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Wild and Crazy Motorcycle Stories
Posted 07-23-2010 at 01:50 PM by MistressKat
Here's a great story from Sean Blankert.
Safe riding is no Accident
The first time I rode a motorcycle was when I was 12 years old. A younger friend of mine, Glen, who was the closest neighbor to us in the Sandia mountains of New Mexico where I grew up, had parents who rode motorcycles. They bought him and his sister Dina Honda 150 dirt bikes, and Dina never rode hers. Somehow Glen conned me into hopping on his sister's bike, telling me that first gear was one down, and the rest of the gears were up. Left hand was the clutch, right was the brake.
We rode down the dirt road away from his house to the main road for maybe two miles before turning around and going back. I do not believe I even shifted out of first the whole time.
Mr. Hollingsworth, Glen's dad, was waiting for us in the driveway when we got back. He was an old WW2 veteran who had the pug-nosed dogface look of an army guy like you would expect to see in a movie like Patton.
His body was still strong and fit from years of working, hunting, riding, and taking care of business, and his eyes seemed to see through us, as if he were looking into the past and future at the same time. His silence spoke louder than any words, and when he spoke you listened half out of fear and half out of curiosity for what he was trying to tell you.
So, when he called us over to him, he asked us where our helmets were, and told us that motorcycles are like snakes: If you fear them they bite you, but if you don't fear them, they bite you too. He had us park the bikes, and I didn't ride a motorcycle again for more than 20 years.
His words echoed in my memory all the way to this day, however, and are good advice for any rider. "Do not fear or take for granted what you are riding, just respect it."
I didn't start riding seriously until 2003 when gas prices were hovering around $5 per gallon. I had been accepted to graduate school for biochemistry at Arizona State University in Tempe, while my wife, Erin, was accepted to graduate school for hydrology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. We decided to move to Casa Grande which is a cow town approximately half way between the two cities, with Erin getting a slightly longer drive than my 120 mile round trip.
I had been driving a 1978 Trans Am to and from Tempe for the first month of graduate school, but I was spending nearly $120 a week in gas transiting back and forth each day. Erin had a similar drive, so you can imagine how much we were spending on gasoline. Something had to give!
I read that motorcycles could get 50 or more miles to the gallon, and I started imagining what it would be like riding an old Harley to school. The long drive back and forth to Phoenix each day was boring in a car, but a motorcycle, that might just make things interesting as well as cheaper.
I started looking in the Arizona classifieds for a motorcycle. I really wanted a classic Harley, but Harleys are not cheap. All the ones in the paper were around $5K at the cheapest, and I was looking to spend around $3K for a starter bike, so there really wasn't much selection.
When I found a bike I was interested in, I would call and find out they had already sold it days earlier. I finally found a guy selling his Harley Sportster for $4K, and he still had it in his possession. He lived in Phoenix, so one day after school I stopped by his house to look at it.
The guy's name was Kim, and he looked like the stereotypical Harley biker that would kill you if you made fun of his name. He had long gray hair, a beard, bleached denim jacket and pants, and a red bandana on his head.
He said he needed the money for his sick wife, and he showed me the bike in his garage. It was a 1989 Sportster 883cc with ape hangers and a bobbed tank sporting a custom paint job of a naked black woman with big round breasts looking like they had been painted on by a nine year old.
He said that the bike had been modified by Sonny Barger, which meant nothing to me at the time. I didn't have $4,000 so I asked him if he would consider a trade. I had an old Remington 870 twelve gauge that I used to duck hunt with when I lived in Minnesota, and a black powder .50 cal flintlock for hunting deer. He said he would settle for the $3000 and those two guns. I'm sure he thought he got the better deal, which maybe he did.
But in reality, the Harley was a great starter bike. It was plain enough that it didn't matter what I did to it while I was learning to ride, but special enough that I didn't mind riding it.
The next day, we transferred the title into my name, and he loaded the bike into the back of his truck to tow it to Casa Grande. He followed behind me the entire way and dropped it off at my apartment. I put a cover over it and was the proud new owner of a leaky old Harley Sportster.
I signed up for a T.E.A.M. motorcycle training class hosted on the following weekend, which was one day of lecture and testing, and the following day we would ride motorcycles provided for us and then be given a pass/fail for licensing.
The other unappealing option was to be tested by the DMV, which supposedly had a strict examination that had a low passing rate. I decided to pay my $100 for the T.E.A.M examination, which was money well spent.
The week prior to the training class, I tested my bike out on the back roads of Casa Grande. I can not express how invaluable this experience was, since there was little to no traffic on the back roads. This is what a beginning biker needs, so it's just him, the bike, the road and few if any other distractions.
