Full Circle

Twenty years ago I sold my old 1978 Honda Hawk CB400A motorcycle.

Lindsay and I with my new motorcycle

This week I bought a 1978 CB400A Honda motorcycle. It's Hondamatic!

I stumbled across it on Craigslist two weeks ago. It was for sale in a town 10 miles north of here as the crow flies. Of course, since the logging roads are closed with gates, actually driving there takes the better part of two hours.

Yet the price was right - about half what similar bikes were going for -- and it was running. I told Amy and she said yes.

It has cosmetic damage and a Vetter Windjammer faring. Not sure I'll keep the faring, but if I take it off I'll have to track down the parts to reconstruct the front light bucket and turn signals. We'll see how ambitious I get this winter. In the meantime, it sits in my garage. Sometimes, I go out and just look at it to make sure it's real. It's been a long time coming.

Lindsay has dibs on it .... someday

It's Hondamatic

Honda Hawk - Two Gears, 400 cc - FUN

It had been a hard year. I had quit college in 1988, hooked up with the Girlfriend From Hell and made bad decision after bad decision. By November I was in Tacoma, staying in a friend's apartment while I looked for work as a recording engineer. There were no jobs and no jobs that paid. Finally, I was at an interview at Ironwood Studios when the guy interviewing me set me straight.

"First," he said. "You'll never get a job as recording engineer that pays." There were tons of kids living in their basements willing to work for free just to be around the music. They'd push brooms and learn the business from the inside. My trade school knowledge was fine, but the kid who hung out night after night would eventually get the nod. "Second," he said. "Go back to college. Get a degree in anything, it doesn't matter. A four year college degree shows you can stick with something for four years. It will give you an advantage in every job interview and no one will ask you what your degree is in."

Back at my buddy John's apartment, I told him and his roommate about what the guy at Ironwood had said. His roommate Pete jumped in. "Go back to college," he said. "College is the only place where you can bee poor and still have fun."

That was it. I drove from Tacoma straight over to WSU and signed up for classes scheduled to start in January. I crashed on a friends couch for a few days and got a crappy apartment. I was back. WSU called it a "leave of absence" since I only missed only one semester.

Money was tight. I took a bunch of jobs to pay the bills and put tuition on my credit card hoping that financial aid would pay things back. Eventually, I got a check and paid my bills. I had about $500 leftover.

This bike is identical to mine - right down to the engine guard.

I had hung out at motorcycle shops for years. I would sit on bikes, ask questions.  I think I stopped into Laplante Cycle on the way to My Office bar. Inside was the new bikes -- A Transalp, Pacific Coast, GB500 -- cool stuff,  but way out of my price range. Out front stood a line of old bikes. It was orange, and as I threw a leg over, the dealer came out and said "It's an automatic."

An automatic motorcycle? I'd never heard of such a thing. He got the key and I took it for a ride. It was April, sunny and the road had a silver glare to it that I still remember. I had never ridden a real motorcycle and I was scared as hell, but this was a blast. This was a sign that 1989 was going to be a better year. That I had turned it around.

I wrote him a check and picked up a Nolan helmet and rode the thing home. It was Awesome!

I had buddies at the newspaper who were motorcycle riders. They made fun of my "scooter" but I had a blast on that thing. It had a crack in the front fender that rattled at speed and it leaked oil from some unknown place. Other than that it started and ran like a dream.

At the end of the school year, I borrowed my Step Father's truck and took it home. That summer I worked for Community Action Program in The Dalles. Rode it to work just about every day. The Gorge roads were perfect for motorcycles, but the winds buffeted the light bike around. I had a rubber goldfish keychain. I wore cowboy boots. I gave girls rides around town and through the hills above Lyle.

Best.
Summer.
Ever.

This orange bike looks exactly like my Honda Hawk

The next year at WSU I rode my bike until the now came, then stored it out back. At the end of the school year my big plan was to go up to Alaska and work in the Cannery. Make a bunch of money for school and for a new motorcycle. I had my sights set on a Harley 883 Hugger.

To get to Alaska, I had to pay my own airfare. That meant coming up with cash at the end of the school year. So I sold my Honda -- I still cringe just writing it -- sold it to a roommate who was graduating.

Alaska turned out to be a bust. I barely made enough to return to school. None was leftover for motorcycle payments. My first motorcycle, turned out to be my last.

That was 1990 - twenty years ago.

First Times

My first time with a motorcycle and I got my finger's burned.
It was back in Turnersville, NJ and I was about eight years old. Jimmy Davys was a friend of my dads who came by on his motorcycle. If I remember right, it was a White AMF Harley. It was cool. He was cool in a 1970s kind of way. He was back from Viet Nam, wearing a white wifebeater and no helmet. I was told to stay away from the bike, but touched the tailpipe and burned my fingers. Got blisters and everything.

I was a big Evel Knievel fan back then, and my man rode a Harley scrambler. (check out this cool inforgraphic about EK) I had the wind up stunt cycle of my own that I jumped over the dirt Grand Canyons in the back yard.

My dad stoked my motorcycle dreams by getting me a Roadmaster bike with shocks and motorcycle seat.
 I was cool. The bike weighed a ton and looked and rode like hell when the BMX bikes came out a few years later, but for awhile, I was the king of the neighborhood. We jumped the heck out of that thing on the mounds of dirt between the houses.

Bikes have been substitutes for motorcycles for generations. I know I wasn't the first to pretend that there was a motor powering my lead weight bike instead of my little legs.

My brother and sister's friends all had dirt bikes when we moved to Washington State. It was the late 70s and  the motocross dudes were the demigods of Klickitat county.

My first time on a motorized two-wheeler was on a scooter. A Honda Cub to be exact. The Cub and Supercub (and later the Passport) was the vehicle that made the Honda corperation. They are still making them and at 60 million and counting, it is the most mass-produced motorized vehicle in the world.

My stepfather - Lester - bought the Honda Passport in 1982 for my mom. We were living in The Dalles and Lester was a impulse buyer. He had just bought a CB900 for himself and he wanted to teach her to ride. She hated motorcycles.

On her first lesson, we took the Honda up to the parking lot of the nearby church. She went round and round on the scooter and was doing pretty good until he told her to shift into second. It's an auto transmission, so shifting is easy, but it gave her a little jolt. She tensed up and thereby squeezed the throttle. She started going round and round like a 78 record on 45, unable to stop until she finally went flying off and into the bushes.

That was the last time she ever rode it. My brother Chuck and I loved the thing and rode it all over town. It was a blast and I wish I still had it. Would love to get a used one, or even by a new Symba -- which is a brand new Cub built by a company in Taiwan that used to make them. (See TeamSymba for more. )

I'm still a sucker for Hondas and Harleys and all this lead to the foundation of the my motorcycle dreams.

Welcome to the New ebbTIDE

Welcome to the ebbTIDE.

Years ago, when I was a journalist and editor of my own online magazine, I could collect the best writing of the week and comment on it. It was called the ebbTIDE. (during the first tech boom, you were required to use either bad spelling or random capitalization of some sort for any new product.)

Of course, that was back in the days before Google news and news aggregators. My job has essentially been replaced by robots.

So for the past several years, I've used ebbTIDE to post essays and lyrics that I write and a few notes here and there. However, increasingly I find myself linking to articles I find interesting that I want to share -- old habits die hard.

So I'm bringing back the ebbTIDE news collection. There is going to be a lot going on in the next four years and we all need help cutting through the garbage to get to the facts and impacts to our daily lives.