Motorcycle Madness

I started riding motorcycles shortly after I was born. OK, not really... but I was pretty young when I first got the taste of riding a motorized vehicle on two wheels. Actually, now that I think about it, that "feeling" that I'm talking about probably came the first time I went down a steep hill on my bicycle. You know the feeling I'm talking about. You're not pedaling, you're just holding on for dear life as the bicycle careens down the hill! Well, that was probably the first time that I got a taste of that "feeling" and it felt good. Really good.

Fast forward a few years to when my dad showed up one night after work with a bright red minibike in the trunk of his car. Man, was that a night to remember! Anybody close to my age, around 25 (+ another 25), will remember those cool little minibikes. They had a tube frame into which you could mount just about any kind of engine. Standard issue was a Briggs & Stratton 3 1/2 HP lawnmower engine. Add to that a little centrifugal clutch and you were ready to hit the road. Now, of course, they weren't street legal but they sure were maneuverable. If you had the stomach for it, and knew the neighborhood backyards pretty well, you could usually make your way home from just about anywhere without getting caught. Unfortunately, although we had "parent sanctioned" rides up and down our street there in our Ohio town, the local police didn't get the memo and it wasn't long until that little adventure was shut down. But, I had now gotten a taste of motorized 2-wheel transport and my addiction had been set in motion.

The next motorcycle that I could regularly get my hands on was a Honda Mini Trail 70. My parents had some friends that had one, so my dad bought one for us and we mostly took it on camping trips. It was big enough for the "dads" to ride, but for us kids it was a "real" motorcycle with gears (albeit a 3-speed automatic with, yet another, centrifugal clutch) and it was "off road" which meant it had some suspension to it. It really was a great little bike at the time and I think that's where I first picked up that "smell" that motorcycles have when you first start them. Harley or Honda, new or old, they all have their own particular smell which is a combination of exhaust gases, metal heating up and whatever else makes up THAT smell. If you ride a bike, you know what I'm talking about. We all experience the smell when we start our bikes in the garage, especially when it's still cold outside. Anyway, the Honda 70 was our "dream bike" for a number of years and we loved it.

When I was about 15 my dad decided he liked the motorcycling thing and decided to buy a bike of his own. In retropsect, I don't blame him a bit... but I sure wasn't happy about it. In his defense, I can only imagine what it's like to try and wrestle YOUR motorcycle from two crazed kids. My brother, Scott, is just a year older than me and together I'm sure we were always a handful. So, like I said, my dad decided he was going to get his own bike. Now this is back in the early 70's so please don't judge the man on the bike he bought (a Honda CB 100). I'm sure his decision was as much fiscally based as it was experience based. I'm actually surprised that he was able to pull it off at all back then because my mother can be pretty persuasive. She may appear defeated early on, but if she isn't happy about what's going on I guarantee she'll eventually make you wish you had seen it her way from the beginning. She is a tremendous force, but carries it brilliantly in a silk glove.

OK, so let me get to the good part of the story. By now I had a gotten a strong bite from the motorcycling bug and could think of nothing else. If you ask my parents (bless their hearts), I bet they would tell you that all I talked about through junior and senior high school was motorcycles. I knew every model, read all the magazines and literally thought about motorcycles ALL of the time. So you can imagine my teenage indignation when my dad bought a bike... just for himself. There it sat in the garage, hardly ever ridden (sigh...), and here I was with a fever so strong it occupied my every waking moment.

Well, if you haven't guessed by now... I could stand it no longer. One night, after my parents had left for some friends' house for an evening of card playing and my dear brother was settled in front of the TV, I snuck out to the garage and committed a crime. Now, at the time you couldn't have gotten me to admit that I was committing a crime, but if anybody did to MY bike what I did to my dad's bike that night... they'd be going to jail. I removed the speedometer cable (hey, I'm not stupid) and, without telltale mileage to later get me in trouble (yeah, right), I hit the road on a licensed motorcycle for the first time in my life. Man, what a feeling that was. Riding a real motorcycle through the streets of my town, at night, without a speedometer. I was in heaven... but I was soon to be going the other direction in a hurry.

Prior to embarking on this little escapade, I had called a friend and told him to be ready, that I was out on "my" bike and would be by to get him. After picking him up I decided the next thing I needed to do to celebrate my new found freedom was to swing by an old girlfriend's apartment (how old can a girlfriend be when you're 15?) and show her how cool I was on my trusty steed.

OK, if you didn't guess the first part, maybe you're starting to get a premonition here. Yeah... we never made it to the "old" girlfriend's place. Somehow (and I will always wonder what gave me away, because I FELT confident) a local police officer seemed to think that I looked a little tentative and decided to pull me over. Actually, he didn't pull me over, rather he waited as I rode through the parking lot of the girlfriend's apartment complex and had his lights flashing when I emerged on the other side. The Steve McQueen in me wanted to flee, but having been raised by awesome parents, I knew that the gig was up and I was in big trouble.

Well, I won't bore you with the details, but it was not a happy night. The cops called my parents at their friends' house, the folks had time to sit around and figure out what would torture me the most (making me wait for my thrashing until their late arrival home that night) and then of course there was some jail time (just kidding.. but I did have to go to juvenile court).

I learned a very valuable lesson that night. You gotta have your own bike and you gotta do whatever it takes to get one (short of stealing someone else's, of course).

The fact is, I've pretty much had at least one motorcycle (or more) all of my life since then. Actually, I can't even imagine life without one. Because it's that one thing that, even today at age 50 with a lot of experiences under my belt, still gives me the feeling of speeding down a hill on my bike at age 5. There's nothing like it and, hopefully, I'll never have to live without it.

See you on the road!

MotoRush