Motor Mouth: Cousin John had a heart as big as his bike

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I had already decided that, dammit, I needed to make this happen. In fact, I already had a note penned to the long-suffering Mari-Phillipe Leduc, she the holder of the keys, that I wanted to switch the dates (yet again!) and the venue (ditto) of my Pan America 1250 road test so that I could ride up the north shore of Quebec’s le fleuve St-Laurent to my hometown of Sept-Iles.

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Actually, I had originally planned to make it happen last year, but, well, you know how it is: life got in the way. For the life of me I can’t remember what hugely (un)important task overrode my long-overdue return to the place where I spent my formative years. What was it? Some fancy Aston Martin in the Azores? A seminar on hydrogen-powered pistons in Germany? Like so many of us with our priorities askew, even looking back over my meticulously-kept iCal scheduler revealed no clue as to what was, again, so darned (un)important that I couldn’t take a four-day scoot up Quebec’s 138 to visit all my relatives.

There were so many to connect with: my aunts Edna and Myrtle, the last of my dearly-departed mater’s siblings still kicking up a fuss; uncles Charlie and Clarence, as opposite as two males can get, but whom at Christmas were the Felix and Oscar of getting our Xmas Eve party going. And, of course, there were the myriad cousins now spread far and wide, but all — because they were better mother’s sons and daughters than I — clustered between Montreal and the Côte-Nord so they could visit la parenté more frequently than I did.

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Most of all, though, I wanted to visit my cousin John. Though we talked frequently on the phone, it’d been nigh on 10 years since I’d been up to see him, a dramatic oversight considering we had grown up together, played — okay, fought — together, and, well, suffered from the same weakness, namely motorcycles and the tinkering thereof.

It was essential that I ride a Pan America up to see him. Cousin John, you see, was a diehard “one-per-center.” Like so many, when it came to two wheels, for John, it was Harley-Davidson or nothing. He understood them, loved riding them, and, though he was the very opposite of wordy poet, he once told me they spoke to him. I have no idea what they said, but I do know that the last one he owned — a 2003 Fat Boy — had well over 100,000 kilometres, so they would seem to have had plenty of time for conversation.

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Unfortunately, age makes cowards of us all, and Cousin John got some form of arthritis. Knees that used to accommodate Harley’s silly feet-forward crouch suddenly couldn’t; working-man’s cord-like forearms could no longer squeeze Milwaukee’s traditionally reluctant clutch lever with ease. The bike was still talking to him, but it was no longer speaking the same language. So, to the surprise of all — mainly because we all thought he’d just put the Fat Boy in his living room when he got tired of it — the Harley was sold.

We, as you might expect, had a lot of conversations about alternatives. Logically, he understood there were alternatives. Indeed, he warmed to the fact that the modern breed of adventure tourers — which is pretty much all I ride these days as I, too, am afflicted, albeit with a wonky back — would be a perfect solution. I even had him sit — when I scored some Pink Floyd tickets and he made his way up to the Big Smoke — on my Suzuki V-Strom. The knees worked, the back didn’t ache, and the easy-pull clutch didn’t strain his wrist in the least. But — and, if you have a Harley fan in the family, you know this is a big but for those who live and breathe The Motor Company — it didn’t speak to him.

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Which is why riding the aforementioned Pan America 1250 up to see him was so important. The Pan Am is, as you might have guessed by now, a Harley-Davidson. But not a Harley as we have come to know them. Finally breaking free of the cruiser genre that has held the brand prisoner lo these last 50 years or so, it’s an adventure bike like the BMWs and KTMs — and the Suzukis! — that have become the most popular segment in motorcycling.

And not just any adventure tourer. While Harley’s cruisers are the very embodiment of traditional, the Pan America is overtly high-tech. Besides the comfy riding position that would not ache arthritic knees; and a clutch lever so smooth you’d swear there was butter in the crankcase instead of 20W-50, the big adventure bike had a high computer-controlled suspension that allows the bike “kneel” like a camel so that old hips can more easily swing a leg over the saddle. In other words, my riding of the Pan America was not just to be a road test, but a sales pitch. “Here’s the answer,” was all I expected to have to say ’cause, well, it’s built in Milwaukee.

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I suspect by now you’ve figured out where this is going. Cousin John died last Sunday, the victim of a massive cardiac infarction. The only positive in this otherwise sad tale of a life taken too soon is that his passing was mercifully quick, this made terribly important since my extended family has been plagued with the curse of Alzheimer’s. Nonetheless, it doesn’t assuage the longing of family left behind and the guilt of those of us who so erroneously thought that some cursed supercar or not was somehow more important than those we hold nearest and dearest.

So, John, I am going to be riding the Pan America up to Sept-Iles. I’m sorry I’m late. Life got in the way. But I am coming this time for sure.

Cousin John was 64 years old when he left us so suddenly. He was the happiest person I have ever known. Whether it was tinkering in the garage on his ancient GMC pickup or quietly sipping a beer on his porch that overlooked the Gulf of St. Lawrence, his face seemed permanently etched in a smile.  

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John O’Brien had a miserable time in high school. A world of mathematics and chemistry interested him not in the least. But he was an absolute genius with his hands. By trade, he was a millwright in Quebec’s local 2182. But that job, of which he was so proud, sold him far too short. Plainly put, there was nothing John O’Brien couldn’t fix, build, or improve. The infernal cam drives of a Big Twin were a one-handed affair for John (his other might, just might, have been holding a can of Black Label) and his 1956 GMC boasted so much modernity under its rusted exterior that not-so-very-old Lambos would be jealous, plus he was building a house from scratch with the same ease with which the rest of us might plug in a lamp.

Let’s put his ingenuity this way: if you ever found yourself in a real-life Flight of the Phoenix situation — that since-remade 1965 classic film in which the survivors of a plane crash escape the Sahara desert by fashioning a much smaller aircraft out of their twin-engine cargo plane — you very much would have wanted John O’Brien’s name on the manifest.

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Most of all, though, Cousin John had a heart as big as the ocean. He came by it legitimately, his father Bert was, according to everyone who ever met him, the sweetest man who ever lived. Family was everything to John. He was proud of the work he did and consumed by his hobbies, but there was never a moment’s doubt as to what his priorities were.

His devotion to family— his mother Jeannine and sister Brenda, but most especially wife Guylaine, daughters Stacey and Sanny, and grandkids Eloi and Oliane — was, frankly, humbling. John O’Brien lived his life better than any other human I have had the good luck to cross paths with. He was such a wonderful human being that he would have even forgiven ignoramus cousins for being late with “his” new Harley.