The Ride Report

In the seafaring world, the passage of time is marked by ringing a bell every half hour. Starting at midnight, 00:30 is one bell, 01:00 is two bells, 01:30 is three bells, and so on. This progresses up to eight bells, marking the end of a four-hour watch for the crew, then it starts over again. Hence the saying at end-of-watch that “Eight bells and all’s well.”

In the motorcycling world, bells are mounted on bikes to guard against road gremlins. The story goes that these gremlins grab onto bikes as they go by and they cause all manner of problems: electrical problems, mechanical breakdowns, bad luck, accidents, etc. But if you put a small bell on the lowest point of the motorcycle, they’ll grab onto that and get caught in the hollow of the bell, where the ringing will drive them nuts and they’ll let go and drop off the bike before they can get up to any mischief. So the bells guard against the gremlins and bring good luck, and they’re supposed to be even luckier if they’re received as a gift from a friend or loved one.

In my world, I go through motorcycle bells like a fat kid goes through Twinkies. I keep losing the damned things. They come with a little leather string to tie them to the bike, and I used to think the strings were breaking. But then I mounted one with a plastic zip tie and I lost that bell too. They just … disappear.

So after going through two bells in just a month or two, I “improved” the latest one to make it more permanent. I used a key ring, that little metal circle you feed the keys through that’s also attached to your alarm remote. That, I thought, would be pretty damned permanent. Leather straps might break down and disintegrate from road grime, and plastic zip ties might somehow get cut by the metal of the bell vibrating against it, but a metal key ring would stand up to just about anything short of a wire cutter. At least that was the theory.

Wrong. Just the other day I noticed that — again — my ride bell was gone. The metal key ring was still there and looking good as new (if a bit dirty), but the bell was just gone. Color me baffled.

Now, I mount my bells according to tradition, at the lowest point of the bike, which on my Road Glide tends to be the kickstand spring under the left floorboard. This kinda sorta puts them in a position to scrape the ground during aggressive left hand turns, and with the leather strapped ones I figured this was what was happening — they were getting torn off when I was scraping my floorboards in the canyons. Common sense might dictate choosing a different spot, but I kind of like the tinkling sound they make when they scrape. So I stuck with the same spot but went with the metal key ring instead. Because like I said: that’s more permanent. But now, I don’t know. Something weird is going on.

I figure that missing bell is what caused my throttle cable to break, by the way. I’m attributing every bell I’ve lost to a major problem avoided: a gremlin who was going to cause an accident or a blown engine or whatever got caught in the bell and had such bad juju that the weight of it took the whole damned bell with it. So I figure this latest bell was taken by a major issue avoided, but it left my bike unprotected and that’s when the throttle cable gremlin climbed aboard.

Well, I’ve fixed the throttle cable and now I’m also stocked up on bells. I was at the dealership today buying yet another part for the throttle cable repair (every project, mechanical or otherwise, always requires at least two trips to the store) and I picked up a bell for myself while I was there. Then I found out when I got home that my wife had gotten me a bell on her own at the same time, and had in fact decided to get me two of them since I’ve been blowing through them so fast lately.

So now I have not one, not two, but three riding bells — and that’s where the tortured nautical reference I’m using to title this entry comes from: It’s three bells and all’s well.

For now…