Greetings, and welcome to my shiny, new blog. I've tried this before, but I always give in to the part of my brain that keeps whispering "you know nobody's reading this, right? You're talking to yourself, buddy. Go get a cup pa Sanka." I don't know why my inner brain would want a cup of decaffeinated coffee-like substance, but there it is.

I've been an on-again off-again motorcycle rider since I was a teenager, yon 20 years ago. I bought my first street bike in 1993, for $300 from a family friend... a '79 Yamaha XS650F. I didn't know anything about it other than it was a road-bike, it was shiny, it had a whopping huge 650cc motor, and it was cheap. Hey, I was all of 23 and hadn't ridden anything more than an asthmatic 125cc enduro bike.

Fast-forward to the present, and that bike is still my bike. It's dirtier, it's rustier, it's leakier. Then again, so am I. (yes, eww.)

For that first summer, I did nothing but ride my new bike. I would get $4 and fill the tank, because gas was that cheap back then, and I would ride until the tank was empty, and I would get $4 and fill the tank. Life was good. Since then, there have been years that the bike sat in storage, and years it sat under a bike cover, and years I actually rode it mixed in there. Lately, I seem to be on a pattern of one year on, one year off -- and I'm currently enduring an off year.

The last "off-year" I had, I at least replaced a frozen front brake, and replaced the worn-out clutch, and stuff like that. This year I got it to run and have zipped it up the subdivision twice.

I still cling to the XS, though, and you know why? Because even when I'm just running up to the corner and back, I still get that *zang* of anticipation when I swing my leg over the seat. I still get that giddy feeling like "I can't believe this is still legal, anything this much fun must be against the law -- quick, nobody say anything or they'll take this away!!"

_________________
1979 XS650F -- "Hi, My name's Nick, and I'm a Motorcyclist. I've been dry for four years." (Everybody: "Hi, Nick.")

Thats great! Would like to see pics of it too.

_________________
2002 Buell Blast 500 /¦\

Confessions of a Commuter

That's the XS in September of 2000 when I lived in Lafayette, Indiana, which I still consider the worst place I've ever been. I found out why liquid-cooled motorcycles are so popular when I was commuting across town to work...in the summer...in 98-degree heat... on acres and acres of pavement... in gridlock... with traffic lights timed to stop you at each and every intersection.

Riding in Lafayette did age my bike a LOT. It was fairly pristine when we moved there, and pretty worn when we left. Nothing but stop and go, and I discovered that I need to be going 35mph MINIMUM to get enough air across the motor to cool it -- and 80% of the time I couldn't go that fast.

My ride would go like this... (and we'll pick it up about halfway through.) puttputtputtputtputtputtputtputt- puttputtputtputtputtputtputtputt- puttputtputtputtputtputtputtputt- puttputtputtputtputtputtputtputt- (green light) *snick* Bpbpbpbbbtrrrrr... *snick* bvrrrrrrr -- (yellow light...same light) -- Rmmm-br-br "GO THROUGH IT, YOU MORON!" (red light) *snick* (foot down) puttputtputtputtputtputtputtputt-puttputtputtputtputtputtputtputt- puttputtputtputtputtputtputtputt- clunk, sputter, puttputtputtputtputtputtputtputt-

Yeah, by the time I rode the 15 miles (45 minutes) to work the bike would be stuttering and trying to seize from the heat...and so would I.

It was a frustrating time to try and ride and be safe, yet comfortable. In that kind of heat, I'd put on my leather coat, and helmet, and gloves and boots...and in riding across town I would be absolutely floating in my own sweat. Even riding out in the country was barely better, because the wind was still hot, even at 60mph -- and I could never go that fast because even the country roads are infested with Hoosiers who never exceed 45mph...so I'd be stuck with going slow, and being buffeted by someone's slipstream.

