It’s a 2016 Moto Guzzi V7II Stornello, or “starling.” The Storny (as I’ve come to call her) is a factory scrambler variant of Moto Guzzi’s seasoned and successful V7 line, taking the basic architecture of the V7 (now in its second II series), but adding a brilliant red powder-coated frame, wire wheels and knobby tires, a high-mount Arrow exhaust,  fork gaiters, rubber tank grips, and several delicious aluminum bits, including machined foot-pegs, laser-etched fenders and number plates, and a micro-aluminum front fairing.

Caution: hi-resolution bike porn ahead.

I mean, how could anyone resist? I first spotted the Storny on the showroom floor of Hamlin Cycles in Bethel, CT.  I’d driven up there in the drizzle to test-ride a garden-variety “V7 Stone” as part of their “Guzzi Demo Day” promotion, just curious what a more modern air-cooled motorbike would feel like.

But the V7 Stornello was sitting there all by her lonesome, aloof and apart from the broader flock of V7 Racers, Specials, and Stones, next to a sleek new V9 Roamer…

The little red and white scrambler just called out to me like a sweet summer song. I made the fateful mistake of swinging a leg over, saddling up, wrapping my hands around the grips, and glancing down at the headstock.

It was Stornello #51. This graying bike-obsessive was also 51. A sure sign. Kismet. It was beshert.

So after some hemming and hawing (and help from Jim Hamlin, Adam Zuckerman, and a sweaty checkbook), I went from bird-watching to bike-buying. Jim gently guided my trembling hand towards the signature line, and with a squiggle and stroke, it was done, and she was mine. Just in time to turn 52. HBD to me.

Happily, the Storny is air-cooled, just like the airhead. She’s also low, light, easy to throw a leg over, and incredibly comfortable (and SOOOO fun) to ride. And just like an airhead, she’s propelled by a clean, maintenance-free drive shaft (not a dirty-bird chain).

But here, the parallels with a vintage BMW airhead end. The lil’ Guzzi might have all the optics and “emotion” of a classic motorbike, but she’s resolutely modern. Goodbye carbs, hello electronic fuel injection. Deceleration is assisted by ABS, which IMHO ought to be required equipment on all new motorbikes (and I guess now is). Wet road handling is made safer via electronic traction control. And the speedometer doesn’t make a gyroscopic whirring sound, since it’s not actuated via a set of gears and cables attached to the spinning front wheel.

I still haven’t sold the Beemer, although together, they make a pretty handsome couple—two birds of an airhead feather, flocking together.

But there’s really only room for one “classic” in my garage, and in my life.  And I’m going with the one that has classic looks, but a higher-tech soul. Anyone in the market for a pristine R75/6?

 

When in March, most people’s thoughts turn to Madness. Mine turn to Mapleness.

Not that I’m a basketball hater or anything. It’s just that there’s something about maple sap running down collection tubes—nature whispering about winter’s looming demise, and a sure harbinger of spring—that’s more exciting to me than a bunch of college guys running up and down a court.

Plus it’s the perfect excuse to take a ride up through New England in search of this:

So the other Saturday, I set sail on the good ship Ténéré, in search of some sweet, sticky spring.  Here’s my craft on the causeway over the Congamond Lakes at the CT/MA border.

I had to stop and defrost at the venerable Granville Country Store & Cheese Shop…

…where I had a “toasted cheddar” that was better than it had any right to be, and a hot cup of tea. My toes and fingers were frozen (it was in the forties, and I’d been riding for almost two hours), and I wasn’t sure how I was going to press on. I thought, “what are the chances they sell those “Lil’ Hotties” boot/handwarmers, along with cellar-aged cheese,  local jams and jellies, and pies?

 

They had ’em. Score.

The view from the grilled cheese table.

I didn’t have a Coke, but this still made me smile.

Before I headed back out, I did a Google search for “maple sugar farm”, and it turned out there was one less than ten miles away right in Granville. Bingo.

