Taku

I'm sure I'm like most of the bike-junkies here, I just can't get motorcycles out of my blood. There were a few years while going to university that I didn't have a motorbike (I did however, have a pedal bike...).

Raised in Montreal, I had a paper route as a kid (the Gazette), and at 12 I started saving for a motorcycle even though I'd never been on one.

By the time I was 14 and a 1/2, I had saved enough for a brand new 1973 Kawasaki G-4 100cc "Trail Boss". The Kawasaki shop was near my high school and the owner "Wally" put up with me for years, it was like I worked there.

Finally the big day came, I had purchased my bike and I was waiting on my front lawn for Wally to show up with my new motorcycle. He showed up, unloaded the bike from his delivery trailer and handed me the keys.

I was soooo excited! Trouble was I had never ridden a motorcycle before! Actually, I had never ridden or driven anything with a motor. Clutch? What's that?

There I was, on my little obscure suburban street with my sparkly new motorcycle...I figured out how to start it...and how to stall it! Couldn't get anywhere.

So I just looked at it for a while, enjoyed the smells of the new rubber, the oil and the vinyl seat. It was like candy, a shiny red, chrome fenders...but I wanted to ride it!

Eventually a neighbour came out after witnessing my dilemma, he gave me some pointers on how to get started off and stood a few feet in front of me (Yes, in 1973 we still had the imperial system in Canada) and said "Let the clutch out slowly, once you start moving, don't let it go all the way until you pass me"...well he had to keep moving back for a few tries, then finally I was off! I yelled "THANKS", but I had no intention on stopping again!

I figured out the shift lever and shifting gears while on the fly...well sort of, good enough I suppose.

I headed to the trails! Some paths along the power lines. Zoom, I went. a smile and level of excitement that only a teenager on a new toy can get. Zing! I flew along, pushing my skills (a good, 20 minutes of experience at this point). I saw a nice open patch and opened it up...SLOSH! Right into a muddy swamp! it had a nice layer of moss and vegetation covering it! I was going fast enough to make it a good 30 feet in...off the bike I went and into the swamp went my shiny new bike and I!

Hours later, after pulling my bike (sideways, as it sunk further into the muck when I stood it up on it's wheels) out of the swamp/mud hole, kicking it over a bazillion times to get it fired up again (which it did, amazingly), I made it over the "the pits", a little unofficial dirt track where a few of the local kids would meet and play with their bikes. I must've looked like a veteran rider with all that muck on me, as I fit in right away and made quite a few friends that day.

Such was the start of a lifelong attachment to motorcycling.
I'm sure you have a similar story.

-Gord-