52 Years On Two Wheels

I can't seem to resist updating the blog once a year or so.  Motorcycle-wise, the '05 Kawasaki Mean Streak sits in the garage, idle and for sale.  It's replacement is a '98 Honda Valkyrie, a truly wonderful motorcycle even at 20 years old.  I never really got to feeling at home on the big Kaw but the Valkyrie suited me immediately.  The big, glorious and shiny Honda flat 6 engine is a wonder, as all Gold Wing engines are, and the cruiser style of the bike is classic framing of the gorgeous engine.  I like the big Valk very much and wish I'd have thought to try one about three or four bikes ago.

In other news, I got married at the end of 2016.  A good friend asked me early in that year "What are you looking for in a woman?"  I wistfully, or perhaps cynically replied "A woman who loves motorcycles, photography, dogs, and guns."   "Yeah" said my friend, "Good luck with THAT!"  And we both laughed.  Such women live with herds of unicorns in far off and exotic places and so can never be discovered.  But to my amazement such a woman wandered into my life; she saw my bird photographs on Facebook and was impressed enough to send me a private note.  We met up only to talk photography and she proved to be quite real -- and also young and pretty.  We were married 6 months later.  It would be grand to win the lottery, but finding Stina is much better.

Late in 2017 Stina signed up for and passed the MSF Basic Rider Course and a few months later bought her first bike, a 2003 Kawasaki 500 Ninja. The little Ninja wouldn't have been the bike I'd have chosen for her but she sat on countless machines and that's the one that rung her bell so that's the one she bought.  She is her own woman and while I kibitzed a good bit about what bike to buy, the final choice was all hers, as it should be.

So on we go towards 53 years on two wheels for me and 1 year on two wheels for her.  Life is good.

50 Years On Two Wheels

I stopped updating 40on2 back in 2014, ten years of rambling on here seemed like enough.  Never the less, the riding and bikes have continued so I thought I'd do a quick update.  The '74 BMW R90S is gone, sold to a collector in the eastern US.  The sporting riding position proved too much for my aging neck.  The replacement bike is a 2005 Kawasaki 1600 Mean Streak, my 50th motorcycle in 50 years of riding.  I always found them to be good looking machines so decided it was time to buy one. 

I'm not riding as much, some health issues and changing priorities have slowed me down but the bike does get ridden from time to time and that seems like enough these days.  More often I'm out doing photography now, it seems to fit where I'm at in life and has brought a very nice person into my life who just happens to like photography and motorcycles.  Still, I am riding, and that makes it fifty years on two wheels.  Who'd have guessed I'd make it this far?

Be well, ride safe.

Closed For Repairs

Time for some maintenance.  The R90S, the blog, or me?  Probably all three.  We all have high miles and are in need of some rejuvenation.

Silver Smoke Fountain of Youth

1974 BMW R90S in factory style "Silver Smoke" paint

on the road, 1974

You guys that pay attention to my ramblings might recall I bought an R90S new in late '73 when they first came out.  House of Yamaha / BMW in Santa Monica, CA got in two of them, I bought one and Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers comedy duo bought the other.  I was 22 years old, had a decent job working for UniFilter, and good credit. I was 22 years old living in So. California just about 10 miles from Mulholland Dr. and the Rock Store, and had a new BMW R90S under me.  It was a sweet moment in life.  The bike left eventually, as they tend to do in my life, but the fascination with the machine never did. I have a model of it, I have all the major magazine articles, I have the original sales brochure the dealer gave me in '73, and I have a lot of great memories.



After the Gold Wing left back in June I got it into my head that I should get another R90S, maybe recapture a bit of my youth and enjoy owning a now truly classic BMW.   Wonder of wonders I spotted one on Phoenix Craig's List a week or so after I started looking.  What were the odds?  They didn't build vast numbers of the 90S and 40 years on they don't just turn up in your town every week.  They are around, some very nice ones, too, but usually far away.

So I went to look at the 90S in Phoenix. The price was too high, the bike needed some stuff, and the owner did not seem real flexible.  My gut told me to walk away so I did but not without some regret.  One fellow on the R90S group on Facebook commented after I related that story "In two more years it will cost you twice as much." He may be right.   R90S values are climbing and pristine examples or museum quality restorations are bumping $20k.

So yesterday out of the blue I get an e-mail from the seller offering to lop $1000 off his asking price. I did the logical thing and wrote him back offering $500 less than that. We settled on $1250 off his original asking price. I met up with my buddy David and we went up to get the bike and I rode it home last night.

Then:

late 1973.  Life was good even if I wasn't smiling

Today:

2014.  Life is still good, maybe better.

I think the R90S has held up better than I have, it's become a true classic, I've merely become a little bit eccentric.  I could use some fresh paint and an overhaul but will have to rely solely on my charm to get me by.

