So be it
“This is the end, beautiful friend.”
(That link is The Doors, dear readers)
The end. (iPhone photo by BobbaLew.)
So concludes almost 40 years of motorcycle ownership; 35-36 of those years ridden without major incident.
I essentially stopped riding when my wife died almost five years ago.
I lost interest in motorcycling after I retired from the newspaper. That was almost 12 years ago. No more riding to work.
It could be said I was no longer into motorcycling even before that. By then all I was doing was riding to work.
There were a couple inconsequential incidents. I remember two.
—1) My first was with motorbike #3, my Yamaha RZ350 two-stroke. I was coming to a stop and my front tire washed out on gravel.
I was hardly moving, but I dumped the bike. No damage or injuries, but I tore my pants.
A lady in a following car helped me get it back up.
—2) My second was with motorbike #5, a Kawasaki ZX6R.
Everything that could go wrong did.
I was riding to my brother in northern DE, and ran into parking-lot traffic-jams on U.S. Route 15 out in the middle of nowhere in central PA.
It was getting past 4 p.m. when I finally got clear. Four more hours to go.
North of Harrisburg one crosses the Susquehanna River on PA Route 22.
To do that you have to get from 15 to 22. I was thinking it was a ramp, but it was a cloverleaf. I was coming in too hot.
Off into the weeds I went, sure I was gonna drop.
I didn’t, but it scared me to death!
What if I’d encountered a drainage-ditch?
All I did was start back up and ride back to the cloverleaf.
It was the motorbike trip from Hell; I missed my turn and rode into deepest, darkest Harrisburg.
I used my sense of direction to get back on route, and by then it was getting dark.
As I approached DE it started raining — but I was dressed for it.
Before DE I turned onto Newport Pike in Gap, PA, and sideswiped a curb in the dark. A motorbike headlight only illuminates directly in front.
When I finally arrived, my wife had already called numerous times. She was worried sick — a tumultuous thunderstorm had passed up home, but I never saw it.
There were other dramas; mainly dropping my ZX6R, since it was after my stroke.
I developed an interest in motorcycling in 1977, shortly after I started driving transit bus.
I befriended a fellow rookie who was selling his Triumph Bonneville.
I had also just finished reading Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” which I consider the most important book I’ve read.
Pirsig, the protagonist, Phaedrus, like me, was apparently unsure of himself.
He and his son were riding motorbike out to northern CA.
The infatuation of motorcycling beckoned: freedom, wind-in-the-face, wanderlust, etc.
I purchased motorcycle #1, a used 850-Commando Norton. After 1975 Norton tanked.
Snortin’ Norton. (Modified: cut down seat, larger Interstate tank, touring [lower] handlebars, and trunk on rear-rack.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)
I began learning how to ride with it. Tiny figure-eights on narrow streets with a gigantic 600-pound motorcycle.
I failed my first test, but passed the second.
For a while I followed the Norton jones, but it seemed my Norton was always fighting me.
Even simple maintenance was a struggle. Just reinstalling the battery was a squeeze.
It was electric-start, but that never worked. It also had a kicker. (Earlier Commandos were kick-start.)
I happened to patronize a junk foreign-car parts emporium. Inside was a Ducati 900SS (“dew-KAH-dee;” as in “ah”).
I was smitten!
Later I saw a used 1980 Ducati 900SS in the want-ads.
“I should at least look at it,” I told my wife.
I rode there on my Norton to be objective.
“Sweetheart.” (Photo by BobbaLew.)
The young dude fired it up, and I was smitten again.
Every exhaust-pulse shook the ground, even at idle.
Suddenly my Norton was for sale.
That Ducati would be bike #2.
But a 900SS was too much for this kid.
Too much trouble to ride to work — it was kick-start, and liked to smash you in the calf if it backfired.
Tuning it was also near impossible. It had “desmodromic” valve-gear, best shimmed by the owner.
Doing it right is supposedly a religious experience unworthy of the average mechanic. It also might take days.
I wasn’t that interested.
Its ignition also went fluffy, which Ducatis liked to do.
