Rubber City Marauders Akron Motorcycle Club










NEWS AND OTHER STUFF FROM THE MEANEST BIKER THUGS IN NORTHEAST OHIO


Friday, November 04, 2005
	Crooks and Camouflage by Clement Salvadori Of course we worry about our bikes, about their falling prey to the scoundrels in our society who steal rather than work. Having had three bikes stolen in my riding career, all within a five-year period back in the 1960s, I’ve learned a little something. However, when I become Attorney General I will recommend that all those convicted of stealing motorcycles have their right hands cut off; that’ll fix ’em. But the point here is, how can we best protect our machines from the low-lifes who would “liberate” them, either for a joy ride, or for profit. Some riders live in houses with garages, and once the door is down, the alarm turned on, they relax. Others are in apartment complexes, with big underground parking areas, lots of traffic; this can be quite worrisome, especially if there is no gate nor camera on the parking. Worse, of course, is having to park on an urban street. Ever since I was 16 I’ve had to worry about where to park my motorcycle. Senior year in high school my parents packed me off to a nearby prep school; I could have been a day student, but they figured, correctly, that if I were locked down in a dorm every night, I might get enough studying done that I could possibly make it into a college, any college. My roommate was another local boy whose parents had the same notion. And we both had 250cc motorcycles. Strictly against school regulations, we hid them down at an abandoned railroad station not far away, and would tootle off after we got released on weekends. We thought that nobody was wise to us-but years later when talking to one of my old teachers, he allowed as to how the school knew. Since we lived only 10 miles from the school, the decision was to let us think we were getting away with something. Leaving a couple of bikes behind an empty building week in and week out in this century would be unthinkable, but that was small-town New England 45 years ago. The motorcycles survived. After getting my diploma I went to work at an amusement park for the summer, sold my 250 and bought a Sunshine Yellow 1951 Indian Chief with the Roadmaster accessory package. I wanted BIG! That fall I headed off to college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a hundred miles east of home, where freshman all lived in dormitories in the middle of the campus. In those halcyon days motorcycle parking was allowed about a hundred yards from my dorm. There were not many bikes in 1958, less than a dozen would be seen, mostly scooters. One night, about 2 a.m., struggling with a paper due in the morning, I needed a break. So I went out, climbed on the Indian—and it did not want to start. There was a whole little drill involving the Linkert carb—turn on the ignition, retard the spark, rise way high up on the kickstarter, and whango! Burp! Nothing. This went on for quite a few minutes, and some nerdy type walking by stopped to watch, and then asked, tentatively, “What are you doing with that motorcycle?” “I’m stealing the damn thing,” I replied, just as the engine coughed and caught. I rode off, probably leaving him in a quandary as to whether or not to call the cops. The first time I did have a bike stolen was in Cambridge, some years later. I had taken a leave of absence from college, done my army service, and come back to finish, now living off-campus in a rundown tenement, fourth-floor walk-up, but with a garage behind, where I kept my Triumph Bonneville on which I commuted. At school I would park the bike behind the Speakers Club, a dissolutely erudite social organization I belonged to, and go off to classes. Sometimes forgetting, or not bothering, to lock the fork…to come back one afternoon and find it gone. Shock and awe! Fortunately the thief was some rather stupid local kid who just wanted to go joy-riding, and I got the bike back two days later, with damage only to the ignition switch. I graduated, several years went by, and I found myself living in a waterfront apartment in Boston’s North End, a delightful old part of the city built before the advent of the automobile, with no garages at all. My previous Cambridge slumlord had an empty garage to rent, so I would keep my new Triumph TR6R there, and drive my old van back to the apartment. I went out of town one weekend in a car, three of us going down to Philadelphia to visit a friend in the U.S. Naval Hospital—this was 1967, the days of Vietnam. We returned late Sunday night. Monday I went to get the bike, and as I walked around the building to the garage the old fellow who had lived in the first-floor apartment since Truman had been president stuck his head out his window and said, “Hey, I think you’ve been robbed; the doors were hanging open when I got up Saturday morning.” Sure enough, somebody had cut the hasp on the padlock and taken my almost new bike. Obviously some local scoundrel had taken note of my coming and going, proof that out of sight did not necessarily mean out of a thief’s mind. Cops arrived, took a report, told me that I had less than a 5 percent chance of getting the bike back, and left. Fortunately, a local dealer had set up an unofficial retrieval system, essentially hiring ex-thieves to steal stolen bikes, and my TR6 was soon back in my happy hands. The moral of that little story was to have a more secure garage. Third theft was down in Rosslyn, Virginia, in 1969, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., where for six months my Bonneville had slept happily in the parking beneath my apartment. The U.S. Department of State had just given me orders to Vietnam; the girlfriend was going back to Maine. On the eve of our departure her VW and my Triumph were parked right in front of our ground-floor window; I was loading her bus, after which we were going to ride over and see some friends. Carrying some boxes out to the VW, I noticed a guy walking by with a helmet in hand; guess his bike broke, I thought, and went back in for another load. Came back out, bike was gone. I had the key, but the fork had not been locked since I was right there—whoda thunk? Real quick! All he had to do was push the bike 10 feet around the corner, down the hill, jam a screwdriver in the ignition or run it into a waiting truck…never saw that one again. I’m more discreet these days, 35 years later, and have become maybe luckier, certainly wiser. When away from home, if I don’t like the neighborhood, I don’t park there. Period. At a parking garage I will put the bike by the attendant. I use a disc lock as well, but a quartet of burly guys, a truck and 30 seconds is all it takes. I know all about these bulky security devices, chains and cables and the like, but I feel these are merely delaying tactics, and the professional thief knows how to deal with them. Alarms are good—if you remain within earshot. On the road I try to stay at genuine motels where you park right outside the door, and I run a string inside and tie it to my big toe. I carry a beat-up old E-Z Touring bike cover, and the driver passing by doesn’t know if that is a new Harley Deuce or an old Yamaha Fazer under it; that’s camouflage. At my rural home the bikes are well-guarded by five attack cats. I sleep well. Posted by C.L. 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