It was 1974 when my cousin barreled into dad's circular drive and skidded to a stop on 432 pounds of booming black badass, good for a buck and a quarter on a cool day with a tailwind: a Norton 850 Commando, last and greatest dinosaur to stomp out of Druidic folklore, hunting for Harleys and scaring the womenfolk, dripping with primordial chrome. It was all Carl could do to boot that beast, but the roar it made convinced me that my grandma was right about everything except them debbil motorcycles. I wanted that. It was the coolest thing ever.
Bikes became my alternative homework. I sketched dirtbikes with 17-inch suspension in algebra, and spent part of every lunch hour wearing out the library's bike mags. By these one-way correspondence courses I studied motorhead philosophy under Dr. Allan Girdler, racing Italian from Signor Cook Neilson and the home economics of fried-egg sandwiches from Prof. (emeritus) Ed Hertfelder.
Magazine dreams aside, I came late to the party, finally learning the clutch-throttle dance at the wizened age of 13 on a Harley (Aermacchi) 250 Sprint. It came with all the options: ribbed front tire, knobby rear and rubber-mounted handlebar. Periodically, it would backfire on startup and blow its muffler tip across the garage, which is how I chipped my dad's ankle that day. That's my story, anyway.
My first traffic ticket came at age 14, sneaking a ride to freshman two-a-days on a Yamaha DT175. Two years later, its hairy-nippled cousin, my notorious IT175, administered a Monocross bite in the ass and tore my left leg mostly off. For years I kept a sandwich bag full of stainless orthopedic hardware, determined to recycle my tibia plate into a beer opener. It's probably around here somewhere, maybe under the Whitworth wrenches behind the 6-volt battery charger, or under that pile of questionable nitrogen cartridges
My mom, expressing sharp interest in the survival of her progeny, marched me into Langlitz Leathers for a "Christmas and birthday" present the year I turned 16. The jacket they fitted me for traveled with me for 23 years. After crashing on it four times and growing a prosperous midlife midriff, I passed the brown bomber to my little brother in fine working order. I have another one now, and it may be my last. Or not.
By my senior year, I was practicing wheelies on a red 1978 RD400 (gawd, but I loved them two-smokers!) with DG expansion chambers dented on their bottoms from landing street jumps on Cornell Boulevard. My buddy Bill bought a blue RD just like mine, and we took many an informal sabbatical from academic endeavors to pursue girls, various contraband (what isn't contraband to a 17-year-old?) and potential victims on Hondas. We were convinced you beat the nicest people on a Honda, but I hear they're actually pretty fast now. And they don't seize hard after the Autolube line comes adrift, 200 miles from home in a leather-loading NW thunderstorm.
The Cool GuysTM at my high school drove hopped-up Camaros, but no matter how much got spent on paint and blowers, those were still Chevys. Big, fat things that worked as well static as moving. The definition of The Edge is that you fall off when you stop paying attention. No car has ever been that kind of test. What good is a vehicle too stupid to kill you when you're drunk?
My best and dumbest moments have mostly been on bikes. Because of that, motorcycles remain part of home, no matter where I am in the world: an international language, a brain-breeze respite, a core competency that-like combat shooting or fire-eating-raises eyebrows and starts the best (or dumbest) conversations.