Bobbers
Turns out he was not only from Mass, but lived less than 20 miles (Dartmouth) from my hometown (Taunton) so we had a lot of the same crap to talk about. “I’ve been living here for 16 years, but I travel a lot in my job and get up to New Bedford (next to Dartmouth) about once a month and visit everybody. We had a ranch there called Apache Ranch that was a horseback riding stable. When my family sold that, I ended up moving down here,” said Shaun. “It’s nice ’cause if you ride a bike, the weather here is nice year round and Daytona is like the mecca of riding, you know?” It’s funny that even though he calls it mecca, this Daytona lad still looks forward to riding in Massachusetts. “I go home for the Portuguese Feast in New Bedford, that’s like my bike week. I bring my bike and I do more riding in the week I’m up there than I probably do all summer down here because the riding here is just long and straight, no corners , no shaded back roads. We’ve got one nice road here called “The Loop” and everybody, I mean everybody, rides The Loop. It’s almost like Main Street.”
Shaun explained to me how he got into this crazy two-wheel thing, “When I was real young, my father used to take me to a place called Motorcycle Headquarters in Dartmouth, it was a little wooden shop, that was all Triumphs and BSA’s and he’d set me on the bikes. I always drive by there now and wondered what happened to the guy Ronnie that owned it. My father used to have a purple Panhead with a chrome frame back in the day and I guess that’s how I kinda got into bikes.”
Frankly, I had a great conversation with Shaun and enjoyed listening to him (and not just because it was a familiar accent) tell a few tales. “In 1980, I bought a Wide Glide brand new when I first got my license. I put a solid wheel on it, put a fender on it, and this place called Cape Cod Choppers in Wareham [Mass] used to do this nice candy paint with gold leaf and that’s what I did to the Wide Glide,” said Shaun. “I’d tell people I had $15,000 in that bike and they almost had a heart attack. If I rode that same bike down Main Street today, nobody, well maybe a couple of old guys, would even bat an eye to it compared to what they do to bikes now.” Even though Shaun and I probably didn’t have the exact same backgrounds and experiences (he’s a lot younger than me, but then who isn’t?), it was fun to hear somebody else besides me have a different opinion of what Old School might have actually been. “Back in the ‘80s, they had murals on ‘em. I don’t remember anybody with flat black bikes in the day. Everybody back then wanted nice paint,” said Shaun laughing at the absurdity and continuing, “Flat black is Old School? I don’t remember one person, not one, wanting a flat black paintjob!” Funny, I can’t seem to remember one either.
Shaun’s latest ride is something of an ode to long ago without trying to be a theme bike (If I never see a theme bike again it will be too soon), or a misguided clone of something, it sorta just happened to end up the way he likes them. “I’ve had it about four years now and bought this bike as a put-together bike from a guy that couldn’t start it,” he said. “Before I had this bike, all I ever rode was Panheads and Shovels. This is only the second Evo I’ve ever owned. I just sold a really, really nice Panhead chopper and I’m sorry I sold that, but I got good money for it and I’m probably lucky I sold it when I did,” said Shaun. “I don’t know what’s up with that motor in this bike. I’ve never had it apart and it’s a one-kick bike. It runs perfect. I hang around at Tropical Tattoo in Daytona and I live 60 miles from there and I’m up there almost every day. I don’t have a speedo so I really don’t know how many miles I’ve got on it, but I’ve worn out three sets of tires and it runs perfect. I’ve always thought Evos were good motors.”
As far as that one-kick thing, Shaun said, “Anybody can one-kick my bike, unless they’re real stupid [laughs] and flood it. I’ve actually kick started this bike with my hand. Sometimes I’ll just bring it up on compression and the thing will start, that’s how good it runs. We dialed it in perfect and re-jetted the carburetor. Every bike I’ve bought that was a kicker was a ten-kicker when I bought it and when I sold it, it was a one-kicker.” The “we” Shaun’s referring to is his partner, Marcus Orabona, who is the other half of Trailer Trash Choppers, a company they run together (Barnett’s Online featured a bike by Marcus and if you want to see it, click on this link http://barnettharley.com/index.php/online-feature-bikes/item/2648-trailer-trash-choppers-spare-change). “We build bikes that we can sell and still make money for $10,000. I look at these bikes that other companies sell for $18,000 and I’d rather buy a Cross Bones for that money,” said Shaun. “People are buying our bikes because it’s a lot cheaper and the banks aren’t giving loans on a stupid motorcycle nowadays.”
Shaun explained the focus of his bike, “Back in the day, they just set ‘em up kinda hardcore and that’s what my bike is called, Hardcore. This bike was built to ride which I told you I do almost everyday. It had a narrow springer and it was way off the ground in front so we put a Wide Glide front end on it. Also, it didn’t have a belt drive and I put a different 4-speed with Andrews gears in it. I changed the brakes to PM and got rid of the cheap aftermarket controls it had and put Jaybrake on it,” said Shaun. “Basically the only thing the bike has is the tank that had that paint on it, but it had a mural of a dream catcher on top and I blacked that out and blended it into the sides. Yeah, a dream catcher. . . I like the Santee frame because the backbone’s flat and if you frisco the tank, it doesn’t have a hump like most other frames.”
Shaun seems to grudgingly like this bike, it does everything it needs to and never has let him down, but his sense of humor (and trust me, he’s a funny guy) comes through when he said with a big laugh, “I leave my key in the bike all the time. If they [bike thieves] can figure out how to kick it and ride it away, they’re welcome to it.” Oh and by the way Shaun, I’ll meet you up there at Pop’s Lunch (“Where old friends meet”) at Route 6 and Faunce Corner Road in North Dartmouth. If you don’t know where Pop’s is, ask around to some of your father’s Old School friends. You know, it’s over where the new mall is going to be built on the old Paskamansett golf course. Should be a wicked pissa time.
For more info on Trailer Trash Choppers, visit their MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/trailertrashchoppers.
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