It was electronic, and had to be properly grounded while tuning each cylinder. (It was a 90° V-twin, tuned as two singles.)
The Ducati was fairly heavy, probably about 400 pounds.
But it sat right, like a 10-speed racing bicycle, which I was used to.
It also was gorgeous. I’d park it out front just to stare at it.
My next goal was a 300-pound motorbike that sat like the Ducati.
That would be motorbike #3, a 1983 RZ350 Yamaha two stroke.
But I’d hafta modify it. It didn’t sit like my Ducati.
The RZ350. (Photo by BobbaLew.)
I modified it extensively = handlebars and rearset footpegs that had my arms and legs akimbo.
My biggest mistake was race-pipes I got for it. They were a light-switch.
Below 6,000 rpm, a douche-bag.
Above 6,000, it came on the pipe = hang on for dear life. My brother rode his Honda 700 out to ride with me, and the RZ could at least keep up, if not beat him. —Half the displacement.
I rode that Yamahopper a while, even decarboned it once.
But I happened inside the store where I bought it, and they had a 1989 Yamaha FZR400 for sale.
I asked what they wanted for it.
That FZR400 became motorbike #4.
The stroke-bike.
By now my infatuation with motorcycling was fading. No camping, no touring, no wind-in-the-face or wanderlust.
All I was doing was ride-to-work.
But the FZR was so much more rideable I decided to try touring.
Off I rode to visit my brother in northern DE, plus my old digs in south Jersey.
65 mph in a torrential downpour = terrifying!
Stop-and-go traffic in Williamsport (PA) due to the Little League World Series.
I also visited my old Boys Camp in northeastern MD near Chesapeake Bay.
Going in it smelled just like it did when I was a camper in the late ‘50s.
On a motorbike you smell everything — yer out in the open air.
I still had my FZR when I had my stroke; October 26th, 1993.
I refused to sell, thinking I’d ride again some day.
I remember my brother’s surprise when I moved the FZR for storage.
After my stroke I did inpatient rehabilitation at a hospital. They wanted me to set goals.
I suggested my primary goal was to ride motorcycle again.
“Your motorcycle days are over,” they guffawed.
Made me mad. No one tells me I can’t ride motorcycle.
Not long ago I asked a lady instrumental in my post-stroke recovery why I recovered, when a friend just put her stroke-victim husband in a nursing-home.
“Quite often the ornery-streak of a stroke-victim gets vaporized,” she said.
“In your case it didn’t.”
I was unable to drive at least two years after my stroke. When I began driver-rehab a second time, I told my instructor to not clear me unless she thought I could ride motorcycle.
I was finally cleared to drive, so after a week I thought I’d try the FZR.
Slightly different, but not much. It seemed I had to concentrate more, but that could be done.
I had already started at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) as an unpaid intern.
People on the staff wondered about my showing up on my motorbike.
“Didn’t he have a stroke?” they asked.
Over 7,000 miles. (That tiny ex-Christmas tree is now well over 50 feet tall, visible in the background of my lede pik.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)
Motorbike #5 is my 1996 Kawasaki ZX6R, the bike I rode most on, over 7,000 miles.
The motorbike magazines were trumpeting motorcycling’s fabulous advances.
I also felt like my FZR needed another gear. 60 mph on a 400-cc motorcycle is about 9,000 rpm.
It felt like 6,000 would do.
At 600-cc, a ZX6R would cruise at about 6,000 rpm at 60-65 mph.
“Should I really be considering another motorbike?” I thought. “I had a stroke.”
Numerous trips on the ZX6R, once to Vermont, Massachusetts, and through New York City, again to south Jersey and DE, and many times to Horseshoe Curve in Altoona, PA. (I’m a railfan, and the railroad crosses Allegheny mountain via Horseshoe Curve.)
Technical advances continued, so now I considered replacing the ZX6R with motorbike #6, a 2003 Honda 600cc CBR-RR.
A fellow car-guy at the newspaper counseled against it.
LHMB. (Photo by BobbaLew.)
Both #5 and #6 could be perceived as “crotch-rockets.”
But I didn’t ride ‘em like crotch-rockets.
