Old Motorcycle Shop
26 June 2018
There are worse places to spend a day.
Whitener?! What?
I woke up on my cushy dorm room, made a cup of their terrible coffee, and packed my things. I knew the address of the place I was headed, but my GPS is on the fritz, and I wasn’t sure if Calgary has a rush hour. The only option was to leave early and just sit around when I got there. After I lugged my stuff across the parking lot and mounted my phone so that Google Maps could guide me, I headed off into the not-so-early morning.
Calgary definitely does have a rush hour, but I arrived at Old Motorcycle Shop at roughly 9:15, they asked me to be there by 9:45. When I pulled up, they were already there moving bikes around. Apparently they actually show up around 8 but it takes some time to get everything sorted out for the day.
Clearly this place means business
They recognized me as the guy who needed fork work and they pointed me right into the main door, down the aisle, and up onto a waiting motorcycle lift. Perfect! I dismounted without falling on my butt and helped them secure the bike to the stand. After that, I talked to the owner a bit and handed over the fork seals I had bought in Kalispell. He suggested I go get breakfast down the street at a little cafe called Oliver’s and just in case, they had ordered some new fork bushings for my bike.
Still wearing my boots and motorcycle pants, I trudged down the street and found my way around to Olivers. There was one guy behind the counter, a wall of printed out pictures behind him that served as a meny, and four elderly Canadian gentlemen at a table drinking coffee and discussing everything. I looked at the picture menu - the guy behind the counter could apparently make just about anything - Chinese, American, maybe even Indian. I settled on the southwestern omelette and some coffee. He rang me up and offered a place for me to plug in my laptop. I got some coffee, and worked on this blog while I waited. The place was clean, but sure felt old, just like about every diner in an industrial area I’ve ever been to. The omelete was darn tasty though; I definitely wouldn’t hesistate to go back.
Back at the shop, Jeff the mechanic had already torn down my forks, and decided he wanted to replace the bushings, which weren’t there yet, but would be sometime right after lunch. They encouraged me to make myself at home, so I put away all my stuff, grabbed a cup of coffee, and started wandering around. It isn’t a big shop, but they sure do pack lots of stuff in it. There were probably 100 bikes sitting around in various states of repair, and every wall was topped with a big shelf that had either parts listed on eBay, or just parts to have on hand (for example, a big bin of taillights, and another of wiring harnesses). They clearly have no qualms about working on anything with 2, 3 or maybe even 4 wheels and probably have most everything on hand to get it put together right. Talking to the techs, there were a couple Calgary locals, but the owner was from Britain, another tech was from Mexico, and yet another from Australia. This pretty much explained all of the various soccer team flags hung up in the shop. They also had a friendly shop dog who supervised, occasionally looked after the payment counter and begged for lunch.
How may I help you? Do you have treats?
After a while, the new bushings arrived. Jeff enthusiastically took them out of their package, tried them on the forks - and they were too big. It wasn’t his day, only moments before someone had ordered the wrong tire for another bike he was working on. We went back to the parts counter and did some checking. Nobody - not even the Kawasaki dealers, had bushings for a KLR. This seems kind of rediculous given how common the KLR is. We threw around some options, and decided to try modifying the wrong bushings to fit since they were of the right thickness. Some hacksawing later and Jeff test fit them. Everything looked good until he tried to reassemble the forks, they jammed about halfway down. So much for that plan. I feel like we could have made it work if we were really desperate and had endless time, but thats not what we had.
After more discussion, we decided just to run with the old bushings. They weren’t totally dead yet, and to wait for new ones would be a 2 day minimum wait in Calgary with no transportation. That didn’t sound good to me or them. So, back together it went, old bushings, new seals and new fork oil.
After we settled up (they were super reasonable), they loaded me up with stickers and a patch and sent me on my way. Overall, I’d go back again in a heartbeat; it was lots of fun being around people who really enjoyed and cared about their job; not to mention all of those pretty old motorcycles.
Once I left Old Motorcycle Shop, I grabbed a quick snack, filled up with gas super fast, and then sat in traffic. Yay, cities! Someone had suggested that I take the 1A instead of the 1 to Banff, it was more twisty. But, to get there, I had to drive through a suburb where lots of people were headed home from work. Add in a fender bender and poor traffic control and you’ve got a proper traffic jam. This is also where I found out that Texans aren’t the only ones that just make their own exits to the frontage road when its convenient.
Eventually I made it to Banff, put up my tent at the Tunnel Village I campground and then wandered around downtown Banff a bit. Pretty good day overall!
Apparently, its called Tunnel Mountain because they thought about building a tunnel through it.