‘The Mild One’…my life with suicycles

Back in 1962 (yeah, I’m that old), I was a high school sophomore at a small Podunk High in the San Joaquin Valley of Californica. My school, fairly typical of Western Coast American secondary schools of that era, had its cliques, social in and out groups, nerds, jocks, band members (you were either a jock or a ‘bandie’ at my school; to be labeled anything else was equivalent to being flung into social purgatory).

At my school, aside from the ongoing ‘surfer’ fad that was sweeping inland from the SoCal Coastal scene, the big teen focus was on the new small displacement ‘motorbikes’ that were starting (since about 1959) to be imported into the US from Japan. Chief and foremost among them were bikes made by the Honda Company, which quickly gained a following due to the incredible engineering precision and quality that went into their two-wheeled motorized products.

Interestingly enough, my very first ‘motorcycle’ experience came quite earlier than high school, however, since I lived across the ally from a former fellow 7th grader named Mike, whose family had one of those rough-as-a-cob 1952 Cushman ‘Husky’ motor scooters. Mike would take this old machine out of their garage and ride it up and down the dirt ally, letting me sit on back as his passenger while we putt-putted merrily along in grand (albeit minimalist) style. It may have been low-tech harmless fun, but it certainly was a formative thrill for me, as well as a foretaste of what would become a life-long love of these two wheel gravity-defiers.

At the start of the 60s and thanks to the clever advertising adopted by Honda’s marketing & media department (“You meet the nicest people on a Honda!”), the new wave of small four-stroke motorcycles were enthusiastically embraced by all my peers and very quickly were subsumed into the essential overall youth culture of the 60s. The competition, such as it was (mostly two-stroke powered Japanese cycles that were very smoky and objectionably noisy…such as the awful 50 cc Tohatsu ‘Run-Pet Sport’) hardly gained a foothold when compared to the performance, style and aesthetic appeal of the new Hondas. Almost overnight it was considered ‘cool’ and very hip to own one of these new Hondas…a change that contrasted markedly with the ‘Outlaw Biker’ motorcycle image that had been spawned in the late post-war 40s.

This was, remember, not all that many years (about 15) after the ‘Big Event’ that gained motorcycles a permanent image as the purveyance of ‘bad boys’. I refer to the famed Hollister (CA) July 4th weekend motorcycle riot in 1947 that changed the image of motorcycling forever. Over that 4 day long weekend, a number of independent motorcycle clubs (among them the infamous ‘Boozefighters’ and the somewhat less notorious ‘Pissed Off Bastards of Bloomington’) convened on the small Central California Coastal town of Hollister (about 4,500 population at the time) for the 4th of July Gypsy Tour event (a long weekend of motorcycle racing, social activities and partying, sponsored in part by the old and long-established American Motorcyclist Association). It is estimated that, due to the rising popularity of motorcycles by that time, over 4,000 cyclists converged on Hollister, effectively doubling its size and putting a severe strain on the community’s services. 10% of the attendees were women, by best reckoning.

Since there were hardly enough overnight accommodations for all the bikers, and given the drunkenness that developed as the town’s bars attempted to serve its over-stimulated out-of-town customers, it wasn’t long before things had gotten largely out of hand. The 7-man Hollister police department, under extreme pressure from indignant and outraged members of the community, found themselves completely incapable of enforcing any constraints on the partying bikers and the immense quantities of beer consumed put many of the bikers totally over the edge, in terms of behavioral dynamics.

Thanks to photographs taken by San Francisco Examiner photographers, somewhat contrived images of the event (one staged photo in particular quickly made headlines across the nation, purportedly showing a drunken biker sitting on his hog, surrounded by empty beer bottles) soon resulted in a generalized civic concern over these ‘motorcycle outlaws’ and the infamous black leather-jacketed look quickly became institutionalized as a recognised stereotype of all motorcyclists.

