A lot of earlier reviewers seemed to be trying to compare this book to Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book I read thirty years or more ago, whenever it first came out in hardcover. I remember enjoying the parts about the road trip and the father connecting with his son, but when he started getting all philosophical and "zen" on me, I tended to skip ahead. I guess I was just too damn dumb to understand the "deeper meanings" in that book. But Fred's book is very different. There's nothing too "zenny" or obscure in this book. It's about a fifty year-old guy trying to finally grow up and also realize a boyhood dream all at the same time, which couldn't have been easy, if you know what I mean. Haefele's a guy who screwed up a first marriage at a young age and kinda lost touch with his first two kids (but is trying to reconnect with them if he can), but got lucky enough to find a really great girl and marry again - in spite of all his faults, and he makes no bones about being a most imperfect kinda guy - and now, at the age of fifty-one, he's gonna be a father again. And he does - achieve fatherhood again, I mean. And his new wife, Caroline, seems to be one helluva good sport about all Fred's strange shade-tree mechanic friends and odd hours and habits. He tries to draw some parallels between rebuilding a fifty-some year-old motorcycle - from what he calls a "basketcase," no less - and building a new life and a new family all at the same time. He manages to go several thousand dollars in debt with the bike thing, and - miraculously - his wife doesn't leave him or kill him. They have the baby, the bike gets built, and they still seem to like each other. Correction: I'm pretty sure they still LOVE each other. Haefele has no problem with poking fun at himself and his peculiarities and juvenile obsessions, which only serves to make him more likeable. And the whole time he's building the Indian and trying to placate his pregnant wife, he's also working hard to make a living as a tree surgeon, or "arborist" - which is just plain hard work. This guy is no lazy slouch. He knows how to work. He just wants to be able to play a little now and then too. I guess I started liking Fred early on in this book, when I found out he's just a few months younger than I and was, like me, born in Michigan. He left Michigan as a young man, and there's plenty of local color here too, from his adopted home state of Montana. (Why am I so addicted to all these Montana books and memoirs lately? What is it about Montana that draws all the artists and writers anyway?) I left Michigan behind too, but did come back to retire, forty years later. My old (late) friend, author Jim Crumley, turns up briefly in Haefele's book too, ragging Fred for letting some women refer to his chosen paint color for the Indian (midnight blue) as kinda like "a prom dress" color. In the course of the this charming, folksy narrative, Fred touches on the strained distant relationship he always had with his father, laments losing track of his first son, and shows himself to be a loving and involved late-life father. I mean there are so many places here where I can relate to Haefele's tale and I just admire the hell out of this guy. I think if we ever got to sit down over a cuppa coffee we'd have plenty to talk about - and the wierd thing about this is I've never been on a motorcycle in my life - and never wanted to be either. Terrific book, Fred. Now I just wish you'd write another one. ( )

Man rebuilds and old bike and his life, many parallels. ( )