atomsplitter
Living Legend
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2007
- Messages
- 4,292
- Location
- Keller, TX
- Ride
- 23 Rocket GT, 20 Bobber Blk, 22 Speed Triple RS
I thought I'd post another story from my first book. It's just the first 2 pages so readers don't fall asleep and can get on with their day. This one is a bit longer so if anyone wants more of the story just ask (politely) and I'll post it here. Without further ado:
Yamaha Wipeout Artist
I was sitting with Monte the other day, we were talking bikes and when we started riding and other sundry bits to while away our time at lunch. Since neither of us was feeling particularly proactive about work, reminiscing over our rides of the past seemed like a good way to let the clock roll to 12:30. Unfortunately we work in a cube farm and someone always manages to break the post lunch reverie with something pressing, like real work, so we were forced to kill the rest of the day being productive (much to our chagrin).
Our conversation led me to thinking about my first real bike, a 1974 Yamaha XS 650. It was 1976 and I was in the market for a school car at the time and was shopping at some of the local dealers for a decent used vehicle. Since I was in college, I could only afford something sporty and fashionable found at one of those ‘corner’ car lots. Usually, these types of dealers have a plethora of cars suitable for the scrap metal pile as well as some that are not as good. I was in need of reliable transportation and hence was maintaining a jaundiced eye peeled on the local used car market.
On my drive to school (K-State) in Manhattan, KS I would go through Ogden, Ks on the east side of Fort Riley. Ogden was a military community in that there were mobile homes out numbering stick built homes on foundations by about 60 to 1. The drive through town center had some bars, liquor stores; auto parts shops, more liquor stores, bars and a car dealer at the far eastern edge of town. It was to this dealership I wandered in one afternoon in October looking for some transportation. The cars were all pretty unspectacular. Mostly he had vintage 1960’s hardware and a few repossessed 1970’s models. It was my habit in those days to pull the dipstick when they popped the hood to see if the dealer had bothered to change the oil. On the repo cars they had indeed, that made seeing the shiny bits of metalflake floating in the oil on the stick easier to see. I prefer metalflake in paint and not so much in the engine oil. It was during this hunt around his lot he took me to his shop to show me some cars not yet serviced. When we got into that building, I noted some motorcycles sitting off in the back of the shop.
One bike that caught my attention was a XS 650 Yamaha. It looked positively huge compared to the other bikes. That’s because the other bikes were 250cc and 350cc street machines. I was enthralled and asked how much he was asking for the bikes. He quoted me prices and that put my brain into high gear. Somehow the whole quest for a car disappeared in a haze of daydreaming about riding around on a motorcycle. It was the call of the open road the mesmerizing effect of owning a ‘chick magnet’ the power to weight, the freedom, the exuberance, and the fact I was in my twenties and completely deranged. All those things added together to make my purchase decision leap from four wheels to two. The only real obstacle of course was actually having to pay for it.
I was on the G.I. Bill going to school and working part time at a sporting goods store in downtown Manhattan. The money from the government came in 12 months a year and the money from the job came in every two weeks, so as a college student I was comparatively wealthy because I could afford more than Ramen noodles by the case. But any excess of largess wasn’t so extensive that I could plunk down the coin of the realm on a used motorcycle without first saving a bit. As any college student will attest, if you are at the end of the month and have more than loose change jingling in your pocket, you’re either dead or playing on mom and dad’s nickel.
So, I went on a savings campaign to purchase that XS 650, which included not eating lunch (that went really well with not eating breakfast), not paying for exotic luxuries like car insurance and putting as many hours at the part-time job as possible thus reducing the annoyance of attending class. All this put my coffer into the black pretty quickly and by mid-March I was in a financial position to actually buy that XS. It never dawned on me that there was a warning by Shakespeare about the middle of March that I was failing to heed. The fly in the ointment of my dream purchase would be if they had sold it during the intervening months. So it was that I again traveled to the dealership on the outskirts of Ogden and inquired if they still had any motorcycles. Indeed, they did, and low and behold they had an XS 650. It was the same bike only now covered in a thick blanket of dust. And the price? Well, that was the same as well, so I had enough money to actually make the deal, sign on the dotted line, acquire, possess and own the bike. I was ecstatic, I was thrilled, and I was an idiot.