The fact that aside from a few injuries suffered by the bikers themselves (crashes, drunkenness, etc.), no citizens of Hollister itself had suffered any injuries somehow fell through the cracks of the media machine as the event became increasingly hyped. Some physical damage had been sustained on local property & buildings (windows broken, bars broken up), but the most astute retroactive assessments of that formative event in 1947 suggest that the Hollister event was vastly overplayed by a media anxious to pander to its domestic news audience. Media has always had (and shall continue to have) a rather unhealthy fixation on anything even vaguely sensational or titillating, since the average television viewer has been determined to have the mental acuity of a 6th grader (now you know why all those nauseatingly repulsive commercials are all so consistantly insulting to one’s intelligence), and the old saying ‘no news is good news’ is ever as true now as it have been since television was introduced. Hence the resulting ‘bad boy’ image that emerged of ALL motorcycle riders being lawless, dangerous delinquents (an image grossly amplified by dozens of 60s vintage, grade-B ‘biker flicks’ made in Hollywood).

Of course, many of the more reactive bikers quickly adopted that image as a convenient pose for social protest, since anything considered socially unacceptable adults has been (and is) quickly picked up by rebellious youthfulness and used as a weapon against conservative, mature mainstream consciousness. Thus the black leather jacket and the street sports-racer or chopper (chopped-down motorcycle, altered to reduce weight and increase performance) became badges of this new counter-cultural elite.

In 1953 the image was boosted by the Hollywood movie inspired by the Hollister event titled ‘The Wild One’, starring Marlon Brando in one of his first major roles as an outlaw biker gang leader. From there things just got more and more stereotyped to the point where the Hell’s Angels MC came to assume an identification for all that was violent, illegal and anti-social on two-wheels. Many of the immature & rebellious adolescents of that period enthusiastically embraced this affect, indirectly linked up with the English ‘Rocker’ motorcycle scene, at roughly the same time that Honda was trying to penetrate the motorcycle market by selling aesthetically attractive, clean and appealing small motorcycles to the American public.

Enter myself and my chums at my high school, who by this time were all strutting around in prescribed pseudo-surfer duds (i.e. Madras shirts, faded blue jeans, Pendleton wool shirts and blue canvas boat shoes, etc., since the contemporary surfer ‘hoodie’ that started as a surfer signature item and later picked up as favored garb by all adolescents, had not yet come into mass popularity), strapping surfboards onto the tops of our inland area cars and frantically emulating anything and everything that even vaguely suggested to our peers that we might be an actual part of the super-hip coastal surf scene. Naturally, everyone at my high school were already into cars, since the term ‘California Car Culture’ is no hollow-sounding phrase, and cars had been continually a central fixation of the youth culture from the early 1900s onwards; but when the surf music group ‘The Beach Boys’ came out with their song ‘Go, Little Honda’, the small and endlessly fun little Honda 50cc motorbikes burst forth on the surfer scene as a new paradigmic icon with all the explosiveness of a low-grade nuke.

Of the new ‘good boy’ Hondas, the most widespread was the Honda C-100 Super Cub, a brilliantly conceived two-wheeled motorized vehicle equipped with a masterfully engineered four-stroke engine and mated to a clutchless transmission. With a step-through pressed metal frame and a gas tank that promised an average range of more than 200 miles a tank, this was at once a popular and much sought-after transportation innovation. Kids with only a learner permit could drive these on the streets. Efficient, quiet and capable of about 40 mph max, thousands upon thousands were eventually produced and sold all around the world. Given their quiet, efficient operation and low-maintenance requirements, they were an instant hit with my high school aged friends.

However, while they were convenient and highly efficient transportation, it was their co-stablemate, the (50 cc) Honda C-110 Sport that captured the attention of the hippest in our crowd. The C-110 Sport featured a much more ‘motorcycle looking’ frame (also of pressed metal), but had a conventional left hand-operated clutch and the physical appearance of a true ‘small motorcycle’. None of that ‘sissy bike’ step-through frame for us! We all knew enough about motorcycle lore at that early age to instantly recognise the ‘cool factor’ implicit in Ochiro Honda’s ‘sport’ model and we all lusted mightily after one as only teenagers can over the latest hip ‘gear’.

