Do you remember learning to ride a bicycle? I do. I was 4 going on 5, in the driveway of my childhood home, my father anxiously teaching me. The bicycle was orange metallic flake, with a banana seat and ape hanger bars. Very late 70’s. I remember two things about that experience. Not the falling down, though there must have been lots of that. I remember the wind against my face, and the sense of freedom as I rode in circles, probably very wobbly, but in my memories smoothly. The sense of flying. That was my take away from my initial experience on two wheels; flying.
In 1983, when I turned 6, my parents bought me a Raleigh BMX bicycle in royal blue, with canary yellow 5 star plastic mag spoke wheels. They hid it at our neighbors house, with a long string attached to it, and the other end my birthday card. I don’t remember the excitement very well, but I do remember what that bicycle felt like. It was freedom for me. I had that bicycle until I was 14, though heavily modified and repaired in that time; it did have the same frame and mag wheels, though not much else was stock by then. Over the intervening 8 years, I rode everywhere. Hundreds of kilometers. A short, and very unsuccessful, stint BMX racing. Lots of jump ramps built from scrap wood. Several back tires, because leaving “J” shaped skids by locking the rear wheel was too much fun. It was stolen once when I was about 11, and for a whole month it was lost to me. I found it at the subsidized housing complex just over a kilometer away after a friend of mine spotted it. There was only one royal blue Raleigh with yellow mag wheels, and a seat post made out of welding two seat posts together in Pickering at the time. It was repainted twice. The handlebars were replaced twice, because I would break them. The goose neck was replaced once, because I snapped the original off in a bad landing. I wore a chain out completely. Front and rear sprockets. Multiple seats. Most of the bike was replaced over the years.
I loved that bike. I loved the feeling of flying it inspired. Cutting slaloms down the road with it; coasting down a steep hill, hands off the bars and out to my sides; jumping down stairs near my house, leading from a sidewalk to a parking lot. My little blue bike and I flew everywhere we went. I don’t know what happened to it ultimately. Through a rather strange turn in my life, at 13, we moved from Pickering in Ontario to Plano Texas. When I say we, I mean my mother, my brother, and myself. My father and his new wife stayed in Ontario. My bike was left with my father. I missed it. My dad, trying his best, shipped it to me in pieces. Looking back at this, I don’t know how my father managed. I’m 42, a father of two, and recently divorced. I have a hard time when my kids are away for their week with their mother. My father saw us every other weekend for a couple of years, and then we moved out of the country. He didn’t see us for 4 months. My kids were away for two weeks last year, and it was one of the single most difficult experiences of my adult life.
I turned 14 in Texas, with my faithful bicycle. By then I was 6’1” and a whopping 140lbs. Despite the modifications over the years, the bicycle bought for an above average 6 year old, was no longer working for way above average 14 year old me. Texas was hard for me in a lot of ways. The obvious things, like the heat, going to school in a different country, or being made fun of for being Canadian, were not so bad. The reason we moved to Texas was the wrong reason; my mother chasing a relationship that was doomed. I was forced to grow up a lot in a short time, and to let go of a lot of childhood. We left Texas abruptly after 4 months there. I left my bicycle with a boy a little younger than me, who wasn’t as well off as we were, and didn’t have one. I don’t know if he loved it the way I did. I don’t know if he felt like he was flying when he rode it. I hope he did. I don’t know what happened to it. My well loved, royal blue Raleigh. I hope it saw many years more of joy.
Coming back to Canada was strange. It was winter time when we did come back. We moved to a completely different part of Ontario, from the small city of Pickering to a small country town. I was very different then when I had left. A little less innocent. One big thing, I was done with bicycles. I had one, a brand new purple mountain bike, with 18 speeds, and front and rear brakes. I hated it. It was cheap, and felt wrong. When I visited my father, he would let me ride his larger silver mountain bike. I liked it a little better, but I was chasing a feeling that was gone. My father had a small dirt bike from when I was younger. He liked to ride it around our backyard with us on it; a 1971, possibly 1970, Honda Z50. It was small, under powered, fairly ridiculous, and dark blue with a white stripe on the tank. Dad brought it over on a trailer one day in the spring after we’d come back to Canada, and gave it to me. Something about it brought me back to my beloved Raleigh. I rode the shit out of it.
