Motorcycles I Have Loved

With respect to author Lilly Brooks-Dalton who wrote an excellent book by a similar name.

There is something about motorcycles that us riders come to feel that they have a life of their own. They don’t of course, they are just steel and aluminum and rubber. It is just the place they hold in our hearts that gives them a soul.

The human imagination is a wonderful thing. Most of the time anyway. It can also be frightening. Sometimes we tend to apply personalities to inanimate objects so we can feel more connected to them.

I’d already been riding for two years when at the ripe old age of seventeen I got my first Harley. For some reason, more so than any of the other motorcycles, it gave me a sense of freedom and somehow an illusion of maturity.

Like I said that was an illusion, but it didn’t stop me from charging off into a life of adventure for the next seven years. That first Harley, a 1951 Panhead in the original rigid frame, was a classic early 60’s chopper; meaning chopped down from its former self, taking away everything that wasn’t needed.

It had a ‘suicide’ foot clutch and a hand shifter off the transmission we called a ‘jockey’ shift. By calling it early 60’s I mean it was pretty basic. Not a lot of chrome and it had a short front end, which was soon was transformed into a ‘late 60’s’ chopper with a long front end.

The 1951 Harley-Davidson Panhead (not mine)

Like the long hair of the time, it had to be in style. Safety and rideability be damned.

I started hanging around older guys riding the same kind of bikes, some of them twice my age or more, but they accepted me as one of them because of the bike. Which all helped to enhance my illusion of maturity.

The fact that I could grow a beard at seventeen didn’t hurt either, I was able to go into bars with them and not even get carded. Or maybe the bartenders were just afraid to ask.

That first Harley changed my life, but alas… I let it go for a new love. I betrayed her and sold her to buy a brand new 1973 Harley Davidson Shovelhead motor from the Harley dealer in Fullerton, California for $735.

With a rare 1957 ‘straight-leg’ rigid frame, I built the perfect chopper from the ground up. Paying special attention to reliability over speed. Every year we would go for long multi-state rides, and I didn’t want to be the guy who broke down, or who’s bike wouldn’t start. She never let me down.

Sadly, I eventually turned my back on her too. Sometimes when you love something you have to let it go. I sold her for money to buy a stake for a new life in Alaska where I thought I would get rich working on the pipeline. It was like selling a part of my body, one of my limbs. But I had to move forward and as much as I hated to, leaving things by the wayside as I pressed onward seemed the only way.

Over the years my love affairs transferred to airplanes. Some I owned, but most I got paid to fly. A form of prostitution you might say. The personal attachments got lost as life flew by.

With my two loves in the ‘70s

Eventually I came back to motorcycles. They had lingered in the back of my mind like old girlfriends and finally fought their way to the surface.

They were Harleys of course, but most were nothing but brief affairs, until finally falling in love again with an Ultima Chopper that whispered seductively in my ear, pulling me back to my youth. Promising the past was still there. All you had to do was reach out and grasp it, she said.

Riding her brought back the old days of looking radical and cool, people staring and pointing. They never realized that the tough guy on the chopper was actually an old man until you stopped at a gas station and the helmet came off.

All of the illusion of freedom came rushing back as we rode off into the two-lane roads of America’s past. Revisiting the small towns and a simpler way of life. I made her famous by writing the book Against the Wind about our solo trip in 2021. She is, after all, the star and enjoys the attention. And like my bikes of old, she never let me down.

Motorcycles leave tire tracks on your heart. I will try not to let this one go. But sometimes when you love something, you have no choice.