Post by Ozarks Tom on May 5, 2019 4:14:20 GMT
This is sort of rendition of some of my experiences riding motorcycles, at least some of the ones I look back on and laugh at.
My first experience on a two wheel motorized vehicle was when I was 13 years old. I had an extra 5hp Brigges & Stratton motor from my lawn mowing sideline, and talked my dad into welding a motor plate into an old bicycle. After that, I did the rest, with all the skill you'd expect from a 13 years old. It was direct drive, meaning there was no clutch or real speed control to speak of. I'd push it as fast as I could with the back wheel sliding along, then jump on the seat to turn the motor over. When it started I'd reach down and push the throttle lever to full open and be on my way. My first pulley was stock on the motor, fairly small, so I put a bigger pulley on it to increase the speed. It would hit somewhere around 45mph, with no brakes. To stop I'd reach down and push the throttle closed, then pull the spark plug wire with the same hand, then put my feet down to slow it. A word of warning here, you'll jolt yourself into wondering if this whole thing was a very smart idea. Anyway, I enjoyed it for a couple months, wrecked it into a tree trying to avoid being smashed by a truck, and was forbidden to fix it.
My next experience was when I was 15. A friend's father had several motorcycles, including a 1948 Indian Chief. My friend suggested he ride his dad's old Triumph, and I ride the Chief. You have to picture this, I was about 6' tall and weighed about 140 pounds. It outweighed me by at least three to one. We made it to the first stop sign, where I laid it on its side. It took both of us to get it back upright. I rode it back to my friend's house, promising myself I was done with motorcycles.
Fast forward 20 years. It was just an innocent remark, not meant in any way to be seriously taken. I had a 14' slide in camper on a '73 Chevy pickup that my wife (at the time) and I would take remote camping. I made the innocuous remark at the campfire one night that it was a real pain in the butt to have to unlevel the rig and drive to the little store just for another loaf of bread or a jug of milk, it sure would be neat if we had a little dirt bike to run errands with. Well, she stored that thought away, and near my birthday enlisted a friend(?) to help her find a bike for me. What she presented me with I came to call the Tasmanian Devil. It was a used dirt motocross bike, 250cc, but geared to stand on its hind wheel with the least blip of the throttle in any range. Obviously the previous owner was as scared of it as I was, I had to let him keep $50 of the sale price to take it back.
Not to be deterred (she was the beneficiary on my life insurance policy), she and my friend(?) found a Suzuki 175cc street and trail bike (I sometimes wondered if something was going on between those two), for my Christmas present. One thing to remember about dual purpose machines is they're lousy at both purposes. I learned to ride it, and hate it. But, the bug had bit me.
I'd been riding mainly on the street with that miserable thing, and quickly realized it had just enough power to get you into trouble, but not out of it. I needed a real street bike. I found a 500cc Honda Silverwing with a full faring and bags for a reasonable price. A really ugly machine, but I felt like a "biker" now. The first time I rode it I nearly crashed it. I was used turning at slow speeds by turning the handlebars, but with that big faring I couldn't see the front wheel, which confused me no little bit. After a short adjustment period I mastered the invisible front wheel, and enjoyed it for a couple months. But, damn, that thing was slow, especially with two people on it.
In the meantime I was getting into dirt bikes We were still remote camping, so I bought myself a 250cc Honda four stroke (a much calmer motor) , and my (later to be ex-wife) a 200cc Honda and her son a 250cc Yamaha. We met a couple our age while riding dirt bikes who had a son who rode professional motocross, and they were avid dirt bikers. He convinced me that 250cc was way too small for a man my size, I needed a 500cc bike. Hey, I'm gullible, okay? Yeah, I bought a Honda 500XR, the biggest dirt bike Honda made. I'd ridden a couple "Cross Country" races, which consist of roughly 10 miles of dirt trails, to be completed six times, specifically laid out to be torturous. The course would be straight up/down, rocks, swamp, straightaways where you could go flat out, then either turn 90 degrees or end up in a river. I was sure my 500cc bike would get me first prize. The next race was at a place near the Red River on the OK/TX line. Lots of everything you don't want to ride a motorcycle through, it's name was Munster. I took the bike off the trailer to ride the course for a practice run on a Saturday, the first time I'd ridden the bike other than around the dealer's parking lot. Shortly after starting the course I came to what I considered to be an impossible hill, it had to be 89 degrees straight up. What the heck, it had tire tracks on it, obviously somebody had made it, so I proceeded to flip the 300 pound bike 5 times trying to climb it. While I was at the bottom of the hill kicking the flooded motor over, 9 and 12 year old kids on their 80cc Yamahas zipped right up it. Oh no, I wasn't just a little frustrated, I became somewhat insane. It wasn't a death wish, it was more a determination of "Hey, I've broken bones before". I made the hill, and the rest of the course, and said that's it, crawled up into the camper and went to sleep. Only to be awoken by my wife and our friends. He asked if I'd be riding the race the next day, and not wanting to be seen a chicken, assured them I would. I did, and finished absolutely last. As I'll explain later, finishing on cross country races is what matters.
Well, I was hooked on motorcycles. Everything about them exhilarated me, the power, the speed, the fact that only you are in control of not only your bike, but your life. It became addictive, more speed, bigger motors, challenges you'd never expected. At one time I owned nine.
Back to street bikes. I'd bought a bare bones 1000cc Honda Goldwing, and proceeded to put every shiny, lit, gaudy accessory available on it. My wife (at the time) said it looked like a Mexican circus. I enjoyed everything about it, from the grunt power to the pure smoothness of the air shocks. I started thinking I'd finally arrived.
