Wednesday, August 30, 2006

 

Moi on the latest Honda

Why a motorcycle? Well, I've been riding various bikes for a lot of years. (Nostalgia alert!) I got my first bike when I was 18 and just out of high school. I don't remember why I got it or from whom, but I owned this nifty little Italian scooter. I think it was a Laverda. 50cc and a two-speed transmission got me up to about 35 mph. I used it to get to work in Oakland, at the old Monkey Wards near Fruitvale. That was 1963. After that, my dad helped me get a "real" motorcycle, a Honda C110. I kept that and modified it to race during the summer of 1965, when I got drafted. In 1968, I got out of the Army and bought a Bultaco Sherpa with a racing clutch. I raced that till I got married in 1970 and sorta fell away from racing. I've also owned a Honda Dream 305 with superhawk pistons, a Yamaha RD350 (the fastest bike I've owned), a Honda CB360 on which I installed a CB radio and air horns, a Suzuki GS750 and a GT750, my big son's Honda MR50, a Lambretta 150 with a sidecar, and a Bultaco Matador.

Here's moi on my Honda Shadow. Now that it's mine, it's OK. I wish it had another gear or two. Once the speedo shows 80, it starts to buzz. And I gotta get some saddlebags because I'm tired of wearing what I need to take around my neck. But it's a Honda- dependable, moderately zippy, looks good, and this one puts my butt really close to the ground, so stopping isn't a worry. Oh, one more small but significant thing- when I look in the rear-view mirrors, I can actually *see* something, not just a big wavy blur, like with every other motorcycle. All in all, pretty good. Not sure how to resolve the one-more-gear syndrome, but this is a good bike.





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