Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

 Every once in a while, I still think about riding motorcycles.

This beautiful '64 Sportser is selling for 14,000 dollars.

Again.

I rode motorcycles for a very long time, around forty years, and I rode a lot. Not just on weekends, puttin' around town. I rode every day, through all kinds of weather, and on many long trips. 

When I quit riding them, some in my family were kind of shocked. My Brother said, "that's kind of like Fonzi getting rid of his bike!" 

So, what happened? Was there any event that made me change my mind? 

Time? Maturity? Fear?

I'm firmly convinced that motorcycle riding is now more dangerous than it was, even back in the 1990's. Everyone is always on their cell phones, that includes a lot of the people driving down the road. At one time people would do the hands free Bluetooth thing, and talk on the phone, now they need their fingers to text. Their attention is directed for too long to that little screen. I wish people had to pay for their service by the minute, they would keep their messaging much shorter. 

I used my bikes for  everyday commuting to work. Besides longer trips, I used to take little rides around the area for fun. 

I found that over time that I just stopped going on these rides. Life's circumstances certainly change over the years.    

I have lived in my current location for almost forty years, add that to the time that I spent growing up in the East Bay. Except for a couple of years when I worked in the LA region, I've always lived in the Bay Area. 

When I was a kid, just starting out riding motorcycles, every trip down every back road or highway was an adventure. It was all new to me. Over the years I expanded my range, now it seems that I've been down almost every back road in my part of Northern California. 

It used to be that I had to go a hundred miles to hit some unfamiliar territory. Now I have to go much further.

That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy driving somewhere, I still do, but the point is, that I need to be actually going somewhere. I need a destination. Aimless wandering doesn't entertain me anymore. 

It was over ten years ago that I sold my last motorcycle, a Honda Shadow 1100. A couple of years later I bought an old Yamaha Virago as a project. My plan was to build it into a Bobber. The bike had some problems with the electric starter, a known problem, (which I didn't know about) that could not be easily or cheaply fixed. I thought I'd just buy and fix up this bike as a project, then sell it. It ultimately seemed kind of silly to buy a motorcycle if I never planned on riding it. 

I have sustained some fairly serious back injuries, ironically enough, it wasn't caused by a motorcycle incident, but work related. These took increasing amounts of time to recover from. The first episode was pretty debilitating, I even had difficulty walking for a while. Luckily, It only took three or four months for an improvement. Almost ten years later I had another incident, it was a re-injury, and this time it took almost a year to get back to 90% of normal. 

I am quite aware that another  re injury would take a long time to recover from, if I even had a "full" recovery. That doesn't make a strong recommendation to get back into riding. 

Do I even really miss riding? I was an extremely active rider, but I wasn't someone that rode like an idiot. You don't make it into your Fifties riding like that. 

I don't often go on long trips by myself, now usually it's me and the Wife, I don't think that she wants to ride a bike anywhere. I don't blame her, at my age I prefer to be comfortable. If I want an open air experience, I'd just take my convertible. I had kept my bike as a personal enjoyment, a part of myself to hold onto, during the times that family responsibilities required that I have uninteresting cars like our two minivans. 

So would I buy a bike just as a project, and not expect to ride it much, if at all? Maybe. 

The early HD Sportster is a bike that I am quite familiar with, However there are a few Japanese bikes that catch my eye, that might hold potential. The Sportsters have very simple electrical systems, they have few essential components, and the ones that they do have are easy to relocate and hide.

I found out that the old Virago had lots of electrical components; fuses, junctions, and relays, located in the headlamp housing as well as under the seat. I don't know how easy it would be to eliminate these components. Just like a modern car, these bikes are more complex. Newer HDs now even have fuel injection! I would need something very basic and simple.

I bought a buckle like this from an ad in the back of Easyriders
magazine back in the mid 1970's. I've still got the belt.

But I'm probably just kidding myself. Motorcycle riding is just something that is now part of my past. Motorcycling is about as likely to fit into my current life as that old Harley Davidson wing emblem belt is likely to fit around my current waist. Which is not at all! 

The time comes when you just have to put a part of your past life aside and move on. Even if I never ride again, I'll always have the memories. 

Not to mention the tattoo!