Corner of the Garage

Hello Friend,

I know it’s been a while. But this weekend I made a breakthrough on the Sportster project.

I was stuck on it for almost two years. This is not a fact I enjoy sharing with you, but there is no point in avoiding the facts. I worked on it for a few months, lost momentum and rolled the bike to the corner of the garage with the headlight off and a rat’s nest of wires dangling from the frame.

Looking back from the other side of the situation, I got stuck because I didn’t have a well thought out plan. It wasn’t just finding a place to put the turn signals, starter button, or indicator light cluster, those were merely the final set of problems that pushed me over the edge. I also wildly overestimated the reliability of the year and model fitment tables listed for aftermarket parts.

These are all problems that can be solved, but I let them overwhelm me to the point where it became easier to push the bike aside and move onto something else.

Motorcycles have an odd way of reflecting life, in some ways more than others.

I’ll avoid the painful details but some of my mistakes may resonate with you, or serve as cautionary tales.

I started this project because the first motorcycle I owned, a 2000 Harley Davidson Sportster, had been sitting in the basement of my parent’s house for over 15 years and I wanted to ride it again. I bought the Sportster brand new a few months before I joined the Marine Corps. When I got out in 2004, I rode it intermittently during college. At that time I had no money, limited time, and motorcycles were low on my priority list. Although I wasn’t riding much, the thought that I should be riding more nagged at me.

Back then, the Sportster was basically stock and I wanted to “make it look cool”, which is the most important component of any motorcycle. Of course, I had no plan, no mechanical skills, and I was broke. The farthest I made it in the quest towards cool was to remove the rear turn signals and add some ugly saddlebags. Who puts saddlebags on a Sportster? At any rate, after I graduated from college and saved up some money I bought another motorcycle and rode that one. The Sportster went into the basement and stayed there for the next fifteen years.

Friend, writing that last paragraph made me painfully aware that this project has been stuck for much longer than the last two years. I’ll choose to take the positive side of this revelation and conclude that it makes the breakthrough that much more important. Have you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig? He dedicates a few chapters to the concept of “getting stuck”, which he describes as a scenario that occurs when you run out of gumption while working on a project. Robert Pirsig talks about the different types of gumption traps, all are now familiar to me.

I got stuck on the Sportster project for multiple reasons, but they all distilled down to the fact that I did not understand the mechanics of “getting stuck” and how to work through it. I approached “getting stuck” as some sort of personal failure, which is completely wrong. Running into roadblocks, “getting stuck”, or whatever phrase you use to describe the situation, is the psychic precursor to acquiring knowledge and a stronger appreciation for Quality.

Overcoming the obstacle at hand and moving onto the next problem builds up your reserve of gumption and makes your current gumption supply even more resilient. The next problem will drain you of less gumption than the previous. The concept of encountering and solving problems is not limited to motorcycle repair. I have found that it applies equally to any endeavour that requires a wrench, screwdriver, shovel, or tape measure.

So, how did I ultimately move past the stuck phase? I made a list of the problems I knew needed to be solved and focused my attention on that one problem. After solving that problem, I kept going, building up my gumption reserves along the way. The solution sounds simple. Trust me, it was not. For example, getting the nut started on the front exhaust stud, a problem that was not even substantial enough to be on the original list, almost mentally broke me. Fortunately, I had stored up just enough gumption in reserve to work through it. I was reminded that the challenge is rarely about the problem itself, but in how I approach it.

The initial phase of the Sportster project is now complete. After riding it for a few hundred miles, it’s time to start the next phase: a fresh paint job. There is more work to be done, more problems to solve, and more tools to acquire. The cycle continues. A little better every day.

Friend, thanks for listening. Let's make our correspondence more frequent.

Best,

Jerad