Much of the ride there was joyfully unpaved…

In time, I arrived here at the corner of Maple and Happy.

The sugar house was cooking with activity.

Here’s their sparkling new evaporator, creating that intoxicating, maple cotton-candy fog that produces the single finest smell on earth. It’s the olfactory equivalent of crack.

One of the farm owners (believe it or not, I assume this is Mr. Ripley himself) gave a little impromptu syrup tutorial on how you start with maple water boil it down to waffle-drizzling goodness.

Where there’s maple smoke, there’s maplewood fire.

Fire in the hole…warmth for the soul.

I headed up to their “Pancake House” and store to buy a pint of their amber finest and some maple sugar candies (they’re so sweet your teeth hurt) before hopping on my Maple-conveyor and heading back south.

Couple of hours of this….

And it was time for some of this at our old farmhouse. Not quite maplewood. No sugar air. But you know what they call it. Home sweet home…

 

Skiing. Riding. Riding. Skiing.

With the possible exception of surfing, eating Twizzlers, or doing the New York Times Sunday crossword, they’re easily two of my favorite things to do on this green and white earth.

Some of these life-loves can easily be enjoyed in the span of a single day. But not skiing and riding. Twizzlers and crosswords? Easy-peasy—I do’em together all the time. Riding and Twizzlers? A natural pairing, and a motorcycle is a great excuse for executing a Twizzlers run (plus you look a lot less like an ass-hat riding with a Twizzler in your maw than a cigar or cigarette, especially since you can chew it and swallow it). Surfing and the New York Times Sunday puzzle? Totally doable between expression-sessions, so long as you don’t drip too much.

But I’ve never been able to jam skiing and riding into the same day, for obvious reasons. Good conditions for one (snow, ice, frigid temperatures, winter) are grim conditions for the other. Especially since I’m not one of these “studded” types.

But this Sunday, the last of this January, the stars (or suns) somehow aligned, and I finally got my chance to ski and ride…without actually planning for it.

According to the Weather Channel, Sunday was supposed to be a pretty mild midwinter day in New England. The weather gods were calling for mixed sun and clouds in the high forties. And since one of my kids is at school (hi Noah!), one’s in Florida seeing an aunt (hi Maisie!), and one’s taking the ACT (sorry, Ivy!), this here kid decided to go skiing. So I roused myself at the usual commuter wake-up time (5:30 am), hopped into my truck, and made a run for Great Barrington, Massachusetts to Ski Butternut.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable ride up Route 8 through the Litchfield Hills and the southern Berkshires. I was stoked to revisit the beginning of the Trans Mass Trail (see my all-dirt MA ride here) at the intersection of Rood Hill Road and Sandy Brook Turnpike in Sandisfield, MA.

That was then….

And this was now.

I made it to Great Barrington in under 2 hours, suited up in the parking lot, hoofed over to the base lodge, and was on boards doing runs by 8:45. Butternut (like most of southern Vermont and northern Connecticut) has had a disastrous snow-desert of a season, and everything on the trails was 100% man made. But for snow of the non-organic variety, it was surprisingly well-groomed, and actually pretty sweet.

I went up and down Lucifer’s Leap a dozen or more times without pause, carving and charging the corduroy until I could feel the burn. Not this one (although I did vote for him  wayyyy back when I was a college kid in Burlington, VT)…

But the one in my legs. Burning quads on the way down, and then riding the quad on the way up, run after run after run. It was a carver’s delight.

Despite it being the dead of winter, it was actually warm enough to be skiing in a sweatshirt. Here’s yours truly at the top of Lucifer’s, a Connecticut guy on Massachusetts snow “representing” for Vermont, courtesy of his alma mater. Nice to get a few shout-outs from some other Catamount dads.

