A Life of Motorcycling …. by Tim Monroe

I’m no kid. I’m 49 years old. Yes that’s right, 49. No matter how much I deny it, I’m old. So why do I feel like a kid every time I swing a leg over a motorcycle?

Ever since my brother and I bought our first motorcycle at age 17, there have been scores of people in my life that have questioned why, exactly, do I ride motorcycles? The easy answer is “because it’s fun”. But after 32 years of riding, I’ve given this some thought and have come to the conclusion that there are many reasons why “its fun”. And its not just fun, it’s also good for me.

I’ll never forget that Mom cried for nearly 3 days after the purchase of our shiny used Honda SL125. She was sure her sons would be dead within a few days. Our more understanding father convinced her that we were good, responsible kids and that we would be fine. I think both our parents thought it was just a passing fad and that we’d forget all about motorcycles by the following summer.

Thirty two years, dozens of track days, thousands of weekend rides, and several cross-country trips later, its safe to say motorcycling will always be a part of our lives. But what is it about riding that is so intoxicating, so enjoyable, and so much of a rush?

I’m not an early riser most days. I abhor hearing the alarm go off at 6:30 A.M. five mornings a week. But I have no trouble getting out of bed that early, or earlier, when it’s a day to ride. In fact, I have trouble sleeping the night before, worried that I’ll sleep in too late and miss the prime riding time. It’s like I’m eight years old and its Christmas Eve. Living in Southern California, I’m fortunate enough to experience Christmas morning almost every week of the year.

One undeniable factor is adrenalin. T-shirts are full of slogans like “everyone dies, not everyone truly lives” and “life begins at 150 mph”. A percentage of humans gets a rush from high doses of adrenalin, probably harkening back to our caveman days. Back then we got a rush from chasing and killing our dinner. Today a few of us need illicit speed to get the same feeling. Of course, one could argue that this is a fairly common human phenomena. There’s always a line for Space Mountain, you know.

Another factor is what I’ll call the Zen factor. Robert Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a huge seller, and for good reason. Though the book had little to do with actual motorcycle maintenance, its easy to draw a connection between motorcycles and a Zen-like feeling that many riders describe.

If I haven’t ridden for more than a week, and I’m aimlessly bouncing around the house, my wife will tell me “why don’t you go for a ride?”. She’s a good wife, and knows what I need. In the rest of my life I’m always busy with seemingly hundreds of different details every day. My mind needs frequent vacations from everyday life. Riding provides that little mental vacation.

Riding a motorcycle, especially riding fast on a twisty road, will cause your mind to focus like no other activity I’ve experienced. Fatal consequences can quickly occur if you lose your focus. Rewards are just around the next perfectly executed turn, and when you get a bunch of them right its magic. If you get one horribly wrong you might have an unscheduled trip in an ambulance…or worse. Fortunately if you’re an experienced rider you probably get most of them right, and the few imperfect turns you make are still good enough to keep you on your side of the road.

NOT our idea of the proper use of a motorcycle

This intense focus, for me, temporarily forces every other thought out of my mind. The longer I do it, the more “pure” my thinking becomes. And the more relaxed I feel. Like any other strenuous activity, too much can lead to fatigue and poor performance. But with a few breaks to swap stories with your buddies, you can make get in more than enough hours of “meditation” to keep your mind healthy until the next ride.

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but I also like the look of being a motorcycle rider. Some people (quite a few, actually) display their motorcycle hobby in the form of a black leather vest, chaps, and a not-quite-DOT-legal beanie helmet. If that works for you, more power to you. Others show their dedication to riding with Aerostich suits and flip-up helmets. My personal motorcycling statement a full face helmet, a one piece, rather colorful leather suit, and roadrace style boots and gloves. This outfit gives me a bit of protection, probably enough to save my skin in a low speed getoff if it doesn’t involve a car or a guard rail. But it also makes me feel like a bit of a “badass”.

