Going whole Hog

Now here is an article from The Chicago Tribune I can guess that several people will be interested in reading. I know many of our readers have the dream of “building their own” but don’t quite have the technical skills to do it. Read on… (The article is a little long, so I’ve  broken it up into two pages.)

IT WAS AN UNLIKELY BUSINESS MODEL: TEACH MOTORCYCLE ENTHUSIASTS HOW TO ASSEMBLE A BIKE FROM THE GROUND UP. NINE MONTHS LATER, CHOPPER COLLEGE IS ATTRACTING STUDENTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.

June 17, 2007

Joseph Biden, the senator from Delaware who would like to be the next president of the United States, was sitting on a motorcycle at the corner of Rush and Hubbard Streets. It was a frigid day in December.

“One look was all it took,” he said of the sleek custom bike. “I just had to get on; it fit like a glove. My only regret is that it was too cold for me to fire it up and go for a ride.”

The motorcycle-actually, a breed of the species known as a chopper-was put together in three days by six men, strangers to one another, who had come to a Harvey garage from cities across the country to work under the tutelage of the faculty at Chopper College: Tommy Creal, Joe Jasko and Armand Salin.

“He looks good on that bike,” said Creal, even though Biden was wearing a suit and a topcoat. “But, hey, who wouldn’t look good on a chopper?”

Creal opened a motorcycle repair shop in 2003–”just a bench and a stack of tools,” he says. Soon he began doing custom work, and in 2006 he heard about a business called Chopper College. “It was being run by a guy who wasn’t doing well and wanted to sell. I thought it was a great concept.”

The college holds a monthly three-day session that enrolls five to eight people–all male so far, though women have made inquiries–who build a chopper from scratch. It is the only such intensive, all-inclusive, hands-on course offered in the country. “We call it a boot camp,” says Creal.

Lawyers, bankers and auto mechanics have taken the classes. Some are serious cyclists, some are hobbyists and others are exploring possible new careers. A recent student was Dave Grass, who works for a trucking firm in Canton, Ohio. Grass, who has ridden motorcycles since he was a kid, was a master mechanic for 16 years in the Air Force working on fighters and bombers. “But this appealed to me,” he says of Chopper College. “A chopper is different. A chopper you build to your own ideal and ideas. It’s all about self-expression.”

Wives have bought the classes–the cost is $1,150–as presents for husbands. The students have come from as far away as Hawaii and the Netherlands after discovering the college on the Internet. “I just got a call from a guy in England who’s coming later this year,” says Creal. “It was cool. I’ve waited my whole life to have some one say ‘Cheerio’ to me. That and a U.S. senator sitting on one of our choppers. Not bad, eh?”

Biden was in Chicago for another in the seemingly endless series of gatherings–spreading the message and gathering cash–that constitute the modern presidential campaign. But for a moment, sitting on the chopper, he was transported back in time. “In college I had a scooter, paid $200 for it, and a decade or so ago I rode dirt bikes with my brother-in-law,” he said. “I’ve never ridden anything like this . . . but I could see it.”

The Biden Bike, as it has come to be known, is a beautiful thing, all gleaming chrome and fine lines, with an American flag painted, as if waving in the wind, on the gas tank and Biden’s name and an eagle artfully stitched into the white leather seat. It will be auctioned to raise money to help veterans.

“We were trying to think of something we could do for all the veterans coming home from the war,” Creal says. “A lot of these guys are our age and they are coming home damaged in ways it’s hard to imagine. So my dad is a friend and business partner with a guy working on the Biden campaign and we thought we’d build a Biden bike and then auction it off to raise money.” He has started the Price of Freedom Foundation, which will fund the building of bikes for returning vets, job training and employment efforts, and raise money for scholarships and family support.

The trio have given Biden a nickname: He is “J.B.”

They too have nicknames. Creal is “Clutch,” Jasko is “Diesel,” Salin is “Hammer.”

All seem older, most of the time, than their years. They are 21, 26 and 19 respectively, and though youthfulness manifests itself in typical ways–there are wild tales from a weekend trip to a motorcycle confab in Daytona Beach–all exude confidence and maturity.

“Some people have started calling us ‘Rebels With a Cause,’” says Creal.

ON ONE LEVEL, a motorcycle is a simple thing, defined by two wheels, a frame, engine and clutch, fork, fuel tank, seat, handlebars and brakes. As such it is easy to customize–to “chop”–with parts and materials, paints and designs that reflect the builder or owner’s personal aesthetic.