I doubt I ever exceeded ten-grand on my Double-R, and it’s good for 14.
I always rode like a bus-driver: slow, deliberate, and 100% concentration. No distraction! (I can’t even play a car-radio.)
With my wife’s death I totally lost interest.
My neighbor, who also lost his wife to cancer, described it perfectly:
“A punch in the gut. Takes the wind outta yer sails.”
The auction-guy, who picked up my Double-R, noted his uncle, nearing 80, said if he gave up motorcycling, they might as well bury him.
The difference is I lost interest. Wind-in-the-face and wanderlust aren’t as much fun as slinging words, and drivin’ this here laptop.
• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.
• I called my Ducati “Sweetheart,” because it was gorgeous.
• RE: “desmodromic” valve-gear....... —In simple terms, a cam opens the valve, and another cam closes it. This dispenses with springs to close the valves, so can be more abrupt.
• “Shimmed” equals “adjusted” = just enough play to forego tightness. Usually done with feeler-gauges and adjusting screws, or in the case of the Ducati, metal shims instead of adjusting screws.
• “Two stroke” internal combustion engines use two strokes to operate, instead of four. Up-and-down once instead of twice — a power stroke for every single down instead of every other down. Many internal combustion engines are four-stroke, since that allows valve-operation, charge-compression, etc. Two-strokes hafta fit everything into that single up-and-down. plus they run dirty, polluting the atmosphere. Two-stroke engines more readily build up internal carbon deposits. Only my RZ350 was two-stroke — everything else was four-stroke.
• I lived in the south Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia until age-13.
• I retired from the the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper over 11 years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern). (“Canandaigua” is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)
• “LHMB” = “Lord-Have-Mercy-Banana.” On seeing my crotch-rocket Double-R, my sister, since deceased, a tub-thumping Christian, cried “Lord-Have-Mercy.” My brother Jack from Boston, a macho Harley-dude, called it “the banana,” since it’s yellow.
(That link is The Doors, dear readers)
The end. (iPhone photo by BobbaLew.)
So concludes almost 40 years of motorcycle ownership; 35-36 of those years ridden without major incident.
I essentially stopped riding when my wife died almost five years ago.
I lost interest in motorcycling after I retired from the newspaper. That was almost 12 years ago. No more riding to work.
It could be said I was no longer into motorcycling even before that. By then all I was doing was riding to work.
There were a couple inconsequential incidents. I remember two.
—1) My first was with motorbike #3, my Yamaha RZ350 two-stroke. I was coming to a stop and my front tire washed out on gravel.
I was hardly moving, but I dumped the bike. No damage or injuries, but I tore my pants.
A lady in a following car helped me get it back up.
—2) My second was with motorbike #5, a Kawasaki ZX6R.
Everything that could go wrong did.
I was riding to my brother in northern DE, and ran into parking-lot traffic-jams on U.S. Route 15 out in the middle of nowhere in central PA.
It was getting past 4 p.m. when I finally got clear. Four more hours to go.
North of Harrisburg one crosses the Susquehanna River on PA Route 22.
To do that you have to get from 15 to 22. I was thinking it was a ramp, but it was a cloverleaf. I was coming in too hot.
Off into the weeds I went, sure I was gonna drop.
I didn’t, but it scared me to death!
What if I’d encountered a drainage-ditch?
All I did was start back up and ride back to the cloverleaf.
It was the motorbike trip from Hell; I missed my turn and rode into deepest, darkest Harrisburg.
I used my sense of direction to get back on route, and by then it was getting dark.
As I approached DE it started raining — but I was dressed for it.
Before DE I turned onto Newport Pike in Gap, PA, and sideswiped a curb in the dark. A motorbike headlight only illuminates directly in front.
When I finally arrived, my wife had already called numerous times. She was worried sick — a tumultuous thunderstorm had passed up home, but I never saw it.
There were other dramas; mainly dropping my ZX6R, since it was after my stroke.
I developed an interest in motorcycling in 1977, shortly after I started driving transit bus.
I befriended a fellow rookie who was selling his Triumph Bonneville.
I had also just finished reading Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” which I consider the most important book I’ve read.
