Back in the middle sixties, my dear Daddy bought a plot of land a couple of miles north-west of Guelph and built our very first new house. Quite an accomplishment for DP's barely ten years into their new lives in the new country.
I wasn't yet into my teens, but I was highly attracted to all things loud and fast and motorized. The Andrews boys around the corner ran a '58 Chevy on the local dirt track, and they had their test 'n tune days on the gravel road in front of our new house. Needless to say, they were my idols.
I made a deal with Dad. If I carved a little circle through the scrub brush that covered our ten acres, he'd buy me an old beater, something that in this era and in these parts would be known as a "field car," and I would henceforth be free to hone my roundy-round chops to my heart's content.
Look out Pearson and Yarborough and Petty! Here comes Neumann!
Much to my father's surprise, I actually succeeded in carving out that circle. With an axe. It would have been maybe a really short eighth miler. Nevertheless, I'd built the track. So I went to Dad and reminded him of the other part of the deal.
Here's why you should get every deal in writing, even when it's with your Dad. He had utterly no memory of our deal to provide the race car if I provided the race track. This went back and forth for months until we struck a compromise; he bought me a motorcycle instead.
The motorcycle he bought me was an old Suzuki 80 street bike that he got from a workmate for forty bucks. It had but one mechanical flaw; it was forever stuck in second gear.
Even on my significantly less than one eighth mile track, second gear didn't cut it. So I abandoned my track and fashioned a new one around Mom's kitchen garden. It was maybe fifty by a hundred feet, and you got perfect circumlocutions without needing anything other than second gear!
That's where I honed my flat-track finesse. I'd circle that garden for hours on end with the back wheel hanging out and my left foot on the ground. No shifting required when you've only got second!
That Suzi paved the way to bikes on which the transmission actually worked. I went through a series of small-bore dirt-bikes till I landed a 175 Bultaco.
The Bultaco had the gears and brakes on the opposite side of where the Japanese bikes had them, a fact that wreaked havoc on the raspberry patch of Bruce Dickinson's mom the first time I took it for a test drive. Bruce was the school pal I was buying the Bultaco from. His mom was not impressed.
I graduated from the Bultaco to a Honda three-wheeler I got at Zdeno Cycle in Guelph. I had one of the first ever sold in Canada.
Could I ever do tricks on that little monster! I could side-wheelie for miles at a time. I could keep the front in the air for miles at a time. One of my favourite memories was when I'd line up my four younger siblings and jump over them, Knievel style!
Nobody ever got hurt, just for the record.
Alas, I hit the ripe age of 16 and it was all cars after that. Flat-tracking around Mom's garden had nothing on burying the speedometer on a 440 cubic inch Chrysler.
Oddly enough, just as I was getting out of motorcycles, my younger brother "the tree guy" was getting into them. His first ride was a 350 Honda. Then he was up to a 750, which I remember taking well over a 100mph.
Without a helmet.
My glasses blew off in the wind.
He's riding a 1200 sport twin today, commuting back and forth to work.
So I was away from motorcycles for forty years or so, till I picked up that 500 Ninja on the cusp of 60. Not sure where to take things from here. I take it for short runs around the neighbourhood once in awhile, but I don't feel I'm ready for the highway.
Where to from here?
Gonna buy a helmet tomorrow.
Showing posts with label Honda Elsinore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Honda Elsinore. Show all posts
Friday, May 5, 2017
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Perry's pool party
The above post got me started down memory lane...
My pal Perry lived out by the airport. His folks had a really swank place out there. Splendid grounds, and a lovely pool.
Perry's folks travelled a fair bit, leaving young Perry in charge of the place. Perry was a dope peddler of some renown, and often hosted lavish parties when his parents were out of town.
On one such occasion Perry was showing off his new Honda Elsinore, and for some reason the talk went round to "bet ya couldn't clear the pool."
Well, Perry was a fellow who loved a challenge. We quickly improvised a ramp and Perry flew that Elsinore the width of the pool like nothing.
"Dude, I could do that on my bicycle... that's nothing! But can you do the length?"
We rig the ramp so it connects to the diving board. Perry's gonna run off the end of the board and sail the 48 feet clear to the other end!
Perry had a great source of what was called "LSD 25" at the time. Looked like Aspirins. The cleanest most potent acid I've ever encountered before or since. That shit can mess up your perceptions.
I don't know what Perry was seeing when he launched his leap, but here's what I saw; Elsinore approaches ramp at high speed on back wheel.
Elsinore stops at foot of ramp.
Elsinore rears up on back wheel, heads up ramp, goes airborne, and makes big splash just off the end of the board.
Applause all round!
More applause as Perry, in motocross leather jacket, motocross boots, and swim shorts, surfaces and flails his way to the edge of the pool.
Which left us with a 250 Elsinore at the bottom of the pool and a gasoline slick forming on the surface.
And Perry's folks due home in the morning.
