There was a boy once. In the time-stained manly tradition, he learned to gun it down public roads at age 13, trying to concentrate through the sound of his dad yelling, "Daggone it, quit killing it" from the side of their shuddering, sputtering Harley-Davidson Sprint.
Once underway, punching through the gears proved eminently easier than the launch itself. A dozen seconds after clutch drop, that helmetless boy was steaming 75 knots up the Evergreen Parkway with tear-drenched ears, wondering what to do next.
By the time he'd figured out how to stop (some) and turn (sorta), his father had chased him down in their dented Chevy Sportvan Beauville, lights and horn going like some demented highway patrol junkman. Pulled over with the engine killed again, the kid shivered like he'd just finished his first fight.
My first words on motorcycling were, "Can I ride it home, Dad?"
There was a girl once who wanted to ride. Finding a safety course, she squeaked through by one point on the first motorcycle she ever rode, a Team Oregon loaner.
She didn't ask to ride it home. Oure Faire Rider found an experienced rider's list on the Intertoobz where she got gang-FAQed into oblivion. Say what you will about motorcyclists, we serve generous helpings of lore. Sifting through data for women, beginners and short riders, she determined to spend a tidy sum on quality gear-and start on a lesser bike.
She also found Joy, a mentor who whispered down the wires of freedoms still unexplored and materialized one day on her own learner, a well-thrashed 1981 Kawasaki KZ440. Like some Kobe-birthed Skin Horse, that little hoopty had most of its chrome loved off, but its valves were on spec and the oil topped off clean.
Our gallant lass declined a neighborhood ride.
"Go ahead," inveigled the pusher-woman. "I've dropped it. Not like it hasn't been around the block before."
Her first moto cost that girl $750, a car ride home and one encumbrance: "Someday, sell it to another woman learning to ride. That's KZ's purpose."
On the way home, Joy nudged our heroine into a bike shop visit, helped her score proper gear at good prices, brandished her own riding club discount to lighten the hit on a single mom's credit card, then disappeared back into the ebb and flow of the riding world.
The tenderfoot apprenticed herself to parking lot practice, strafing lampposts and planter beds until that hand-me-down Kwacker responded like wings on her lifted Lady Daytona boots. She shunned townie traffic to steeplechase over blue-gray Willamette Valley highways, faster and smoother by the day. When she first grazed a peg in an uphill left-hander, it felt Zen-like as a proper trigger squeeze.
By the time I met Joy's protg, she had passed KZ along and graduated to Sal, a voluptuous Moto Guzzi Mille. Sal crouched, dragon-like, over a treasure pile of chrome vanadium sockets and a greasy wooden stick used for disciplining fork seals.
The Mille taught new lessons-endless Wopanese maintenance, mostly, but also the two best ways for purdy li'l gals to right foundered motorcycles: 1) Squat down, back-to-bike, and hoist with legs; or 2) snatch the damned thing off the ground before anyone sees it lying there.
On a sun-dappled river road, she danced with an older rider to the double-bass melody of her megaphones. Notwithstanding a 160-bhp ultrabike and the attention span of a caffeinated ferret, I wasn't bored. On another fine day I married that woman, and she hasn't bored me yet.
She bought a scorching yellow 2004 BMW F650GS named "Tweety" to slide around trails and gently foist on newbies. She also helped me find girl gear for my offsprout.
One autumn day, Daughtergirl borrowed Tweety to join me on a short loop. Scaling our vertiginous driveway, she executed a counterclockwise snap-doughnut, quickly followed by Recovery Technique 2.
It wasn't her first ride. Daughtergirl already owned a Honda CB400T Hawk with a slender Euro tank that hit reserve every 85 miles. She aced her Basic RiderCourse by riding "Hawklet" an hour down to the Tri-Cities MSF range, pre-endorsement. The nature vs. nurture question remains thus unresolved...
Five years older than its owner, Hawklet wasn't fast ever, but ticked along cheerfully, made Daughtergirl smile and unleashed her mordant streak.
When a rawboned teenager came on hard about his bad-azz Kawasaki Ninja 250, Daughtergirl opened her baby blues wide. Softly, she breathed, "But ... mine's bigger."
Like Tweety and KZ before it, Hawklet came along from another woman rider, a certified flight instructor and cowboy action shooter who's not boring, either. Nor is Daughtergirl destined to dullness.
There once was a girl once, who wanted to ride. May there be many more...