The Motorcycles I have owned

My Bikes
     I guess in order to tell the story of my motorcycle history I should start by saying that before I enlisted in the U.S. Army I really never really had and great desire to own or ride a motorcycle.  As a matter of fact I didn't even think about them until it was almost time for me to be discharged, and then it happened.  I feel like this is the beginning of one of those Hallmark Channel love stories that my wife just adores.  "I didn't mean to fall in love, I wasn't even looking for romance, I didn't want any attachments or anything to hold me down once I was out of the Army.  But then one day there it was, a brand new 1970 Norton 750 Commando in metal-flake purple looking like it was ready to fulfill all my fantasies"  Okay so now it's sounding more like the adult cable channel.  In reality it belonged to a friend of mine and fellow GI who had just plunked down a good bit of his hard earned combat pay which he had gleaned from his all expense paid visit to that Asian paradise know as South Vietnam.

     It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and I decided right then and there I must have her, uh!  I mean it.  Just one problem though, when I asked him how much it had cost him I realized that when I got out and returned home I would be about $400 short of my dream to place a Commando between my legs, alright now that sounds just downright creepy so enough of the sexual fantasy metaphors.  Anyhow I started looking at Triumphs which were slightly less money but again I found that my first choice the 650 Bonneville was still out of my price range by about $200.  Now I know what you are thinking $200 that's chicken feed, but if  you adjust it to today's dollars it would be about 1200 bucks, and I was just getting out of the service and had no permanent job yet.

Wow look at those mufflers!

    So did I go back to work and save up the other $200, you are kidding aren't you?  I was like the seventeen year old boy out on a date with the easiest girl in his class, you might conservatively say I was hot to trot!  I looked around the showroom and sitting back in the corner was a black and red Trophy 500 with the biggest set of side pipes I had ever seen, (I'm sorry, I did promise to knock off the sexual metaphors).  Why there was enough chrome on those babies to do complete Buick Roadmaster.  It wasn't the Norton or the Bonneville, but it was love at first sight or sit if you prefer because when I got on it I knew it was for me.  Luckily the dealer took pity on me and agreed to deliver it to my home free of charge which was fortuitous since I had never ridden a motorcycle in my life much less had a license to drive one.
     I consider myself lucky that I was allowed to grow up on a farm which I must say came in handy for learning to ride your first motorcycle.  The kindly dealer warned me that the shift lever on a Triumph was on the right side of the bike, and that I should be careful at first while I adjusted to the fact that positioning of the shifter was opposite to every other motorcycle in the world.  In my case that didn't really matter much since I didn't know what the hell I was doing anyhow.  So after the bike was delivered I made preparations for my inaugural motorcycle ride.  I had a helmet and boots, I had a set of Malcolm Smith goggles, I had a make believe dual purpose 400 pound motorcycle with side pipes and trials universal tires, I had a ten acre field, and I was 22 years old, what could go wrong?  We won't go into details but needless to say I limped into the Triumph dealer the next day and purchased new shift and brake levers to replace the old ones that I just didn't care for any longer, twisted metal levers just never look as nice as straight ones.  To say the least I was lucky and learned a valuable lesson from my experience, and that is that motorcycles should come with a warning lable, THIS MACHINE HAS HIDDEN TEETH AND IF YOUR ARE NOT CAREFUL IT WILL BITE YOU ON THE ASS!
     After some continued practice at a somewhat reduced speed and cautions cornering I became a more proficient and careful rider, which was good since I did not think that my body or my wallet could stand too many more death defying encounters with mother earth.  I practiced in the field for about a week and then started sneaking out on the road at night to get and a feel for road riding before I went for my drivers test.  It was just after this that I discovered that the Trophy was much more suited for the street than the back roads and trails.  It didn't take long before the bike and I became homogeneous and I will always remember those warm summer evening rides on the back roads around my home as some of my the most enjoyable experiences I have had on two wheels.  What can I say, I am sure you are familiar with the old adage about your first love, I guess it is the same with your first motorcycle.  Unfortunately I was force to sell it when a few years later when my young wife became pregnant and I needed the $750 to pay for the hospital and doctor bill when my son was born.  Can you imagine a time when it only cost that much to have a child, no wonder the world is overpopulated.

