When we had nothing else, we had motorcycles.
My brother, Eric.
One year ago this morning my only and older brother was found dead in his apartment. His last day appears to have consisted of a normal day at work, followed by a purchase at Cabela’s, a large hunting and outdoors store, and dinner from a Chik-Fil-A fast food restaurant. Then drove his nearly new truck home, deadbolt locked his door, and sometime that night shot himself. His coworkers knew he had health problems so when he didn’t call or show up for work the next morning they called the police to check on him. A careful reading of the police report indicates that he probably died instantly, perhaps the only comfort I can find in the situation.
Much of my past year has been spent cleaning up this mess both physically, he died with multiple vehicles and apartment full of stuff, and virtually, he died without a will and in a complex, undocumented array of financial obligations. In that sense his presence has been only gradually fading away as I resolve his estate. That process is, after a year, nearly at an end. (Please, everybody, have at least a minimal will. It will save somebody close to you an immense amount of time and money.)
At the end of all this I’m now left with some personal items, his rolling tool chest, and a motorcycle. This seems perhaps appropriate because, aside from the obvious family connections, motorcycles and wrenching are just about the only thing we had in common.
Honda QA-50
On one hand, we grew up in suburbia. On the other hand, our house happened to be right next door to thousands of acres of woods, crisscrossed with miles of trails and motocross obstacles that had evolved over time in a long dry, massive drainage ditch. Dirt bikes, as we called them then, were a natural fit and for whatever reason our father saw fit to buy us a series of small minibikes. I can barely remember a tiny 50cc Honda QA-50 monkey, then my brother upgraded to an MR-50. It was a normal motocross bike, complete with ring-a-ding two-stroke engine, just in miniature.
Honda MR-50
Perhaps you have in your memory one particularly great childhood Christmas where your parents seem to be getting along and are feeling sufficiently flush to splurge a little. I can just remember walking out on Christmas morning and seeing more presents than I believed possible underneath and overflowing around the tree. Also in the living room (!!!) was a brand new Honda XR-75 for my brother. This was fantastic news because the MR-50 would become mine. I struggle to imagine a happier moment in my life.
Honda XR-75
I recently visited the LeMay car museum in Tacoma and was amazed when I rounded a corner and saw at least a hundred mint condition vintage Honda motorcycles. I found both an MR-50 and XR-75 and as the memories came flooding back I couldn’t help but notice how they now looked incredibly small. As a little kid, though, they felt normal and I spent so much time riding the MR-50 that it came to feel like an extension of my own body. Then, when I was large enough to start riding the XR-75, I remember it feeling like a rocketship when I held it wide open in top gear. What a feeling for a kid who might have been 10 or 12 years old.
Our paternal grandfather was a mechanic and our father an engineer. My brother and I both appear to have inherited the mechanical knack, that sense of understanding how machines work and a willingness to repair and use them. We have both wrenched with reasonable confidence for our entire lives.
On the other hand, this is where things start to come apart. Eric was a smart guy who had a lot of difficulty interacting with the world. First came the awful friends, then the drugs, then failing and dropping out of school. In his papers I found what must have been one of his last report cards. In the fall semester his grades were marginal but passing, but in the spring he was failing everything with a huge number of absences. After quitting school he would end up flailing around for a quite a while but eventually found steady work behind the parts counter at car dealerships.
As for me, I struggled too but in my own way. I was the overweight, secretly gay kid who resented and hated school. I understood everything but made marginal grades because, in retrospect, I was super stressed and struggled to concentrate and focus on my work. Then one day Eric found an adult magazine I had hidden in my room and exploded with rage. I came home from school to find my entire room trashed, pages from that magazine torn out and tacked up everywhere with “FAG!” and other stuff written on them, and literal dog shit spread over all my possessions. That’s how I ended up spending a significant part of my senior year of high school on my own, staying with friends and refusing to go home.
I would go on to college, barely, and eventual uber-nerd status with a doctorate in engineering. Eric and I spent a long, long time barely talking. But when both of our parents’ health began failing we eventually started trying to find some common ground and that turned out to be motorcycles.
Eric somehow registered this Canadian market Yamaha RZV500R. Both motorcycles are in the dining room of his apartment.
He had never lost the bug and eventually starting making a significant fraction of his income on the side, buying and selling rare and unusual bikes. It lay dormant in me for a long time but eventually manifested in a series of boring adult motorcycles, mostly BMW twins. When we couldn’t talk about anything else, either because it was too painful or because we just didn’t have any base of common experience, we could talk about that.
My BMW R1100S Special Edition, sold to pay Eric’s bills.
Around 2008, when the economy started tanking, Eric got into some financial trouble. To help him out, keeping him from getting evicted from his apartment and having his car repossessed, I sold my lovely yellow BMW R1100S and loaned him the proceeds. Characteristically he never paid me back for that or the rest of the money he owed me.
Ducati 749S
And now, sitting my garage on a battery tender, is his, now my, Ducati 749S. The estate has been sorted such that I’m now able to transfer to the title, register, and ride it. It’s not the motorcycle I would choose. My tastes run more towards the sport touring or, more so these days, the vintage. But that rough personality fit also makes it special to me. It really feels like Eric’s motorcycle, not mine.
Even when the feuds were all in the past and mostly forgiven we struggled to interact. We were so different in most ways that it was hard to talk about anything substantial. He drove me nuts for my entire life, including this past year of estate cleanup, but I also miss him terribly. In his last year or so he developed some serious health issues and it seemed to mellow his personality a little bit. For my part, I tried to forgive what felt like some terrible wrongs and I like to think we would have continued to grow closer in time. And now I’m left with this uncomfortable, loud, fast machine. It feels like a little bit of his personality is still here, working with me but also frustrating me. I don’t think I’ll ever sell it.
Take care, brother.
