Peyote Dreams
by
Art Bone
"Poor Mexico; so far from God, so close to the United States." Porfirio Diaz
It’s been a sad time since my last Peyote Dreams. I’ve had three very good friends with Norton connections pass from this life.
George Costain - When I got off the Lady of Mann at the Douglas Ferry Terminal at three in the morning on the eve of the 1989 Isle of Man TT, I had no idea in a few hours I would make a decision that would have an effect on the rest of my life. I rode off down the Promenade with a band of bikers like myself who had no place to go and we found a small coffee shop, the only place open on the whole island. Breakfast was black coffee and a Manx kipper. I had no idea what a kipper was but decided to be adventurous. It was a mistake.
As soon as the sun peeked above the Irish Sea I motored back to the Sea Terminal to the Tourist Office and queried the young lady about places to stay. That was when she asked me the question that changed my life.
She said, “Do you want to be on the south of the the Island or the north?”
When I said, “The south” my fate was sealed. That decision led me to come back to the Isle of Man every year since, to bring my future wife there on our first time traveling together, to get married there, and to make the Island an inseparable part of my life ever since.
The gracious young lady gave me a scrap of paper with an address on it and some vague directions mostly consisting of “at the next roundabout take a left and the next roundabout take a right.”
I wondered around for a bit then pulled into the petrol station at Port Erin and asked the guy behind the cash register. He said, “Who are you looking for?” and, when I showed him my crumpled up scrap of paper he said, “Oh, George Costain.”
Then he took me by the arm and led me outside, pointed up at the mountain and said, “See those two houses at the very top of the mountain? The one on the left is George’s.”
This time the directions were more specific. “Go to the next roundabout, take a left and go up that mountain until you see a big yellow sand box, take another left in that driveway, and go to the second house.”
Walking to the door I looked through the garage window and saw a Manx Norton on a trailer. Having never been to the IOM before I thought maybe everyone had a Manx Norton in their garage.
Once there I met Isobel who welcomed me and led me through the house to my room. In the hallway was a large framed photograph of a rider in old fashioned leathers and a pudding bowl helmet going through what I discovered later to be Parliament Square in Ramsey.
I asked who that was and Isobel replied, “That’s my husband, George. He raced the TT and the Manx Gran Prix many times.”
That afternoon I met George and learned he owned three butcher shops in Port Erin, Douglas, and Ramsey and was also a sheep farmer. George was a very modest man. It was much later that I found he had the largest meat business in the Isle of Man and was the largest landholder and sheep producer in the Island, but in no time I realized he and Isobel were fonts of information about racing, riders, and the history of the TT. He raced his whole career on Manx Nortons so walking through the paddock and looking at bikes with him was an education in the evolution of that famous model.
He was a personal friend of Geoff Duke, Tommy Robb, Arthur Wheeler, and many other famous riders. Mike Hailwood attended parties in the same room where we took our tea.
It was several years later that I found George had won the Manx Gran Prix in 1954. Carol and I were honored to have him and his family at our wedding in 2004, fifty years to the day after his big win.
George passed from this life in January 2018 at age ninety. I will miss him so much this August when we’re back in the IOM for the Manx Gran Prix.
Mark McLennan - In 2015, Carol and I decided to ride through Ireland on the way to the Isle of Man instead of crossing the English Channel at Calais, France and fighting Bank Holiday traffic through southern England. We had a wonderful time exploring some new cities in Brittany and Ireland and finally rode onto the Belfast ferry dock where we were assigned a lane. I pulled up next to a BMW and kicked down the stand. I turned to comment to the rider on what a beautiful day it was when I realized the rider was Mark McLennan. I had just seen him the month before at the INOA national rally. Mark and I both jumped off our bikes and started slapping each other on the backs and laughing while Carol, not knowing Mark, looked at us as if we were crazy.