So I'd forgo the heavy coat -- be only a little more comfortable, and a LOT worried that I was going to get killed, because (and this is my opinion -- please no flamewar from thin-skinned Hoosiers) Indiana has the WORST drivers in the known galaxy, and possibly the entire Asimov multiverse. For the five years I lived in Indiana, I was *certain* that I was going to get sent to the hospital by some moron -- It is one of the great surprises of my life that I was not. I also totally enjoyed being sneered at by shorts-flip-flops-sunglasses-wearing college-squids on their Gixxers, because I actually had clothes on.

All in all, I think there were about four weeks where the weather was actually good for riding there. About two weeks in the early summer and two in the fall. The winters were frigid and snowy, there would be a couple of weeks of spring, and then it'd be 98 degrees with 100% humidity all summer...then two weeks of fall and straight into winter again. Most days of the summer it was simply too hot to go riding.

But, those days are five years gone. At least that's what the therapist says...right after she coaxes the butcher knife out of my hand...

_________________
1979 XS650F -- "Hi, My name's Nick, and I'm a Motorcyclist. I've been dry for four years." (Everybody: "Hi, Nick.")

Yes, again today.

I think I like working on bikes as much as actually riding them. (pause. blink) Okay, I like riding wayy more. But I really do get something from working on my machinery -- cars, bikes, lawnmowers, whatever. On my XS, the only thing I haven't done myself was mount a pair of new tires. I've replaced brakes, clutch and that thingie on the axle that tensions the chain. When I dropped it, I rebuilt it. Adjusting the valve clearances is actually relaxing for me, and it's turned into a father-son thing on more than one occasion. Basically, a little tinkering suits me fine -- rather than being an onerous chore. Sure, I'd like one of those new bikes that I could just Windex the bugs off of, and ride...but I'm not sure what I'd do with myself.

I'm seeing quite a few people on TMW who also ride bicycles, and I ride a little, but I had more fun this year rebuilding my old mountain bike. When my mom passed away, I inherited her old late-1980's Cannondale mountain bike. It's been sitting outside chained to one post or another for the past 10 years or so, and gotten pretty beat up. So this past winter and spring I gradually assimilated the parts and rebuilt it myself. I spent a couple of months, less tan $200, and I have a working $800 or so bicycle. I like that.

_________________
1979 XS650F -- "Hi, My name's Nick, and I'm a Motorcyclist. I've been dry for four years." (Everybody: "Hi, Nick.")

You have a good start to your blog. Keep it up....because we are reading it.

_________________
1st motorcycle 2004 Yamaha V-Star 650 Classic.

I agree, I'd like to see more posts .

_________________
Of course I'm generalizing from a single example here, but everyone does that. At least I do.

Thanks for the encouragement!

Wow, I've been reading CN's Confessions of a Commuter and -Holiday's transcontinental travelogue. Great writing, good photos, I recommend them for some good stuff about riding, both daily and long-distance. I feel they have inspired me.

I'd like to share some of the places I've parked my bike.

Okay, okay stop with the "sick face" already. Since my riding history has contained entire years of not riding... of staring out the window at the un-insured/un-plated bike... of, well, parking it. It makes up a fair share of my experience. Right now, the bike has a place in the garage -- it's actually the only motor vehicle in there, unless you count the lawnmower.... which really isn't a vehicle, as it's a push-mower. I guess you could ride it like a skateboard -- a really loud skateboard with whirling blades of death under it. But I digress.

It's the only motor vehicle in there...that's where I was. Sharing space with the bicycles, the gear for the impending babies. (impending babies?) Yes, we're expecting twin girls in November. (wow, that's cool, congratulations!!) Thanks! (Do twins run in your family?) Look, not to be rude, but I'm really trying to do something here. (sorry)

Geesh. Um. (pause) Right. This is the first time we've actually HAD a garage, so it's cool. Hasn't always been that way. When we moved to Atlanta, and thence to Indiana, it stayed covered in another one of my mom's barns, gathering dust under a bike cover. After we brought it to Indiana, (in the back of a U-Haul) it stayed covered in parking lots, storage units and under carports when it wasn't being ridden. One winter it spent on our back porch, under a cover that had gotten really brittle and started ripping from the handlebar ends, and that was the winter we got a blizzard that dumped 13" of snow on us. The snow blew around the house, drifting to an astonishing height...right where the bike sat. Basically, it was totally covered with snow, which was not really kept out by the ripped cover. I could cry.

