Not quite as old an interest as shooting guns is my relationship with motorcycles. At 13, my friends and I built motorcycles out of bicycles and lawn-mower engines. Partly to keep me off of those homemade death traps, my dad helped me get a "Honda 50" when I was 14.5 (twas legal back then for young people to ride motorcycles of less than 5 brake horsepower). This somewhat made up for the state raising the driving license age from 14 to 16 after the leading edge of the baby boom (Bill Clinton, et al.) made their debut.Harley-Davidson is the great American MC still standing. I never could afford one as a kid and they were saddled by a poor reputation (since repaired) by the time I was a young adult. I always liked the Harley look, even when import bikes were the big thing. So in a recent effort to reaffirm everything that was important for me at 13, I bought an Electra Glide Ultra Classic.
There can be no cooler name than Electra Glide---I don't care if it just means they added a starter moter.
Yamaha (now STAR) and other imports have been busy copying the Harley style. They make nice bikes that go down the road nonetheless for being imitations of the original. They may also be reasonably conceded to be technically superior to my Electra Glide. I don't care---that my attitude is not uncommon is alleged to drive the Japanese crazy.
So here I am, sitting on my bike in front of the volcano, Rainier, after staying the night at Paradise.
3 comments:
Great to see folks embracing young loves!
You are only young once, but you can be immature forever.
Testing comments like you asked :)
I've always been more of a dirt bike person myself. Riding through the mountains on old logging roads is great! Plus you're not going fast enough (usually) to get serious road rash.
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