Every day I could, after school, on the weekend, onto the minibike, and on to the trails. 3 gears, no clutch, and endless fun. I learned about points ignition, because I swamped it a few times. I learned about slide carburettors, because I had to tinker with it a few times. I learned how to replace cables, because I snapped the throttle cable a couple of times. I met friends with quads and dirt bikes, and at 14 going on 15 I was going on group trail rides. In the summer we’d leave early, and be gone the whole day. I don’t think we ever got further than 10km from home, but we’d go all over. Take lunches and snacks, lots of water, extra fuel, axes, rope. You name it, we’d strap it to one of the 4 wheeler’s, and go. We’d make “camps”, chop down trees and lash them together with ropes to build shelters. We’d play games. Sometimes we’d bring air rifles with us, and shoot cans. One time someone snuck their fathers lever action rifle out of the house, and we all took turns trying it out. We would periodically play a game where one person would yell “scramble”, and we’d all run to the quads and dirt bikes and take off. The fun was taking someone else’s bike or quad, so no one left on what they’d arrived with. It was my chance to try a quad for the first time, or a 3 wheeler, and even larger dirt bikes. There was the freedom I was missing.
Around the time I turned 17 one of my fathers neighbors gave me an old dirt bike he had in his back shed. It was a 1973 Honda Elsinore CR250, and it didn’t run, but it was mostly complete. At this time, the old Z50 was with my younger brother, and I was mainly riding my step dad’s Suzuki quad. I missed riding a dirt bike, the sense of flying you only get with a 2 wheeled vehicle. I set out, with the help of my father, to get it running. The main problem was the rubber connecting the carb to the intake manifold. Honda made it one piece, proprietary rubber glued to the aluminium header. It was impossible to find a replacement. I was very interested in metal working, and at my high school’s machine shop, I chucked up the manifold on a lathe, and created a flange on the aluminium, shaving away the factory rubber. This allowed me to use, with the assistance of a heat gun and some hose clamps, a short length of generic coolant hose from a car. Just like that I had a running dirt bike. A 250cc, 2 stoke beast, with a knackered swing arm bushing, blown shock seals, no kick stand, and a kick starter playfully named the “widow maker” by riders in the 70’s. The handling was terrible; it would only turn if you kicked the rear wheel loose. Kicking the rear wheel loose required you to really hit the throttle hard in the power band; the power band was about 500 rpm wide. This required you to know the corner, and the gear you needed to be in, to hit the power band just right, to kick the rear wheel loose. The kick starter would either attempt to toss you over the bars, or perform some kungfu maneuver that resulted in the kick starter hitting you in the shin, if you weren’t assertive enough when kicking it over. I learned a lot riding that death trap, mainly about 2 stoke motors. I sold it to a friend for $100 a couple of months before I turned 19, and moved out on my own. I don’t think it actually killed him, but I haven’t seen him since, so who knows. Neil, hopefully the beast didn’t kill you.
After the old Honda CR250, I didn’t own another dirt bike for nearly 10 years. Life happened. Love, heartbreak, depression, joy. All the usual cliches, and some new ones I’m sure. I realize all I’ve actually talked about here is bicycles and dirt bikes, not real motorcycles. I know. To me, all of this, is a journey; one I’m still taking. Some parts of me, when I’m going down the road on my motorcycle, are still that 6 year old boy, finding joy in the freedom and the flight. Telling you, dear reader, about who I was and how I got here, I hope will convey some of that emotion. I promise I’ll talk about real motorcycles in the next post.