Pirsig, the protagonist, Phaedrus, like me, was apparently unsure of himself.
He and his son were riding motorbike out to northern CA.
The infatuation of motorcycling beckoned: freedom, wind-in-the-face, wanderlust, etc.
I purchased motorcycle #1, a used 850-Commando Norton. After 1975 Norton tanked.
Snortin’ Norton. (Modified: cut down seat, larger Interstate tank, touring [lower] handlebars, and trunk on rear-rack.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)
I began learning how to ride with it. Tiny figure-eights on narrow streets with a gigantic 600-pound motorcycle.
I failed my first test, but passed the second.
For a while I followed the Norton jones, but it seemed my Norton was always fighting me.
Even simple maintenance was a struggle. Just reinstalling the battery was a squeeze.
It was electric-start, but that never worked. It also had a kicker. (Earlier Commandos were kick-start.)
I happened to patronize a junk foreign-car parts emporium. Inside was a Ducati 900SS (“dew-KAH-dee;” as in “ah”).
I was smitten!
Later I saw a used 1980 Ducati 900SS in the want-ads.
“I should at least look at it,” I told my wife.
I rode there on my Norton to be objective.
“Sweetheart.” (Photo by BobbaLew.)
The young dude fired it up, and I was smitten again.
Every exhaust-pulse shook the ground, even at idle.
Suddenly my Norton was for sale.
That Ducati would be bike #2.
But a 900SS was too much for this kid.
Too much trouble to ride to work — it was kick-start, and liked to smash you in the calf if it backfired.
Tuning it was also near impossible. It had “desmodromic” valve-gear, best shimmed by the owner.
Doing it right is supposedly a religious experience unworthy of the average mechanic. It also might take days.
I wasn’t that interested.
Its ignition also went fluffy, which Ducatis liked to do.
It was electronic, and had to be properly grounded while tuning each cylinder. (It was a 90° V-twin, tuned as two singles.)
The Ducati was fairly heavy, probably about 400 pounds.
But it sat right, like a 10-speed racing bicycle, which I was used to.
It also was gorgeous. I’d park it out front just to stare at it.
My next goal was a 300-pound motorbike that sat like the Ducati.
That would be motorbike #3, a 1983 RZ350 Yamaha two stroke.
But I’d hafta modify it. It didn’t sit like my Ducati.
The RZ350. (Photo by BobbaLew.)
I modified it extensively = handlebars and rearset footpegs that had my arms and legs akimbo.
My biggest mistake was race-pipes I got for it. They were a light-switch.
Below 6,000 rpm, a douche-bag.
Above 6,000, it came on the pipe = hang on for dear life. My brother rode his Honda 700 out to ride with me, and the RZ could at least keep up, if not beat him. —Half the displacement.
I rode that Yamahopper a while, even decarboned it once.
But I happened inside the store where I bought it, and they had a 1989 Yamaha FZR400 for sale.
I asked what they wanted for it.
That FZR400 became motorbike #4.
The stroke-bike.
By now my infatuation with motorcycling was fading. No camping, no touring, no wind-in-the-face or wanderlust.
All I was doing was ride-to-work.
But the FZR was so much more rideable I decided to try touring.
Off I rode to visit my brother in northern DE, plus my old digs in south Jersey.
65 mph in a torrential downpour = terrifying!
Stop-and-go traffic in Williamsport (PA) due to the Little League World Series.
I also visited my old Boys Camp in northeastern MD near Chesapeake Bay.
Going in it smelled just like it did when I was a camper in the late ‘50s.
On a motorbike you smell everything — yer out in the open air.
I still had my FZR when I had my stroke; October 26th, 1993.
I refused to sell, thinking I’d ride again some day.
I remember my brother’s surprise when I moved the FZR for storage.
After my stroke I did inpatient rehabilitation at a hospital. They wanted me to set goals.
I suggested my primary goal was to ride motorcycle again.
“Your motorcycle days are over,” they guffawed.
Made me mad. No one tells me I can’t ride motorcycle.
Not long ago I asked a lady instrumental in my post-stroke recovery why I recovered, when a friend just put her stroke-victim husband in a nursing-home.