Since Mum was only a poor school teacher (teachers were paid dirt back then and are still undervalued in the salary pyramid even today, as ironic as they seems to those of us who know and value quality education), money for such cool luxuries didn’t come along readily and even at a retail price out the door of $285, this was still a fairly hefty price-tag back in those days. But I was as much a thorough little savage as all my little buddies and Mum had no respite from my incessant pleas for one of my own.

Mum’s older brother, Charles, was a physician & surgeon in a well-established practice in Southern Idaho at this time and all his three kids had been sent to expensive prep schools in furtherance of their academic careers, the two boys matriculating at prestigious Shattuck School (Faribault, MN), a military prep school with the highest possible academic rating obtainable.

Although Mum could hardly afford to send me to such an exalted institution of middle school learning, recognizing that without a Dad I could use some substantial formative authority in my life, she finally offered me a choice: I could either have my little C-110 Honda OR I could go to Shattuck School for a year (ostensibly to see if my academic achievements there warranted further encouragement, but also to straighten out my inherent adolescent rebellious streak). The Shattuck option would have cost roughly twice as much as the little Honda, but it cannot possibly be a mystery to any rational person which option I seized upon and not soon after I was the proud owner of a new 1962 Honda CA-110 ‘Sport’ motorcycle. I’m certain that no one other than Mum knew that I was so thrilled by my new bike that I kept it in my bedroom, next to my bed…fortunately for my street creds!

The fact that I was the very first one in my hometown of about 3,500 people to have one of these ultra-cool machines was not lost on all my school peers (although that still didn’t gain me entry into the most exclusive ‘popular crowd’ clique) and in short order my best buddy Steve also had coaxed his parents into getting one for him. I understand from contact in later years with some of my old HS friends that several others in the class following ours also followed suit, but until I graduated from HS, Steve and I were the coolest kids on two wheels, bar none.

In our junior & senior years we had a number of adventures on those little 50cc wonders, including a lengthy trip over the nearby Tehachapi Pass and down to the high Mojave desert (near the Edwards AFB Flight Test Center). I can still recall the thrill (um, the ‘dangerous thrill’ perhaps?) of zipping along up the Tehachapi grade at a speed of about 25 mph, wide open, riding in the shoulder and hoping upon hope not to get rear-ended or butted off the roadway by a car or truck. Looking back on things like that, it seems amazing that God didn’t just take us right then and there, but somehow we survived such zany & admittedly hair-brained adventures. I recall also that at only 175 pounds, these little bikes were great for doing wheelies and doughnut spin-outs. Being products of the post-war ‘jet age’, we contrived a sort of ‘afterburner’ to the exhaust pipes of our machines that, when a string was pulled, released a burst of Sodium Bicarbonate into the exhaust gas, thereby producing a rather awesome (I use that word only because it truly WAS) plume of white smoke that looked exactly like an airliner’s contrail at high altitude! I’m sure it mightily confounded the other vehicles on the road that were zipping by us at much higher speeds, but it sure looked bitchin’.

We even had a vague plan to take our little tiddlers on a lengthy trip up into Canada! How any rational person could possibly think that riding a small machine like that (with a maximum speed of about 45 with a good tailwind), loaded up with sleeping bag, camping gear and food, was even feasible is today almost beyond my powers of imagination. Fortunately, my friend elected to bow out of this almost certain appointment with The Reaper and the idea never passed the planning stage (despite the fact that we had even printed up a detailed agenda and equipment list on a Hectograph…if you’re uncertain what a ‘Hectograph’ is, GOOGLE it).