The next year, on our way to the New Zealand Norton Owners rally, Carol and I walked into a restaurant in Wanaka, New Zealand, and who should stand up from a table of riders and say, “That looks like Art and Carol” but Mark. He was president of the club that year and as such was our host for the event.
Mark loved to travel by bike and managed to do a lot of it, coming to the US for our rally for a number of years then going on to Europe for the IOM TT and Manx GP and other vintage events. He was always upbeat and enjoying the motorcycle life that he, like a lot of us, dreamed of when he was slaving away in his younger days.
Mark lost his life in a road accident in March of this year while riding his Norton. I and many others will miss him terribly at this year’s National Rally in Washington.
Paul Fireman - I met Paul Fireman the second year I lived in Mexico. I was sitting at the bar in Hank’s, a local gringo hangout, and Paul noticed my Norton shirt and said, “Are you Art Bone?”
Turns out he was from Canada, had ridden Nortons for years and was friends with George Cameron, one of the organizers of the last Lumby BC rally. We had a lot to talk about.
Paul became a member of MotoClasico, bought a bike, and started participating in as many of our activities as his business would allow.
We were planning a big ride to the National Rally this year. I was planning to ride, with several other friends, from San Miguel, up through the Copper Canyon, and on to the US border. From the border we would continue up the Continental Divide Trail to Del Norte, Colorado. Paul and a friend were going to ride from Canada down to Del Norte on the superslab to meet us, then we were going to ride the Trail together to the rally.
I got word three weeks ago that Paul had suffered a massive heart attack while vacationing with his wife in Croatia and had passed away.
If you want to make God smile, tell her your plans.
While I’m sorry they are gone and I won’t see them again I’m so happy that I got to know them, spend time with them, and got to call myself their friend. They were all men who risked much and worked hard, overcame their fears, and achieved success.
George won the big race, was a successful businessman, and raised a wonderful family. Mark was a successful real estate investor, traveled the world, and was a leader in the thing he was passionate about; Norton motorcycles. Paul moved from his home in Canada to Mexico at a time when that was considered very risky, started a successful business, and died while traveling in Europe.
These were not ordinary men; they were extraordinary men. Men who followed their own dreams and made them real. I am privileged to have known them and shared their friendship. The world will be an emptier place without them.
Godspeed.
2018 Vincent Rally - I attended the Circuit of the Americas MotoGP this year in Austin, Texas. Afterwards I rode down to the Big Bend National Park and rode around, discovering an area I knew very little about.
I hitchhiked through there back in the early 60s before the Interstates were built but that was a long time ago and I wasn’t that interested in rural Texas at the time. It was a place to go through to get to where I wanted to be.
I remember a guy picking me up in one of those big four-door Lincolns with the suicide doors in back like Kennedy was riding in when he was assassinated. The guy was wearing a western businessman suit the exact shade of blue as the color of his car. He was wearing cowboy boots and there was a Stetson hat on the back seat like the ones worn by the deputies that were holding Lee Harvey Oswald when he got shot.
He was chewing tobacco and spitting into a paper cup. I threw up a tiny bit in my mouth every time he did that.
The only thing I remember about our conversation was him saying what good cow country it was out there.
I said “What do they eat, rocks?”
He said, “Well, it takes a lot of acres per cow.”
I thought but didn’t say, “A cow would get really skinny walking from one blade of grass to another in this country.”
This time I discovered it’s a wonderful place to ride motorcycles. I especially recommend the road that runs along the Rio Grande from Terlingua to Persidio. It snakes along, following the river, and in many places you could wade across to Mexico without getting your socks wet, illustrating the problems of building a wall along the border.
While I was in Marfa I met an INOA member. I fell into conversation with Robert Arber one morning while I was packing up my bike and, when I mentioned I lived in San Miguel, he said he read a column in his Norton newsletter by a guy that lives there.
When I told him I was that guy I don’t know if he believed me.
I wish I had time to visit a bit and maybe see his Nortons. Maybe next year.