On another level, of course, there is a macho mystique about the machines–from 6-horsepower dirt bikes to window-rattling 125-horsepower Harley-Davidsons–and millions of words have been written trying to explain their appeal and the biker culture, usually evoking such actors and films as Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin in “The Wild One,” Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape” and Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in “Easy Rider.”

Generally, these words wind up being more pretentious and confounding than incisive. Here’s what Robert M. Pirsig wrote in his 1974 best seller, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”: “A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.”

The motorcycle image got its most serious polishing in the summer of 1998, when the Guggenheim Museum in New York staged a wildly popular exhibition called “The Art of the Motorcycle.” The catalog for the show put it this way: “The motorcycle is an immortal cultural icon that changes with the times. More than speed, it embodies the abstract themes of rebellion, progress, freedom, sex, and danger. The limits imposed by its possible forms and functions, and the breadth of variation that has been expressed within these limitations, provide a framework in which to examine the motorcycle both as object and as emblem of our century.”

All that’s a bit rarefied for those who actually ride motorcycles. “We don’t talk a lot about symbolism and meaning,” says Creal. “Most of the talk between guys who ride is about the machines themselves. We’re not philosophers. All sorts of people ride, and if you do there’s a certain understanding that doesn’t have to be talked about, to be broken down.”

He pauses, then asks, “Hey, doesn’t your new guy ride?”

By our “new guy,” Creal means Chicago billionaire Sam Zell, the soon-to-be new chairman of the Tribune Co., of which this newspaper is a part. And, yes, he has ridden motorcycles since he was a student at the University of Michigan. Indeed, when he toured Tribune Tower recently and got his first look at the grand offices of former publisher-editor Col. Robert R. McCormick, he said, “I think this would be a good place to park my motorcycle.”

Zell underwrote the Guggenheim’s “The Art of the Motorcycle” exhibit when it came to the Field Museum, and he and a few dozen motorcycle-riding pals showed up at the opening. They call themselves “Zell’s Angels” and for years they have taken annual motorcycle trips to foreign countries. Zell rides a Ducati, made by an Italian-based company that he once tried to buy. He does not, as far as anyone knows, have a tattoo, that familiar emblem of the motorcycle culture.

Creal has dozens, “so many I really have forgotten how many,” he says. They form a wild mosaic, creeping from the words “L-I-V-E” and “L-I-F-E” inked onto his knuckles up his arms to his shoulders.

Tattooed or not, an ever-growing number of people are hitting the road on motorcycles in all their varieties, including scooter, street, dual-sport and off-road types. Sales have risen for 14 consecutive years, and the Motorcycle Industry Council says more than 10 million motorcycles are in use in the U.S. and more than 150 million elsewhere on the planet. In most countries, such as India, Taiwan and Thailand, they are simply means of transportation and do not come freighted with the weight of fads, fashion and symbolism as they do here and in Europe.

There is one intriguing statistic about the U.S: In 1985, 21.3 percent of owners were over 40, but in 2005 that number was 53 percent.

ou raise kids and you hope they will grow up lawyers, doctors, CPAs, get their MBAs,” says Creal’s tattoo-less father, Tom, a CPA specializing in forensic accounting for a roster of international clients. “But you also teach kids to follow their passions and–what do you know?–mine did.

“My oldest, Theresa, lives in Los Angeles and is an aspiring actress. And then I’ve got Tommy.”

When he was 2 years old, Tommy was riding a motorized tricycle. When he was 6, his parents gave him a go-cart. At 14, he was riding a dirt bike and repairing his friends’ bikes in the garage that was attached to the family’s house in Homewood.

“From the time I was 10, I was always fixing bikes,” he says. “There weren’t many of us who rode, but we were passionate. We’d ride in forest preserves, in people’s back yards . . . wherever we could.”

He had another, more consuming, passion. “I started playing hockey when I was 4, and it was serious hockey, traveling around the country with a touring league,” he says.

His father was his coach. “He was good, very good,” the elder Creal says. “I’m not sure he could have played professionally, but he certainly would have gotten scholarships to major universities.”

Then, during his junior year at Mt. Carmel High School, where he was an A and B student with an active social life, Tommy Creal’s life started to spin out of control. “It all got to be too much,” says his father. “All these things–school, hockey, the bike shop, girls

. . . It’s hard for any young person to handle that kind of stress. They don’t even know what stress is.”

Stress relief came in the form of drugs.