However cool we were, thanks to these little machines, it was inevitable that the urge for something bigger and more powerful would gradually get a grip on us and about 6 months before graduation I acquired a slightly larger 90cc Honda CA-200 (‘Touring 90’) with red paint. Like a Honda 50 C-110 on steroids, it was hardly a quantum leap beyond the C-110, but it was great fun until the bug hit me even harder: in summer of 1964 I bought a used Honda CB-92, parallel-twin, 125cc ‘Benly Super Sport’ (rated at about 15 BHP, the word ‘Benly’, by the way, is the English equivalent of a Japanese word that translates to ‘convenient’) from a store in the nearby college town where I was about to begin my freshman year and was in the process of driving it home when it suddenly gave up the ghost in a cloud of blue-black smoke. Fortunately, I was able to have it taken back to the store I bought it at and got my money back…which I then applied to the purpose of a brand new, black CA-77 Honda Dream 305 (‘Dream’ being a name chosen by Ochiro Honda for many of his bikes, given that it amounted to exactly that: his ‘dream’ for fulfilling economical, efficient personal transportation).

This was a major step up from the tiddlers I had had theretofore and seemed to me the perfect bike to take to college with me, being what was considered at that time a truly upper-mid-size motorcycle of twin-cylinder, four cycle OHV design. While the ‘305 Dream’ was all of that, its rather squared-off body work (again pressed from steel, as with the C-110 tiddlers) instantly marked it off as an unusual sort of bike. Weighing in at about 356 pounds and rated at about 20 BHP, the 305 Dream was able to travel on roads comfortably at an average cruise of about 55 (top speed was about 80) and was technically a lot safer therefore than the smaller bikes, since it could keep up with automobile traffic. Still, that was a lot of sheet metal to carry about, given its slick tubular framed counterpart described below.

For his part, my buddy Steve, not to be outdone and simultaneous with my acquiring the 305 Dream, bought himself a Honda CB-77 Super Hawk, surely a far sexier and more conventional looking motorcycle in the time-approved tubular-frame manner. With the same engine (more or less) that I had in my 305 Dream ‘touring’ bike, although the Super Hawk weighed about the same (as my Dream), it handled better, had improved shocks and forks and was far more a performance machine that my stodgy old 305 Dream. It also looked sexy just standing still and is today regarded by collectors as an archetypal step-up in the motorcycle state of the art of that period. From that point onwards, Hondas got progressively bigger and more capable, both in terms of performance and handling, to the point where today a 300cc bike is regarded as a fairly ‘small’ sized machine.

For me, however, a 305 Dream was really all I needed at that point in my life and never having been a particularly daring soul, I couldn’t really conceive of the need to go much faster. An apt analogy, given my subsequent aviation experience, is a comparison between a Mach-2 fighter jet and an antique J-3 Piper Cub. Whereas the jet can absolutely demolish you into a zillion smithereens in an instant, the J-3 Piper Cub putt-putt can just barely kill you. Same with my 305 Dream and some of the more exotic Italian (Ducatti, notably) two-wheeled machinery that was starting to come into the US at that time. Ironically, at a much later date, my personal best achievement for speed and altitude would be Mach 2.2 and 60,000 feet, so the vaunted ‘need for speed’ on two-wheels became moot after having reached extremes that are denied to most mortals. [Today I am quite content to just putt along, pause to smell the flowers and fervently hope that some distracted young four-wheel vehicle driver doesn’t accidentally turn me into fresh road kill while texting his girlfriend.]

The 305 Dream served me well enough during my first two years in college (admittedly augmented by a cherry little ’40 Chevy Master Deluxe I had managed to pick up in primer-gray for only $50). Thereafter followed my Air Force stint and it wasn’t until about 1970, back in Berkeley again after discharge that I once more got back on two wheels (not quite the whole truth, since I had had several bicycles along the way, both in and out of the service).

