AJAY
Registered
As some of you may know, I bought a 1985 Suzuki GS550ESF from oRg member MetallicMetalGod and have teaching my 17 year old son to ride. He’s also been wrenching on the bike with me and is showing a lot of mechanical prowess. He even signed up for Auto Shop as an elective for his senior year of high school.
I’ve enjoyed working on that old 550 so much that it’s triggered a nostalgia kick. I bought a 1982 GS1100E, the “Hayabusa†of its day when one came up on Craigslist two weeks ago. This one is much rougher than the 550, and I still don’t have it running right, but it will get there.
Playing with these old motorcycles - including the 1972 Honda CB350 that I was already restoring – is triggering a lot of old memories for me, and I thought I’d take a moment to write some down for posterity. Perhaps some of my friends here on the oRg will enjoy reading it. Note that the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
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This is an old story, that happened when I was still in college, and these bikes antique bikes I’m working on now weren't even built yet!
I was working as a motorcycle mechanic part time while in college and full time in the summer. The short story is that I bought a real POS Honda CB450 twin as my first street bike, a "chopper" with 6" extended forks, king and queen seat, and a sissy bar. Hey, it was the era of Easy Rider, right? Anyway, the motor was dying and I took it to a shade-tree shop owned by Tom, the older brother of a childhood friend. The motor was toast, but I had spent just about all my money buying the bike. Tom offered to let me rebuild the motor under his tutelage, and after that, he offered me a job as a wrench. He'd tell his customers that I was part of a Government-run job training program. But I made a lot of motorcycle buddies on campus and often got easy side work for beer money, or sometimes just beer.
Fast forward a year, I sold the 450 chopper and built a very hot-rodded 1969 CB350 twin with supersport handlebars that was more of a real ‘cafe bike’ than what you see all over Craigslist today . That little CB350 had high lift cams and so much compression that she’d pop wheelies in 3rd gear and top out at about 110mph. Sadly, the CB350 was totaled when a ditzy college girl hit me with her car, but the insurance money enabled me to buy an almost new 1977 Suzuki GS550e, my first four cylinder and one of the best bikes I ever owned.
I met my friend Jim in college, I think the year was maybe 1979 or 1980. We had seen each other around for a while, you know, the way guys on bikes pick each other up the same way we could pick out good looking girls at 300 yards across the campus mall. Indeed, we knew each other by our bikes, not each other's names. I'd saddle up to the bar or at a party and say, "KZ400, right?" and he'd answer, "Yep. GS550?" We called each other by our "bike names" for a long while before we'd start remembering each other’s real names.
Jim and I became pretty good friends as we entered our senior year. He was handsome and charming, always with a string of girlfriends that were the source of some small envy on my part. Not that I lacked for girlfriends, just not ones that looked like his girlfriends. But we hung out together, and I learned more about how to charm women from him than anyone I ever met. I had to learn, but it just came so naturally to him.
By this time, Jim had had enough of his puny Kawasuckie KZ400 and bought a GS750, the old two valve model. I don't think the newer 4 valve TSCC heads were out yet. Jim and I rode a lot together, sometimes long rides, but more often shorter rides, bar hopping, too fast on back roads, trying to get somewhere else before it closed.
(WARNING - DO NOT TRY THIS CRAP! IT’S REALLY STUPID AND DANGEROUS!)
I had learned a really idiotic trick from riding with my boss at the motorcycle shop. I’d be riding along minding my own business and he'd come up quickly behind me and tap my kill switch off as he passed off my right handlebar. It became sort of a game for us, but I think I only ever got Tom back once. It didn’t hurt that he had a much faster Honda CB750F and could ride circles around me. Unfortunately, I introduced this bit of silly stupidity into the mix riding with my college buddies, including Jim. Like I said, we were young and stupid, and I'm glad to have survived!
Jim and I made a few weekend trips up to the "big city" to see one of his girlfriends, and I had met a girl up there too. We were doing the stupid kill switch thing and it turned into a crazy leap-frog game that stupid kids on motorcycles are apt to do. We were on I-95 just south of Philly and he cut off a station wagon filled with nuns to get past me. That was too much for me. We were cheating death as it was, and I wasn't going to cut off a bunch of nuns even if I wasn't Catholic! I never let him forget that maneuver as we were partying that weekend. Even Kenny Roberts never cut off a station wagon full of nuns!
That weekend, we were riding through a state park with the girls on back when Jim tried to hit my kill switch. Bad move, as this just got me dying to get even. I failed once to sneak up on him. The second time I got close he whacked the throttle to get away, but with his girlfriend on the back his bike popped a big wheelie. Unfortunately, this was right in front of a park ranger who had set up a speed trap. Lucky for me, the ranger didn’t see the shenanigans that had precipitated the wheelie. Jim was pissed. When the cop asked for his license, he whipped his wallet onto the ground with a curse and walked away, which I’m sure didn’t help his case too much. I think it was a $50 fine and I probably should have split it with him, instead of laughing which is what I was doing.
