About a minute after I posted the 1,400-mile review of the Triumph Thunderbird LT, it donned on me that I didn’t mention it is belt driven. Big difference. Anyone besides me remember the old song “We’ll see the world on my Harley, if the chain don’t break”? Oh wow. I knew the original was by Sailcat. I had no idea that the Sugarcubes had covered the song. I digress …
About that belt drive, by the way. There is no tachometer on the bike, so you can judge your r.p.m.s by belt vibration or wobble or whatever. The belt makes a sound that reminds me of the belt on a device Papa Pingel bought when I was a mere lad. He had a weight-loss, jiggly thing … a motor on a stand, with a belt 4-inches wide, that you could strap around your waist, turn on, and wobble yourself to skinny oblivion. Didn’t work. Ha … I saw pieces of it lying by the old barn at the Ping Farm recently. I should probably try to resurrect it and use it. I digress …
Well, it wasn’t the belt or a chain, but the afternoon I arrived in Nashville, after filling up on barbecue at Martin’s Barbecue’s newer location, I noticed my front tire was deplete. So I aired it up and a liquor store/gas station that to my surprise had an air pump. Had some luck that day. Aired up the whitewall and drove easy, favoring the tire, to the Gaylord Opryland Resort, about 10 miles away.
The tire was flat by the time I pulled into the Gaylord parking lot. Nice, nice security guards helped me inflate that night and again the next morning. What to do? (More on The Gaylord, yet to come.)
It was Sunday morning on Memorial Day weekend. Fat chance finding someone open. More luck. Yes Nashville has a Triumph dealership, but they were closed. I e-mailed anyway, hoping someone might help me out. By the way, I had to be back in Columbia, Mo., Monday night, 400 miles away.
No dice. I didn’t hear back from the dealership for a day or so, due to the holiday.
However, I Googled and the first shop to pop up was Nashville Motorcycle Repair. My compliments to your SEO efforts. I e-mailed them and soon after got a call. I could not believe it. The guy said his shop was closed, but read my predicament in the e-mail and made a special effort to open up and help me. (I knew this would be expensive, but I had no choice …)
Guru Andrew
Ha. What a character. Andrew doesn’t know it, but I immediately BFFed him. Great guy. Immediately, it was apparent he is way into motorcycles, but everything else too. He is quirky, extremely detailed oriented and can explain just about any process on the bikes, with textbook detail. After talking with him I learned he was an engineer for a major automobile manufacturer, before going in partnership at Nashville Motorcycle Repair. Figures.
Ha! In conversation, he had to spell something … and reverted to the NATO military phonetic code for letters A-Z … or Alpha to Zebra … whatever that is called. “You’re probably going to ask if I was in the military,” he said after spelling something with a few “foxtrots” “tangos” and “rogers.” He was not in the military. He said he just memorized their alphabet because he got tired of having to making up his own when he spelled things over the phone. Quirky.
And kind of geeky cool. As he broke down my tire, he told me he was into electronic music, although by his engineering bent, I had guessed trance. “Trance is for programmers,” he corrected me.
Such a cutting edge, motorcycley, tech guy … I wondered if the shop had Wi-Fi. Yankee-Echo-Sierra!
Indeed, there was a Wi-Fi hotspot, although I can’t imagine blogging on line, instead of talking with this interesting guy. Not to mention, he is fast … so you wouldn’t be on line long. Alas, I missed a great opportunity to check in on Facebook.
He ran a fine tooth comb over the tire. Nothing. Defective tube — probably bad since the day it left the factory, which is very disappointing … and dangerous. How lucky I was that the tire didn’t go flat out in the middle of nowhere.
When he finished mounting the tire, he hopped on the Triumph and took it for a test drive to make sure everything was hunky dory. (Recently, I was marveling that David Bowie chose Hunky Dory for an album name, and had been waiting for what I thought was just the right moment to use the term too. I digress … )
As Andrew dismounted the bird, I was a bit apologetic — as referenced in the previous blog — for the quiet, almost politically correct pipes on the bike. I loved the response of this thinking man’s motorcycle mechanic, although he is not a Triumph man. “I like the sound. It is good to hear a powerful motor, instead of listening to its exhaust. (Ha … nice analogy, I thought … You could apply that to some people.)
What a nice guy. I found myself compelled to force a PingWi-Fi t-shirt on him. And I am not surprise, he reciprocated. If you follow this blog, you know I am a sucker for a quirky t-shirt, somewhat off the beaten path as tourist souvenir’s go. I now have the coolest Nashville shirt I could ever imagine from NMR … The artwork has this abstract owl shape, but if you analyze it … the eyes could be motorcycle wheels … the wings/feathers could be motorcycle treads with just a little imagination. Well played – the abstract coupled with the straightforward name of the shop. And on the back … the perfect tagline for an intellectual biker – “ Oh … and on the back … an old school open end/box end wrench, and “Thoughtful Repair.” Amen!
If you’re ever in Nashville, and your chain breaks or whatever … he’s your guy. (Do me a favor … hit his Website and say “ping.”)
Nashville Motorcycle Repair … You were there when I needed you man. On a holiday, they charged about half what other shops would charge on a normal day. Wi-Fi for sure. The time-honored tradition of t-shirt swapping … No two ways about it … perfect score — 7 Papa-India-November-Golf-Sierra.
Know what I sayin?