Let me tell you, the first time you put a motorcycle in gear and pull out onto a road, you truly are a bad ass. You are taking your life into your own hands, and you are maybe the most exposed and vulnerable you will ever be. If you have any fear whatsoever of death, you better come to grips with it before you go out riding, because if you hit a dog, or if someone in a car doesn't see you and hits you while you are doing 40 mph, you might very well be at the end of the rainbow.
These things go through your mind the first time you push the starter button and feel the engine rumbling beneath you, and believe me, I felt all that while I was out testing the Harley for the first few rides.
I like to tell people that I strapped on a big set of balls before going out, and figuratively I did. I've met people since who can not overcome the fear of being snuffed out in one big fiery crash, so they only drive cars and view riding with a mix of fear and admiration.
My first time riding, I knew the Reaper was on my back seat, and I said screw it, let's go! That's what it takes to get started riding at mid life, and if you don't have that spirit, I'd say, do yourself a favor and stay in the cage.
My first time out, I was becoming accustomed to gear shifting and turning. At one point, I took one of the turns too wide and ended up in a ditch, scratching one of the boobs off the naked black girl on my tank. This was an improvement to the paint job, I think, but don't tell that to Kim.
Some cowboys in a pickup truck saw me drive into the ditch and were laughing, and I was quite embarrassed. But I picked up the bike and drove it around the block anyway, getting used to the handling of it and feeling like a rock star doing all of maybe 20 mph.
I felt confident enough to be able to take my riding test that weekend after riding the Harley those few times, and that Saturday I went to the lecture part of the TEAM test. Our lecturer was a big biker lady, who drove up on a Fat Boy. She showed us a video, then gave us a written exam which I passed with a 100%.
The lecture told us many common sense things, like where truck blind spots are, that cars will always win so don't get into a pissing contest with them, and to keep a 2 second distance from cars in front of you. With that done, I was ready for the driving portion of the exam on Sunday.
I remember that day in detail, because it was so much fun, at least for me. Some people decided it was not for them after only a few minutes of riding. Others were frightened every step of the training. Others were experienced riders, and then there was me who had just learned how to shift and ride on my Harley in Casa Grande earlier that week.
We were given a brief outdoor lecture by the TEAM trainers, where they told us to pay attention to everything they said, and to follow what they were teaching to the letter. When they said stop, we were to stop, when they said go, we were to go! They said they understood that for many of the people there, it was their first time on a motorcycle and that was OK.
Read the rest of the story at
http://motorcycleviews.com/tales/story126.htm
Safe riding is no Accident
The first time I rode a motorcycle was when I was 12 years old. A younger friend of mine, Glen, who was the closest neighbor to us in the Sandia mountains of New Mexico where I grew up, had parents who rode motorcycles. They bought him and his sister Dina Honda 150 dirt bikes, and Dina never rode hers. Somehow Glen conned me into hopping on his sister's bike, telling me that first gear was one down, and the rest of the gears were up. Left hand was the clutch, right was the brake.
We rode down the dirt road away from his house to the main road for maybe two miles before turning around and going back. I do not believe I even shifted out of first the whole time.
Mr. Hollingsworth, Glen's dad, was waiting for us in the driveway when we got back. He was an old WW2 veteran who had the pug-nosed dogface look of an army guy like you would expect to see in a movie like Patton.
His body was still strong and fit from years of working, hunting, riding, and taking care of business, and his eyes seemed to see through us, as if he were looking into the past and future at the same time. His silence spoke louder than any words, and when he spoke you listened half out of fear and half out of curiosity for what he was trying to tell you.
So, when he called us over to him, he asked us where our helmets were, and told us that motorcycles are like snakes: If you fear them they bite you, but if you don't fear them, they bite you too. He had us park the bikes, and I didn't ride a motorcycle again for more than 20 years.
His words echoed in my memory all the way to this day, however, and are good advice for any rider. "Do not fear or take for granted what you are riding, just respect it."
I didn't start riding seriously until 2003 when gas prices were hovering around $5 per gallon. I had been accepted to graduate school for biochemistry at Arizona State University in Tempe, while my wife, Erin, was accepted to graduate school for hydrology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. We decided to move to Casa Grande which is a cow town approximately half way between the two cities, with Erin getting a slightly longer drive than my 120 mile round trip.
I had been driving a 1978 Trans Am to and from Tempe for the first month of graduate school, but I was spending nearly $120 a week in gas transiting back and forth each day. Erin had a similar drive, so you can imagine how much we were spending on gasoline. Something had to give!
I read that motorcycles could get 50 or more miles to the gallon, and I started imagining what it would be like riding an old Harley to school. The long drive back and forth to Phoenix each day was boring in a car, but a motorcycle, that might just make things interesting as well as cheaper.