This time I checked around for used bikes and found a nice old Honda 150 that served me for a few months until it was stolen from where it was parked on Milvia Street, near Herrick Hospital in Berkeley. Thus wheel-less once again I subsequently acquired a nice 74 Honda CB-350. At about 350 pounds curb weight and rated at 36 BHP, the CB-350 was a very, very good bike and over the next few years I went through several of them at various times. The parallel twin CB-350 later emerged as one of those ubiquitous, bombproof medium-sized ‘mules’ of the 70s that delivered perfect functionality, reasonable speed (top speed about 100, cruise at 65), excellent mileage and lots of fun in the deal. I must admit that I still think of them occasionally with great fondness. After work (at Summit Medical Center on Pill Hill, Oakland), taking my bike home was a therapeutic experience…even during bad weather and on weekends, nothing could beat a relaxed country putt through the rural areas north of Berkeley and El Cerritos. There was just something pacific’ about those cycling meanderings that I have never managed to capture today on our high-density suburban byways.

I think this last fact has a lot to do with the exponential proliferation of automobile traffic in California’s settled areas since the 70s. That and the increasing reckless disregard of younger drivers, who are easily distracted by their cell phones while driving (but who also seem to have no concept at all for vehicular safety of others around them). Today, driving a motorcycle…any motorcycle…has become a survival contest, a matter of how much risk one is willing to take by being in the immediate vicinity of four-wheel vehicles that can take you out in a heartbeat.

Naturally enough, being in the medical field (medical technologist & nurse) and running the cardiopulmonary & cardiovascular labs at Highland General Hospital at the time, I was all too aware of the extreme risk posed by motorcycles and even lost a very close friend on one, who had come off the freeway and been hit by a car full of jive spade dudes high on drugs when they ran a stoplight. Regrettably, he had not been wearing a helmet (a characteristic of his entire lifestyle) and suffered massive temporal lobe brain injuries, not long after dying from the effects.

I had seen many other such fatal injuries (including a number of major head trauma cases, sustained by riders both wearing and not wearing helmets), since I worked closely with the hospital’s emergency room. The worst motorcycle related injuries I recall were those suffered by two young Asian men riding on a single bike that had veered right off the street and ploughed directly into the rear of a Ford Pinto. The resulting blast had literally welded them together, front to back, and although they managed to survive briefly, they too soon died from their massive first degree burns. Try as I might, I'll never forget that truly macabre incident and carry it to this day inside my head…perhaps another ‘limiting’ factor in my ability to enjoy being on a motorcycle around cars.

The only accident I myself have ever had (knock on wood) in my 55 years on bikes came after I had returned home one day from the hospital. A person who ALWAYS wore safety equipment (approved helmet, eye protection, leather jacket and gloves), I had taken them all off and since it was a lovely warm spring day decided to go three blocks to pick up some milk at the local neighborhood grocery store.

It’s almost a classic example of how s**t can happen when you least expect it, taken right out of the motorcycle safety manual, since a majority of motorcycle accidents have been shown statistically to take place within a couple of miles of home. There I was, about two blocks from my house, when I came to a ‘T-intersection’. I was taking the straight course, after stopping at the stop sign, and glanced over to my right where a fellow in a car had also come to the required stop, traveling perpendicular to my direction of traffic.

Glancing towards him, I established direct eye contact and saw that he was looking right at me, so I slowly started out across the intersection. I was directly in the middle of it when he suddenly pulled out in front of me. Fortunately I was naturally cautious and young enough to have excellent reflexes, but nevertheless T-boned him. The bike ended under the front of his car, but the impact sent me flying into the air OVER his car.

All I remember about it was the fact that I did two summersaults in mid-air and somehow had the presence of mind to reflect on the fact (while in flight and upside down) that lacking my helmet, I had better cradle my head in my arms, figuring that loss of an arm or two was far better than loss of a brain! This all happened in a split second, of course.

Due to unknown physics involved, when I came down I landed in a seated ‘jack-knife’ position and did not hit my head or lose consciousness; in fact at first I thought I had sustained no injuries at all. That turned out not to be entirely the case, as I seem to have clipped my left knee which promptly started swelling to the size of a grapefruit. My tennis shoes had been knocked off and my sunglasses were lying about 16 feet away when they had flipped off while I was in flight.

