Mystical message solved motorcycle mystery

Vintage motorcycles, classic motorcycles and old motorcycles in general pick up human stories as they go through their mechanical lives. We don't always know the stories. There is every chance that an inanimate object like a motorcycle will outlive its rider. The mileage on the odometer will suggest that good times were had, but not much more.

One consolation may be that our motorcycles do remember us to their future owners, in silent testimony. Someone replaced that horn. These handlebars aren't standard equipment. Look, here's the factory color underneath the black primer. They are evidence that we once lived and lived through them, enjoying our lives and changing theirs.

I got a sharp reminder of this yesterday and blogged about it at Royal Enfield Motorcycles.

Here's what happened: I was looking through some pictures emailed to me by the daughter of a man who had just died. I'd been writing to her trying to answer a question about his motorcycle, which she was selling.

Saddened to hear of her loss, I concentrated on the words in her email. I set the photos aside. I knew I would look at them later.

When I finally looked at them again, more than a week later, one of them seemed to leap out at me. It was a picture of the woman's father, next to his motorcycle, and he was holding a sign in his hands.

Written on the sign was the solution to the very mystery that I was trying to solve.

Sometimes you hear of people who experience something in life and barely take notice of it. Typically, I think, what you have is a delayed reaction. I was reading about a secretary in England during the Blitz. A bullet came through the window of her office, narrowly missing her. Half an hour later, she fainted.

I didn't faint, but something similar happened. Impressed by my great good fortune in being handed the answer to my question, I worked up my blog item, including the photo in question. Only with that done did I begin to reflect.

The mystery I was trying to solve was whether or not this motorcycle was a Royal Enfield Hornet, a model sold for one year only and only, apparently, in the United States. The daughter didn't know and her father couldn't satisfactorily tell her. With the help of other Royal Enfield owners, who provided pictures, I did manage to ascertain that the motorcycle probably was a Hornet.

But there was no knowing for sure; at least so it seemed when, shortly after our correspondence began, the father died. The daughter wrote that her father had enjoyed the attention to his long-time motorcycle restoration project, and that seemed the end of it.

Then I picked up that picture. It seems that, more than a year before his death, the motorcycle owner had decided to pose for a prank photo to send to a friend in England. The picture would remind his friend that a new wiring harness was needed for the motorcycle. To add humor, the motorcycle was strewn with extension cords to make it look like a wiring disaster.

In his hands, the owner held a handmade sign advertising that he needed a wiring harness for his Royal Enfield Hornet. The motorcycle was indeed a Hornet.

The happy smile on the man's face tells you that he sees the humor in the photo. But I wonder if he would not have laughed still more to know the shock it gave me. It was as if he was speaking to me from Beyond.