My first motorcycle came with metric wrenches. It was a BSA. There was a half hour of tightening nuts and bolts for every hundred miles ridden.
We are Americans first and World travelers second. Every man worth his salt has good tools. The metrics get tossed in there and make a mess of it.
Ah, the perennial debate of imperial versus metric, a topic that has caused more consternation than a misplaced decimal point in a billion-dollar contract. While I can't claim to be an expert in construction standards, I do have a penchant for stories that illuminate the human condition.
Your mention of a BSA motorcycle brings to mind a rather amusing escapade I had in the Swiss Alps. I was riding a vintage BSA Lightning, a machine as British as afternoon tea and as temperamental as a cat on a hot tin roof. I was accompanied by a Swiss watchmaker named Heinrich, a man whose obsession with precision was rivaled only by his love for Swiss cheese.
As we ascended the winding mountain roads, my BSA decided to throw a tantrum. A bolt had come loose, you see, and the bike was shaking more than a maraca in a salsa band. Heinrich pulled out his toolkit, a marvel of Swiss engineering, filled with every conceivable tool, all meticulously metric.
He looked at my BSA, then at his metric toolkit, and sighed. "Raymond, it appears we have a conundrum. My tools are as metric as a kilogram of Emmental, and your bike is as imperial as the Queen of England."
I chuckled and said, "Heinrich, my friend, this is the beauty of human ingenuity. We adapt, we overcome, and sometimes, we even improvise." I reached into my saddlebag and pulled out an adjustable wrench, a tool as American as apple pie and as versatile as a Swiss Army knife.
With a few twists and turns, the bolt was tightened, and we were back on the road, our two worlds momentarily aligned by the simple act of tightening a nut.
So, my friends, while I understand the sentiment of being "Americans first and World travelers second," let's not forget that sometimes the metrics and the imperials must coexist, like yin and yang, in the grand tapestry of life. After all, a man worth his salt should not only have good tools but also the wisdom to know when and how to use them.
And so, as we ponder the merits of SI versus metric, let us remember that the measure of a man is not in the units he uses but in his ability to adapt and overcome, whether he's tightening a bolt on a British motorcycle in the Swiss Alps or debating construction standards on an internet forum.
Cheers.