During my lusting, saving, planning, scheming, plotting and starving to acquire this bike I had not actually learned how to ride a motorcycle. Somehow, I had missed the connection between ownership and ridership. I had gotten out of the US Army with a laundry list of qualifications for driving everything from a forklift to a 5-ton tactical tractor-trailer with fifth wheel and everything in between. When I applied for a driver license upon separation the Kansas Highway Patrol dude asked if I wanted a motorcycle endorsement on my license too, I said ‘sure’ only because I liked the idea of someday riding a bike. But at that time, I had as much hope of owning a motorcycle as Richard Nixon did of becoming Pope. So, I had the license in my pocket and zero skills in my hands, so I was ready as George Custer for a Lakota Sioux meet and greet. I was of course relying on my memory of riding motorcycles when I was in middle school and high school in Albuquerque, NM in the 1960’s. Those experiences were garnered from friends that had motorcycles and would stop by to show off their new rides. They would let me putt-putt-putt around the residential streets in first gear to show how great their bike was. During those halcyon road trips, I was riding bikes as small as 90cc and as massive as 185cc. Heady indeed.
Our next-door neighbors at the time were an eclectic family from the old South. And they had four boys, all of whom had mopeds as kids and then graduated to real motorcycles when they got into high school. So, I got to ride pillion behind people that rode. My older brother Mark spent a summer in Junction City working for my uncle (his too) and took all his earnings and invested it wisely into a 1966 Honda CB305 Dream. I rode pillion to school for an entire year holding his books, our sack lunches and whatever else Mark could think of to make me miserable (like his drafting board). So I was imminently aware of how to ride a motorcycle (with the possible exception of actually using any of the controls). I knew how to lean with not against, I understood holding onto the seat strap and not the driver. I had mastered the stop, so helmets don’t click and all manner of what the passenger is supposed to do. I felt I was ready for the front seat by golly. Confidence borne of ignorance can be a dangerous thing.
Yamaha Wipeout Artist
I was sitting with Monte the other day, we were talking bikes and when we started riding and other sundry bits to while away our time at lunch. Since neither of us was feeling particularly proactive about work, reminiscing over our rides of the past seemed like a good way to let the clock roll to 12:30. Unfortunately we work in a cube farm and someone always manages to break the post lunch reverie with something pressing, like real work, so we were forced to kill the rest of the day being productive (much to our chagrin).
Our conversation led me to thinking about my first real bike, a 1974 Yamaha XS 650. It was 1976 and I was in the market for a school car at the time and was shopping at some of the local dealers for a decent used vehicle. Since I was in college, I could only afford something sporty and fashionable found at one of those ‘corner’ car lots. Usually, these types of dealers have a plethora of cars suitable for the scrap metal pile as well as some that are not as good. I was in need of reliable transportation and hence was maintaining a jaundiced eye peeled on the local used car market.
On my drive to school (K-State) in Manhattan, KS I would go through Ogden, Ks on the east side of Fort Riley. Ogden was a military community in that there were mobile homes out numbering stick built homes on foundations by about 60 to 1. The drive through town center had some bars, liquor stores; auto parts shops, more liquor stores, bars and a car dealer at the far eastern edge of town. It was to this dealership I wandered in one afternoon in October looking for some transportation. The cars were all pretty unspectacular. Mostly he had vintage 1960’s hardware and a few repossessed 1970’s models. It was my habit in those days to pull the dipstick when they popped the hood to see if the dealer had bothered to change the oil. On the repo cars they had indeed, that made seeing the shiny bits of metalflake floating in the oil on the stick easier to see. I prefer metalflake in paint and not so much in the engine oil. It was during this hunt around his lot he took me to his shop to show me some cars not yet serviced. When we got into that building, I noted some motorcycles sitting off in the back of the shop.
