My First (And Last) Bike

1974 Honda CL 360 Scrambler identical to mine.

Although I knew a guy in high school who had a Triumph Tiger Cub, street bikes weren't really on my radar until pollution controls eviscerated car engines in the early 1970's.  Pure chance got me onto two wheels.  I blame the CB radio craze.  A half-dozen of us yakked on our daily commute.  We started meeting for a drink on the way home on Fridays.  One of us was a gal with a Honda 360 Scrambler for sale.  She was moving up to a bigger bike.  I knew that I would not be getting a high-performance car any time soon.  Why not ride?  Open air touring into the bargain!  She rode her bike over to my house; it looked and ran fine.  Money and title were exchanged.

The Scrambler was a thrill to my 25 lbs. per horsepower mindset.  Maybe the bike and I were 16 lbs. per horsepower, all-up.  I learned what sportbike riders know so well: you can just wish it around bends if your entry is right.  I lived near a rural area with lots of twisties.  And a park system with a two-lane road surrounded the metro area.  It was ideal riding: relatively low speeds in low traffic.  A day-trip around the city on that vibrating vertical twin left me with a weary sense of accomplishment and a farmer tan.

But I never really got into riding.  I didn't feel as confident using the bike aggressively as I did behind the wheel (and got nowhere near dragging a knee).  You can't brake a bike as hard as you can a car--at least I couldn't.  I rode in jeans, Dockers, and a t-shirt, and without a helmet when I was on rural roads.  Even an open-face helmet felt hot and claustrophobic.  Despite my non-approach to passive safety, a movie ran in my mind of leaving the bike with painful consequences.

The penultimate deal-breaker was entirely my fault.  That old saying has it wrong: fools are not always protected from their foolishness.  One April, I rode the bike to the upper Shenandoah Valley and back.  700 miles in 5 days, with down time for Civil War battlefield tourism.  It was the most miserable trip I've taken.  Interstates in cold rain at 60 m.p.h., being sprayed by passing 18-wheelers.  Rain-suited riders on Honda 750's with Windjammers and waterproof panniers laughed at me.  150 miles on two-lanes, cold and soggy, with the feeling gone from my hands from the ever-present vibration.  By the time I got to Harrisonburg VA, I was ready to take a limo home.  But the only option was to retrace the idiocy.  After that, I rode the bike less, slower, and only on back roads on summer days.

We moved to Minneapolis.  There was only one twisty road within handy distance.  A bee stung me in the one inch of flesh showing between my helmet and goggles.  It turned out that I was now allergic to bee stings that had only been painful in childhood.  A neighbor, who rode a Harley, lost an argument with a deer on a major highway.  He was not ambulatory when he left the hospital.  The next spring, I was riding a highway when a kid on a dirt bike pulled right out in front of me.  I got around him on the gravel shoulder.  Barely.  I realized that I didn't know how to lay the bike down safely, if I had to.  The messages seemed to be piling up in my in-box.

I  put the Scrambler on its stand, sideways in the front of the garage, and bought my RX-7 a few months later.  "Some day, I should sell that thing."  Later,  my ex got it in the divorce.  Not in the settlement, but because I didn't push it into the U-Haul.  Since then, I've watched sportbikers ride really stupidly on Chicago freeways.  And we don't have a helmet law.  This is one of the least bike-friendly cities I can think of.  Come to think of it, what large metro area is sportbike friendly?

I'm awed by what professional sportbike racers can get out of their machines.  And what a good rider can get out of a sportbike on the Dragon.  A couple of Killboy's shots are on my screen-saver.  But I don't have the attachments.  When he was in college, my son had the same bright idea I'd had: wanna go fast, cheap?  Buy a sportbike!  He was long past the age where I could tell him no.  Instead I reminded him of Newton's First Law: human leaves bike, human meets solid object, human loses.  At least that's how I remember The Law.  To my relief, my son's physics experiments have all been on 4 wheels.

Killboy's caption was "Not sure who has the larger attachments."  I can't DO it, but I know it when I SEE it.

And that is why I slay the Dragon on 4 wheels.  A sportbike is a great slayer if you're a good, confident, lucky, rider.  "Chasing Jay/Multistrada" is useful not only because it shows how to drive the Dragon, but because it shows how to ride it.  Riding a sportbike fast is not just a skill set, it's an art.  But if I wanted to push the envelope, my fantasy ride would be a Caterham 7 with 200 horses.

Street-legal, Dragon-ready, and you can't fall off.