it was also around this time i got my first rides on a motorcycle, also thanks to jim. my very first ride was in walnut creek, california while visiting my cousins jason and andrew. i think it was jason's bike i rode on. i remember it was a blue harley davidson. jim took me around the neighborhood, and i distinctly remember the red and yellow leaves being stirred up off the pavement as we rode over them. it was enough to get me hooked. jim's constant barrage of motorcyling magazines didn't hurt.
over the next few summers, whenever we were down in california i would go riding with jim. i was still on the back at this point, but he was already giving me the basics on our rides up the palo alto hills to alice's restaurant. on sundays there would be upwards of 50 or 60 bikes lf all kinds parked at alice's, and we would just wander around, jim explaining the differences to me. in a shed around the back of the restaurant they had a boss hoss which, if you don't know, is a beast. a boss hoss is a 450 v8 engine taken from a camaro, or some other muscle car, and mounted on a motorcycle frame. insane. i loved it.
the bike we took on most of these rides was technically my cousin andrew's, though by this time he was at college and it was being looked after by jim. this was the first bike i truly fell in love with, and sadly missed the opportunity to buy it when andrew finally sold it a half dozen or so years ago. it was a 1982 bmw r90 (i think). a beautiful machine with an old cafe-style fairing, and the tried and true bmw boxer engine. i did my best to find a photo of something close, and here's the best i could do (just picture it in black):
as i said, a beauty.
flash forward to my senior year of high school. i was 18, and finally (don't ask why it took so long) convinced my parents to let me take the motorcycle safety course. this might be because my dad decided it might be fun to take it with me. anyway, late fall in the pacific northwest might not be the best time to get on a bike for the first time, but with a little help from my snowboarding jacket and some new rain pants, we braved the elements for a weekend and passed the course.
(don't ask how i did. as our instructor said: "no biker bar in the world will ask how you scored on your motorcycle safety course. you all passed." i do know i was the only rider to speed up the entire time i was going through the prescribed turn, which earned me the speed demon award. that was probably the only time i've been called fast on a bike.)
at this point, my history gets a little fuzzy. i think for christmas that year i got an old honda xr100 dirt bike. i rode this a total of about 3 times, mainly because it was at my aunt's ranch in sandy, oregon and i hardly ever went there.
the more significant piece of my history would be my first "real" bike, a 1982 kawasaki spectre. this bike belonged to my choir teacher at the time, who was tired of it sitting around in his garage. we borrowed it for an elongated test ride, and i promptly crashed it into a ditch while riding around our neighborhood. i remember going into the turn and thinking, very calmly mind you, "huh, i'm going way too fast. i'm not going to make this turn. i'd better bail out." so i did. i rolled off the bike, which went into a ditch, cracking the speedo (it never got fixed), breaking off a turn signal and scratching up the whole left side. needless to say, we bought the bike. here's a picture of what is essentially a carbon copy of my bike:
i rode this bike for the rest of the year, and never went above 35 mph! at least, according to the speedo, which would go to 35 and then stick. i ended up selling this bike to my best friend at the time, john. he painted it and tried to ride it to ASU, where he was going to go to school. unfortunately, th head gasket burst about 50 miles outside of vegas, and he had to hitch a ride, abandoning the bike to the will of the highway patrol. when he finaly located it in impound, it wasn't even worth the money to get it out. i'm guessing it was probably scrapped. a sad end, but one hell of a good story.
well, this post is getting much longer than i anticipated, so i think we'll call it here for the evening. part two of my motorcycle history (when my condition became terminal) will have to wait until tomorrow.
till then: ride fast, take chances.
scott
Whoa, whoa, whoa... are you saying Mr. King owned a bike? (No, this was not all that I got out of your - insanely awesome - post... but it's a questions that needs answering.)
ReplyDeleteyes, believe it or not, Mr. King owned a bike. he actually had a pretty cool spread when we went to pick it up. the bike, a nice boat, a little water. not too shabby.
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