I went up and down like a yo-yo, meeting oddball folks on the lift and making ski-talk on the ride up, and then dialing in the lactic-acid power-carves on the way down. I don’t think I stopped or paused once. And since I’d been making track since 8:30, I broke for an early lunch to rest and soak up some sun.

A plate of fries, a bowl of New England clam chowder, sunny skies and temperature hovering in the mid-fifties? I was having a joy meltdown.

Unfortunately, so was the snow. I skied until 1:30, at which point the snow was thick like Stew Leonard’s soft-serve, and just as sticky. So before bogging a ski and ripping my hip out of the socket (it almost happened a couple of times towards the mushy bottom), I decided to call it a ski-day, and head back to CT.

The drive back was just as delightful, and for most of Massachusetts it was so warm I actually had the windows down. At one point around Marlborough, the temperature gauge in my truck hit sixty. In January. In New England.

It is a natural law of New England that when the temperatures rise, so do the bikers. And as I drove through Winsted, sure enough I passed maybe a half-dozen guys out on motorcycles. They were the typical Northern  CT black & bedazzled Harley crowd, brapping their way up and down Route 44. But they were out there riding. On a Sunday. In January. In New England. So I stepped on it.

When I pulled into my driveway an hour later, I marched into the house, took off my ski pants, pulled on jeans and riding boots, threw on a jacket, grabbed my (other) helmet, and headed out to the garage.

I can’t express how weirdly satisfying it was to go from ski boots to riding boots, from ski helmet to Shoei, and from snow gloves to motorcycle gloves—all in the span of a few hours. It took a little more effort than usual to swing my tired legs over the bike, but once I was in the saddle, it felt stupendous. My airhead fired up on the second try, and we were off and riding.

Two and half hours earlier I was carving on two skis. Now, I was carving on two wheels. Call it love-squared.

I went for a typical Fairfield beach lap, motoring over to Southport, then Burying Hill, and then on to Compo. Here’s my airhead by the beach at Southport, with a mini dirty Buttenut in the background.

At Compo, I ran into another guy on an BMW, but a late-model R1200GS. He was out for a cruise with his young daughter, who was riding pilion. He knew his airheads (although he pegged mine as a ’73, when it’s a ’74), and we had a nice bike chat, both shaking our heads at the guilty pleasure of riding through such an unseasonably warm winter.

“Yeah,” I said. “Whatever happened to skiing?”

Some pleasures shouldn’t be gloated-over. Just enjoyed in private silence.

It was a dark and stormy Sunday. What else to do but grab your bike and go for a ride?

Once again, thanks to global warming, temperatures hovered in the mid-to-high fifties today—in mid-January. The only downside was the downpour and high winds, which made the Southport and Westport beaches pretty dramatic.

The riding occasionally so, too.

 

A few observations. First, crash bars really work. I dropped the airhead, but through no fault of my own. Left her idling in the driveway and ran inside to get my helmet. When I returned, she was lying on her side, un-running, with gas dribbling out of the carbs, kind of like a drunken sailor with an open bottle, splayed out and happy. Either a gust of wind tipped her over, or some low-idle cylinder shudder kicked her off her stand.

Whatever the case, I picked her up, adjusted the mirror, and went on my merry way. Not a scratch or ding in sight. (Note to self: you need crash bars on your Super Ténéré.)

Second, the newish Michelin Pilot Sport Activs are pretty good wet-weather tires. Comfortable, stable, and not a single slip. Great traction accelerating, cornering and braking to avoid the odd tree branch that had fallen into the roadway, and shattered into a blast of wood pulp and bark.

Third, the robots are getting pretty good. I discovered an app called Magisto that lets you dump a bunch of your raw video footage and photos onto their site, along with an uploaded song of your choice, and then it “auto-edits” a video for you. Whatcha think?

http://www.magisto.com/embed/MwIMIVoLSmttRUZhCzE?l=vem&o=w&c=b

It isn’t going to win any “Editor’s Choice” awards on Vimeo. But thanks Ray Garland and John Coltraine. I couldn’t decide on a track, but Indecision seemed to fit the bill just right.