Almost predictably, the young driver of the vehicle I had hit rushed over and said “Gee! I didn’t see you! Are you OK?” Happy to be alive with what appeared to be only minimal injuries, I reassured him I was, since he was more shaken up than I appeared to be (although perhaps I was a bit shocky at that point, hence my calmness).

Later what turned out to be a small tear of the left knee’s left lateral meniscus eventually healed without intervention, so I was damned lucky! It was a very direct lesson, however, in what can happen when you let your guard down on two wheels even for a second. I quickly intuited that any time one is piloting a two-wheeled vehicle…whether a bicycle or a motorcycle…one needs to always been about 30 feet ahead of the curve, constantly searching for any possible indication of threat directly to the front or to either side of your intended route of travel.

A technique also quickly picked up by pilots when flying Visual Flight Rules (VFR), the equivalent state amounts to maintaining constant acute situational awareness, a quality that can serve one well whether on a bike, in a cockpit, or just walking down the street in a rough neighborhood. If I had a dime for every bicyclist or motorcyclist who isn’t (or wasn’t) aware of this prime directive and who doesn’t know that it can make the difference between life and death in daily life, I’d be bloody millionaire by now.

As the 70s turned into the 80s and with my departure from the US for many years of expatriate work in the Middle East (e.g. ‘Southwest Asia’, as the military regards it now), I left all my motorized & non-motorised two-wheeled vehicles at home and didn’t rejoin the motorcycle fold until about 1989. At that time and working at the Santa Cruz Heart Institute, I finally forsake my old Honda affinities and found myself alluringly bemused by the new Yamaha machines, chiefly the so-called ‘Seca series. Consequently, when I found a 1982 Yamaha XJ-550R ‘Seca’ in bright red for sale, I intuitively knew I had found my next bike. This particular one was a beauty, owned by…amazingly…a motorcycle mechanic. He had taken very good care of it and it had only about 10,000 miles on it, which for a parallel four like that is really quite low.

The geometry of that chain-driven XJ-550R Seca was astoundingly good. It had a nimble balance and handled like a sports racer, having enough torque to put in some impressive times (should one care to do so) of the 0-60 sort. That wonderful machine was my primary bike for a number of years, subsequently, and although I also found and purchased its bigger brother (a shaft-driven 1982 Yamaha XJ-750S Seca in black), the 550 remained my favorite.

Sadly, in the late 90s I let myself actually listen to wifie (for a change), who argued that since I could only ‘…ride one bike at a time’, why not sell one of the two? Like a dork, I found myself beguiled by the low-mileage, shaft-driven 750 and sold the 550. To this day I rue that decision, since although the 750 only had about 20,000 miles on it (quite low for a big of its displacement), and was a much bigger (and therefore theoretically faster) machine, it was actually less fun than the smaller 550. This assumption later proved to be erroneous, since despite having 200 less cc’s than the 750, the 550 with its chain-driven rear wheel was a comparative rocket.

It’s hard to forget the sheer exhilaration I experienced riding that bike home every day after work at the institute to my beach cottage at Sunset State Beach (near Watsonville, on the coast, just 15 miles south of Santa Cruz). Since this was typically after one or two good German ‘Spatenbrau Hell’ beers at my good friend Heinz’s Biergarten (in Pacific Garden Mall in SC), it was usually just after dusk and the rush of shooting along Highway 1, well lubricated by the ETOH (although fully garbed with my safety gear), is hard to describe. It was also rather foolish, since everyone knows that ETOH and motorcycles go together about as well as oil & water, but somehow or other my guardian angels had my back and I never had that accident that such a status can deliver in a heartbeat.