I’m a slightly overweight, old white guy, with a hairline noticeably higher than it was a few years ago. But when I don my bright leathers, helmet, boots and gloves, and hop on my shiny fast repli-racer sportbike, I’m a different person. I’m a daredevil, a fearless lawbreaker that’s not afraid to get in your face, and I don’t care what you think about me. Well, that’s the image I hope to project, anyway. A badass, in other words.

I know I’m not much different than all those accountants and dentists who stop shaving on Friday and slip into bad-boy chopper guy mode on Saturday. I’m OK with that. I’m happy in the knowledge that I actually know how to ride a bike, and that for me the ride is the destination. No parking-lot jewelry for this boy.

There’s an undeniable social aspect of motorcycling. The male bonding ritual is a big part of riding, and for many folks is the main reason for owning a motorcycle. I enjoy chatting with my riding buddies, but only to a degree. After a while I get the itch to bond with my mechanical buddy instead.

With apologies to Queen, here’s my version of “I’m In Love With My Bike”.

“The machine of a dream, such a clean machine.
With the pistons a pumpin’, and the brake rotors gleam.
When I’m holding your bars,
Keep away from them cars,
When my hands on a grease gun,
Oh it’s like a disease son,
I’m in love with my bike, gotta feel for my ride on two wheels,
Get a grip on my boy racer helmet,
Such a thrill when the footpegs scrape.

Told my girl I just had to forget her,
Rather buy me a new carburetor,
So she made tracks sayin’ this is the end now,
Bikes don’t talk back they’re just two wheeled friends now”

Everything about motorcycle riding turns me on. Walk out to the garage and just look at the damn thing, fer chrissakes! It’s a sexy beast parked there. My pulse quickens at the sight of my little 675cc jewel. Chain oiled? Tire pressure checked? Engine oil and brake fluid level checked? Yes, yes and yes.

Fire up the bike and listen to the exhaust. Blip the throttle just to hear the quickly rising and falling notes. Clutch in, left toe pushes down, she clicks into gear. Execute a smooth takeoff, then try for as many seamless upshifts and downshifts as you can for the rest of the day. Throw in lots of smooth braking and turns. Make it look effortless to observers in cars. I know they’re all the rage, but who really needs a slipper clutch? Not me. My slipper clutch is my left hand, with smooth, rev-matching downshifts carefully practiced thousands of times. Maybe millions. Repeat often.

Riding is the reward, the rest of the stuff is just icing on the cake.

A recent article by Fred Rau in Friction Zone magazine explores the correlation between riding motorcycles and flying aircraft. Fred says a pilot is 12 times more likely to be a motorcycle rider than an average person, and that a U.S. Marine pilot’s number one cause of injuries was due to motorcycle accidents.

In the back of my mind I’ve always suspected that many pilots were also riders.

Heck, just check out Tom Cruise riding a Kawasaki ZX-10 in Top Gun for proof. No helmet, of course, just cool Ray-Bans and lots of wind in the hair. Or how about Richard Gere’s Navy-pilot-in-training character, riding a vintage Triumph around when not making time with Debra Winger. Clearly there’s something to this.

Everybody knows Peter Egan, right? Yup, Pete’s a pilot.

Back in my college days, learning to pilot planes and work on them too, there were lots of bikes parked at the airport. Well, at least during the six months of the year when the central Illinois weather cooperated. Half of the mechanics and flight instructors rode bikes, and of course I did too. I caught lots of grief from the older, Gold-Winger mechanics when I showed up on my Kawi 350 triple- sans baffles of course. Hey, I was 19, what can I say?

There are lots of similarities between riding bikes and flying planes. Focus. Preparation. Learning curve. Three-dimensional sensations. Speed! Exhilaration! Turning and burning! Banking and cranking!
OK, I digress.

Look through your turn. Lean into it. Tilting the horizon. Pilots and riders all experience these. Being closer to the ground, the sensation of speed is obviously greater on your Yamaha R1 or Ducati Monster, but it can easily be compared to the experience of performing aerobatics in a Pitts Special or Citabria.