When I got the bike, I was living at home, on a horse farm, and the bike got space in a barn we didn't really use for anything else but storing things like hay bales, old storm windows, shiny motorcycles and really, everything but animals. I had a wide sliding door so I could fire it up and ride straight out. It was cool. Then I moved to my college apartment and I had neither a barn nor a bike cover. I did have a really wide overhang, formed by the -- if you can picture this -- walkway for the second-story apartments. The building was like a motel, with a second-story balcony for the entrances to the second-story apartments. That balcony gave me about a 5-foot overhang to park my bike under. I asked my neighbors and they were cool with it, so there I went.

And I got a ticket from the Campus Gestapo for parking on the sidewalk. When I called, and explained that my neighbors didn't care, etc... I was told "it may block handicapped access." I looked out my window at a) the sidewalk/porch. b) the sidewalk 10 feet past that and c) the parking lot another 2 feet past that. I also recalled that my building was slated to be demolished at the end of the semester, and politely (yeah) related all that to the officer on the line. The answer was quick. "It blocks handicapped access, and I WILL make sure it gets ticketed."

I did what any red-blooded, American 24-year-old college student would do. I parked it in my living room. Yes, I learned that my 650cc Yamaha was seven feet long, and I parked it in my living room. It was like another couch -- a seven-foot-long, chrome-rubber-aluminum, stinky couch. At Christmas I wrapped lights around it and had a Christmas bike. During the winter I took parts off it and polished them. It was a grand time, possibly the best the bike has ever had.

And I never had another problem with the campus police.

_________________
1979 XS650F -- "Hi, My name's Nick, and I'm a Motorcyclist. I've been dry for four years." (Everybody: "Hi, Nick.")

I suppose I have to detail how I got started in this crazy motorcycling thing. I'll be honest, I don't ever remember NOT being nutzy about things with motors. Mom once told me that when I was two years old or so, we got the JC Penney's Christmas Catalog (remember them?) and she knew what I liked, because the pages with pictures of trucks on them were all gummy with my toddler-drool. My dad had an old 1950's Harley Sportster scattered through the garage when I was little, and at one point before I reached double-digits he assembled it and sold it off. I remember the occasional Suzuki or something coming and going, and my Dad went out and got a Triumph 650 Tiger when I was little that we always had around.

I remember trying to get my parents to buy me a little dirtbike when I was 10 or so and being shut down pretty hard. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I started to have some exposure of my own -- my best friend's dad got one of those newfangled three-wheelers -- a Honda 110. They let me ride it a couple of times and darn if that wasn't the biggest blast -- no clutch, backwards shift pattern, and a pull-starter like a lawnmower and all. Later on, my friend started riding over to my house on one of their Honda XL125's instead of on his bicycle. He lived a half-mile away by road, but about half that by cutting through the woods between us -- I lived on a 68-acre horsefarm with about 50 acres of that wooded, and his house was on the backside of our property.

Then came the day that he let me ride his bike. It took a little coordination, but my experience driving our Ford F-250 with a stick-shift paid off, and I was motoring around our farm on his bike, while he yelled at me to quit "dogging" it with such low rpm's. I was in heaven. It wasn't soon after that I found my own bike -- a 1971 Honda SL125 -- in the paper, and I drained my little passbook account to get it -- all $250 of it in 1985 or 1986... '85 I think.

I'll tell you, that little thing was a blast, and I rode it for at least the next five years or so. I started out in our own woods, then ranged farther out to ride in the state forest around our place. I learned many lessons about bike control on that little thing. I also learned that a 132-lb geek COULD drag a 150lb bike out of a mudhole and push it for miles through the woods. Also that after being totally submerged, a Honda can dry out and carry you home that same day.