After a bout of brainstorming it was decided that we would use the lawn tractor to pull the bike out of the pool.
I located a tow strap and fired up the Massey Ferguson lawn tractor. Wheeled 'er round, arse end towards the waters edge, and backed up to the edge of the pool.
You had to be careful doing this on acid. Things aren't always what they seem... inch it back... inch it back... inch it back...
WHOA!!!!... Too late! There was a moment of lucidity as the tractor tipped into the pool. I was able to bail before we hit the bottom.
I still remember the round of applause I heard as I surfaced.
So now Perry had a 250 Honda Elsinore AND a lawn tractor at the bottom of the pool...
With his parents due home in a few hours.
I didn't stick around to see how that turned out.
My pal Perry lived out by the airport. His folks had a really swank place out there. Splendid grounds, and a lovely pool.
Perry's folks travelled a fair bit, leaving young Perry in charge of the place. Perry was a dope peddler of some renown, and often hosted lavish parties when his parents were out of town.
On one such occasion Perry was showing off his new Honda Elsinore, and for some reason the talk went round to "bet ya couldn't clear the pool."
Well, Perry was a fellow who loved a challenge. We quickly improvised a ramp and Perry flew that Elsinore the width of the pool like nothing.
"Dude, I could do that on my bicycle... that's nothing! But can you do the length?"
We rig the ramp so it connects to the diving board. Perry's gonna run off the end of the board and sail the 48 feet clear to the other end!
Perry had a great source of what was called "LSD 25" at the time. Looked like Aspirins. The cleanest most potent acid I've ever encountered before or since. That shit can mess up your perceptions.
I don't know what Perry was seeing when he launched his leap, but here's what I saw; Elsinore approaches ramp at high speed on back wheel.
Elsinore stops at foot of ramp.
Elsinore rears up on back wheel, heads up ramp, goes airborne, and makes big splash just off the end of the board.
Applause all round!
More applause as Perry, in motocross leather jacket, motocross boots, and swim shorts, surfaces and flails his way to the edge of the pool.
Which left us with a 250 Elsinore at the bottom of the pool and a gasoline slick forming on the surface.
And Perry's folks due home in the morning.
After a bout of brainstorming it was decided that we would use the lawn tractor to pull the bike out of the pool.
I located a tow strap and fired up the Massey Ferguson lawn tractor. Wheeled 'er round, arse end towards the waters edge, and backed up to the edge of the pool.
You had to be careful doing this on acid. Things aren't always what they seem... inch it back... inch it back... inch it back...
WHOA!!!!... Too late! There was a moment of lucidity as the tractor tipped into the pool. I was able to bail before we hit the bottom.
I still remember the round of applause I heard as I surfaced.
So now Perry had a 250 Honda Elsinore AND a lawn tractor at the bottom of the pool...
With his parents due home in a few hours.
I didn't stick around to see how that turned out.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Wheelies then and now
My old pal Barney had a 1969 Nova SS with a 375 horse 396 four speed and 456 gears out back. While I have to admit I never personally witnessed this, rumor around the Guelph street racing circuit back in the day was that this car would lift the front wheels on a 7000 rpm launch.
That Reinhart fellow with the '68 Mustang side-oiler used to lift the front wheels at launch. That's something I saw. Right there on the 86 Dragway.
But for the most part, wheelie land belonged to the gravel pit crowd. I know I used to be able to keep the front wheel of my Honda ATC in the air for miles. Used to be a master of the "side-wheelie" too. I could go from here to kingdom come with one back wheel in the air.
Mind you, with 90 cubic centimeters of pep, that wasn't nearly as exciting as Wild Willie Borsch keeping the left front off the pavement throughout a 160 mph run.
But back to the gravel pit. While I was tooling around back there with that ATC, there were some heavy-duty moto-cross guys sharing the dirt. The Honda three-wheeler was a bit of a novelty so quite often I'd have the opportunity to take the latest two-stroke moto-cross technology for a rip while the moto-cross guys tested out my ATC.
I remember when those bikes hit the power band you were doing a wheelie whether you wanted to or not. On one occasion I traded off for a ride on a 250 Honda Elsinore. We were racing around in the pits behind John's Supertest when one of the local land-owners came out to complain about the noise.
She was an elderly woman and I certainly wasn't interested in picking a fight with her, but as I pulled away I unexpectedly hit the power-band. Suddenly the front wheel is reaching for the sky and the back wheel is showering the old bat with gravel. That was enough to cause her son, who had been watching from a distance, to call the police with a bizarre complaint about drug-crazed bikers spraying his dear momma with dirt.
That was an afternoon that didn't end well, at least not right away. Turned out that the son was a bit of a super-car afficianado in his own right, and used to race stock cars down at the Flanboro Speedway. I talked this incident over with him years later and by God, had we known then what we knew now, my evening at the police station could have been avoided entirely.
