“Do you have questions about anything?”
says the salesman as he walks up to me.
“No, I’m just hear for the sights and
the smells,” I say.
The salesman gives me a sideways look
as he sidles over to a more likely looking customer. But
what I said was true. The looks of the bikes have changed
over the years, but there’s still nothing like the smell
of a large showroom packed with new motorcycles on a day
when riding season is approaching in Michigan. That hasn’t
changed much, and smells have a unique way of unlocking
old memories.
This is Anderson’s annual Open House
that has been held since long before I started riding. Having
moved on to BMWs, it’s been a long time since I bought a
motorcycle from them, but still this has become an annual
event that I rarely miss. Thinking back, I realize that
it has now been 30 years since I started my riding career
with that first Honda that I bought here. Looking back from
the vantage point of age and experience, I’m surprised that
I survived the first few months.
I had been a “gearhead” for many years,
but was mostly into cars at the time, cruising around proudly
in my new GTO. However, a number of my old college classmates
had been riding motorcycles for a while, and I was always
hearing stories about their rides and adventures. It started
to look like a lot of fun, so when one of my friends started
trying to talk me into buying one, I decided to take the
plunge.
Knowing nothing about motorcycles at
the time, I did what was a common practice and bought the
same model that my buddy had. At least they made them in
two colors so we weren’t an exact match. The bike was a
1970 Honda SL350, the “Motosport” version of the venerable
350cc series. It was sold as what we would now call a dual-purpose
machine, being qualified for that duty by having high-mounted
(steel) fenders and upswept black-painted pipes. The tires
were Trials Universals, with “universal” in this sense meaning
that they weren’t very good for either the road or the dirt.
So, my first foray into this new world would be on a 350-lb.,
electric-start “dirt bike.”
Anderson’s at the time was the largest
dealer in Michigan and one of the largest in the country.
They sold all four brands of Japanese bikes, the three British
makes, plus Moto Guzzi. Basically, they had everything covered
except Harley and BMW. I soon found out that this was not
like buying a car, as it was the beginning of the sales
boom of the 70’s and the salesman would sell you a bike
one day and forget your name by the next. I gave him a cashier’s
check for the total of $930 and he told me to come by the
next day to pick up my bike.
Now this was in the days before the
MSF, and there were no special licensing requirements, so
learning to ride a motorcycle was strictly up to the rider.
The best way was to get a friend to teach you, but nobody
in his right mind would actually let a rookie learn to ride
on his prized steed! So, I had to content myself with reading
owners’ manuals, sitting on a stationary bike, and trying
to mentally go through the exercise of how to operate these
complex machines. But on the day when I was dropped off
to pick up my new cycle, I had never so much as twisted
a handgrip with the engine running.
“Do you know how to ride it?” said
my salesman as he handed me the keys.
“Sure,” I said.
Hey, I wasn’t going to let this guy
know that I wasn’t an experienced rider. He turned and walked
away, instantly forgetting about me. I was now on my own.
I put on my helmet, started the engine
(so far, so good), and eased the bike out onto the road.
Anderson’s is situated on Telegraph Road, which then as
now is one of the busiest thoroughfares in the Detroit metropolitan
area. I just had to make it the 10 or so miles to home,
but to this day I am not sure of all that happened on that
first ride. I remember being surprised that shifting came
fairly easily, but I was also overwhelmed at the complexity
of having to think of what each hand and each foot were
individually supposed to be doing. For some reason, making
a right turn from a stop was extremely difficult to do,
but looking back from the present day I can’t really remember
what the problem was. Fortunately, after getting off of
Telegraph I had mostly rural roads to travel, and made it
home without any real incidents.
Later that day, Steve, my friend with
the other SL350, called and asked me to ride over to his
place so he could take me out on some trails. During the
ride to his house I started to get the feel of controlling
the bike. My confidence soon turned to over-confidence.
Turning onto a dirt side-street in Steve’s neighborhood,
I made several mistakes, upshifting instead of downshifting,
then panicking and hitting the brake while leaned over on
loose gravel. The bike went down and high-sided on me. Luckily
a passing motorist stopped and helped get it off of my leg.
I mumbled some thanks, got back on, and slowly made it to
Steve’s place. Nothing was broken, but the glossy candy
blue paint was already scratched and we had to bend the
front fender back into shape.
I should have just gone carefully back
home at that point, but again I didn’t want to admit defeat,
so we headed out for one of the local trail-riding areas.
When we got there we met up with Glen, a rider who I had
never met, but who was something of a local legend with
our crowd. This guy was a serious rider who rode one of
those little two-stroke bikes and had even been known to
compete in events that went by the strange names of “enduros”
and “hare scrambles.”
Glen led us on some easy trail loops,
with me barely managing to keep up at the back of the pack.
In one place, the trail went down through a dip, and coming
up the other side I felt the bike go slightly airborne as
I crested the lip.
“That was fun,” I told the guys when
we stopped.
“Did you like that?” replied Glen.
“What you have to do, though, is to gas it a little and
pull back on the handlebars when you go over a jump. You
don’t want to come down on your front wheel when you’re
in the air.”
“OK. I’ll give it another try,” I said.
I went back and made another approach
to the gully. This time I was going a lot faster, and as
I crested the rise I remembered Glen’s advice to gas it
and pull back. The problem was in knowing how much! The
next thing I knew, the bike was flying through the air with
me sliding off the back of the seat and hanging from the
handlebars. It landed on its back tire in a near-vertical
position. As the front wheel slammed down, I was still hanging
on with the throttle held wide open. The front end rebounded
again into a huge wheelie. It all ended when I crashed into
a small grove of saplings. The rest of the guys came riding
up.
“I thought he knew how to ride,” I
heard Glen say to Steve.
They shrugged their shoulders and helped
me get the bike back into rideable condition. This time
the damage was more severe, with a broken brake lever, broken
mirrors and headlight, twisted forks, and more. Embarrassed,
I just got back on and rode ¾ slowly ¾ back to my place.
When I took the bike to Anderson’s
for repairs, they told me that it would be a while until
they got the parts, but that since it was rideable I could
wait and bring it back later. I told them to keep it and
just call me when it was fixed. Even after the parts were
installed a month later I delayed picking it up, and when
I finally retrieved it I just parked it in my garage. There
was no doubt that I was afraid to ride it again and would
soon have to make a decision on its future.
Eventually I decided that I would either
have to learn to ride the thing or sell it, so I had to
give it another try. Early one Sunday morning I took it
out for a ride along some of the twisty roads that wind
around the lakes in the western part of the county. The
long layoff had actually caused some of my learning to gel
a bit in my mind, and I immediately felt more comfortable
than I had ever been. The controls fell to hand more easily,
and my coordination was improving. I don’t know if “epiphany”
is too strong a word to use, but thirty years later I can
still remember the exact stretch of road, along the Pontiac
Trail, where it suddenly all came together. Leaning left
and then right, upshifting and downshifting through the
sweeping curves, I felt the same “freedom of the open road”
that I still feel today. I was doing it! This was a blast!
I had just
become a motorcyclist.
Now, attending yet another Open
House celebration at Anderson’s, I think about all of the
bikes I’ve owned and the adventures I’ve had in the ensuing
years. I look around to observe some of the younger customers
gawking at the flashy sportbikes that they sell these days.
If it’s going to be their first bike, at least they’ve now
got places to learn to ride before they buy it. My story
makes a nice reminiscence, but I wouldn’t recommend repeating
it.
I take in that glorious new-bike smell
one more time and then head for the door. The weather’s
starting to warm up and it’s time to get my RT ready for
another riding season!