From there I headed back up to Kerrville for the National Vincent rally. Because I’d heard so much about it, I made it a point to ride through Leakey, Texas and was gratified that I made that decision. Highways 335, 336, and 337 are some of the best roads you’ll find in the US. I highly recommend them and plan to explore them more next year.
I really enjoyed the rally. I ran into many old friends with Norton connections, including Tom Hill from Atlanta, Glenn Bewley from Tennessee, and Carleton Palmer from Vermont and San Miguel. I shared a room with North Texas member Marq Jones.
This was my first Vincent rally and it was interesting comparing it to Norton rallies. The first thing that struck me was that, to the untrained eye, the bikes looked very much alike. They were very monochromatic. I guess there were not that many models of Vincents and not that many colors offered. Sort of like Ford Model Ts; you could have any color you wanted as long as it was black. The 1000 CC bikes and the 500 CC bikes are hard to tell apart since many have the same paint, tanks, and lower ends, just missing one cylinder. Even Tom’s Egli-Vincent with it’s flat black paint job sort of blended in with the others. Glenn brought his red bike and it really stood out.
Someone mentioned that there was a very rare White Shadow at the rally but when it was pointed out to me it was black. They explained that it was a special order of, I think, ten bikes from a dealer and the engine was built to Black Shadow specs but without the black stove enameling on the engine so it looked like a Rapide. Sort of a sleeper I suppose.
It worked. It put me to sleep.
Marq and I rode on the first group ride to Luckenbach. Willan and Wallie and the boys weren’t there but, sure enough, nobody was feeling no pain. From there we split from the group and rode to Fredericksburg on some wonderful farm to market roads. Texas has really excellent, well maintained roads.
The rally was held at the YO Ranch Hotel which I really liked. It has nice rooms and a huge parking lot for the bike show and other events. It has a bar and restaurant, banquet rooms for meals and meetings, and it’s about a half mile from Interstate 10. This is my kind’a roughing it.
To the north there are rolling hills and beautiful roads for cruising and many nice small towns for pit stops; to the south there are canyons and really technical twisty roads. The big problem in the area is the deer. The place is overrun with them.
All good things must come to an end so, when it started raining the third day of the rally and the show looked to be cancelled, I decided to get in the wind and head home. I had a very pleasant ride to McAllen, spent the night, and was across the border and rolling towards home at seven the next morning. The 518 mile trip was absolutely without drama and I was home and dry well before dark.
Cannonball Run 2018 - At the Vincent rally I spoke with Richard Asprey, president of the North Texas Norton Owners, and he filled me in on his plans for the 2018 Cannonball Run, taking place in September of this year.
Richard ran in the 2016 edition of the Cannonball on his 1915 Norton Model TT. He was in the hunt for a good finish until, three days from the end, his gearbox disintegrated six miles from that day’s finish line and he could not complete that day, losing points. Richard went on to finish the race even finishing one day with a broken handlebar but slipped from 5th place to his finishing place of 25th out of 100 bikes that started.
This year he’s planning a much more serious attempt. Team Norton is preparing three bikes for the race; Richard’s ’15, a ’23 for his friend Chris Perry, and a ’24 for Keith Martin, owner of Big D Cycles in Dallas. They have those three bikes plus two complete spare bikes to take parts off of in the trailer, two mechanics traveling with them, and two mechanics back at the shop in Dallas, ready to help if needed.
These guys are serious as a high-speed wobble and I think they have a good chance to win this thing.
Richard was testing his ‘15 at San Marcos Raceway the week before the Vincent rally and set the lap record for 100 year old bikes. Of course, no one had ever raced a 100 year old bike there before but still, a noteworthy achievement.
I’m planning to meetup with the race in late September, somewhere around Spokane, WA, and will ride along for the last few days. It promises to be an interesting event.
If you go on YouTube and search for “Team Norton Cannonball Run” you can watch the excellent video about their preparation for this year’s event. The video and the attempt are really exceptional.