“It wasn’t like I fell in with some bad biker crowd. No one introduced me to cocaine; I found it all on my own,” Creal says. “I was staying up all night and falling asleep in classes. My grades started to plummet. I lost interest in hockey. I just became a different human being,” he says.

He promised to stop. He didn’t. He promised to stop and did, and his father let him attend classes at the American Motorcycle Institute in Daytona Beach, where he learned what he didn’t already know about bikes. He relapsed again and sold all the equipment and parts in his garage to buy drugs. He promised to stop and underwent outpatient rehab. He stopped. He relapsed.

“My wife and I were going through hell,” his father says, his words deliberate and his eyes welling with tears. “No one . . . no one prepares you for that part of parenthood.”

Creal has been clean now for two years. “It will always be a struggle. I know that,” he says. “I went downhill very fast. I hurt a lot of people. But I’m fine and taking care of myself and have put a lot of faith in the future, in this place and in my guys.”

His first hire was Jasko. Born in Chicago and raised in Glenarm, a tiny town south of Springfield, he was the only child of a divorced father who was a truck driver and former drag racer. “He was willing to share with me everything he knew about cars, which was a great deal,” Jasko says. “But, for reasons he would never explain, he hated cycles. From the earliest age he was always telling me, ‘Never get a bike.’”

After high school Jasko drifted a bit, moving to the Chicago area and installing heating and air conditioning units (”I got laid off”), selling cars (”I wasn’t willing to sell my soul”) and servicing them (”No future there, since I knew, like, a million mechanics who were out of work”). He eventually got a job in a motorcycle shop.

“It was completely new and exciting,” he says. “In high school I hated learning stuff, but then I just wanted to learn everything there was to learn. I’d tear apart engines and put them back together just to learn.”

He eventually wound up working with Creal. “When people come up and ask what I do and I say I teach people how to build motorcycles, everybody wants to talk to me. There has always been a fascination with motorcycles. That’s why I see so much potential with Chopper College.”

The youngest member of the faculty doesn’t have any career ambitions. “I love this job, but I don’t think about what I want to do for my whole life,” Salin says, who is less professor than he is teacher’s assistant. “I just know that I want to build one kick-ass bike.”

His grandfather ran an auto repair shop in Chicago’s Roseland neighborhood. His father, an auto parts dealer, was a serious cyclist. “My first memories are the sound of his motorcycle,” says Salin. “I got into cars early, and while I was in [Homewood-Flossmoor] high school I started painting cars on the side, doing detail work, fixing cars at an auto body shop, and all I wanted to do in high school was stuff about cars, like taking welding classes.”

His parents wanted him to go to college “real bad,” but he wasn’t interested. “Then my mother found Chopper College and told me about it, and it sounded cool. It wasn’t maybe the kind of college they had in mind, but . . .”

He was a student in the first class, which was held last October. “It was weird, that first day,” he says. “I didn’t say anything. I was real quiet because all the other guys in the class were really old, like in their 40s.”

All except the teachers, who were nervous about their new teaching duties. “Starting that first class almost gave me a heart attack,” Creal recalls.

There have been monthly classes ever since. “And with every one we are waiting for that one jerk, that one guy who thinks he knows it all,” says Jasko. “But that’s never happened.”

In an effort to pre-empt any criticism from veteran gearheads, an impossible-to-miss sign hangs from the rafters of the school: “Wisdom is acquired by experience, not just by age.”

Graduates of the college have nothing but praise. Craig Elken, who traveled from Florida for the December class, observes: “[These are] how-to, go-to guys if you want to learn how to wrench on a bike and walk away with the confidence to build your own bike. I had never wired anything in my life . . . but I wired one entire side of the bike, front and back, including the ignition, and it fired up on the first try.”

The members of the February class began to show up early on a frigid Friday morning. The men wandered from chopper to chopper, some the gleaming results of previous classes, as if strolling through an art gallery.

“THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL,” said Doug Fortney, a bartender at a T.G.I. Friday’s restaurant in Virginia. His girlfriend paid his tuition as a gift. “I had no idea what to expect, what the place would look like, but I have a lot of friends who ride, and I want to learn enough to do custom work. I am definitely thinking that this might be the foundation for a new career.”

The class started with the students seated at tables. In front of them were massive textbooks covering such topics as “engine, transmission and primary alignment” and “rake and trail.” By the afternoon, they had rolled up their sleeves and started work–questions and answers flying fast– piecing together a chopper from hundreds of parts.