I used to buy all my bikes at Honda North, the dealer was just up a ways from my business, and I had become friends with the manager. One day he called and said "Hey Tom, we've got a DESPERADO race next month, you want in?" It turned out the race was from the parking lot at Honda North to the parking lot of a bar on the south side of Eureka Springs AR. It was a timed race, not a mass start, and the person with the shortest time won. Everyone, 15 the first race I was in, put up $100, winner take all, no second place. Well of course I wanted in, even riding a touring bike I couldn't resist. I ended up coming in second to a guy I'd ridden with on a Kawasaki KZ1100, nice guy, but a little hesitant going through small towns.
Almost a year later Donny, the Honda North guy called me up and said "Hey Tom, we just got your bike in." I explained I hadn't ordered a bike, but he said "You'll want this one." I rode my 900F over there, title in my pocket, at took a test drive on the 1100F. Yep, I wanted it. I drove it about 15 miles to a race bike mechanic, who promptly bored/stroked/cammed it and made it the craziest bike in Dallas County. I was not going to lose the next DESPERADO race.
About a year later I was running up the Indian Nation Turnpike, down behind my speedometer, running about as fast as I was comfortable with. I glanced into my mirrors, and saw three other bikes stacked up behind me, I looked at my speedometer, and it read 145mph. My first thought was "Those guys are crazy!" Then I realized I was looking back at them, and goosed it. Crazy wins. Yep, I won, and bought beers for the house the whole night. Would I do it again? No, but it sure was fun.
Back to dirt bikes. As usual I was in the lead going through the trees at Ft Hood's forest trails. I didn't see a small sapling, which caught my left little finger on it, which turned my front wheel into a large pine tree, beside breaking my little finger. With the abrupt stop, I got off head first, doing what we used to call a "sailor's dive", didn't have time to put my arms out to cushion the impact. My helmet broke my right collarbone, and I was just a bit dizzy. My stepson at the time who was finishing his 3rd year of medical school was riding behind me and confirmed what I already knew. It's hard to ride a dirt bike five miles though the woods, over logs and through swamps with a broken collarbone, so I got on the back of his bike, with my hand in my leather coat pocket rode back to the motorhome. When we got there I got off the son's bike, pale as a sheet I'm sure. The three gals were sitting around the campfire, and my (soon to be ex-wife) said "How was your ride? The fire's dyring down, can you throw another log on?" I said "No, I think I'll be go to the emergency room instead." When I got the ER they wanted to cut my leather jacket off to examine my shoulder, like that's going to happen. The coat is hanging in my closet right now.
Oh, I did trophy in cross country, first place in the over 40 class. There were six races, I'd met all the guys who were riding in the over 40 class, they seemed like nice enough guys, but damn, when the race would start they all thought they were 20 years old, and invulnerable. They kept smashing into trees, dropping off into the river, and generally trying to act like they could keep up with the kids. I just kept riding. My points for just finishing outdid their points for every now and then running a fast time. The trophy was silver colored, I think my ex-wife melted it down thinking it was real silver.
It was a beautiful Sunday morning. I was at my cabin in SE Oklahoma and decided to take my 1100F for a ride. I'd ridden the Talimena Scenic Drive a hundred times, mountain top to mountain top, little hairpin curves to the next one. I'd had some problems with my company, andstarted thinking about them, running a bit too fast forgot where I was. I realized I'd screwed up when I looked down to a 13 degree slope with a hairpin 20mph curve at the bottom. I looked at the speedometer and it showed 90mph, oops. I downshifted and hit the brakes, the front one hardest because that's where the real braking on a motorcycle is. The back wheel kept lifting off the pavement, so basically I was riding the front wheel down. Just before I came to the curve I glanced down at the speedometer and it read 70mph, another oops. Well, the curve was carved out of the side of a mountain, so I had a choice, either try the curve, or go straight into the rock. I of course chose the curve, and it seemed like it might work, my back wheel was drifting out, and I was leaned as far in to be throwing sparks off my left foot peg. At one time I thought "Hey, this might work!", but then I caught some unexpected traction on the back tire and high-sided off into the mountain. When I woke up I was in the middle of the road, couldn't breath, and knew I needed help. After a while I got to my feet, looked for the bike, but it was in a ditch pretty bent up. I waited about 20 minutes until a couple in a van came by. They almost didn't stop, but I stepped out to where they had no choice. They took me to the national park resort a couple miles up, where they called an ambulance. Then the real fun began.
Mena Arkansas's hospital is a bandaid station. This was a Sunday morning, when their least qualified personnel are on duty. They at least knew enough to know I had a blown out lung, so they started working on that. The "doctor" explained he'd have to put a chest tube in to reinflate the lung. Okay, like I had a choice. Two packs of cigarettes a day need both lungs. He brought out a roll kit, sort of like my metric wrench kit, unrolled it, and started reading the dang instructions! I asked him if he'd ever done this before, and he answered in the affirmative, then I asked him if that was the case why he was reading the damn instructions. At any rate, he got the chest tube in after nearly pushing me off the table with the probe and then the tube, and put me in the ICU. I spent 10 days there before they threw me out due to my abusive language and attitude. I drove back to Dallas so doped up I'm surprised I made it two miles.
A month later the 1100F was fixed, and I was riding. If anything, I've learned you can't blame the bike for your own mistakes. Y'all remember the Forest Gump quote about stupid.