But back to wheelies. My buddy Jim Lippert, may he rest in peace, was one of those old-school hot-rodders who could shoe-horn any motor into any vehicle and make it work. His last project before he passed on was putting a Cummins diesel from a Greyhound bus into a GMC pick-up truck.
Personally, I didn't see the point, but by God there were certain things that 600 foot/pounds of torque could do that your average GMC pick-up couldn't.
Like wheelies.
But Lippert had an even richer wheelie legacy. He used to run the auto shop at one of the local high schools. A few of the shop teachers around the area were getting into bragging about the race cars their students were building. They'd source an old muscle car, canvas the community for donations, and eventually sink twenty or thirty thousand dollars into some piece of crap that might turn a low 14.
They were like those would be street-racers who couldn't figure out why their 350 Nova was actually slower after they bolted on that 950 Holley three barrel. They'd mount a set of wheelie bars just in case that 14 second Nova, which for a couple of thousand dollars they'd just turned into a fifteen second car, was going to go over backwards at launch.
So Lippert gets this old Oldsmobile station wagon. Has his students spend a week mixing cement by hand and pouring it into the back. The old girl must have had two tons worth of concrete behind the back seat.
He takes it to the back parking lot at his school, puts the hydramatic 350 in neutral, sticks the pedal to the metal and dumps it into "drive".
The old girl lurches forward, front wheels about three feet off the ground, and she expires right there.
But he had the students record every second of this launch. What you saw in the pictures distributed around the School Board was this 1980 Oldsmobile station wagon doing a wheelie, and the caption that said "shop teacher builds nine-second racer from junkyard parts."
Sorry to let the cat out of the bag Jimmie!
That Reinhart fellow with the '68 Mustang side-oiler used to lift the front wheels at launch. That's something I saw. Right there on the 86 Dragway.
But for the most part, wheelie land belonged to the gravel pit crowd. I know I used to be able to keep the front wheel of my Honda ATC in the air for miles. Used to be a master of the "side-wheelie" too. I could go from here to kingdom come with one back wheel in the air.
Mind you, with 90 cubic centimeters of pep, that wasn't nearly as exciting as Wild Willie Borsch keeping the left front off the pavement throughout a 160 mph run.
But back to the gravel pit. While I was tooling around back there with that ATC, there were some heavy-duty moto-cross guys sharing the dirt. The Honda three-wheeler was a bit of a novelty so quite often I'd have the opportunity to take the latest two-stroke moto-cross technology for a rip while the moto-cross guys tested out my ATC.
I remember when those bikes hit the power band you were doing a wheelie whether you wanted to or not. On one occasion I traded off for a ride on a 250 Honda Elsinore. We were racing around in the pits behind John's Supertest when one of the local land-owners came out to complain about the noise.
She was an elderly woman and I certainly wasn't interested in picking a fight with her, but as I pulled away I unexpectedly hit the power-band. Suddenly the front wheel is reaching for the sky and the back wheel is showering the old bat with gravel. That was enough to cause her son, who had been watching from a distance, to call the police with a bizarre complaint about drug-crazed bikers spraying his dear momma with dirt.
That was an afternoon that didn't end well, at least not right away. Turned out that the son was a bit of a super-car afficianado in his own right, and used to race stock cars down at the Flanboro Speedway. I talked this incident over with him years later and by God, had we known then what we knew now, my evening at the police station could have been avoided entirely.
But back to wheelies. My buddy Jim Lippert, may he rest in peace, was one of those old-school hot-rodders who could shoe-horn any motor into any vehicle and make it work. His last project before he passed on was putting a Cummins diesel from a Greyhound bus into a GMC pick-up truck.
Personally, I didn't see the point, but by God there were certain things that 600 foot/pounds of torque could do that your average GMC pick-up couldn't.
Like wheelies.
But Lippert had an even richer wheelie legacy. He used to run the auto shop at one of the local high schools. A few of the shop teachers around the area were getting into bragging about the race cars their students were building. They'd source an old muscle car, canvas the community for donations, and eventually sink twenty or thirty thousand dollars into some piece of crap that might turn a low 14.
They were like those would be street-racers who couldn't figure out why their 350 Nova was actually slower after they bolted on that 950 Holley three barrel. They'd mount a set of wheelie bars just in case that 14 second Nova, which for a couple of thousand dollars they'd just turned into a fifteen second car, was going to go over backwards at launch.
So Lippert gets this old Oldsmobile station wagon. Has his students spend a week mixing cement by hand and pouring it into the back. The old girl must have had two tons worth of concrete behind the back seat.
He takes it to the back parking lot at his school, puts the hydramatic 350 in neutral, sticks the pedal to the metal and dumps it into "drive".
The old girl lurches forward, front wheels about three feet off the ground, and she expires right there.
But he had the students record every second of this launch. What you saw in the pictures distributed around the School Board was this 1980 Oldsmobile station wagon doing a wheelie, and the caption that said "shop teacher builds nine-second racer from junkyard parts."
Sorry to let the cat out of the bag Jimmie!
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