One journey, many engines and all the memories that only a journey on the road between father and son is able to create
While I was writing last week’s column, in which I remembered the motorcycles with 4-cylinder engines that I had, I relived a passage that deeply moved my little heart here: the day I took a motorcycle trip with my father – he passed away a little over 7 years ago.
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Edson was responsible for everything I became. He came from Sorocaba to São Paulo in the early 60’s to be a mechanic for the Pratt & Whitney engines of VASP’s DC-3. When I was born, in 1969, he had already transferred to the Quality area of Hyster, a manufacturer of forklifts and cranes. He was the guy who liked (and messed with) everything that had an engine.
I inherited exactly the same trait, although Edson went further. He also knew how to fly single-engine aircraft – my grandfather had been one of the founders of the Aero Club of Sorocaba. I flew dozens of times when I was a child in the Paulistinhas, the Piper’s, the Cessna’s… But he flew much more than me as an adult and learned to fly just by “looking”. I would love to, but I didn’t have a chance. Oh, and he also had gear, but then, I confess, I’m the one who never found this outboard motor thing funny.
Of everything that has an engine, boat is the only thing I’m not interested in. I have on my list of guided things: car, motorcycle, tricycle, quad, jet ski, snow mobile, Gurgel BR-800, Chevette Junior, truck (from 2 to 7 axles), bus, bobcat, forklift, crane and tractor. And he inspired me.
Let’s talk about cars and motorcycles. As I mentioned at the beginning, the memory of the motorcycle trip came from one we took precisely from São Paulo and Sorocaba. He took my bike (a Yamaha XJ600 Diversion and I was with a Yamaha V-Max 1200, doing a test), back in the mid-90s.
Neither of them made any fun of the little more than 100 km that separate the two cities. We walk together. We stretched it out again, but nothing untimely. We even changed on the way back, when a storm hit on the Castello Branco Highway. The XJ600 was a 4-cylinder in-line with very smooth power delivery (72 hp), which was no longer the case with the devilish V-Max, with its 100 hp V4 and cardan shaft final drive.
And herein lay the problem. Without traction control, any extra jerk on the throttle, added to an eventual film of water on the track, plus the effect of the lateral kickback generated by the cardan (the crankshaft rotates in the same direction as the wheel and tends to “twist” the chassis, causing traction)… and the tire would lose grip. As it weighed more than 260 kg, the operation had to be very technical to ride it in the rain. And Edson took it literally. It could. The guy had learned to ride motorcycles in a Jawa from the 40s… If you don’t know what it is, Google it – and be careful not to be scared. It’s a horror. Well, those who learn to drive on a thing like that, take any modern motorcycle literally.
The precision caught my attention in his riding style. This was repeated in cars, something that I followed much more, by the way. My father was an excellent Kombi driver, for example. Experts will understand: driving a Kombi, or riding a Kombi fast, is different from driving anything else. And this precision, which we can call skill, talent or passion, also appeared when adjusting a forklift ruler, changing the brake linings of a truck or simply adjusting the double carburetion of our 1973 Kadron buggy, with a 1700 engine. And he did it by ear.
Too bad it was the only trip we did on a motorcycle. We compensated, however, in the cars. We traveled to various corners of the country, either in separate cars, guiding each other on two-way roads, or in the same car, where there was always a tremendous stick to see who drove the longest.
We went to the south of the country, as soon as I got my license, in January 1988, on a family trip. He went with my mother in the Monza 1.8 and I in a Voyage LS (with long gearbox), with my sister and two aggregates. The BR-116 was not duplicated between São Paulo and Curitiba. And it was very dangerous. He went ahead, overtook and signaled whether I could perform mine or not, even considering the fact that the AP-600 did not have the same performance skills as GM’s Family 2.
It sounds like crazy talk, but we did it, and it worked super well. No scare on the whole trip, because the guy was f… I was going to his, that’s all. Sometimes, I purposely stayed behind to go around some faster corners, but at the stops, when it was time to refuel, he looked at the shoulder of the tire, saw the name “Pirelli P44” worn out and gave me a loud spurt… lol. Yes. He knew the way I was driving just by looking at the shoulders of the tyres.
I learned a lot, of course. Years later, I started to do car tests, where the roles were reversed and I even started to teach him some things, like the day I made the comparison of 22 1.0 cars running for 24 hours straight at the Interlagos Autodrome. By this time, in addition to doing track tests, he had already participated in races and knew how to ride the circuit. Edson was fast, but he had never driven at the Autodrome. In one of the first shifts, we made a pit stop to change cars and left, by coincidence, together. Me in a Palio 16V and he in a Ford Ka, who rode practically in the same tune. He stuck behind me to learn the corners, the braking points, the tangencies of the curves. And there he stayed for 1h30, glued to my car. Imagine the pride? I was teaching him something, in addition to having given him the dream of driving inside Interlagos. Memorable.
I also remember another trip we took, this time to the Pantanal, with six people, in a VW Caravelle. On the way back, we left Corumbá (MS) at 2:00 pm. The uncle here in the driver’s seat. Everyone had woken up very early to fish. When it arrived around 10:00 pm, after about 500 km driven, we stopped to refuel and eat. And I took the wheel again, as I always was.
Ten minutes after leaving the station, everyone fell asleep. And I came. And I came. And I came for about another 750 km, straight. Suddenly, the crowd woke up when I entered another station for a final “splash and go”. They saw that we were passing through Tatuí – there were about 150 km to São Paulo. I was scolded a dozen. “Where have you seen it? How irresponsible! You drove more than 1,200 km!” Edson, quiet. I gave way to another driver to do the final stretch and he whispers to me. “I would have done the same.”
Each trip was a story.
And the memories, curiously, are mostly generated in situations where we had a car (or motorcycle) involved. It was where, in addition to being father and son, we added a solid friendship permeated by passion for engines. In his forklift shop, for example, I learned the basics of mechanics when I was still a teenager.
And of course this nostalgia drives me to give you some advice. If your father also likes the automotive world, don’t leave it for later. Go on the road with him. It will be some of the best memories you will ever have! Or, if you already belong to my age group, the same ritual also applies: put your child in the passenger seat – don’t give it easy, otherwise the guy will want to guide the whole route – and write new stories with him.
Saudade, Edson.