     My next motorcycle was a 1972 Harley Davidson Sportster, well actually it was my wife's motorcycle.  Yes my little sweetie was a Harley Mamma!  But there is a perfectly rational explanation for her riding a Sportser, it was the only bike she was completely comfortable on and could hold up properly when she came to a stop.  In the long run though I rode it a lot more that she did and therefore can say unequivocally state that it was an engineering nightmare connected by two wheels.  How do I begin, first of all it was slow and when I say slow I mean it could be trounced by a good running CB 450 Honda, oh who am I kidding the Honda could have a hole in one piston and still manage to embarrass the Sprotster.  Ah, but what it lacked in speed it made up for with bad handling. My brother in law bought an identical Sportster to my wife's except for color and one night he was following me home form a local watering hole when his Harley decided that it wanted to become a dirt bike.  It seems that while he was negotiating a curve he suddenly sneezed and started the infamous Sportster head shake (which if you have ever experienced it you'll never forget it) when unseen demons take over control of your handlebars.  The best way I can describe it is that the front end becomes a victim of demonic possession, and starts whipping back and forth against the steering stops in an effort to commit murder/suicide.  The end result was that my brother in law went straight thru the curve careening off into the woods.  I remember looking in my mirror and seeing his headlight performing some really amazing feats of gymnastics as I tried to figure out if it was the alcohol we had consumed or he was just showing off.  After the dust cleared we managed to pull the bike out of the woods and luckily his Sportsers imitation of a rodeo bull had not done any permanent bodily damage.  He placed the Sportser up for sale the next day and it wasn't too long afterwards that my wife and I decided to sell ours.  Now you are probably thinking that the Harley folks out there will be getting mad at me.  Well the truth is even the most ardent HD rider will tell you that the AMF Harley years were a dark time for the venerable old company.  The bikes produced during the AMF onership were some really bad motorcycles and the Sportster might just have been the worst of the lot.
     It was around this time that my brother in law, father in law, and myself all fell victim to mental Suzuki Motor Corporation.  So much for the unanimous vote thing.  I won't go into details about our excruciatingly painful ten years in business, lets just say that I won't be buying a Suzuki product any time soon or looking to go into any other businesses with family.
illness and decided to open up a Motorcycle business!  We originally started with a repair and accessory shop which to our great surprise actually began turning a profit.  We were so pleased with our new found success we decided to send my brother in law to mechanics school for advanced training in order to take on more complex repair jobs.  When he returned he informed us that we would surely fail if we did not obtain a motorcycle franchise of some kind in the immediate future.  I thought this a bit strange since our store was already making money, but we decided to put it to a vote.  When we went into business we agreed that any vote had to be unanimous in order to be carried so when I voted no that was the end of it, except that my father in law and brother in law voted yes and two months later we were signing a dealership agreement with

     The whole thing was a giant waste of time except for the fact that I got experience riding some really great bikes and some of them were even Suzuki products.  When we got our first delivery of bikes the three of us each took a GT750 as a demonstrator, it was the first legitimate water cooled motorcycle, and it was immediately dubbed by nearly everyone "The Water Buffalo."  If water cooling wasn't radical enough the GT750 was powered by a two cycle motor, which was barely tolerated in this country on outboard motors, chain saws, Toro lawn mowers, and dirt bikes, but thoroughly looked down on by the average motorcyclist as a Gran Torismo  machine.  The oil was fed to the motor from a tank that fed an injector system that shot oil into the crankcase which was then scavenged through ports to be burned along with the gas and oil, thereby creating a lovely little trail of blue smoke whenever you applied large amounts of throttle.  To make matters even better the initial motors came with defective crank bearing seals and proceeded to self destruct at their earliest opportunity.  Gee, lets see ridiculed for  being water cooled, blues smoke in the faces of your fellow riders, and a motor that blew up almost immediately after being delivered, not exactly a great start.
     As I said it was painful to live through those early days, but things did get better, Suzuki fixed the problem with the cranks, we discovered synthetic two cycle oil (no thanks to Suzuki) which eliminated the smoke and Suzuki began equipping  the bikes with dual disc brakes up front that made the GT stop on a dime.  I owned two of these machines and I can tell you that they were an absolute pleasure to ride.  Being a two stroke the motor had no hard braking tendencies at all, unlike our in-line four cylinder four stroke competitors bikes that nearly threw you over the handlebars if you chopped the power too fast.  It had good power and would cruise all day long at seventy miles per hour.  Perhaps the most extraordinary thing was the bikes torque, you could let the RPM's drop down to 2500 and then with just a twist of the throttle it accelerate straight up to red line with an uncanny smoothness that seemed almost electric like.  All in all it was just a rider friendly bike, and it will always have a place in my heart a motorcycle that I really enjoyed riding.

   Suzuki GT 250 for a while which boasted a two stroke motor, six speed transmission, and magnificent handling for its time.  The GT 250 was actually just an updated and dressed up version of Suzuki's beloved X6 Hustler, which early on was their largest displacement production motorcycle.  The Hustler enjoyed mild success with the general public but it was a smashing hit on road racing courses and can still be seen dressed up in its GP style bodywork at vintage motorcycle races throughout the world.  Next time we'll examine another of our shrewd business moves as my all knowing brother in law decided we should take on an Italian line of motorcycles in order to really get our business rolling, here's a hint, it wasn't Ducati, or any of the well known Italian manufacturers.