My friend Peter talked me into putting a Yamaha SRX250, that I had saved from the salvage yard several years ago, on the road this week. “I am going to put my cb175 together in time to make it to bike night in July” he told me.
That was all it took for me to start envisioning the 2 of us riding little bikes 30 miles to meet with other folks from our group of friends, most of whom met because of our website nehondaguys.info, and word of mouth.
I had purchased the 250 in 2009 from an unemployed kid fresh out of grad school, who was going to let it sit and rot on the Boston streets through the winter if no one bought it. A mercy sale though it might have been, I needed a bike for my 2 kids who had still expressed interest in riding after each fell off the sv650 I had reclaimed for them.
After replacing a bent wheel, plenty of scrubbing, new tires, and progressively encouraging results from cleaning and rebuilding one of the funniest carbs ever made at least a half dozen times, I had a running bike. By that time both kids had moved to NYC, and any interest they had in riding was mitigated by my fear of either kid on a bike in a city where people drive like North Korean food shoppers competing for the only bag of rice.
The 250 sat in the back of the garage, waiting for the day each month when I started it, and with the benefit of a plate pilfered from a garagemate, took a short ride to make sure there were no encircling marauders in the neighborhood.
4 years goes by, and Peter’s call to action encouraged me to insure and register the little bugger last week. It has been raining a lot here, and it took until yesterday for me to put the plate on and take our first legal and long ride together over to get a sticker from my friends at Medfield automotive.
My brother the film-maker has terrorized me for years, asking that I don a form fitting lycra body suit and ride a bicycle in one of his films. Given my rather Hitchcockian profile, in the past I have mentally run screaming and crying from this kind offer. It did occur to me yesterday that riding the 250, even in street clothes was probably a similar spectacle, as each cc has to propel almost a pound’s worth of avoir du poids. I did not care one whit, I was having too much fun.
The joy of going 35-45 mph was amply enhanced by knowing that the tach reading( times 100) was exactly the same as my speed. After several minutes of empty headed grinning, I realized that the feeling and sound of the 250 single had conspired to make me feel exactly as I had when I “borrowed” Peter Harvey’s brand new 1970 CB100 for my first ride, enjoying the experience and feeling of freedom so much that I did not return for an hour. Peter’s near heart attack was replaced with hate and mistrust, and we were never again close friends, but after 43 years, I think the experience was worth the price. And the feeling yesterday, again after all this time, was priceless.