The R90S cockpit, complete with quartz clock, was a revolution in 1974

This bike looks better in the pics than in person, it does have some cosmetic issues and some mechanical faults but nothing major. New shocks first, the ones on it are flat. The forks are off a later model and need to be changed out to be correct.  The odometer is kaput and that will be a little more problematic to resolve, I think.  Near as I can tell the bike has about 50k on it so the motor should be good for a while.   It rides very nice, I have no complaints, so I can wander around on it while I sort out the mechanical and cosmetic issues over time. The paint is near new and is very nice, not quite "correct" but close enough. The previous owner didn't have it pinstriped so that's on my list; the bike should have some simple gold pinstriping as they came that way from the factory.

Riding it home last night in the dark I had a lot of thoughts running through my head. I was making a mental list of the stuff that would need to be addressed even as I recalled riding my original 90S to Canada from SoCal in '74, to Colorado in '75, and doing 922 miles of twisting roads one Saturday in an old event called the California 1000.  I have lots of history with the 90S and racked up a lot of little stories. The bike means something to me, it's not just another bike like so many I've own.

I'm not clear how much I'll ride it, the riding position is still young and I am not, but I think the riding I do should be thoroughly enjoyable. I have no quibbles with the functions of the bike, some things are obviously 40 years old but nothing about it comes up short enough to spoil my fun.  The adventure continues...

The 10th Anniversary of 40on2

Gold Wing Sunset

Ten years ago today Forty Years On Two Wheels sprung to life from the flotsam and jetsam of motorcycle stories and thoughts rattling around in my head.   Something past 400 blog entries have been made, some of them good, and there are a handful of which I'm really proud.  I only rarely used anything but my own writing and photos; for good or ill I want the blog to be a reflection of who I am as a motorcycle enthusiast.

I am in my in my 48th year of riding and I confess that I'm getting a little burned out.  During the past several years bikes have come and gone from my garage, I believe in part because I thought another bike might buy me some new enthusiasm.   Out of that parade-of-bikes-through-my-garage situation I have discovered, as my friend Simon, over in the UK, wrote about himself at one point "Somewhere along the way I went from enthusiastic motorcyclist to motorcycle enthusiast."  I love nearly all things motorcycle, riding is only a part of that.  Simon stopped riding for a few years after a bad crash and shifted his focus to photography of bikes but he's been back for a year or three now, first on Triumph and now on one of those new Honda 750's with the dual clutch transmission.  Bike fever might go into remission but you're never really over it.

For what it's worth, I sold the Gold Wing a couple of weeks ago.  It seemed like the time to do that as the bike was sitting too much, only accumulating an additional 3000 miles in the eleven months I owned it.  My timing must have been right in deciding to sell the Wing because after only a week on Craig's List only one guy contacted me, came to look at it, brought a fat envelope of $100 bills, and rode the Wing away.

What's next for for me bike-wise after 48 years, and for Forty Years On Two Wheels after 10 years?  I dunno.  No rush.

Art, Individualism, Or Just Stupid?

I spend too much time on-line but at least a lot of it is spent on motorcycle sites.  As I look at what's being done in the custom world these days with so-called bobbers, rat bikes, or even cafe bikes,  I get the feeling that a lot of what's being feted out there in publications and custom bike blogs was never intended to be ridden, or not ridden any further than from its trailer to the bike show floor.  

Going way back to the '60s and '70s customized bikes started getting stupid with suspended frames swapped for hard tails, mile high sissy bars, and forks extended to the point that a bike couldn't make a continuous u-turn on a two lane road.   Giant ape hanger bars?  Look cool?  To a few.  To others it just looks stupid, like an accident waiting to happen.   

Yes, yes, I can hear people saying "Hey, it's their bike, they can do what they want with it!" To that I would agree, everyone has a right to self-expression and no one has the right to tell another person how to express themselves; I understand that.  I also understand that I have the right to call stupid impracticality what it is.  What people do in the privacy of their own garage is their business, how they parade around in public makes them fair game for criticism, if not laughter.

Seriously?  One slip and you're gelded.

That over done Wing above is no worse, nor less lacking in art, than some of the "customs" and "bobbers" that I'm seeing around the 'net.  Huge, impractical Firestone balloon front tires that would play havoc with steering, little tiny thin seats at steep angles that would give you hemorrhoids in 30 miles, are stupid.  They are not even esthetically pleasing to anyone with a genuine sense of taste and function born of experience.  I can understand a bike as art but I don't have much sympathy for bikes-as-art that are barely rideable or even unsafe.  A bike that doesn't work well has little meaning to me.  A motorcycle should still have some reasonable practicality and function left in it and not torture the rider or be outright dangerous to ride.