Focus is equally important for both machines if you want to get home alive. Pilots and riders both report a “zen-like” experience of intense focus while flying along, on the ground or in the air. Both mode of transport are relatively dangerous, compared to more mundane and popular forms of travel such as cars and airlines. If it wasn’t a challenge, it wouldn’t be quite so rewarding.

I haven’t taken the left seat of an aircraft in several years, but the sensations of piloting a plane never leave. The feeling of greasing one onto the runway is just as rewarding as nailing that apex with my knee strafing the asphalt.

How many of you reading this are pilots? Ever think about getting your private pilot license? If you are an experienced motorcycle pilot, you owe it to yourself to at least take an introductory flight at your local small airport. Cessna and other aircraft makers offer low-cost flights for people just like you. Warning- you could become addicted.

Bikehenge? Suzuki Ranch? (get it?)

Motorcyclist magazine has featured “The Bike That Changed My Life” in recent issues, and the magazine’s Brian Catterson recently editorialized about some of the bikes that changed his life. Perhaps to satisfy his ample ego, or maybe just to fill up space, Catterson featured not one but five bikes that were significant in his life.

Naturally I started thinking about the bikes that “changed my life”. The term “changed my life” is probably a bit strong, but I suppose that in a subtle, Zen-like way, you could say my life was changed by a few of the
many bikes I’ve owned.

As is so often the case, dear old Dad is at least partly to blame for my, and my brother’s, motorcycle obsession. At the age of 9 or 10 Dad brought home a scrappy little Tecumseh powered hardtail minibike. Did I say hardtail? Make that no suspension at all, other than letting some air out of the slick, rock-hard, lawn-mower refugee tires. Ah, but motorcycle mania had settled into our impressionable little brains, never to leave.

The bike I remember most fondly, and my first street-legal ride, was a 1972 Honda SL125, purchased used when my twin brother and I were 16. Mom was none too happy about it, of course, but our good father brought home the little enduro anyway, in the back of the family Torino Squire Wagon. Looking at SL125’s nowadays brings a huge smile, and a laugh. That bike seemed huge, powerful, and barely controllable back in my teenage years. Nine ginormous horsepower screaming down the road. Now, after 30-plus years of riding streetbikes, the little SL seems like a toy, something more suited for a pit-bike. Back in the day we were the only kids in school with a motorcycle, and I must confess to a small James Dean complex. The SL125 saw duty riding to school, drag racing against a neighbor’s Hodaka 100, and “off-roading” in vacant lots behind factories. Ignorance was truly bliss.

Another memorable motorcycle was the Kawasaki 350 S2 triple two-stroke that carried me through college. Though I also had two cars at the time (unique among full-time college students in those days) the smokin’ Kawi provided rapid, attention-grabbing transportation from April to November around the University of Illinois campus. Being
on a bologna and mac-and-cheese budget, the only modifications I could afford were some chain lube and the removal of the three exhaust baffles. Oh yes! I had to push that bike a block from home before starting it in the morning, to avoid nasty neighborly yelling. On the throttle those unmuffled pipes provided an unforgettable
soundtrack to my travels. No bike has made me smile more.

The last bike that “changed my life” was a 1992 Honda CBR600F2. Screaming red with white stripes, this baby was the first bike that taught me my riding skills were no match for what I was riding. Despite years of riding experience, the F2’s handling inspired me to hone my skills with training and track days.

Like most veteran riders, I could go on and on about each and every bike I’ve owned, extolling its virtues and probably forgetting its faults. There was the Ninja 900 that seemed like it steered by telepathy. The Honda Nighthawk 750 that reliably carried me around much of the U.S. The Suzuki GS1000S that scared me silly with its amazing acceleration. And the SV650 that just does everything so well. But the diminutive SL125, the oily Kawasaki 350 triple, and the red Honda 600 stand out above the rest.

So, what bikes changed your life?

Doesn’t she look like the type you’d like to take home to meet your folks? Assuming you could catch her, of course.