Silver Lake ‘Knuckleheads’ begin cross-country Cannonball Run

Sometime early Friday three Silver Lake residents will begin a 4,500-mile cross-country motorcycle ride, beginning in Daytona, Fla., and ending in Tacoma, Wash., in two weeks.

On vintage Harley-Davidson choppers. Built in 1936. On two-lane back roads. With no rear suspension. And no front brakes. And “suicide” clutches.

The three men -- Sean Duggan and Craig Jackman, both 45, and Bill Buckingham, 47 -- are taking part in the third Cannonball Run, a coast-to-coast motorcycle tour limited exclusively to riders operating bikes built before 1937.

Although the bikes can be modernized somewhat, with more contemporary electrical or braking systems, they must be powered by engines from 1937 or earlier.

The event (and many other similar events, as well as the 1981 movie of the same name starring Burt Reynolds) owes its name to the story of Erwin “Cannonball” Baker, who in 1922 rode a Neracar motorbike from New York’s Staten Island to Los Angeles.

The top Cannonball Run prize, Duggan said, will be awarded to the rider who makes the best time on the oldest bike with the smallest engine. The winner of both previous events rode a 1913 Excelsior.

The three men are all veteran Silver Lakers. Duggan and Buckingham work in the film industry -- as production designer and key grip, respectively -- and Jackman is a tattoo artist who operates the Silver Lake ink parlor American Electric Tattoo.

Posing for photographs and taking turns firing up their machines outside the Sunrise Cycles motorcycle shop in Silver Lake, the friends joked and joshed, obviously eager to start their cross-country adventure.

Duggan and Buckingham will both be riding chopped ’36 Harley-Davidsons with V-twin engines known as Knuckleheads. Jackman will mount a ’36 Harley-Davidson VLH, which is more of a board track racing bike.

The other riders will almost all be riding stock, restored bikes that look much the way they did when they were built. There will be no other choppers, the riders said, which may unnerve the more traditional Cannonball Runners.

“We’re going punk-rock on them,” Duggan said.

They’ll be crossing America not on Route 66 or the modern superhighways, but on back roads, staying overnight in small towns like Red Boiling Springs, Tenn.; Sedalia, Mo.; Leadville, Colo.; and Yakima, Wash.

Riders start at different times and proceed at different speeds along an unmarked route, and do not ride in a pack. Do Duggan, Jackman and Buckingham run the chance of getting lost along the way?

“Impossible,” Buckingham said. “You just follow the oil puddles” left by the usually leaky old motorcycles.

This year’s Cannonball Run is the third such event in modern times. A 2010 rally was for bikes made before 1917, and ran from North Carolina to Santa Monica. The 2012 event was for bikes made before 1930. It started in New York and ended in San Diego.

All three men were trucking their bikes to Florida for the Daytona Beach start time Friday.

Would they ride home to Los Angeles from Tacoma when the Cannonball Run is over?

“Depends on time,” Buckingham said. “We all have to make a living!”

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