Here's a story in the same vein:
I was raised in the area of Cycle One-Off, but long-before their day. In my small suburban high school were kids from the local non-Harley-Davidson dealer's family: both the boys and girls all rode bikes to school, and they had a real captive market in the area. They sold British and Spanish bikes. The girls rode BSA's, four-stroke singles (the boys, 441 BSA's or Triumph or BSA twins), and there was no 'electric foot' back-then. They were tough, smart, and gifted both in the classroom and playing sports. The fact they could ride circles around pretty-much all the guys their own ages was impressive. The fact they could shouldn't have come as a surprise, as one of their older brothers rode motocross in Europe in the 1960's for Bultaco, and the family hosted Senor Bulto when he traveled to the USA to see the American dealers.
One of my friends bought a Bultaco 175 from them, used, shortly after I got my license (no-need for a motorcycle license back-then). The bike dealer's had a shop in the countryside on a busy state route, Ridge Rd., on a clear day you could see Lake Ontario in the distance, and behind the shop were plenty of trails you could blast-around on to your heart's content. I can still recall the first time my Bultaco-riding friend said, "let's go!," when we were visiting the shop, and he suggested taking a trail ride w/me on the back. I was totally-ignorant about off-road riding, besides stealing the key to my older brother's Honda C110 and taking it around the fields next-to our home. I used-to remove the upswept 'pickle' or chrome-torpedo those C110 Sports had for a muffler, and run the header-only. It sounded much-better that way, though it probably hurt the performance.
I had never been a passenger on a dirtbike. I had never ridden a dirtbike. When my buddy dropped-off the bike shop pavement, and started down the incline behind the shop, weaving to avoid the saplings and the bigger ruts, I thought for-sure I was going to be spit-off into some more-substantial tree and that would be the end of me.
That didn't happen. We circulated around the trails, singletrack, for a bit, and then he worked his way back to the parking lot and stopped. "I thought we were going to wipe-out, but we never-did, that was great!," I told him. He used to carry a couple of spare plugs w/him, and if the bike started to miss, he'd change the plug, and off we went! I had no knowledge of two-strokes, nor of motorcycles, really, and the only bike I ever rode to that point was that Honda C110. But the memory stuck with me. I was too-poor to afford anything of my own then. I was making $1.65 an hour working for the school district in the summer, cleaning the schools from top-to-bottom. You ever-need to throw-up, turn-over a school desk and spend part of your summer scraping-off whatever *(&%^%#! kids wipe-off on them, or stuck-there. :damn angry:
A couple of years-later, I was in college in MI and working during the summer there for a summer enrichment program. One of the kids who was in the program was an 18 y.o. kid from Chicago, and after a couple of weeks, he went-home one weekend, and came-back w/his Honda 305 Scrambler. He couldn't keep it at campus, so he found someone living off-campus and left it there. He let me borrow the bike pretty-much whenever I wanted, and I would take it home, about 41 miles, to our rural house, down a winding dirt road. I had so-much fun riding it around, and my parents didn't really-know where this interest in bikes came-from, as the only bike among the four boys they raised was that little Honda C110, though the two older brothers had sports cars, Triumphs and Jaguars.
The next year at college, I worked at a local pizza shop evenings and saved my $. When summer came around, I bought my roommate's Honda 305 Scrambler (a different 305 Scrambler), and that became my transportation until the snow came. The next summer, I sold the 305 Scrambler, which I had thoroughly-thrashed riding singletrack w/my motorcycling friends, and hillclimbing in sand and gravel pits in SW MI.
About selling my first motorcycle-one of my high-school friends whose sister I was seeing socially, wanted to buy my bike, you-know how it goes, "if you ever-want to-sell it, gimme a call." So we made a date for the deal, and that morning, I said, "what the heck, one last offroad ride!" So I took-off for some nearby hills, and as I was riding it there, hillclimbing, I caught a stump of a tree, and it snapped-off the shifter lever shaft, clean as can-be. No damage to the case, just no shifter! I was able to locate the lever, so I slipped the clutch and was able to limp home, not too-difficult as it was in the country and there wasn't a single traffic light on the route. I called the local Honda dealership. They had a replacement shift-shaft in-stock. I took one of the family cars in, and got it, came-home and changed-it-out. Then I called the prospective buyer, and did the transaction. I sold it for more than I paid for it, though I was buying new Metzler rear knobbies pretty-regularly, as I rode it on the street to and from work.
Now I had some capital. I added to it from my savings and promptly went down to M & M Cycle Sales on Sprinkle Rd. in Kalamazoo, and bought a brand-new Yamaha 360 Enduro. My buddy bought an identical one and he looked pretty-surprised when I pulled-out my wad of cash and paid 60% down. He told the salesman, "if I knew he had that-much on him, I would-have rolled him!":rofl_200:He was one of my best friends, his dad owned an Indy Car team, and had been racing there since the early 1950's.
That bike transformed my knowledge of bikes, of off-road riding, and of mechanics. I began racing enduros and hare scrambles, and became a much-better rider and wrench for it. It took me about a half-year to finally strip it down to an offroad ride only. I raced it in MI and FL on the same track in FL where the first YZ250's and YZ360's were raced during the Yamaha Silver Cup, a winter series before the AMA season began.
Before I left-off the lighting and instruments permanently, I would ride it on the road to meet my friends an go trail riding, hillclimbing, and generally having a great time off-road. Then it was an offroad bike. The cool part? I still have it. It's waiting its turn to be refurbished.
unk: Be sure to read 'em!
