Q: What inspired you to write BIG SID’S VINCATI?
A: I got the idea when Cycle World sent their best known writer, Peter Egan, to Louisville so he could ride the Vincati and do a story on it. When Egan’s piece came out, I sent an unsolicited submission to a literary agent, asking him if maybe he saw something here. Later, Sid and I were on the road, dropping off a Vincent engine, and I got a call while we were at a rest stop on I64. I got back in the car and told my dad I had just gotten an agent who believed I had to go off and write this book.

Q. After college you were determined to write a book about motorcycles, but not about your father. BIG SID’S VINCATI clearly is a book about motorcycles and your father. What changed your mind and how does Big Sid feel about being a central character in this book?
A: After I got married and had made the decision to become a father myself, I was finally able to work though some basic issues I had. That growth enabled me to claim subject matter that was clearly mine to use, and had been staring me in the face for a long time.
Sid has mixed feelings about being the star of my book. He and I have talked a lot about how art is inevitably reductive—each of us is more than what gets written down. You have to accept that liability, but at the same time you hope that the reader sees something essential in the character. I think we both feel that my book at its best does that for him and for all the main characters. I wrote much of the book at our dining room table in full view of my family, and often had Lucy in my lap while I wrote it.

Q: Your father clearly has a mechanical gift and while you share his passion for motorcycles, you lacked his skills and became a Shakespearean scholar. Besides your foray into reconstructing the Vincati have you ever wanted to go into your father’s business?
A: This question gets at the karmic quality of my book: what I most wanted to run away from is exactly where I ended up. Now I supplement my income as a professor heavily from the work Sid and I do out in the garage. Facing up to this fear and turning it to my advantage is an important positive message in the book.
Q: Did you gain a new appreciation for your father after working on the Vincati and seeing his mechanical skills up close?
A: Yes but it is tough to put in words. Fortunately I felt that I didn’t have to labor over that aspect of the story because Robert Pirsig has done that so well already. Thanks to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, our culture understands at least in the abstract what I mean when I say that my father has a special knack for bonding with machines and tinkering with them to get them to work. Most other men—me, for example—just don’t have that gift.
I will never be the mechanic my dad is but through effort I can do pretty good work. That is a big message in this book: you don’t have to be Michael Jordan to enjoy putting a ball in a basket.
Q: You mention Pirsig and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Do you see your book as a response to his classic?
A: Yes, very much so. I was very moved when I read about the death of Pirsig’s son Chris. When I wrote this book, I felt that I was giving voice to Chris—and to all the kids who grew up on the back of a bike, getting hauled all over god’s creation. This book is for them.
Q: What do you hope readers will gain from reading BIG SID’S VINCATI?
A: I hope readers gain some inspiration from a story about two men who push through failure.
I learned that it is never too late to try and repair a broken relationship. My father and I both had to come to terms with vanished dreams. Sid wanted to set a land speed record. I wanted to write the great American novel. These dreams didn’t come true but in facing up to reality we found that other dreams of ours did come true. That’s my real message and I think its one this country needs to hear right now.
Q: You’re very honest about how you and your father had a distant relationship and barely spoke as adults. Do you think it was the process of building something together that brought you closer together or was it due to your father being near death which made you realize that your time with him was limited?
A: The heart attack did not push us together. It was circumstances. Suddenly to survive we had to live together. I took on a second job—doing Vincent work out in the garage with Sid. That provided enough money for the family to function. The Vincati was a way to make that work fun—it was our reward for doing the paying jobs.

Q: You say in the book that riding a motorcycle saved your life. What is it about riding that you find so therapeutic?
A: Motorcycle riding is a way to live artistically. John Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale is a good example of the kind of art I am thinking about. Keats explores why he feels envy for a bird. He wants to be able to sing like a bird—without thought—just sing and make beautiful music, naturally. But if he became a bird, he would stop being human and that would mean no more thinking. So in the end Keats realizes that he does and doesn’t want to be a bird. I feel the same way so that when I ride I am a bird—almost. But then when the helmet comes off, I think, I am human.
Q: Was writing this book also a therapeutic process for you and do you think it helped bring you two closer together?
A: The book didn’t solve all my problems but it did let me gain insight into myself and my relationships in ways that continue to astonish me. Some of my favorite scenes came very late in the writing. For example, early in our work out in the garage I had banned my father from asking me to talk about what I did at the university. Again and again I told that bit of the story without realizing that it was my father’s way of trying to ask if I thought he would have been good enough for college and to succeed at it like I did. I can’t believe how thick headed I was about that but once I figured out what was really going on, being together out there and talking about my work as a professor was very healing for both of us.

Q: The title of the book centers around your father but the book really spans three generations. Have you found that being somewhat estranged from your father for years has in turn made you a better father as you’re more attuned to not repeating the same mistakes?
A: My daughter Lucy is now seven and I would like to believe that she will not have to work through some of the issues that plagued me. Sid’s father was very cruel and abusive. He controlled his family and forced Sid to surrender his dreams of going to college and becoming an engineer. The only thing Sid had in terms of self worth was mechanical ability and he couldn’t resist letting me know that he had the skill and that I didn’t when I was a kid. I have tried to do what I can to make sure Lucy doesn’t acquire a sense of inferiority when it comes to the world of science and technology. Its little things, like letting a child figure things out rather than correcting them.
Q: Likewise, your parents appeared to have a very strained marriage. Do you think growing up in that environment made you more aware of what you were looking for in a marriage and thus had a positive impact on your own marriage?
I think I am probably like many men who grew up in the 70’s in America. Divorce became the norm and all the talk was about the collapse of the nuclear family. So I didn’t see my family as atypical. As a result I think I entered marriage more willing to accept its flaws and to try and do what I can to insure that Lucy grows up with a healthy sense of what love and commitment means today.
Q: At one point during your quest to build the Vincati your wife noted that it was as though nothing else mattered to you and Big Sid. Dare I ask what would have happened if you hadn’t been able to complete the project?
In our editorial discussions about the cover, I commented that I liked the image of the bike parked because that way the reader would be uncertain as to whether or not we actually got it to run even when they are very deep into the book. It would have broken my heart to have sold it as a lame “looker” suitable only to be parked in a collection until fixed by somebody else but in the end you swallow your pride and cut your losses. We have worked on plenty of bikes that fit that description and sooner or later the shoe is going to end up on the other foot.
Q: Over the years there has been a lot of discussion about varying degrees to which memoirs should strive to be factual and accurate. Now that you’ve written one, what’s your opinion?
A: For me memoir is really about figuring out what to leave out in order to effectively tell the story. So first of all, a memoir is a selective telling of what happened. For that reason it can’t be the whole truth.
Q: Do you and Big Sid have any other motorcycle reconstruction plans for the future?
A: Leno insisted that if I got the price point right, I could sell Vincati replicas but I have worked the numbers and I can’t see how to make a profit. We do have two final projects: the first is a very trick 600cc Vincent special, prepared for Bonneville land speed racing. It features the frame from which we stole the motor to build the Vincati. I call it the Bonnie Bike and think of it as the Vincati’s girlfriend. It is finished in a matching paint scheme. We have one final gift bike: a Vincent Rapide that Sid and I hope to finish in time to auction her off on ebay in conjunction with the release of the paperback of Big Sid’s Vincati.

Q: What’s next for you?
A: I’d love to get a chance to work on a screenplay for Big Sid’s Vincati: I see it as Field of Dreams in a Garage. And if that doesn’t pan out I have this theory about who the dark lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets really was . . .