found a custom job that
wouldn’t work on his last tank. For some unknown reason it fit.
He jammed into the house to change, the hairs on his thighs
were beginning to itch from the caustic fluid. In a cold sweat he
pushed his scoot into the street and fired it to life. Cindy went
back into the house to do what women do, locked up the house and
returned to the street.
Hacksaw locked up the garage. Cindy returned to the house for
Hacksaw’s helmet and gloves. Hacksaw unlocked the garage again to get
his bike lock. The made it a block, before they both noticed they had
forgot his cell phone, back again.
One more delay, for refueling. Amazingly the tank didn’t
leak, the Mikuni nipple didn’t escape covering him with petrol, and
the bike ran as sweet as butter mints.
He pulled into the Quervo Cantina at 12:05 parking lot. He
kicked out his sidestand, turned off the petcock and locked the
chain around the front wheel. Running into the Cantina he looked up
at the clock on the wall- 11:05 a.m.
“We figured you’d forget to turn your clock back,” Frank, the leader
of the club came up to Hacksaw laughing and patting him on the back.
The president then turned stern, “Wind ’em up, we’re leaving.”
The brothers mounted up and cranked over their engines. All
except Hacksaw, who dug desperately through his pockets looking for
the key to his lock.