I started looking in the Arizona classifieds for a motorcycle. I really wanted a classic Harley, but Harleys are not cheap. All the ones in the paper were around $5K at the cheapest, and I was looking to spend around $3K for a starter bike, so there really wasn't much selection.
When I found a bike I was interested in, I would call and find out they had already sold it days earlier. I finally found a guy selling his Harley Sportster for $4K, and he still had it in his possession. He lived in Phoenix, so one day after school I stopped by his house to look at it.
The guy's name was Kim, and he looked like the stereotypical Harley biker that would kill you if you made fun of his name. He had long gray hair, a beard, bleached denim jacket and pants, and a red bandana on his head.
He said he needed the money for his sick wife, and he showed me the bike in his garage. It was a 1989 Sportster 883cc with ape hangers and a bobbed tank sporting a custom paint job of a naked black woman with big round breasts looking like they had been painted on by a nine year old.
He said that the bike had been modified by Sonny Barger, which meant nothing to me at the time. I didn't have $4,000 so I asked him if he would consider a trade. I had an old Remington 870 twelve gauge that I used to duck hunt with when I lived in Minnesota, and a black powder .50 cal flintlock for hunting deer. He said he would settle for the $3000 and those two guns. I'm sure he thought he got the better deal, which maybe he did.
But in reality, the Harley was a great starter bike. It was plain enough that it didn't matter what I did to it while I was learning to ride, but special enough that I didn't mind riding it.
The next day, we transferred the title into my name, and he loaded the bike into the back of his truck to tow it to Casa Grande. He followed behind me the entire way and dropped it off at my apartment. I put a cover over it and was the proud new owner of a leaky old Harley Sportster.
I signed up for a T.E.A.M. motorcycle training class hosted on the following weekend, which was one day of lecture and testing, and the following day we would ride motorcycles provided for us and then be given a pass/fail for licensing.
The other unappealing option was to be tested by the DMV, which supposedly had a strict examination that had a low passing rate. I decided to pay my $100 for the T.E.A.M examination, which was money well spent.
The week prior to the training class, I tested my bike out on the back roads of Casa Grande. I can not express how invaluable this experience was, since there was little to no traffic on the back roads. This is what a beginning biker needs, so it's just him, the bike, the road and few if any other distractions.
Let me tell you, the first time you put a motorcycle in gear and pull out onto a road, you truly are a bad ass. You are taking your life into your own hands, and you are maybe the most exposed and vulnerable you will ever be. If you have any fear whatsoever of death, you better come to grips with it before you go out riding, because if you hit a dog, or if someone in a car doesn't see you and hits you while you are doing 40 mph, you might very well be at the end of the rainbow.
These things go through your mind the first time you push the starter button and feel the engine rumbling beneath you, and believe me, I felt all that while I was out testing the Harley for the first few rides.
I like to tell people that I strapped on a big set of balls before going out, and figuratively I did. I've met people since who can not overcome the fear of being snuffed out in one big fiery crash, so they only drive cars and view riding with a mix of fear and admiration.
My first time riding, I knew the Reaper was on my back seat, and I said screw it, let's go! That's what it takes to get started riding at mid life, and if you don't have that spirit, I'd say, do yourself a favor and stay in the cage.
My first time out, I was becoming accustomed to gear shifting and turning. At one point, I took one of the turns too wide and ended up in a ditch, scratching one of the boobs off the naked black girl on my tank. This was an improvement to the paint job, I think, but don't tell that to Kim.
Some cowboys in a pickup truck saw me drive into the ditch and were laughing, and I was quite embarrassed. But I picked up the bike and drove it around the block anyway, getting used to the handling of it and feeling like a rock star doing all of maybe 20 mph.
I felt confident enough to be able to take my riding test that weekend after riding the Harley those few times, and that Saturday I went to the lecture part of the TEAM test. Our lecturer was a big biker lady, who drove up on a Fat Boy. She showed us a video, then gave us a written exam which I passed with a 100%.
The lecture told us many common sense things, like where truck blind spots are, that cars will always win so don't get into a pissing contest with them, and to keep a 2 second distance from cars in front of you. With that done, I was ready for the driving portion of the exam on Sunday.
I remember that day in detail, because it was so much fun, at least for me. Some people decided it was not for them after only a few minutes of riding. Others were frightened every step of the training. Others were experienced riders, and then there was me who had just learned how to shift and ride on my Harley in Casa Grande earlier that week.
We were given a brief outdoor lecture by the TEAM trainers, where they told us to pay attention to everything they said, and to follow what they were teaching to the letter. When they said stop, we were to stop, when they said go, we were to go! They said they understood that for many of the people there, it was their first time on a motorcycle and that was OK.
Read the rest of the story at
http://motorcycleviews.com/tales/story126.htm
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