MOTORCYCLE MANIA

I needed another mode of transportation when my first vehicle died, my 1955 Pontiac "Wonder Wagon." Money was tight but I was fortunate to land a job next to my Dad's locksmith shop. A guy by the name of Duke McCracken owned a motorcycle rental shop and he hired me on, when I wasn't working for my Dad, more as a favor to Dad than anything else.

This was 1963 and previous to this, most motorcycles were huge machines, not practical for young, unexperienced drivers. Then about that time, the Japanese market introduced a whole line of smaller, cheaper motorbikes. Duke rented Honda 50cc trail bikes and Yamaha 80cc street bikes. It was sort of like riding around town with your bicycle that had a lawn mower engine attached to it to drive the rear wheel.

The bikes were tiny compared to the Harley's and Triumph's but, nevertheless, they created quite a sensation on the market and began to sell by the hundreds. People wanted to try them out first and Duke would rent them for $2.50 per hour and he couldn't keep them available fast enough. He made loads of money and hired me and others to help him out.

After closing time, he'd bring along about ten of us and we would drive around the local hills and "break in" his new machines. We'd drive at night and go to the hills chasing rabbits and have all sorts of fun on the bikes. This was before there were many laws or restrictions on where you could go or if you needed a helmet or a motorcycle driver's license. Sometimes we would just drive until they ran out of gas. It was all kinds of entertaining but also dangerous. Often new bikes would come back to the shop, beat up and broken. We'd stay late and fix them so that we'd be ready to rent them the next day.

I got many of my first lessons on simple and minor repair of these machines and eventually, with Duke's and my Dad's help, bought a Yamaha 80 for my very own. It had a top speed of about 45 miles per hour if you were going downhill with a wind at your back. I buzzed through a school zone at about that speed and received my first traffic ticket. Eventually the bike proved too small for my liking and I upgraded to a Yamaha 250, YDS2. Still a small bike but to me it was a power house. The Yamaha's, at that time, were two stroke engines and sounded like giant popcorn machines when they were running. My 250 was dual cylinder instead of single and I had it painted candy apple red with a bell helmet to match. By then (1965), I had graduated from high school and started my first year of college. I added banana grips, an oversize rear tire, a parallel extension handle bar and even got a leather jacket. I thought I was hot stuff, and even got to go on the freeway, since the 250 would do over 60 mph.

Unfortunately all that excitement almost killed me and I had several near, fatal accidents. I had a motorcycle paper route, was chased by dogs, slipped and had the bike come out from under me when traveling on wet or gravel roads. Several times, I hit the front brakes too hard and flew over the handlebars. Road rash, torn clothing, scrapes and bangs and a lot of makeshift repairs, kept me humble. Freeway driving was especially scary when the road was grooved for icy spots and better automobile tire traction. I was on the California golden state freeway on my way to Disneyland and hit road grooves that shook the front end of the bike so bad that I almost lost control. There were cars going freeway speed all around me and if I would have fallen, I would have been killed or horribly maimed at least.

Since then, I have had many smaller and bigger motorcycles but in 1987, I sold my last one, when it nearly killed my wife as she was learning to ride. In a car, I was surrounded with metal and glass, had a seatbelt and music and a much better chance to surviving an accident. Besides, I never got rained on or froze to death in a car. On a motorcycle, what I saved in gas I spent on hospital bills. My Dad gave me great advice when I told him I liked the feel of wind on my face as I went down the road. "Son, if that's what you're after, take the front windshield out of your car!!"