Of course car drivers at that time (and on that route) were usually very well behaved and there were fewer of them about on the highway home after the 5PM commuter traffic had thinned out considerably. Still…

My remaining Yamaha XJ-750R Seca stayed with me a year or so longer, after the 550 departed, but eventually I sold it as well. The fellow I sold it too couldn’t believe his good luck, getting it (with only 20,000 miles on the clock) along with a nifty folding ‘Stinger’ single-bike carrier for only $1200. [The XJ-550R had sold for a bargain price also, but to a total dipshit who told me he just wanted a reliable bike he could commute to work with…duh! Should have had my head examined, since it meant nothing to him except a reliable ‘hoss’ to ride into the ground; the bike deserved better than that!].

My reasons at that time for selling my bikes had a bit to do with my increased age; being well aware of the effects of aging on reflexes & response times, my more prudent side appealed to reason, arguing that I was getting too old for motorcycles in my mid-to-late 60s.

Then, several years later still, the home next to us sold to a young couple, the husband of which was a classic motorcycle buff, being particularly interested in old BMW and Italian bikes (he had a garage full of classic old bikes!). Ack! That was all it took to get me re-hooked and I soon found myself in possession of two new and much more modern bikes: a beautiful red 1991 Yamaha FZR1000 and a stunning yellow Honda VFR-800R Interceptor (with its excellent fore/aft V-twin set-up). Of the two, the Honda Interceptor was near new having only 2900 miles on it. With its injected and powerful engine, it handled and drove like liquid silk. Having a slightly modified (read: less radical) sportsbike seated posture, it was a dream to drive and operate for longer periods.

By contrast, the red 1991 carbureted Yamaha FZR1000 was a real beast, a powerful, torquey and high-spirited one-off road racer that could do 0-60 in less than 2.7 seconds (that’s better than the fastest Ferrari!). For a long time after I bought it, all I could do, Casper Milquetoast that I am, was gaze anxiously at it as it sat in the garage, half fearing what it could do to little old me were I ever to lose focus for a second on it!

Eventually I did work up enough moxie to drive it, but after a year or so sold the screaming yellow Viffer (the Honda Interceptor) and kept the red beast as my very last bike. I recently spent almost $3000 having the Fizzer gone over and serviced by a local motorcycle service wizard (Matt at East Sacramento Motorcycles...if you live in the sacramento area, it's the ONLY place to trust your older motorcycle to) so that it rides like a brand new suicycle! It may not be more than 26 years old, but it’s ‘old school’ enough to suit my tastes until I kick the bucket.

My buddy Steve, who had bought a Honda C-110 and later a Honda CB-77 (350 Super Hawk) retired from the US Air Force three years or so ago and found a new passion in Harley-Davidsons. Despite some serious health concerns (that eventually felled him), he really enjoyed that hog of his. For my money, I’ve never much cared for American machines, much preferring and remaining a Japanese ‘ricer-burner’ fan all my life.

I suppose if I had lots of money, the seductions of high-performance Italian machines, German BMWs, or even gorgeous classics like the ’70s era Norton Commando would have attracted me, but I am enough of a plebe (although a well-eddicated one) to know my economic place in the motorcycle world of ‘affordable’ semi-classics.

That beautiful red Yamaha FZR1000 suicycle now sits out there in my cold, cold winter garage like slumbering demon, waiting for spring and a few good rural rides away from other traffic; it’s kept company by my 1973 Volkswagen Type 181 (‘Thing’) that also doesn’t care much for cold weather. Consequently, I won’t have to worry about a premature two-wheeled death until the weather warms up a bit.

As the German Luftwaffe pilots were fond of putting it: “Kampfen und leben schnell, und haben eine gut aussehende leiche!“ (Translation: “Fight and live fast, but have a good looking corpse when you die”.)

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PS: That old Honda 150 I bought in Berkeley after getting out of the Air Force that was stolen from me mysteriously emerged from the black unknown and was returned by the Berkeley PD, after they somehow found it somewhere. It was completely unaltered and just as it had been when it was taken. I can only wonder bemusedly at the odds against such a bit of good luck as that!