Our Motorcycle Family - Part 1

At some point during my childhood dad became heavily into motorcycles. Actually, he was always a car and motorcycle guy. As a stereotypical rebellious teenager, he was a guy that grew up in the era when the hot setup was transplanting a Cadillac V8 into an old Ford and painting it primer-black. He had a love for anything like that.

Dad giving the family a ride

In those days there weren't too many varieties of motorcycles available. There was, of course, Harley-Davidson, and there were the British bikes too--like BSA, Triumph, Norton, Matchless, and others. All of these were great bikes but were all expensive. At least to a family our size it was. They were also all fairly big and unwieldy to smaller, more inexperienced riders. It was no wonder then that when the invasion of new, small, Japanese motorcycles hit the U.S. he was all over it. From the time he bought his first full-size Honda 50 we always had motorcycles around. He started a little business on the side that he used to be able buy his own parts at wholesale. All the things that he went through often, like gaskets, cables, and other this were made a lot more affordable to him that way. He also did a lot of wheeling and dealing on bikes at were repairable, fixing them and either selling them or keeping them for our own family enjoyment. Small Hondas became his new hobby.

Dad's pride and joy Honda S90

His personal dirt bike was a Honda S90, lovingly modified to outperform most any other one of its size. I remember him sitting in his chair watching TV while hand-polishing engine internals. He even went so far as to send the camshaft to a small company in California after finding out that they could put a custom race grind on it. It was not unusual for him to have his motorcycle in the house while he worked on it.

We were able to ride a lot back then.  The only people that wore helmets in those days were racers.  There were no advocacy groups bent on trying to tell the public what was best for them. With no helmets and not much in the way of laws we could go riding up and down the streets if we wanted--license or not.  At least in Algona we could. We were fortunate that we didn't have to though.  We had a field on our property, and it became a motorcycle track.  I started out riding an old Honda 55 that my dad had.  With a bike that size I didn't need anyone to help me get going.  While it was a full-sized motorcycle, it had a step-through design, so it was the "girls bike" equivalent of a motorcycle.  It was my stepping stone to riding a real motorcycle.