Same goes for the current fad in helmets.  Somehow, now to be cool you need to get some crappy old helmet from 1967, re-do the liner, and wear it, preferably with two days growth of beard on your angst ridden face, and also a flannel t-shirt, and low top sneakers or lace up Red Wing work boots.  Don't forget to have a pack of unfiltered cigarettes in your pocket, too.   I hate that look.  It's an affectation, a copying of motorcycle world past that never quite existed as it's imagined now.   It's not much different than dressing up as a character from a science fiction movie. Think of is as motorcycle cosplay.  Bikes and bike clothing moved on and riders got smart and moved on from the old days.   Helmets evolved for practical reasons like...oh...safety.  Wearing an old, refurb'd  helmet is stupid.   Want to ride in low top sneakers?  Your choice, but also stupid (If you're doing it because you have no money for boots, fine, try the Salvation Army thrift store).  If you're wearing your sneakers, battered metalflake helmet, jeans with rolled cuffs, and a flannel shirt so you like like some imaginary rider from the 1950s or 60s, you're just a hipster motorcycle poser and look stupid.

Having strip mined biker culture, HD moves on to hipsters.

Years ago I wrote a piece about the gawdawful Icon Skull jacket.  I didn't think motorcycle apparel could sink lower than that ridiculous piece but it has.  Barbour International, formerly an actual motorcycle clothing company of renown, has brought out a fake Steve McQueen jacket or several of them.  So what's the big deal?  We all like to think we might look just a little like the King of Cool if we just had the right gear, were handsome, and immensely talented.  

Barbour International has over 100 years in the rugged apparel business including motorcycle jackets

and they've drawn own their illustrious history to being you the Babour Steve McQueen MacGrain jacket (MacGrain?).   To help you look cool, to look just a little more like Steve, the jacket comes with fake rubber mud applied to it.  Yes, fake mud.  How desperate for an identity do you have to be to wear a jacket with fake mud on it when it's not Halloween?  I'm pretty sure any mud on McQueen's jackets got there honestly.   I don't believe in ghosts but if I did I'd be hoping McQueen would come back and haunt every moron that buys that joke of a jacket.  At the least, decent motorcyclists everywhere should laugh out loud at anyone they see wearing it, especially since the owner paid $835 for it.

Then Came Bronson

A replica of Jim Bronson's bike.

It's been pointed out to me by friends that I left an important movie off of my list of Motorcycle Movies You Should See.  That movie is Then Came Bronson.

Then Came Bronson (TV movie)

Then Came Bronson was a TV series from 1969-70.  The pilot was a made-for-TV movie by the same title.  The story revolved around "Jim Bronson," a newspaper reporter who finds life is offering more questions than answers so he quits his job and sets off from San Francisco on his Harley Sportster to see America and sort things out.  The laconic character of Jim Bronson was played by Michael Parks and is based on the real life person of Birney Jarvis.    Birney Jarvis was a reporter, a Hells Angel, a blue water sailor, boxer, and general larger than life character.  The adventures of Jim Bronson were in keeping with Birney's life.   More importantly, Then Came Bronson was probably the first movie or TV series to portray motorcycling in a reasonable light and Bronson's wanderings and philosophical bent motivated lots of young men to see the Harley Sportster oe motorcycles in general as a ticket to freedom.


Long about 1970 or so I did visit Oceanside Harley Davidson to buy a Sportster but it didn't go well.   I had the money but in those days Harley dealers were not the spit and polish places they are now, eager to drain your wallet and make you part of the Harley "lifestyle." Ugh.  In this case, the dealership was in a tin industrial building and the huge guy behind the counter looked like he opened beer bottles with what was left of his teeth.   "Whaddaya want, kid?"  he said leaning on the counter.  Skinny, 19 year old me replied "I want to buy a Sportster."  Now in those days the Sporster was still considered a hot bike, only the new Honda 750/4 pretended to be faster and the Harley people would assure you that it wasn't.   Mr. Greasy Hands at the counter turned to someone unseen in the back of the shop and said "Hah!  Hey Louie!  Da kid thinks he wants to buy a SPORTSTER!"   I don't know if I was intimidated or just didn't want to spend money where I wasn't welcome but I left and bought a new Suzuki T500 which in fact was surely a better machine than the old iron head Sportster.

I tried in 2003 to buy a Sportster, perhaps some latent seed from Then Came Bronson was still trying to germinate.  I visited Chester's Harley Davidson to buy one of the new Sportsters with the rubber mounted engine.  The clean, orderly, slightly ignorant sales guy quoted me full retail plus $1200 for set-up...and wouldn't budge on any of it, even got rude when I suggested $1200 to set up a bike like the Sportster was absurd.   So I left and bought a new Kawasaki 1600 Classic from Kelly's Kawasaki, surely a much nicer machine than the Sportster.   If nothing else I suppose the above stories in a small way illustrate the impression Then Came Bronson made on impressionable teenagers in 1969.

Some Fun With Old Photos

Above is the old Pinal County Court House, the main image from 1938, the Gold Wing image is my 2002 Gold Wing photographed there about 2008.   I've passed the court house countless times now and stopped periodically to photograph it alone or often with a bike in front of it.  It seemed like combining the pictures would be fun so I did.  I've seen it done around the 'net with various historic pictures so I thought I should try my hand.