Charlie On The Mountain
Blue jeans and ball caps assemble, leaning against their dusted rides at the unofficial hangout of any small town, the parking lot. Its neutral ground sets the stage for showing off, settling scores, leaving things behind, or collecting nerves before heading inside. We linger long enough to run out of people to talk to and walk toward the Club. Pushing open the door to a gentle resistance, people press in small packs against it and the wall. In a flash we’ve caught the eye of someone who wants to know why we’re here, who we are. We perform casual introductions and plunge into a series of Q & A around connections. We all have one person in common, that’s all the qualifications we need today.
It’s a Saturday afternoon on Caledonia Mountain at the Clubhouse. Under the roof is a warm up shelter, meet up point, or place to grab a bite at Kick Ass Foods. To get here you can take the main road over the mountain, a path the Department of Transportation has paved with negligence over the years. Layered occasionally with chip seal and patches, you swerve past deep potholes and praise the lack of oncoming traffic, save for the occasional wildlife. In contrast, ride here through the woods by four wheeler, snowmobile, or side by side and you’ll cruise over well groomed trails maintained by volunteers of the Club; groomers kept in service for years because of Charlie.
A handful of motorbikes have made the trek here today, but we’re not part of their pack. My bike lies picked apart in our garage waiting for us to discover her latest complaint, which left me stranded on the side of the road two days ago. “As a testament to Charlie’s mechanical skills, your bike remains unfixed,” says Tom and we toast, taking part in the memorial by holding down a corner of the room. We’d love to talk with Charlie now, but to reach him would be a long distance call.
Charlie was our ‘phone a friend,’ at the end of a troubleshooting line. A certified BMW mechanic, who always answered if we were in a rut or just needed to talk shop. On weekends we would find Charlie in his truck, parked at the gas station. We’d catch up and fire questions out the window while our kids squirmed in the backseat at the hold up. During his time off he let us pick his brain, and in return we rolled into the drive thru ordering an extra drink. Sometimes we just wanted to see him without being noticed; not bother him with our problems. Playing a game like Where’s Waldo we would scan the porches of the countryside for a sighting; the winner proudly shouting, ‘found him!’ while the rest of us turned our heads to prove it before he disappeared. When his health declined and he ended up in a hospital bed, he could rattle off solutions to our problems without knowing the half of it. Free of reference materials to back him up, he offered no hesitation in his diagnosis. After a lengthy illness, Charlie went from the hospital bed to one in his home, and never returned to his shop.
Surveying the crowd of all-sorts at his memorial, we confirm what we thought all along, that Charlie belonged to more than just us. If you owned a vintage BMW from Atlantic Canada it likely passed through Aadrian’s Cycle in New Brunswick, by way of purchase or repair. The family business began as a Honda and BMW dealership, eventually becoming a mechanic shop servicing all makes; German, American, British, Japanese, and anything in between. Not known for small talk, Charlie and his dad Aadrian kept their heads and hands engaged on the long line up of bikes in their care, while his mother Lorraine worked from a small corner office. From here you could trace the history of their lives as your eye moved across layers of nostalgia clinging to the walls; decades of photos and memorabilia from former biking days held together in a workshop collage.
Someone must have had permission to borrow a few pictures from the 1970’s layer for today’s temporary display. Scattered on the table beside the guestbook are photos reflecting an era marked by sepia tones, bell bottoms and long hair. Still shots of bike rallys capture once private stories of road trips and work days, and if you’re able to strike up a conversation with one of Charlie’s long-time friends you could pin down exact dates and details.
Word spreads through the crowd of a group photo request and people haphazardly usher themselves and others up against the wall. Arranged in no particular order, friends from the photos of days gone by mingle with Charlie’s modern day friends. It’s mostly men up front while a chorus of women stand in a huddle behind the one with a camera, their purses piled on the table in a heap of trust. We stand back and play a who’s who to identify the line up, connecting those we can with a story related to Charlie or not. Some are members of a vintage motorcycle club, others family, and a few we recognize as customers of the shop. A couple arrive by chance; by the time they realize they’re here for a memorial they decide to stay and catch up, or maybe stay because it’s too awkward to leave.
A tray of rum shots balance in the hand of a lady working her way around the room. She heads toward us and we decide now might be a good time to separate ourselves from the crowd. We sign the guestbook, adding our names to another page of history in Charlie’s life. On the table his cremated remains lie sealed in a motorcycle tank at the front of the room. Here the rider is back on his bike, a fitting finish for a man whose life revolved around them.
