A Royal Enfield story to tell you

Why is this man smiling? Me fixing my Royal Enfield on the sidewalk.

 Pushing my broken down Royal Enfield Bullet home earlier this year, I was secretly pleased. 

I had finally earned a place in the imaginary club of vintage motorcyclists, in which every member has a story to tell about pushing a motorcycle home. 

My wife, who arrived in our car to bring me a drink of water, was filled with pity. It was misplaced. I wasn't sad, I was happy. 

At last, I had the right to tell the lads down at the pub the story of how I pushed my Royal Enfield two miles. 

Except... there is no pub. I have no "lads." 

That's my fault. For one thing, I waited until I was 50 to buy my Royal Enfield. For another thing, I had waited until I was 73 to push it home!

Most story tellers boasting of going home on shoe power describe events of their youth. Older and wiser, a break down late in life would inspire them to call a truck to collect the motorcycle.

Not me.

I wanted to experience the ups and the downs of riding an old-fashioned motorcycle, and have stories to tell.

Stories like the one Graham Scarth of the Royal Enfield Owners Club (UK) told me years ago, in an email.

"Back in 1970/71 I had a Norton Twin as well as the (Royal Enfield) 250 GT," he wrote.

"Coming home from the Yorkshire coast one evening on the Norton, it suddenly lost all drive in the bottom of a dip just as I opened the throttle to climb the rise. Coasted to a halt and put the bike on stand. Rear chain was laid out in a straight line on the road some yards back and no damage to engine/gearbox cases. No damage to me either from what could have been a nasty incident.

"Pushed the bike about a mile to the nearest pub and phoned a mate with a van, then had a pint or two whilst I waited."

What a wonderful story. And, of course, it ends at a pub.

When I started this blog, in 2008, I visualized it as a fictional soap opera built around a mythical biker bar I called the Three Down, somewhere in America.

I wrote nine episodes before admitting that I am not a novelist. You can read them here. But I wouldn't.

I wrote the soap opera shortly after I retired and I was missing the companionship and drama of the office. I was also missing the fun of commuting to work on my Royal Enfield. A blog seemed like a partial answer to these losses then, and it still is.

Because, truth is, dear readers, you are collectively the lads, and this is the pub. Bottoms up and may there never be a Last Call.

Royal Enfields, Made Like a Gun

A big cannon is solid, all-steel, mechanically complex, and makes a thump.

 Today's subject is not motorcycles, but artillery, as displayed on war memorials. 

These have always fascinated me, and not just because I ride a Royal Enfield motorcycle. 

"Made Like A Gun" is the time honored motto of Royal Enfield motorcycles, but the motorcycle-gun connection is tenuous. 

The motto stems from the brand's earliest days. Implying some relationship to the famed Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield, England, was considered just plain good marketing by a firm that made bicycles in the nearby town of Redditch. 

The company was proud that it had made some parts for the armory (although, apparently, never complete guns). The parts contract was considered adequate justification for calling its bicycles (and, later, motorcycles) "Royal Enfields."

Although the "Made Like A Gun" motto was occasionally illustrated with a drawing of a rifle, the "gun" was usually shown as what most people would call a cannon. (The British military preferred to call even such big weapons "guns" since, after all, "cannon is a French word.")

Ever since, owners of Royal Enfield motorcycles have loved posing their motorcycles in front of war memorials, especially memorials featuring cannon, although warplanes on pedestals attract Royal Enfields as well.

The present Tampa gun was modified to fire from a railroad car. Four big hydraulic canisters cushion the recoil.

And so, on a recent visit to Tampa, Florida, I was delighted to discover a whomping big artillery piece in a  park on the grounds of the University of Tampa. The monument it decorates is dedicated to veterans of the Spanish-American War of 1898.

The base of the monument describes the gun, but I wanted to know more, and boy, did I find it: an entire webpage devoted to this monument.

To my surprise, the description of the gun on the monument itself is wrong. In exacting detail, the website Tampapix explains that the monument base originally hosted a different big gun. That one was cut up and scrapped for its metal during World War II.

Base says gun was placed in 1927, but this gun is a 1946 replacement.

The base of the monument sat forlorn three years until 1946 when, with little fanfare, Tampa war veterans found another 8-inch cannon of the same era and the city and county paid to have it mounted. The lack of fanfare is odd, as the thing was said to weigh 15 tons, and it sits atop the memorial base on a different mounting. It is quite a big deal.

The original cannon would have been one of my favorite oddities: a "disappearing gun." This almost whimsical seacoast-defense gun would recoil back to hide below the open-topped walls of its emplacement, effectively disappearing from the view of enemy battleships after firing.

Fine, for 1898. Not so fine after the invention of the airplane, from which it was not invisible.

The replacement gun is certainly worthy of display. Whether disappearing or not, it, too, would have defended the coast, but it was rendered obsolete as battleships began to be equipped with bigger, longer ranged cannon.

It got a second life, modified as a railroad gun. Mounted on a special carriage it could approach enemy lines on the tracks. This particular gun may even have seen combat in World War I, Tampapix states (although, unusually for it, without documentation).

Big old gun was complex, but still aimed by hand.

Royal Enfield's motto, Built Like A Gun, very properly suggests the robust construction, precision (and complication!) of these enormous creations. Mounted as memorials to wars of 100 years ago or more, they might also be described as built to last.