Jim and I went through that summer bar hopping and crazy riding, picking up girls, him getting luckier than me, but that was normal. Oh well.
One night we were bored and went onto some back roads we didn’t know so well. We would take turns changing the lead, heading further and further into the hilly Pennsylvania countryside, riding too fast for our own good.
Wow! I had forgotten it all, but suddenly it flooded back to me like it was yesterday. We were screaming down this road with Jim in the lead when he blew past the warning sign saying ‘Bridge Out 1000 feet’ or something like that. I sort of knew the road and where the bridge was supposed to be, but something told me Jim must have missed the warning sign. Something just took over my brain to make me pass him and force him to stop.
We turned our bikes around in the road and parked them in front of the Bridge Out signs. After walking around in the half moonlight looking at the cause of our near disaster, we laid back on the side of the road, looking up at the stars and talking and smoking.
It was August and the Persied meteor showers were peaking. Jim would see a shooting star, point, but I wouldn’t find it. Then I’d see one and he would miss it. This went on for maybe an hour while we were chilling, but we never both saw the same shooting star. And then there was a big one, we both saw it streaking across the sky. Suddenly it split into two shooting stars, streaking together across the sky, like two old riding buddies out for a night in the cosmos. We sat there a few more minutes, finished our cigarettes, got up, and rode back into town at a very leisurely pace just in time for last call.
--------------
Other than changing names to protect my friends and leaving out a few contributing details, this is a true story. Jim and I still get together a few times a year and we even ride together once in a while.
I’ve enjoyed working on that old 550 so much that it’s triggered a nostalgia kick. I bought a 1982 GS1100E, the “Hayabusa†of its day when one came up on Craigslist two weeks ago. This one is much rougher than the 550, and I still don’t have it running right, but it will get there.
Playing with these old motorcycles - including the 1972 Honda CB350 that I was already restoring – is triggering a lot of old memories for me, and I thought I’d take a moment to write some down for posterity. Perhaps some of my friends here on the oRg will enjoy reading it. Note that the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
-------------------
This is an old story, that happened when I was still in college, and these bikes antique bikes I’m working on now weren't even built yet!
I was working as a motorcycle mechanic part time while in college and full time in the summer. The short story is that I bought a real POS Honda CB450 twin as my first street bike, a "chopper" with 6" extended forks, king and queen seat, and a sissy bar. Hey, it was the era of Easy Rider, right? Anyway, the motor was dying and I took it to a shade-tree shop owned by Tom, the older brother of a childhood friend. The motor was toast, but I had spent just about all my money buying the bike. Tom offered to let me rebuild the motor under his tutelage, and after that, he offered me a job as a wrench. He'd tell his customers that I was part of a Government-run job training program. But I made a lot of motorcycle buddies on campus and often got easy side work for beer money, or sometimes just beer.
Fast forward a year, I sold the 450 chopper and built a very hot-rodded 1969 CB350 twin with supersport handlebars that was more of a real ‘cafe bike’ than what you see all over Craigslist today . That little CB350 had high lift cams and so much compression that she’d pop wheelies in 3rd gear and top out at about 110mph. Sadly, the CB350 was totaled when a ditzy college girl hit me with her car, but the insurance money enabled me to buy an almost new 1977 Suzuki GS550e, my first four cylinder and one of the best bikes I ever owned.
I met my friend Jim in college, I think the year was maybe 1979 or 1980. We had seen each other around for a while, you know, the way guys on bikes pick each other up the same way we could pick out good looking girls at 300 yards across the campus mall. Indeed, we knew each other by our bikes, not each other's names. I'd saddle up to the bar or at a party and say, "KZ400, right?" and he'd answer, "Yep. GS550?" We called each other by our "bike names" for a long while before we'd start remembering each other’s real names.
Jim and I became pretty good friends as we entered our senior year. He was handsome and charming, always with a string of girlfriends that were the source of some small envy on my part. Not that I lacked for girlfriends, just not ones that looked like his girlfriends. But we hung out together, and I learned more about how to charm women from him than anyone I ever met. I had to learn, but it just came so naturally to him.
By this time, Jim had had enough of his puny Kawasuckie KZ400 and bought a GS750, the old two valve model. I don't think the newer 4 valve TSCC heads were out yet. Jim and I rode a lot together, sometimes long rides, but more often shorter rides, bar hopping, too fast on back roads, trying to get somewhere else before it closed.
(WARNING - DO NOT TRY THIS CRAP! IT’S REALLY STUPID AND DANGEROUS!)