Uh oh. Starting to rain again. Gotta get going…

Well, I done did it.

After about a decade of web-surfing, forum-lurking, Craigslist-checking, and general Beemer-fantasizing, I finally did it. I took the plunge and got myself an airhead (luftkopf in German).

For the uninitiated and to be clear, airhead does not refer to a bimbo trophy wife, at least not here. While airheads do inspire a peculiar brand of mid-life obsession and covetousness (much like vintage Porsches or teak-trimmed catboats), they are far less expensive and complicated, and your present wife and kids will still talk to you after you get one.

I mean, how can anyone get upset with you for falling in love with this?

In this case, “airhead” refers to a particular sub-genre of BMW motorcycles known and loved for their two-cylinder engines. Each cylinder head protrudes horizontally from the bike “opposing” its twin, with their contained cylinders punching outward, perpendicular to the bike, kinda like this.

The engine was designed this way so that its cylinder heads—like the rider’s—would have unobstructed views to the oncoming rush of air, which efficiently cools the valves and cylinders, while it simultaneously slow-roasts the rider’s legs and feet.

But shin-warmth aside, the airhead “boxer” engine has proven to be an incredibly durable piece of industrial design. And it bears more than a passing resemblance to another favorite piece of industrial design which also stirs the soul, but in different ways.

BMW produced motorcycles with airhead engines for more than seven decades, from 1923 to 1995. Although (as far as I can tell) the term “airhead” itself seems to be reserved mostly for bikes made from 1969 to 1995, with the legendary 247 motor.

So how did this gearhead come by one?

Well, on an aimless Saturday morning a few months back, I just so happened to check Fairfield County’s Craigslist to see what kind of two-wheeled metal was for sale. I, like many other machine-crazy web-lurkers/searchers/fantacists, have done this at least a thousand times before, partaking in a sort of one-man motorbike variant of fantasy football:

How about a…(insert vintage Japanese enduro single here)
But ya know, I’ve always kinda wanted a…(insert obscure Italian sportbike here)
Hey lookeethat! What’s about a…(insert oddball sidecar hack here)

During this itninerant fantasizing, I’ve seen maybe one or two bikes of lukewarm interest. But nothing has ever been so tempting that I’ve actually clicked the “email seller” link.

This time was different.

After searching under “vintage BMW motorcycle, the first thing that popped up was an ad posted that very morning. It was for a listing just a few miles south of me. The bike—a 1974 BMW R75/6, 39,000 original miles, second owner—belonged to a guy in Darien, CT who had possessed it for a quarter of a century, and who only rolled it out of his heated, spotless garage for typically-hard Darien duty. You know, stuff like morning runs to Dunkin Donuts for coffee,  or trips down to his boat. (This pattern of abuse was later confirmed when the owner opened the side bags, which were crammed with telltale cardboard coffee trays and brown Dunkins napkins.)

So after some hasty (and probably over-enthusiastic) emailing, I offered to drive down to meet Don, the owner, and check out the bike.

When I pulled in,  Don was kneeling on the freshly-hosed tarmac of his immaculate driveway, a tube of Flitz in one hand, the other polishing the bike’s tailpipe. He was flanked by a shiny Jeep Wrangler and a trailered, well-kept Boston Whaler.  As we bullshitted about bikes, I learned that Don owned multiple Beemers (including several airheads), and was in the process of “toy-shedding”—a close cousin of down-sizing, which often accompanies empty-nesterdom, and the move south to warmer climes. (Don was moving to Florida where his wife, boat, and other bikes were waiting for him.)

Anyway, Don fired her up on the first try, I fetched my helmet from the car, and went airheading for my first time. Within 11 seconds, it was game over. Hook, line and sinker love.

