THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 23, 1996 TAG: 9607230243
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: 87 lines
The world's largest motorcycle - 17 feet long, weighing 3,284 pounds, cruising 90 miles an hour - will visit Hampton Roads this week.
It is the mother of all motorcycles.
Called Roadog by its creator, the late William ``Wild Bill'' Gelbke, it will be displayed on a trailer Friday from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Hampton Roads Harley-Davidson in Newport News and Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon at Southside Harley-Davidson in Virginia Beach.
With Roadog will be its owners, Buzz and Pixie Walneck, publishers of Walneck's Classic Cycle Trader. They will answer questions, distribute pictures, and, for those who bring cameras, take pictures.
Buzz said Monday that Wild Bill was as mythic as the behemoth he designed and built over eight years.
In some ways Wild Bill fit the biker image his nickname suggested - burly, bare-armed, bragging, happy-go-lucky, laughing, defier of odds, defender of the underdog.
Oh, but he was a rousing companion, an Odysseus questing to see what was over the hill. At a bar in Green Bay, he'd say a good steak is in Oklahoma and a better beer in Texas. Let's go get one or both.
In a second he'd be gone with a friend perched in the bike's buddy seat. The crowded bar would suddenly seem empty and mundane.
Once, he and his buddy and the machine wound up sprawled on the ground in a cloud of dust from which, while she watched, dazed, Wild Bill emerged, shouting, ``Is my machine hurt?''
It wasn't. It was indestructible, as Wild Bill seemed to be.
A friend tells of seeing Roadog roar by at 100 mph, followed seconds later by a squad car going 100 mph, light flashing, and, a half hour later, seeing the squad car returning at a normal speed.
``What happened?'' he asked Bill.
``Oh, the cop just wanted to get a good look at Roadog,'' Bill said.
Wild Bill was much more than a boisterous biker, Buzz Walneck said. ``He was very, very intelligent, friendly, smiling, if larger than life.''
Born in Green Bay and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison with a degree in electrical engineering, Wild Bill studied at the University of Southern California and worked in defense with Hughes Aircraft and McDonnell-Douglas.
He had a dream of creating an industrial-strength motorcycle that would last a lifetime without ever needing mending or any repairs.
He opened a cycle shop on Chicago's Cicero Avenue and began work on Roadog, an epic single-handed effort, Walneck said. ``He had to bend and shape heavy-duty steel pipe, weld aircraft tubing and other parts for the frame. To me, he looks to be an engineer on a locomotive bike.''
In a pioneering operation, he yoked an ``Iron Duke'' Chevy II four-cylinder, water-cooled engine to a Powerglide automatic transmission with reverse gear. He installed dual headlights, anti-dive suspension, shaft drive, hydraulic jacks to lower and raise the giant.
During the first year after completing Roadog in 1965, he drove it 20,000 miles. It served as a prototype from which he produced nine 900-pound motorcycles. In much of his travel he tried to interest police departments in his designs.
In 1978 Wild Bill became involved in a neighborhood dispute that escalated into shooting when police arrived, Walneck said.
Wild Bill, shot in the back, bled to death seated in the back seat of a patrol car while waiting to go to a hospital. He was 43. His mother stored his possessions.
Photographs of Wild Bill astride Roadog graced bars and shops across America. ``I wondered what had happened to him and his bike,'' Walneck said. A six-year search ended through a call answering Walneck's ad in his own magazine.
He found Roadog, which had been resting 15 years in Green Bay in a neighbor's garage. He bought it, but rather than restore it, he left it as it was when Wild Bill last gripped the handle bars between a pair of mounted beer cans. It had proved the builder's expectations of being impervious to time's ravages.
Walneck's garage is filled with some two dozen bikes, a hobby since his father bought him, at 9, a used ``doodlebug'' bike for $15.
He became a distributor of an English bike magazine and, one day, inserted a mimeographed listing of parts for sale. Others asked to be included, and soon the listings filled a 130-page magazine.
In two years, Walneck has driven Roadog on four early morning outings in malls' deserted parking lots. Once he pushed it to 50 mph, but neither it, nor he, is ready for traffic, he said.
Walneck takes the giant to shows around the country. Nearly everywhere he finds people who have seen or heard of Wild Bill.
``It's as if Wild Bill and Roadog are still riding America's roads coast to coast,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
``Wild Bill'' Gelbke and his creation, Roadog. by CNB