Q & A — Peter Sperling, M.O.M.’s big brother

Peter Sperling, M.O.M.’s big brother

 

by Robert Greene
 

Peter Sperling has worked at M.O.M., or Motorcycles of Manchester, for the past 15 years.  He started out part time, in sales, but these days he’s in charge of inventory, buying good bikes that M.O.M. can sell as is or fix up for resale.

For Sperling, motorcycling is a family thing. He taught his son to ride and often goes traveling with him. His father rode well into his 80s and left Sperling his prized possession, a 1941 Indian.

“It’s easier for me to be around people who really like motorcycles,” Sperling said. “That’s why I got into the business and that is why I’ve stayed so long.”

Q: What kind of motorcycle do you ride?

Ducatis. I don’t see any reason to ride anything else. I still ride my father’s Indian sometimes. He gave it to me 30 years ago, I guess. He said, “I’ll give it to you but you have to paint it red. Indians should be red.” I said, “I’ll do that, Dad.”

Q: Does it still run?

Oh, yeah. I start it every year on Father’s Day and I ride it up here. And I leave it here for a couple of weeks and people seem to make a big fuss over it. Coincidentally, of course, Father’s Day is on motorcycle weekend [in Laconia], so it kind of serves a dual purpose. It was a military scout [bike], so it really should be khaki, but Dad said “Red, Indians should be red.”

Q: What do you like about Ducatis as opposed to American-made bikes? [Ducati is an Italian company.]

They’re light. That would be the difference right there. The Ducati is extremely light and handles very well. Very high performance, and there is a great deal of sophistication in the design that isn’t there in the American bikes. The American bikes — Harley Davidson is the only one left, really, along with some Harley-esque clone-ish things — all those, they may be interesting as art, but in terms of transportation, in terms of riding one every day, they’re not really comfortable or practical.

Q: How often do you ride these days?

I ride more, in any year, than I use my car. I rode today. Now, a lot of people would say that it looks kind of cold. So what? I dress for it. It’s a great improvement in the attitude. I come to work — go to the Y in Nashua and swim, get back on the bike and come here. By the time I get here, I am in such a good frame of mind that something premeditated has to happen in order to get me upset. And knowing that the bike is out there, knowing that I am going to ride it home — possibly not by the most-direct route — really keeps me quite level during the day. I suppose other people use other means — some of them are illegal, some of them are not — but this is my thing.

You know, of course, that New Hampshire has the highest rate of motorcycle ownership per capita? People come from down south and they are mystified by that. People come from Florida — in Florida the highest hill is 425 feet, why would anybody ride there? You may dodge the occasional alligator but other than that it’s all the same.

Q: Is that what it is about New Hampshire? The variety of roads and scenery?

The roads are better. They’re better by design. The specifications for the depth of the roadbed in New Hampshire is deeper than any of the neighboring states. So the roads don’t break up like they do in the other states. And there’s the destinations — the lakes, the mountains, the oceans — within an hour or two. There isn’t so much traffic yet, that it’s at the limits. Like in California, people on motorcycles split lanes because that’s the only way you can get anywhere. Here they don’t do that. It’s not common at least.

Q: So what is it about motorcycles anyway?

I got guys who come in here, and this is mostly guys, who come in here to change bikes three times a year. They just want something different. Then there are the ones that own five or six of them, and that’s how they get variety. I’ve often wondered if there isn’t some sort of surrogate action for a mate, if you will. Or a playmate. The perception is that it’s a kids’ sport, it’s a risk-taker’s sport — and these fools on their stunt bikes they will perpetuate that. They will make it so that all the normal people, out raking their lawns when they go by on their front wheel, that they will believe all of us are like that. I’ve often said that people of my generation who are motorcyclists have spent their lives trying to live down Marlon Brando as they live up to Steve McQueen. Brando was the one — and of course that whole thing was staged. The event the movie [The Wild One] was supposed to portray was a fraud. McQueen was a real motorcycle competitor, a real one, a good one. He was on the international Six Days team. He was one of the best motorcyclists in the United States. His agent hated that. He had a pseudonym that he used to race under so his agent wouldn’t find out he was racing because it was in his contract that he wouldn’t do it.

A bike is the most possessive of possessions. I don’t even know what the word is. My son  said to me — he had a Ducati, which is still in the family — he said “It’s like an animal. It’s not a person. It’s not quite a person but it is more than a machine.” You know that can be true, and to the owner of a motorcycle, it’s always true.

Q: Is M.O.M. kind of a good place to get a first bike?

Yeah. With a first bike you haven’t decided yet what you are going to do with motorcycling and so many people come in here — young people, women. Largely women in this case because their significant other thinks he knows what kind of bike she should have. Really, you have to be that person to know what is best for them. Anyway, they’ll say, “I’m going to get a Harley,” when they haven’t even ridden a bike yet. Harleys are heavy, they’re top-heavy. They’re not first-time-rider bikes. They’re so many nice first-time-rider bikes that are cheap. And they might already have another dent in them, a couple of scratches. They might have a couple more when they bring it back for a trade. What we do in a situation like that, is we tell the person what we will give them back for it in trade. So they take it out and they learn how to ride, and they get their moves down. Now they can move on to a bigger bike, if they got that far. Not everybody is a motorcyclist. Anybody can be but done wrong — when they go too big, too heavy, too ferocious, too cantankerous a bike — they get discouraged and they don’t get to where they could go. You take it by the gradual approach and you become a better rider. The little moves you can learn on a small bike you can take to a big bike but you can’t learn them on a big bike.

Q: Then what? How do you know what sort of bike to move on to?

Well, the person has ridden know and has some idea of what a bike can and cannot do. Once you get a motorcycle you become sensitive to all the other motorcycle around you, what people are wearing, what types of motorcycles there are, what kinds of places you can go with it, when it becomes unhandy ... OK, in my case, you like to go to the gym, so you have this gym bag and you look at it and wonder “Where can I put this stuff?” You want to live your normal life, but you want to ride a motorcycle. So you look and think about what I can do to modify this bike or what the next motorcycle needs to be to accommodate your life.

That’s why it’s a bad idea to spend a lot of money on a first bike. Everybody trades off their first bike soon. And that’s why this is a favorite place to get a first bike. The people here will not try to sell you too much bike. We are here for so many year because we get repeat business and that is not the way you get repeat business.

Q: Seeing as there is so many bike shops in town, what is the level of competition like?

Manchester Harley Davidson, to give you an example, they’re customers are a totally different group from ours. You know, the socio-economic levels ... we are not competition for each other. It’s that simple. In fact the cooperation is really good. We buy their trade-ins or they refer their customers to us to sell bikes directly. Manchester is a really clean town. I worked in the car business for many, many years and it’s not like that.

- Robert Greene

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