I toodled out onto Mansfield Avenue in Darien, and spooled her up. The bike churned smoothly,  pulled strongly, and rode shockingly well for a 41 year old machine. It was almost comically low to the ground compared to my Super Ténéré, with an equally low center of gravity, giving it the comfort and easy rideability of (dare I say?) a scooter. But with way more mechanical presence and heft.

The whole boxer experience was also fresh and unique. At idle, like at a stop sign, the bike jiggled noticeably side-to-side, shifting its weight and following the momentum of its horizontally-opposed “boxing” cylinders. But roll on the gas, and that sideways mechanical motion was transferred through gearbox and driveshaft to produce hummingly perfect, almost gyroscope-powered forward motion. Riding the airhead was super mechanically involving, from shifting to throttle to brakes, which required considerable effort, but adequately hauled the bike down from speed.

The only noticeable quirk (forewarned by Don) was a touchy, clunky shift into second; but simply preloading the shifter with pressure from your toe made it thunk in smoothly.

So back in Don’s driveway, and after a little gentlemanly bargaining, she was mine. I consider it one of the great deals of my lifetime, as the delight-to-money ration was and is totally off the charts.

Here’s Don, a gentleman, indeed, dropping the bike off at my house the following weekend. How’s that for service?

It took a few weekends to noodle and get aquainted with her, and to decide where she needed some improvements. Here she is on her inaugural third-owner photo shoot:

At Don’s recommendation, I bought a tube of Flitz, and flitzed the shit out of her. On chrome, paint, or bare metal, that stuff worked its magic.

There are one or two minor cosmetic imperfections, which I may (or may not) address over time. First, there’s a noticeable crack in the front fender.

And second, there are a few rusty spots around the battery box.

In both of these instances, and in a very liberating (but uncharacteristic) way for me, I’ve decided to do nothing, and simply not give a shit.

Don delivered the bike with a Clymer’s manual and a milk crate brimming with miscellanea and spare parts, including the original manual and toolkit.

I decided that such a sweet vintage machine deserved an equally sweet tool roll (the original was vinyl and kinda threadbare), so for $35 I commissioned a guy named Randy (via Etsy) to make a replacement. He crushed it, in duck canvas and leather:

(Notice anything else new? Hint: tool tray gasket). The bike also came with its original handpump…

And various bibs and bobs, including extra spark plugs, fuses, bulbs, hoses, fork oil, engine oil, filters…

Oh, and the original Krauser bags, emptied of their coffee detritus.

The one area of obvious, immediate need was tires. They were largely unworn, but pretty dry and crackly.

And while Don had clearly taken care of the bike (he changed all fluids annually and had installed a modern, sealed battery), I still wanted to get a professional “once over” before starting to ride her in earnest.

So I sent her off to Max BMW in Brookfield, CT, where she was admitted into the care of Phil Cheney, one of their resident airhead master mechanics. Ironically, Phil had worked on the bike about 25 years earlier (and had remembered it) when he was a mechanic at Lindner’s Cycle Shop in New Canaan, CT.

Here’s the key chain that came with the bike. How’s that for kismet?

Phil oversaw a minor tip-to-tail overhaul, from new tires (Michelin Pilot Sport Activs) to new stainless steel brake lines to re-routing the clutch cabling, cleaning and adjusting the Bing carbs, replacing the gas lines, adding a few new seals, new plugs, replacing all fluids, and road testing her.

Phil’s post-overhaul recommendation? “Ride the wheels off it.”

Here’s my little black kitten, purring…

Since then, the only thing she’s missing is a marriage license in the form of plates and registration. It turns out that in the great State of Connecticut, any vehicle 20 years old or older is required to be towed or trailered in for inspection at a sole location in the state: Wethersfield, CT. So until this spring (or unless I rent a U-Haul and take a midweek, midwinter run up I-91), she’s relegated to garage queen, with only occasional autumn leg-stretching around the block.

But man, isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she won-der-ful?