“Quite often the ornery-streak of a stroke-victim gets vaporized,” she said.
“In your case it didn’t.”
I was unable to drive at least two years after my stroke. When I began driver-rehab a second time, I told my instructor to not clear me unless she thought I could ride motorcycle.
I was finally cleared to drive, so after a week I thought I’d try the FZR.
Slightly different, but not much. It seemed I had to concentrate more, but that could be done.
I had already started at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) as an unpaid intern.
People on the staff wondered about my showing up on my motorbike.
“Didn’t he have a stroke?” they asked.
Over 7,000 miles. (That tiny ex-Christmas tree is now well over 50 feet tall, visible in the background of my lede pik.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)
Motorbike #5 is my 1996 Kawasaki ZX6R, the bike I rode most on, over 7,000 miles.
The motorbike magazines were trumpeting motorcycling’s fabulous advances.
I also felt like my FZR needed another gear. 60 mph on a 400-cc motorcycle is about 9,000 rpm.
It felt like 6,000 would do.
At 600-cc, a ZX6R would cruise at about 6,000 rpm at 60-65 mph.
“Should I really be considering another motorbike?” I thought. “I had a stroke.”
Numerous trips on the ZX6R, once to Vermont, Massachusetts, and through New York City, again to south Jersey and DE, and many times to Horseshoe Curve in Altoona, PA. (I’m a railfan, and the railroad crosses Allegheny mountain via Horseshoe Curve.)
Technical advances continued, so now I considered replacing the ZX6R with motorbike #6, a 2003 Honda 600cc CBR-RR.
A fellow car-guy at the newspaper counseled against it.
LHMB. (Photo by BobbaLew.)
Both #5 and #6 could be perceived as “crotch-rockets.”
But I didn’t ride ‘em like crotch-rockets.
I doubt I ever exceeded ten-grand on my Double-R, and it’s good for 14.
I always rode like a bus-driver: slow, deliberate, and 100% concentration. No distraction! (I can’t even play a car-radio.)
With my wife’s death I totally lost interest.
My neighbor, who also lost his wife to cancer, described it perfectly:
“A punch in the gut. Takes the wind outta yer sails.”
The auction-guy, who picked up my Double-R, noted his uncle, nearing 80, said if he gave up motorcycling, they might as well bury him.
The difference is I lost interest. Wind-in-the-face and wanderlust aren’t as much fun as slinging words, and drivin’ this here laptop.
• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.
• I called my Ducati “Sweetheart,” because it was gorgeous.
• RE: “desmodromic” valve-gear....... —In simple terms, a cam opens the valve, and another cam closes it. This dispenses with springs to close the valves, so can be more abrupt.
• “Shimmed” equals “adjusted” = just enough play to forego tightness. Usually done with feeler-gauges and adjusting screws, or in the case of the Ducati, metal shims instead of adjusting screws.
• “Two stroke” internal combustion engines use two strokes to operate, instead of four. Up-and-down once instead of twice — a power stroke for every single down instead of every other down. Many internal combustion engines are four-stroke, since that allows valve-operation, charge-compression, etc. Two-strokes hafta fit everything into that single up-and-down. plus they run dirty, polluting the atmosphere. Two-stroke engines more readily build up internal carbon deposits. Only my RZ350 was two-stroke — everything else was four-stroke.
• I lived in the south Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia until age-13.
• I retired from the the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper over 11 years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern). (“Canandaigua” is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)
• “LHMB” = “Lord-Have-Mercy-Banana.” On seeing my crotch-rocket Double-R, my sister, since deceased, a tub-thumping Christian, cried “Lord-Have-Mercy.” My brother Jack from Boston, a macho Harley-dude, called it “the banana,” since it’s yellow.
Labels: Motorcycles
posted by BobbaLew at 6:17 PM
1 Comments:
Sweet-looking bikes, but nice move dumping the motorcycle riding. It's an accident waiting to happen. Hey BobbaLew, how about a pedal bicycle. Personally, I've seen a three-wheeler I'd love to try. I need the stability.
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