I grew up riding motorcycles. When I was fairly young my father somehow acquired a mini-bike made by the same manufacturer of our lawnmower and edger, my impression is that these aquisitions were made through his work. I think I was about six or eight years old and I don’t hardly remember riding it because we lived in a city and we’d have to go somewhere in the country to ride it; but I looked at it and dreamed.
When I was around ten my father’s professional life fell apart, but somehow there was enough money for us to spend time as a family camping and riding motorcycles. At one time all three of us, my mom, dad and I all had a bike, but I think my mom decided that reading books beat out riding motorcycles – I don’t remember her riding much. My dad bought himself a Yamaha DT-250 and got me a Honda CT70; I would rather have had a Yamaha Mini-Enduro because it looked just like his bike and had a clutch, but we got the Honda, which looked like the bike in the picture only blue, and I rode the heck out of it. I remember standing around at the motorcyle dealer looking at the various bikes while my dad bought mine; I remember seeing this big one with a weird engine that had the cylinders (I knew quite a bit about engines for my age) sticking out of the sides looking all functional and powerful. I pointed it out to my dad and he offhandedly said that it was a BMW which was made in Germany and Germans (like my dad and me) are good engineers…
A year or two later my dad was in the hospital battling mental illness and I crashed at Bonzai Motorcycle Park near Anaheim Stadium; I hit a big patch of mud too fast. The mud kept the bike but let me escape right-arm first over the handlebars. I heard a popping noise when I landed but nothing hurt until I tried to pick up my motorcyle and realized that my right hand was crooked and facing the wrong way. I pulled my glove back and fainted when I saw my misshapen wrist; this was the beginning of my tough-guy era. The next thing I remember was being loaded up in the truck and my sort of freaked out mom taking me to the hospital…the same hospital where my dad was…one of her guys was in psychiatric and the other in orthopedics. There’s a lot more to this story, but that could be another post.
Before my arm was out of my cast I had hacksawed the parts of the cast that made it hard to ride a motorcyle and got back on my Honda a few times. I seem to remember my mom’s fatalistic statement; “well, at least if his arm’s in a cast he can’t break it again”. Her rules were “always wear your helmet” and “never ride on the street”.
It took me until 1979, and I was nineteen, to move my mom to the fatalistic stage of “he’s going to do it anyway” and give me permission to buy my first street bike, a Yamaha RD400F; which was basically a motocrosser for the street. I could ride wheelies around on this sucker which I’m sure was an assurance to my mom…but I always wore my helmet.
Road riding was a new world. Instead of starting after a two-hour ride in a car pulling a trailer it started in my driveway and it was even useful for grocery shopping provided you kept your list down to one bag’s worth. I pretty much abandoned cars after this, I could park really close at college and in Southern California a motorcycle is a viable means of transportation year-round.
I found that I liked to explore back roads and places I’d never been before. I liked twisty-turney mountain roads and long distances away from people. I liked the quiet, I like the solitude; between the purchase of my first dirt bike and my first street bike my father had decided that continuing with life and parenting was not a good choice and had chosen to end his life. My bones healed, his mind had not.
As part of my healing losing my father I rode, and rode…sort of like when Forest Gump started running when Jenny dumped him…he had to work through things and it took some serious ‘alone time’ to work it through. I worked to ride, I rode to school and work and then just work and back home. After a while I had a car too, but the motorcycle was ‘me’. When I had an appendectomy it hurt like crazy to drive a car; my motorcycle felt great.
One day I stopped by Irv Seaver BMW in Santa Ana, it used to be right along Interstate 5 and I think I was driving a van mooched for the rainy day from my step father of a couple of years. I don’t remember the why, maybe the traffic really sucked and I wanted to get off of the freeway and do something besides look at somebody else’s tailights.
I saw this bike and fell in love. It was a 1981 R100RT and this, though not my first exposure to a BMW; was a significant moment because I looked at it for the first time wondering if I could actually afford it. A purist could probably find all of the reasons that the photograph to the left that is not actually an ‘81, but for the theme of this story it does not matter. I wanted this bike as it was the stuff of my dreams. Since becoming a street rider I had spent hours and hours pouring over a set of National Geographic maps of the United States that I had purchased to carry with me when I was riding. They all fit in a cool plastic box and they were the stuff of dreams…those maps and a bike that I could ride and ride and ride that would carry enough stuff to last for weeks on end on the road.
But the R100RT cost more than I could afford. It was somewhere around $6,000 and it was simply too much of a stretch; I walked around the showroom/lot and found…
…this, a 1981 BMW R65. It was the base level, bare-bones “welcome to your first BMW” sort of machine. This bike sold for about $3,700 and I could afford it. I spent a lot of time drooling, went in and applied for a loan, was approved and drove the van home. Before I left I found out what time they opened up the next morning and when I got home I asked my mom if she’d give me a ride to Santa Ana to pick it up.
I spent a lot of time exploring Southern California, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada on this bike. I eventually put hard saddle bags and a frame mount fairing. It was a great machine, very trustworthy, very reliable. I was riding it at a time when the Japanese manufacturers were building some pretty powerful and comfortable bikes designed specifically for touring…and others designed specifically for sport. This was a Swiss Army Knife in comparison, it did everything. I loved it, but I never lost sight of that R100RT.
Time passed, so did motorcycling. I sold my last, a Japanese Superbike with little charactor…a cruiser, a wannabe chopper…to pay for our taxes the first year of marriage. I’ve lived in California, Colorado and now Minnesota and the riding season has shrinked from 12, to 9 to 7 months. A couple of friends have bikes and I posed to them the question: “Motorcycling in Minnesota is just a hobby isn’t it?” They agreed. In California it was practical year-round transportation, in Minnesota it is not.
I found an R100RT for sale about 70 miles from here. I was looking for a little economy car to replace our little economy car that died last week and just for the heck of it searched for BMW motorcycles. I looked at it yesterday and it’s beautiful. I love it. I want it. It makes no sense as I’ve neither time nor money for a ‘hobby’.
This is the first time I’ve grieved my move to Minnesota…I want this to be a practical transportation choice and it is not. Not when I’m in the midst of an expensive international adoption. Not when I’m not just a single guy anymore but am a married professional with great time demands that needs to give all of his time away from work to his wife. My life is no longer about me or my wants, it is about serving God through being a husband, a father and ministering to the needs of my clients and co-workers.
Right now I’m dreaming of a small, Kent-built open wooden boat that we can use as a family, the four of us…Kent, Laurie, Daughter-to-be and our little Shih-Tzu puppy Little Girl. Exploration in Minnesota is best done in a watercraft and a canoe, which we have and will always have, has some limits in sociability and seaworthyness on larger bodies of water. The other thing I miss about Southern California is ‘big water’, but I can adjust. After all, when I rode home from work on my motorcycle…
…this was my home.
