Thursday, Jun. 11, 2009
Memory Lane is a Muddy Trail
The Harley Owners Group publishes a magazine with reader-submitted pictures featuring owners posing next to their motorcycles. The latest issue features a woman from Alabama in a picture from her tenth birthday astride her 1973 X-90 Harley Davidson Shortster. It got me thinking about the different motorcycles I’ve had through the years.
I think I was about 10 when I got my first motorcycle, too. It was a 70-cc dirt bike with a “semi-automatic” transmission. You shifted gears using a foot pedal like most motorcycles, but there was no clutch. I’m pretty sure it was a Honda, but back in those days my dad was prone to building and fixing used things up for the five kids in our family so I can’t recall any tank emblems or factory paint scheme. I do remember it was a lot of fun though and riding it just as fast as it would go. Once, I rode it as fast as it would go face-first into a huge bee. I pulled up to my dad in tears who removed the embedded stinger from my cheek and treated the sting with a wad of tobacco from one of his cigarettes that he had me moisten with saliva. Nothing will make a man out of you like sticking spit-covered tobacco on a wound while straddling a motorcycle, covered in dirt.
It didn’t take long for me to graduate to a 90-cc. I remember this dirt bike was a Kawasaki because my dad and I spray-painted the gas tank green. Not Kawasaki green, but spray paint-we-probably-dug-up-in-the-basement green. I was proud of this bike because it was bigger and faster than the 70 and it had a clutch and everything. It was my first big boy motorcycle. My little brother inherited the Honda 70, but we’d end up sharing it after some punk stole my 90 not long after we got it all fixed up. We’re pretty sure it was one of the older boys who lived on the end of our street, but could never prove it and never saw the bike again despite the hours of surveillance I dedicated to their back yard.
I’m not sure if I outgrew the 70 or if my dad got a big promotion or what, but I remember hitting the jackpot on my 13th birthday after we moved to California. My parents led me out back to the patio where I uncovered my eyes to find a brand new Suzuki DS-185. Holy crap! I couldn’t believe it was mine. Unlike the kids’ bikes I’d been riding, this was the real deal. It sat much taller and had modern plastic fenders (instead of rusting chrome steel fenders that had to be cleaned up with Brill-o pads); it had rubber shock boots and big knobbie tires on full-sized wheels; and a motor more than twice the size of anything I’d ever ridden. Our yard in California wasn’t big enough to ride it in, but I sat out back on that motorcycle until it was dark. Then, I turned the porch light on and sat on it some more.
I held on to that DS for a long time and rode it every chance I got. The American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) had converted an old cattle ranch into an off-road motorcycle park. We’d spend Saturdays riding the race track and miles of unexplored cattle trails they had. My brother got chased by a bull after ending up fenced in on a neighboring property. I went head first over a cliff (OK, a really steep hill) when the trail ended suddenly, and I almost plunged off a cable bridge into the river below when my front wheel left the narrow wooden planks suspended above the ravine. Good times.
We moved to Virginia where two new friends had motorcycles. Jim had an older Kawasaki KZ-125 that was prone to breaking down, but James had a new Yamaha YZ-125: the envy of all teenage boys. It was bright yellow, sat so high you could barely touch the ground, and the engine made the unmistakable high powered buzzing that usually comes out when someone imitates the sound of a dirt bike running through the gears…waaaaahhhhh, waaaaahhhhhh, waaaaaahhhhhh. My beloved DS was a breed of quieter enduro bikes that had turn signals, a headlight, and wasn’t quite as hard core as the motocross-style YZ, but the 185-cc power plant on my Suzuki and I routinely kicked their asses, and we all appreciated the not-so-cool headlight when we rode past dusk and had to find our way out of the woods. I started hanging out more with friends who lived closer and I found myself without riding buddies. I ended up selling the DS, against my dad’s advice, to invest in a weight set that I assured him I was going to use three times a week. I might have used it three times altogether. In two weeks, I’ll tell you about my graduation to street bikes.
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