A First Couple Motorcycle Rides
Thursday, January 2nd, 2014
This would have been about the size of one of those early rides.
I had hoped to ride yesterday but I woke up to snow falling, and though it came and went during the day there was not to be any two-wheeling.
When riding is constrained it makes it tough to tell new stories about riding adventures. So I start thinking about old stories.
Like my very first motorcycle ride, at age 15. Hard as it may be to conceive, way back then, in Nebraska where we lived, you could ride a small motorcycle without a license at 15. And they rented Honda 90s at the local 7-Eleven by the hour. This was back in the days of “You meet the nicest people on a Honda,” when the bad-guy biker image was starting to turn.
My friend John and I went over one day with enough money in our pockets to rent a couple bikes for maybe two hours. It probably cost about $3.50 an hour, so that was big bucks for us. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much at all about that ride, other than that we did it. I do seem to remember we did some riding around on some dirt in a local vacant lot.
The next summer my family moved but I spent that summer working at a camp on an island up in Minnesota. The guy I bunked with had a brand new Honda 305 Scrambler that he rode up from Minneapolis and he offered to let me ride it anytime I wanted. So I did. Oddly, I don’t remember riding it all that much, which seems very odd to me now.
The one thing I do remember is one day I was going to town to get some supplies and as I took the key for the bike he told me he didn’t want me taking the girls who were going with me for rides. I guess he figured that wasn’t necessarily safe. Of course that was exactly what we intended, but we assured him we wouldn’t do that.
And then we proceeded to do exactly that. I took one for a ride in the country and took the other into town to get what we had come for. Must not have been big, whatever it was. This Scrambler was pretty torquey so at times I ended up doing wheelies as I tried to take off. We were getting back on the bike in town and some young guys came along and saw us and started yelling “Look at the girl on the bike!” Yes, she was quite pretty.
It wasn’t my intention but as I took off we wheelied. I’ve always thought that was pretty dang cool, with those guys watching, to wheelie out with this babe on behind me. Back at camp my bunkmate asked if I had taken the girls for rides and I hated to lie so I didn’t. He never let me ride his bike again.
My next opportunity to ride was in Decatur, Illinois, where my family had moved. This was another friend named John, and he and his brother Steve each had little 125s, probably Yamaha. Steve didn’t mind if I rode his so John and I took off.
I had no idea about counter-steering at that time, so as I rolled down their somewhat steep driveway and tried to turn the motorcycle the way I would turn a bicycle things did not go well. I would try to turn right and that made the bike want to go the other way and I crossed the street and ran straight into the curb, sending me flying onto the neighbor’s lawn.
No damage done, though, so I picked it up and we rode off.
Out in traffic it started getting dicey. I still wasn’t getting this steering thing and at one point as we moved into a left-turn lane I watched anxiously as I just barely managed to avoid clipping the median on my left. Clearly there was something going on that I didn’t understand.
Other than those particulars I really don’t remember much about that ride either.
There were other rides on other bikes in later years, but far too much time passed before I finally bought my own. Now when some of the guys I ride with at times tell me they haven’t had the bike out in six months I’m just amazed. I guess I’m trying to make up for lost time.
Biker Quote for Today
I ride not to add days to my life, but to add life to my days.
