Chessie’s Bristol Adventure

Frequent IWBlogger contributor Chessie sends this tale of one of her riding adventures. Once again she’s found a cool looking place to stop but had some mis-adventure along the way. Like her and many others I’ve had that bad experience I’ve trying to shift and looking down to find the shift lever was gone. Here’s how she dealt with it.

“Nothing makes me feel so good, as taking a long ride to nowhere and back home again.  Of course, there is no such thing as “nowhere”.  Anytime you leave one spot for another your somewhere!  I left my home in Johnson City TN with the idea of following a map I had routed a week or two before. The map idea lasted until I got to Bristol.  Nothing worked after that: I guess I can’t remember directions past the 2nd turn. Once in the city of Bristol, I made my way west on 11E toward Kingsport TN. About 4 miles out of town I found what I was looking for.  I had read about an old building on the internet, but had never seen it.  I slowed down and gradually eased into the huge gravel parking lot.  Drinking in the sight of this huge box guitar posing as a building.  It’s a cool sight and well worth the stop to photograph your bike in front of.  It gives ya bragging rights if you’re a music fan.

This building is known as the Grand Guitar.  Its last usage was as a Museum housing guitars and other types of rare or unusual instruments.  You could wander through the museum spotting guitars, ukuleles, lap steels, resonator guitars, banjos, mandolins, dulcimers, auto harps and violins. The building is 70 feet long, three stories tall and the guitar neck inlay as well as the sound hole is windows.  It’s a bit sad to see it in its present crumbling condition, but that’s “progress.”

I stopped my bike in front of the building and started snapping away. It was cool just me and my bike out for a great Sunday ride, kinda doing a theme thing.  I thought I would stop at all the neat things I had found on the internet; you know the weird but true historic and not so historic places of interest to visit?  I got the photos I wanted and then it was time to mount up and head on out.

Climbing on the little girl and pulling in her clutch lever: I cranked the bike up and made sure she was in first gear, sliding the lever out slowly, I pull out onto the road.  Once both wheels were on the road and out of gravel, I twisted the wick and in short order I was ready to kick her into second and I did.  Oh, oh, something’s wrong.  Damn you Mr. Murphy!  Damn you all to hell!  My shift lever came off the shaft and it was dangling on the toe of my boot. I thought to myself; don’t move your foot Chessie, slowly shut the bike down, find a safe place to pull over and hope there are no bumps to knock the shift lever from your boot. There are cars behind you so please don’t let that pot ash material get run over by a car or truck, oh no, no, no.

Whistles and fanfare, I did it! I might have pissed off the driver behind me but who cares?  He didn’t run me over and I still have the shift lever dangling from my boot!  I’m off the road and off my bike.  I open my tool bag and pull out the hex head wrench needed to tighten the leaver back on.  OK, put the lever on the spline and correctly tighten her down.

Are you kidding me? None of the wrenches fit! Found one that would kinda sorta work. I couldn’t see the hole on the set screw, so I just assumed it was stripped and that was the reason I couldn’t get the thing to tighten down well. While I was lying on my back peering under my bike and trying to tighten the bolt I noticed a middle aged woman pull over.  She had passed me on the other side of the road and then decided to come back around and offer tools or assistance if needed.  Cool, I was impressed, this woman was like me and carried all the tools she needed to work on her vehicle.  I liked her and thanked her profusely for stopping.  We discussed what was going on with the lever and I asked her if there was an Auto Zone or something up the road.

Yes sirreee Bob, about four miles up the road just before coming into Kingsport I found a NAPA store that was open!  I worked for a NAPA store that catered mostly to jobbers. We wouldn’t have opened on Sunday for anybody, but these guys were, amazing, and the guy was most helpful.

Turns out the screw that was being used to tighten the lever onto the splined shaft was a star setscrew, no wonder I couldn’t get it to tighten up very well. By the time I was done with it, it most certainly was buggered! The guy behind the counter went to his bolt bin and found me a hex headed bolt to fit.  Well, it may not be pretty, but it bolted on and stays tight!”

Welcome to Bristol

Grand Guitar

Part of Chessie's Tool Kit