I had learned a really idiotic trick from riding with my boss at the motorcycle shop. I’d be riding along minding my own business and he'd come up quickly behind me and tap my kill switch off as he passed off my right handlebar. It became sort of a game for us, but I think I only ever got Tom back once. It didn’t hurt that he had a much faster Honda CB750F and could ride circles around me. Unfortunately, I introduced this bit of silly stupidity into the mix riding with my college buddies, including Jim. Like I said, we were young and stupid, and I'm glad to have survived!
Jim and I made a few weekend trips up to the "big city" to see one of his girlfriends, and I had met a girl up there too. We were doing the stupid kill switch thing and it turned into a crazy leap-frog game that stupid kids on motorcycles are apt to do. We were on I-95 just south of Philly and he cut off a station wagon filled with nuns to get past me. That was too much for me. We were cheating death as it was, and I wasn't going to cut off a bunch of nuns even if I wasn't Catholic! I never let him forget that maneuver as we were partying that weekend. Even Kenny Roberts never cut off a station wagon full of nuns!
That weekend, we were riding through a state park with the girls on back when Jim tried to hit my kill switch. Bad move, as this just got me dying to get even. I failed once to sneak up on him. The second time I got close he whacked the throttle to get away, but with his girlfriend on the back his bike popped a big wheelie. Unfortunately, this was right in front of a park ranger who had set up a speed trap. Lucky for me, the ranger didn’t see the shenanigans that had precipitated the wheelie. Jim was pissed. When the cop asked for his license, he whipped his wallet onto the ground with a curse and walked away, which I’m sure didn’t help his case too much. I think it was a $50 fine and I probably should have split it with him, instead of laughing which is what I was doing.
Jim and I went through that summer bar hopping and crazy riding, picking up girls, him getting luckier than me, but that was normal. Oh well.
One night we were bored and went onto some back roads we didn’t know so well. We would take turns changing the lead, heading further and further into the hilly Pennsylvania countryside, riding too fast for our own good.
At this point in my narrative, I’m going to fast forward 25 years, because I honestly had forgotten about the incident. Jim and I had lost touch for maybe a dozen years, but reconnected when I moved back east from Arizona. We were at a party at Jim’s house and he had just introduced me to one of his friends who had a Honda CBR954RR. See? I remember what bike the guy said he had, but forgot the name, just like when Jim and I first met! Anyway, I’ll let Jim take over the story from here.
Jim, talking to his friend, “You know, Ajay here once saved my life.â€
Hmmm, this is interesting. I cocked an eye and listened.
“We were riding on this back road in Pennsy, I really don’t know where we were. I was leading at the time. All of a sudden, Ajay screams past me on this turn, gets right in front of me, and starts braking like crazy. I had a hard time not hitting him. And then we came down this little hill and there were these big orange signs across the road that say ‘Bridge Out’, no barrier or anything, just these two big signs set on the road. Beyond them is nothing, just nothing, no bridge, just some new concrete and a pile of new steel girders stacked on the side of the road.â€
Jim, talking to his friend, “You know, Ajay here once saved my life.â€
Hmmm, this is interesting. I cocked an eye and listened.
“We were riding on this back road in Pennsy, I really don’t know where we were. I was leading at the time. All of a sudden, Ajay screams past me on this turn, gets right in front of me, and starts braking like crazy. I had a hard time not hitting him. And then we came down this little hill and there were these big orange signs across the road that say ‘Bridge Out’, no barrier or anything, just these two big signs set on the road. Beyond them is nothing, just nothing, no bridge, just some new concrete and a pile of new steel girders stacked on the side of the road.â€
Wow! I had forgotten it all, but suddenly it flooded back to me like it was yesterday. We were screaming down this road with Jim in the lead when he blew past the warning sign saying ‘Bridge Out 1000 feet’ or something like that. I sort of knew the road and where the bridge was supposed to be, but something told me Jim must have missed the warning sign. Something just took over my brain to make me pass him and force him to stop.
We turned our bikes around in the road and parked them in front of the Bridge Out signs. After walking around in the half moonlight looking at the cause of our near disaster, we laid back on the side of the road, looking up at the stars and talking and smoking.
It was August and the Persied meteor showers were peaking. Jim would see a shooting star, point, but I wouldn’t find it. Then I’d see one and he would miss it. This went on for maybe an hour while we were chilling, but we never both saw the same shooting star. And then there was a big one, we both saw it streaking across the sky. Suddenly it split into two shooting stars, streaking together across the sky, like two old riding buddies out for a night in the cosmos. We sat there a few more minutes, finished our cigarettes, got up, and rode back into town at a very leisurely pace just in time for last call.
--------------
Other than changing names to protect my friends and leaving out a few contributing details, this is a true story. Jim and I still get together a few times a year and we even ride together once in a while.
, half of the enjoyment is looking back and being able to say "I've done that."
