Coop's Corner: Right After The Sportster

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Right After The Sportster

After I brought the Sportster home, dad decided that he needed a bigger bike too. As a former and old HD man, he was impressed with the Sportster but had a chance to buy a brand new, orange 1974 CB750 Honda at a good price from the local dealer. A few years before, he and I had stopped by the very same dealer and saw that dealer's first or second showroom'd CB750. Dad was given the key for a test ride, I followed him on my 125 Yamaha Enduro down the rural County road. We'd only gone a little ways when he pulled over, put the stand down and waved me over. He got off, walked back, jumped on my bike and waved me on, obviously motioning me to jump on the big Honda and take it for a spin. After a couple of miles, I very responsibly pulled over once we got to a parking lot and remember just sitting there listening to the four cylinder idle. Dad often reminded me, years later that my grin was something he'd always remember.

With a windshield and a luggage rack, dad had a bike he could commute with on the city freeways. Over the next winter, I was paying more and more attention to this thing the magazines were calling 'Touring'. Windjammer fairings were being sold and I was tiring of the Sportster, ready for something new. The following spring, dad and I traded, he taking the HD and I was then an official Honda Four rider. Taking dad along, we visited the new accessory shop that had opened downtown in an old warehouse. It was quite an experience. Up until that time, our accessory buying had been in the dirt bike aisles. This place was full of seats, luggage racks, aftermarket 4-into-2 pipes, Windjammer products, crash bars, highway pegs, hand grips, etc. I spent huge money on a Vetter Fairing along with some other stuff, excited to start taking real trips on a real, traveling motorcycle. Ray, the guy that owned the shop, had recently quit working full time at the same company my dad was working at and over the next months, he and dad became friends.

The following season, Ray at the accessory shop was selling his Demo Bike, loaded with many, if not most of the high end accessories that they offered for sale. In no time, dad was then the owner of a red '75 CB750 Honda, complete with the firm's super Gel Seat.

Here are the two 750's after Dad and I got home from attending Aspencade in Ruidoso, New Mexico, October '78. There was some rain, there was some mud.

In the spring of '76, I bought a brand new XL350 Honda from Cambridge Honda for $1075. Nancy, a friend from work, rode up with me and followed behind me in my car. A few weeks later, we switched roles; she rode home on her brand new Yamaha 400.

In July of '76, my brother bought a closeout 850 Norton from Burnsville Honda for $1395. Here we are, just outside of Theilman, MN on a Poker Run, put on by the Plainview Motorcycle Club.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Others say....

"it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new." ----B. Fuller

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)