One bike that caught my attention was a XS 650 Yamaha. It looked positively huge compared to the other bikes. That’s because the other bikes were 250cc and 350cc street machines. I was enthralled and asked how much he was asking for the bikes. He quoted me prices and that put my brain into high gear. Somehow the whole quest for a car disappeared in a haze of daydreaming about riding around on a motorcycle. It was the call of the open road the mesmerizing effect of owning a ‘chick magnet’ the power to weight, the freedom, the exuberance, and the fact I was in my twenties and completely deranged. All those things added together to make my purchase decision leap from four wheels to two. The only real obstacle of course was actually having to pay for it.
I was on the G.I. Bill going to school and working part time at a sporting goods store in downtown Manhattan. The money from the government came in 12 months a year and the money from the job came in every two weeks, so as a college student I was comparatively wealthy because I could afford more than Ramen noodles by the case. But any excess of largess wasn’t so extensive that I could plunk down the coin of the realm on a used motorcycle without first saving a bit. As any college student will attest, if you are at the end of the month and have more than loose change jingling in your pocket, you’re either dead or playing on mom and dad’s nickel.
So, I went on a savings campaign to purchase that XS 650, which included not eating lunch (that went really well with not eating breakfast), not paying for exotic luxuries like car insurance and putting as many hours at the part-time job as possible thus reducing the annoyance of attending class. All this put my coffer into the black pretty quickly and by mid-March I was in a financial position to actually buy that XS. It never dawned on me that there was a warning by Shakespeare about the middle of March that I was failing to heed. The fly in the ointment of my dream purchase would be if they had sold it during the intervening months. So it was that I again traveled to the dealership on the outskirts of Ogden and inquired if they still had any motorcycles. Indeed, they did, and low and behold they had an XS 650. It was the same bike only now covered in a thick blanket of dust. And the price? Well, that was the same as well, so I had enough money to actually make the deal, sign on the dotted line, acquire, possess and own the bike. I was ecstatic, I was thrilled, and I was an idiot.
During my lusting, saving, planning, scheming, plotting and starving to acquire this bike I had not actually learned how to ride a motorcycle. Somehow, I had missed the connection between ownership and ridership. I had gotten out of the US Army with a laundry list of qualifications for driving everything from a forklift to a 5-ton tactical tractor-trailer with fifth wheel and everything in between. When I applied for a driver license upon separation the Kansas Highway Patrol dude asked if I wanted a motorcycle endorsement on my license too, I said ‘sure’ only because I liked the idea of someday riding a bike. But at that time, I had as much hope of owning a motorcycle as Richard Nixon did of becoming Pope. So, I had the license in my pocket and zero skills in my hands, so I was ready as George Custer for a Lakota Sioux meet and greet. I was of course relying on my memory of riding motorcycles when I was in middle school and high school in Albuquerque, NM in the 1960’s. Those experiences were garnered from friends that had motorcycles and would stop by to show off their new rides. They would let me putt-putt-putt around the residential streets in first gear to show how great their bike was. During those halcyon road trips, I was riding bikes as small as 90cc and as massive as 185cc. Heady indeed.
Our next-door neighbors at the time were an eclectic family from the old South. And they had four boys, all of whom had mopeds as kids and then graduated to real motorcycles when they got into high school. So, I got to ride pillion behind people that rode. My older brother Mark spent a summer in Junction City working for my uncle (his too) and took all his earnings and invested it wisely into a 1966 Honda CB305 Dream. I rode pillion to school for an entire year holding his books, our sack lunches and whatever else Mark could think of to make me miserable (like his drafting board). So I was imminently aware of how to ride a motorcycle (with the possible exception of actually using any of the controls). I knew how to lean with not against, I understood holding onto the seat strap and not the driver. I had mastered the stop, so helmets don’t click and all manner of what the passenger is supposed to do. I felt I was ready for the front seat by golly. Confidence borne of ignorance can be a dangerous thing.