And I also signed up for a motorcycle safety class at the community college, and passed, and got my motorcycle endorsement. At first I thought the class was lame -- "this is the gas tank, this is a wheel, keep your fingers out of the moving sprockets." That kind of thing. When it got to countersteering and locking up the rear wheel for a panic stop, darn if I wasn't having fun sliding their new Honda Rebel across the parking lot! Sure, there was the grandma-looking woman who diligently took notes on everything they said, and asked ALL KINDS of questions but never actually learned how to make a bike move forwards, but everyone else passed.

And so I'd ride my little 125 Honda to high school -- 45mph cruise speed, 58mph flat out, 7,800rpm, laying down on the tank, wind behind me, downhill. I was, I think, the only guy in history to ride a motorcycle to high school and NOT be cool. I didn't care...I was having too much fun. And like I previously said, I've never stopped having fun when I ride. It's never stopped making my heart beat faster, and it's never gotten old. The one thing that's always been able to overcome anything bad that happens is going for a ride. I can storm out all angry at the world, and ranting and raving into my helmet, but after I've ridden for a while, I realize that I've been relaxed and smiling for some time, and I can't ever point to where it switched.

_________________
1979 XS650F -- "Hi, My name's Nick, and I'm a Motorcyclist. I've been dry for four years." (Everybody: "Hi, Nick.")

Ever ride a bike that isn't yours, or at least isn't your normal ride?

I haven't done it much, but I have a couple of times. Of course there was my buddy's XL125 that was my first ride ever, I've already talked about that. One time another buddy's wife bought him a bike -- an old, purple, 2-stroke Yamaha 200cc roadbike. She wanted to surprise him, so she took me to pick it up and ride it the 20 miles home or so for her. Could've been fun, except it was raining. I'll admit, the 2-stroke 200cc was way more powerful than I'd expected, and went 60mph with no problem at all...as long as I didn't pay attention to my total lack of knowledge about the tires, cables, brakes, etc. They all seemed to work, at least until I got it to their place, and then I didn't care. Actually, when he and his wife split, the bike ended up in my barn with no key and no title for a few years. They finally came and got it when the place was being sold -- I think he forgot that he even owned it.

A few years later, my mom bought a bike from our 'cross-the-street neighbor for $100. It was actually pretty nice -- a mid '70's Honda CB360, red with a big police-style windshield. It just didn't run. I cleaned the plugs, gave it fresh gas, and sorted out a spot on the wiring harness where the wires had melted together. That and a battery charge, and it ran like a top. We never did actually get it insured before the cancer got mom, but I ran it up and down our country road a couple of times. I liked that one because I got it to run. Me. Like I had something invested. And it was red, too. When I moved out, it sat. We auctioned it off with the rest of mom's belongings on the farm. I polished up really well and got it to run the night before the auction, but couldn't get it to kick over the day of. I hated to see that one go, but only had room for my XS in the U-Haul.

The best had to be my uncle's bike. When I was a teenager, before I'd ridden anything more than my little 125cc enduro bike...he let me ride his...I have to lick my lips... 1985 Kawasaki GPz 750 Turbo. Yes, the turbo GPz. D@#^ that was a sweet bike. It was like late September, in Michigan, so it was something in the 50's outside, and I only had a denim jacket on, so I froze almost instantly, but I didn't mind. The way the V4 burbled when it was off boost (and I never really put it IN boost) was stirring. The way 55mph was too slow for 5th gear, and I had to downshift and ride in 4th was eye-opening. I did one snort from 55 to 70mph, and the only different thing was the motor going from "rrrrrr" to "Rrrrrr." Gad, that bike had the potential for many things, including transforming me into a grease spot at the age of 16. That he let me ride it is just an incredible gesture of trust on his part.

_________________
1979 XS650F -- "Hi, My name's Nick, and I'm a Motorcyclist. I've been dry for four years." (Everybody: "Hi, Nick.")

Good writing, great short stories. Thanks for doing your blog and keep writing.



And ain't that the truth! The switch seems to happen when the bike gets turned on, at least for me.

_________________
Ya right, there are only 2 kinds of bikes: It's a Ninja... look that one's a Harley... oh there's a Ninja... Harley...Ninja...