Getting ready to start rebuilding the 1975 Honda CB750 Four (K5) that got me through college. This is a father-daughter senior year project.
I found the CB laying on its side in a warehouse in 1984. It was my first bike, didn’t even know how to ride. My friend Bill, who coincidentally owned a CB400 Four, and my younger brother backed my Dodge Omni into the warehouse in Maine one rainy summer night. Using a wooden palette and our meager muscle power, we coerced it into the hatchback, front end hanging out like a deer tongue. Our apparent robbery resulted in a personal interview with Bath’s finest.
The maroon monster and our three bodies crushed the soon-to-be-sold car as we bounced off of the wells all the way to Portsmouth. We had not solved the problem of getting it out, a task which consumed the next day. The car supplied the necessary capital for the first Macintosh computer and Imagewriter printer, and just enough to get the beast on the road. I had no history with motorcycles, and precious little with cars. But I was very handy and what I lacked in experience I made up with… experience. I created the new self of my imagination as I scraped and torqued.
I learned to ride on Bill’s 400, in a fish cannery parking lot. I didn’t bother to get a motorcycle license until compelled by the Navy five years later. The “two-axle vehicle” statement on my New Hampshire operator’s license was sufficient for the many times I was stopped for being helmetless, speeding, or reckless. I did however need registration. New Hampshire also helped me out with lack of a title, as 10 year-old vehicles required none. Before the time of computerized VIN verification, a fib about production year got it done. Some years later I officially corrected their error.
A local chop shop sold me a pair of well-worn leather saddle bags, which along with the lack of a muffler, were to become our signature. The bags, which looked like they belonged on a mule, had been earmarked as the shop’s raffle piece for Bike Week in Laconia, but somehow I talked them onto my bike. Willing myself rid of adolescent baggage, I loaded up the Mac and filled the gaps with a semester’s wardrobe and Bill’s copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. With a fresh coat of primer gray, bedroll and helmet strapped to the seat, a new leather jacket from Wilson’s at the mall, and a paper map of the United States, I rolled out onto I-95 South.
Given I was to start college in upstate New York it might seem curious that I was heading down the Eastern seaboard from the Maine border. But there was a girl.
I had obtained my Honda from a warehouse that belonged to my parents’ marina in Bath, Maine. It had been taken in trade for a boat by the previous owners. As a consequence of my first motorcycle ride, on the back of Bill’s 400, I needed a bike. The Honda I found was the larger of two bikes in the warehouse. When the boat shop manager learned I was to get it he ratted me out, telling mom it would kill me for sure. Not an entirely unreasonable concern given I had never ridden. But he didn’t know me, and she had promised it. I won the battle, dragging the bike off in the rain, under cover of darkness, the watchful eye of cops probably called by my mother, in the hatchback of my Chrysler birth control unit.
With it running and registered, I hit the road for Troy, New York via Frederick, Maryland. It was just a couple days prior to freshman orientation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, just enough time for a pit stop at Wendy’s dorm at Hood College. I was sure I could find it and pretty sure we would still be dating, as she was only in her first week. Despite the challenges of residing in a college for women, transiting New York City (twice) and a first-time visit to the nation’s capitol, I made it to Troy unscathed.
I managed my first traffic stop on the ride North. I was head down between the mirrors, feet on the passenger pegs, anticipating my Cafe-Racer-to-be. A Smokey doing his best Richie Cunningham impersonation had to pass me to stop me, as I could neither see nor hear him. He first confirmed my theory on the New Hampshire operator license, asking if it was a motorcycle license (when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say…). “What’s the hurry,” he interrogated. “I have an afternoon class… in New York.” Chuckling he issued me the obligatory-yet-pointless verbal warning and reminded me that Maryland has a helmet law. Oh the good ole days. At least mom had thought to issue me a helmet from the marina’s ATV business. I strapped it on and off I went.
By arrival in Albany I had been sleep-riding for hours, standing on the pegs to keep blood flowing. It got bad enough that I pulled off the Thruway at a Hojo’s truck stop. Thinking it was probably safest to sleep among the trucks, and using a picnic table as a tent, I used my bedroll for the first time. With nary a strange look from a trucker, I awoke on my 18th birthday dripping Empire State dew. No more than 30 minutes later I pulled up at the freshman check-in table in an RPI parking lot. Got my room key, a bag of toiletries and a pile of paper.
The room was a quad, yet empty upon my arrival. Disappointed with reading on my birthday, I mounted the CB, eastbound on Route 7 to Bennington. I located the same grocery store that carded me on the interview visit to RPI. The drinking age in Vermont being 18, this time I was ready to slap down my legal status. But no such luck, so I just loaded up the mule bags with beer, college bound.
First motorcycle trip, first time in the South, first breakfast at a college for women, first day at college, first legal beer. The CB never let me down, ever. In the following five years we racked up over 30,000 miles and almost as many firsts. Much of it was some arduous combination of dark, rain, snow and ice, including some unbearably-cold and other astonishingly-scenic trips back and forth to Maine. I rewarded her with occasional care and feeding, often doing more harm than good. Eventually I broke her good, and she’s been waiting 25 years for me to make it right.
In a couple months Sophie will be the same age as her dad when I found my first ride. She’s given me the motivation to face my long-neglected partner, and herself an excuse to hang with dad. It seems that anything is possible. Sturgis is calling.