Chapter 1: A New Beggining, An Old Story.

Its time. This is the story about me, motorcycles, and memories. We'll see how long I can keep this up for, but don't hold your breath- I don't do so well at continuing things like this.

A Brief introduction…

I like bikes. Really, I like anything with a motor. Sometimes as long as it has wheels the motor isn’t even necessary. My FAVOURITE thing, however, is when you combine two wheels and an engine. I have had a thing for bikes since around the age of 8, at which point in my life my parents informed me that motorcycles were the devil and I wouldn’t own one while I was living in their house. Turns out they were wrong, but we’ll get there in a minute.

I had ridden a bike or two- a neighbor had a PW50 that we would spend hours on going around and around and around and around their yard on. As I got a little bigger, I got more interested in 4 wheelers. Thankfully, the training wheels stage didn’t last very long, although I do have many fond memories of a certain Honda Fourtrax that we put several hundred miles on in, around, through, over, and across our small town- even somewhat legally. Well, it had a plate and was insured, anyways…

My motorcycling started in earnest when Clinton moved to town. Again, I wasn’t allowed to own a bike, but occasionally I was permitted to ride a friend’s around a bit. Well as it turned out, Clinton had the coolest little dirtbike I had ever seen- an early ’80 Honda CR60. Man did that thing go like stink!!! We rode it everywhere. In the alley, in his yard, in the church parking lot, in other alleys, out to the Ridge, out to the motocross track, on the south end of town when it was nothing more than a field, at Corner Lake, just everywhere. I got okay at riding, but I was kind of a chicken. I enjoyed tinkering almost more than riding. We soon outgrew the little 60, and Clinton bought a late ‘80’s YZ80 from my cousin. Now THAT was a fast bike!

The YZ opened up a whole new field for us. It was bigger, went faster, AND we still had the CR60, which meant we could BOTH ride at the same time!!! The CR was getting a bit small on me though, as I’ve always been about a foot taller than the average, and Clinton decided to buy a project bike. He hauled home a basket case Yamaha IT400. Took him a while, but after about a year, he got it together and running.

Imagine, if you will, going from a little YZ pushing maybe 26 horse power to a great big bike that was running around 60 horse power!!! It even had a speedometer so we knew just how stupid we were being.

After the IT400, there was a rapid succession of different bikes, sleds, and other toys including quads and good old Honda Odyssey’s, which was actually my first ever set of wheels. So it was, that at about age 15, I finally managed to get my very own half of a motorcycle.