This month marks 55 years of motorcycle riding for me. If you had asked me 56 years ago if I’d ever ride a motorcycle, I would have guessed not, even though bicycles were at the center of my life.
Unlike many of my contemporaries, I didn’t grow up dreaming of riding motorcycles. My earliest memories of motorcycles were my dad pointing out BMWs on the highway as we drove from West Covina to Santa Cruz to visit his parents. He noted that they were the quietest motorcycles around. What he didn’t mention was that before he was married, he had an Indian Four with a defeatable baffle exhaust.
I know people who grew up obsessed with motorcycles. They would beg friends to let them take a spin on their bikes. After that, they would save up money, buy a bike, and keep it at a friend’s house to avoid parental confiscation. I was a kid who always worked in cooperation with my parents, rather than against them—I think it’s an only-child thing. The idea that I would do something like that behind their backs was unthinkable.
I could have been motorcycle-obsessed. My friends and I would go up to “The Hills” behind our neighborhood and watch big kids ride their bikes up and down the hills. These were big English four-strokes—BSA, Triumph, Matchless—rather than the coming two-stroke onslaught from Europe and Japan. While I was certainly impressed, it never occurred to me that it was something I could ever do.
However, in 1970, my parents made the fateful decision to buy a travel trailer for camping in the desert. When one of my dad’s drinking buddies at the Elks Lodge got wind of the plan, he told my dad that he would have to get me a dirt bike so I would have something to do out in the middle of the Mojave. Yes, this was before Starlink was a household word.
So, my dad handed over $50 to my cousin for her clapped-out Honda Super Cub 50, and that was going to be my ride. The first time out, I kicked it a couple of thousand times, tried to push start it a couple of hundred, and watched my dad get towed on it while my mom piloted the Jeep Wagoneer. It never fired, and my dad was not a mechanic.
When we returned home, my dad took it to the local Honda dealer in West Covina. I had been there once before. He took me there in 1969 to see the first Honda CB750 K0. It was then that I learned he had an Indian Four, which is why he wanted to see the Honda. Me? I didn’t even know what an Indian motorcycle was. Regardless, he was impressed by how much more sophisticated the Honda was than his Indian.
The shop “boiled out” the carb. I had no idea what that meant, but I deduced that it had something to do with cleaning the carburetor. Did I know what a carb was or did? No, but I knew it was an essential part of getting the Honda to run.
When we got it back, it started on the first kick and had been fitted with a brand new knobby rear tire. Up front, though, it still had the stock ribbed tire. There was still tread remaining, so my dad saw no reason to replace it.
My parents outfitted me with a no-name red metal-flake open-face helmet purchased at Gemco for $10. Bell Helmets had a slogan, “If you have a $10 head, buy a $10 helmet.” Apparently, I had a $10 head. To be fair, that’s about $80 in 2025 dollars. I had no eye protection, a sweatshirt for upper-body armor, gardening gloves, 501s, and running shoes to protect my feet.
The next time out to the desert was a revelation. I started the 50 up, and my dad explained what the auto-clutch heel-toe shifter did and where the brakes were. After some time in first gear, I tried shifting up and was rewarded with more speed. I tooled around on desert roads and then ventured onto off-road trails between the bushes. One weekend in, I was hooked.
Fifty-five years later, I still am.