At one point, student Troy Zeidman dropped a screwdriver. “It’s amazing that the government allows you to fly helicopters,” Jasko said playfully.

“It is, isn’t it?” said Zeidman, laughing.

He is a West Point graduate, class of 1998, and a captain in the Army. During his first tour of duty in Iraq–he’s scheduled to return this month–he was a company commander in charge of 16 Black Hawk helicopters and 46 soldiers.

“The age of the instructors? That doesn’t bother me at all,” said Zeidman, who has three Harleys where he is stationed in Georgia. “I’ve got 19- and 20-year-olds working on my helicopters. I trust them with my life and the life of my men. These guys here know what they are doing.”

At day’s end, which came after 6 p.m., Creal offered to host a trip to the campus “malt shop,” Club O, which touts itself as a Las Vegas-style all-nude gentleman’s club; another after-class stop is often the Hooters in Orland Park. “These are intense days, and it’s good to blow off some steam and learn stuff about each other that we didn’t have time to talk about in class,” says Creal. “You can grow really tight with some of these guys over three days.”

The only local member of the February class was Jon Allard, a printer who lives in Woodridge and thought the college “would give me more knowledge . . . I’ve got a motorcycle family: My kids–they are 6, 5 and 3–all have their own little Hondas. And I guarantee you, one day I am going to build my own chopper.”

During Saturday’s class, the bike really started to take shape, and by Sunday afternoon all that remained were a few finishing touches. At around 5, Creal said, “OK, that’s it,” and he lowered the chopper from the hydraulic lift it had been sitting on during construction. For a long moment, teachers and students stared at the machine, nodding their heads and lighting cigarettes.

The bike was wheeled toward the garage door. Creal mounted it and kick-started it. Or tried to. Again and again he tried. Again and again.

Exuberance was quickly fading into frustration. One by one, the students climbed aboard the bike and tried to start it. Occasionally there was a sputter, a blast of smoke, but they failed to get the engine cranking. Creal and Jasko took tools and started making adjustments.

“It’s a brand-new bike, [stuff] happens,” said Creal

He got on the bike and tried again to start it. Nothing. Then, out of nowhere, the engine roared to life, and the members of the class began shouting, slapping one another on the back and shaking hands.

Creal put the bike in gear and they watched as he quickly became a speck traveling south in the February chill. In a couple of minutes, they heard that roar again and, turning north, watched him approach. He pulled to a stop in front of them, the engine idling.

“You guys build a hell of a bike,” he shouted.

The chopper joined the class-built machines in the Chopper College garage. It will soon be auctioned to benefit the Price of Freedom Foundation. Who knows what it will fetch? Choppers do not come cheap: Prices range from roughly $30,000 to $250,000.

THE MOST WELL-KNOWN chopper builder is California’s Jesse James, a distant relative of the famous outlaw and the star of the television show “Monster Garage” on the Discovery Channel. (Another popular show is “American Chopper” on The Learning Channel). James’ bikes have been purchased for something in the neighborhood of $150,000 by such celebrities as Shaquille O’Neal and Keanu Reeves. He refused to allow any of his bikes to be part of the Guggenheim show, saying: “You can only sit there and look at it for so long before you’re gonna want to ride it. They’re meant to be ridden.”

Chopper College tuition does not cover the cost of the parts used to build the bikes, which varies but averages $20,000; the difference is made up by the shop’s regular work. The labor, of course, is free but, as Creal says, “this is all an investment in the future.” It seems to be paying off. Classes for June and July have been filled for some time and new courses have been added to the curriculum: All Engine, Advanced Bike Builder, 3 Day Trike Building. “I’m thinking we might have to add another floor, a second floor with classrooms,” says Creal. “I can see us opening campuses in Florida and Seattle. I can, in a few years, see a lot of Chopper Colleges.”

Those are big dreams for a young professor.

“I know they are,” says Creal. “I feel like I’m the luckiest guy in the world. My parents stood by me. They helped me get this business up and going . . . If they didn’t have faith in me I wouldn’t be here. I would be dead or lost . . . Make that dead. But I now can see the future and it looks good.”

Salin has a different vision, sparked at the moment by the Biden Bike, on which he is sitting. “How cool would it be if J.B. gets to be president?” he says. “He could take this to his place and then it could be the first bike ever at the White House, and he could put it right in the front so it would be the first thing people see when they walked in the White House. A chopper in the White House. Now that would rock.”

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune