My Motorcycle and Me
I had been a passenger on a motorcycle a couple of times when I was young but the first time I rode a motorcycle myself was in Marysville, California, in August of 1971. I was in the Air Force stationed at Beale AFB. I had recently returned from my TDY assignment in Okinawa. My first wife Donna had left me while I was gone and took our car with her. Not having a car, I stopped by a car dealership one afternoon. A sales guy came out to assist me, like they always do, and he started talking. It wasn't long before the guy asked if I might be interested in a motorcycle as he had one he was selling. I didn't say yes but I also didn't say no. The next thing I remember was hopping into his car and heading over to his house. When we got there he opened his garage door and inside there were two motorcycles. He pulled one out and explained to me how to ride it. He then gave me a helmet and told me to give it a try. So I cautiously got on as he walked me through starting it and and how to let the clutch out and give the bike a little gas. I did as he said and the next thing I knew I was flying down his street a little out of control traveling faster than I expected. I managed to get the bike and myself under control and eventually circled around to head back to his driveway. When I got there he jumped on the other bike and we went for a ride together. I was a little nervous but I was having fun. I almost bought the bike but the practical side of me quickly emerged realizing that if I was going to buy a vehicle it needed to be a car. I was about to start divorce proceedings, not to mention I could be shipped out to another part of the country or, even more likely, to Southeast Asia at any moment.
I took my second motorcycle ride 12 years later in the fall of 1983. That was when I purchased my first motorcycle. Well I didn't exactly buy it so much as I traded for it. I was talking with my friend Larry and he was telling me how he was looking to get rid of his old beat-up motorcycle. It was an old 1974 Honda CB400. It was in need of repair and badly needed a facelift, actually it looked like it needed a face & body lift. Larry said “If you want it, you can have it cheap.” Larry had recently borrowed $100 from me so I proposed that I take the bike in trade. He asked “Are you sure? The bike's not running but I don't think there is anything majorly wrong with it.” We made the deal and I now had a bike that didn't work, or at least wouldn't start, even using the kick-starter. To my mind, I kind of got the bike for free. Larry and I were long time friends from the Air Force. When he had asked to borrow the $100 I was happy just to give it to him although he called it a loan. Thanks to my friend Dennis back in Eugene, I had learned not to let money get in the way of a friendship. When a good friend asks to borrow money from me in my mind, I am giving it to them – Don't get any ideas.
A '74 Honda CB400 without the duct tape and scratches
Larry's, well now my, bike had seen better days. It was scratched up, had duct tape in various places holding things together, and it was very dirty. I cleaned it up the best I could and loaded it into the bed of my little pickup truck. I hauled it to a motorcycle repair shop down the peninsula. Two mechanics came out and walked around my new bike looking at it. They kept their distance while walking all around it, like they might catch something if they got too near or, heaven forbid, actually touched it. I told them I was interested in getting the bike up and running and asked them to look it over and give me an estimate. They indicated that they were up for the challenge and quoted me a minimum charge of $50 to check it out. I gave them a check, and left the bike with them. A couple of days later they called me and told me that it needed a battery and some additional maintenance but in general the bike, while looking like a lost cause, was not in too bad a shape and they could have it up and running for about $100. The following Saturday I picked up my new, now running, motorcycle. My brother, Pete, had recently bought a 1980 Honda CB750 from my friend Rocco. He picked me up and dropped me off at the shop. They brought out my bike, and that's when I took my second motorcycle ride. I rode it down to Pete's place in Sunnyvale. I spent the night and the next day, not wanting to wait another 12 years, I took my third motorcycle ride. I rode my motorcycle all the way up to my apartment in San Francisco. Pete rode with me which was good given my relatively limited motorcycle riding experience not to mention that I did not have a license to ride it. Heck, I didn't have a permit yet. We took 280 up to San Bruno where we cut over to Skyline Blvd. One of the first things I noticed riding a motorcycle is that riding a motorcycle you experience all the little, and not so little, changes in temperature as you ride from place to place. Of course it's generally much cooler in San Francisco than Sunnyvale, but the coldest spot of all is on Skyline on a rise as it connects with Hwy 1 in Daly City. To co-opt a phrase from Mr. Twain, the coldest the winter I ever spent was a motorcycle ride on Skyline Blvd in Daly City. I have probably ridden that part of Skyline on my motorcycle a 100 times and it was always friggin' cold even when the sun was out. Pete and I referred to it as the North Pole.
The next week I went down to the DMV and got a permit. I could now legally ride my motorcycle as long as I only rode during the daylight hours and didn't carry a passenger. A motorcycle is very handy to have in SF. Parking is tough and almost impossible in certain parts of the city. I had a number of experiences where I just decided to just go home after being unable to find a parking space anywhere near my intended destination. However, parking a motorcycle was easy as you could just park on the sidewalk in most areas of the city as long as you didn't block pedestrians or driveways. I started using my bike all over town. I even rode it over to China Beach wearing only shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops. Riding a motorcycle is a freeing experience. It's exciting and fun with an element of fear all rolled up together. It's never mundane or tiresome. Riding a bike is good for the soul. On weekends I would sometimes go riding with Pete, often on the ever popular motorcycle area around Skyline Blvd. We also sometimes took short road trips, like over to the Marin Headlands or to the top of Mount Diablo.
Using my bike to get around the city kept my drinking of beer to a minimum as I was not comfortable riding a motorcycle being even just a little under the influence. On the other hand that bike was so ugly, it still looked like it was being held together by duct tape, it was not a target for getting stolen. If I did drink too much, or didn't feel comfortable about riding it home, I could just leave it, and go get it the next day. I never locked it. It was also small and light enough so that if it got knocked down or I dropped it I could pick it up without much problem. One drawback was it had an annoying habit of just conking out every now and then, but waiting 5 or 10 minutes seemed to solve the problem as it would then start right back up again. In the two years I owned it it never failed to start back up.
One of the first things you learn riding a motorcycle on the streets of SF was how to stop at stop signs on those steep roads. Maybe good riders don't need to do this but if you stop on a steep grade, starting can be quite the adventure. There's that moment where you let the clutch out and apply the gas where the bike will begin to roll. Forward is not so bad but when it rolls backward that gas needs to come on fast. Rolling back, sort of in a free-fall, is frightening. So very quickly I learned to turn my bike 90 degrees when stopping on a steep road. While I still had my car, I pretty much just used the motorcycle in the city unless it was raining. I also took it to day baseball games, mostly the A's but also the Giants as it made for an easy exit after the game. With my bike being on the smaller side I could really feel it when I had a passenger. It was important for the passenger to lean the right way when we were going around turns and it behooved them to hold on to the driver, me, tightly. Holding me tight would also help them lean with me rather than attempting to say straight up which would put the bike and us out of balance. Every first-time passenger received this friendly advice from me.
A couple of years later my brother would move back east and I would buy his bike from him. I sold mine to a guy who was on my softball team for $100. He didn't keep it very long, evidently the occasional conk-out bothered him. I had told him about it, but that didn't seem to make it any more palatable so he sold it to some other sucker. The CB750 was a very comfortable bike. It had a sissy bar behind the passenger seat so a passenger could just lean back against it. That bike was big enough so I couldn't even feel it when I had a passenger. A down side was it was heavy and if I dropped it I was not sure I would be able to get it back upright by myself. Luckily I never had to figure it out. By the way, I never did follow-through and get a motorcycle license but I generally did not ride my motorcycle after dark. The passenger restriction? Oh that, I can honestly say that I did abide by the restriction more than I didn't...
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