I last wrote about how much motorcycles affect and drive me. I thought I’d share more details of some specific sensory experiences I had when riding at different times. The second day I had the Hodaka 125 (at 12 years old) I left the yard for the unknown eastern Tennessee woods of the trails behind my house. Dad spent the first day making me ride around the house until he was satisfied I could operate a clutch. I was ready to expand my boundaries now. We’d been told there were 300 plus acres of woodlands directly behind us to ride on and I’d had yet to explore them.
I was already feeling a prickly sense of excitement as I pulled the bike out of the garage. I kicked the starter hard to crank it up. The bike came to life with a gust of oily smoke and an explosive roar. My blood started rushing immediately. I was scared, excited and motivated all at once. I breathed in that oily cloud and connected the smell forever with joy and a sense of adventure. Something great was going to happen and I knew it – every time I kicked the starter.
The ground near the house was covered with grass, but as I worked my way down the hill from the house to the trails, I realized that the dirt trails were still slightly slick from recent rains. I had good knobby tires and I was young and athletic enough to balance the bike as it slid down the culvert running along the edge of the hill and onto the trails. As mentioned above, I’d just started learning how to use a clutch, but I don’t think I stalled out too many times as I got to the base of the trails and was about to head off into the woods.
As I climbed into the hilly trails and ditches, the stall outs came a little more frequently. The stall outs were good teachers for me though. I had to learn how to restart on a hill, sitting on a bike that was too tall and quite heavy. I was twelve. My growth spurt hadn’t yet hit, but was about to. The kick start was challenging. I was on a bike that I had to tiptoe on to begin with. I had to lean the heavy bike over, balance on one foot in the mud, get the kick start lever turned out and kick hard. I had to do that again and again until it turned over. Then the mixture of thrill and fear kicked in again each time the engine roared to life.
Each time I stalled out, my stomach would churn as I was alone in the woods on a strange bike that I hadn’t mastered at all yet. I felt vulnerable, as I had little confidence in my ability to maneuver the bike successfully if a bear, wolf or mountain lion showed up (these were not unreasonable possibilities where we lived). I also had that internal desire to conquer the fears and overcome the learning period on the cantankerous and heavy bike. I wasn’t going to let a machine beat me.
As I got to the base of the trail and entered the woods I heard the birds squawking. They were quite furious with me for breaking the peaceful silence of their homes with the glass-breaking sound of a two stroke motor working its way into the forest. The trail was muddier than I expected and even with knobby tires on, I was sliding and shifting in and around the edges of the trail. All the while I was trying to learn how to shift and use the clutch and keep the revs up so it wouldn’t stall going up or down hills. It was a blast.
I needed to find a way through the woods to my friends at the Kimsey boys’ house so I could show the bike off. I didn’t know the trails though, so I made it about halfway through the woods and took a ½ mile stretch of broken, worn out pavement the rest of the way. When I arrived you’d have thought it was a party. The four Kimsey boys, their mom and a grandma came out to greet me.
“Nice bike!” the boys kept saying. Each of them had to take a turn sitting on it. Kevin kept asking to take it for a ride and his mom and brothers kept saying “NO”. I wasn’t sure why they were so firm with Kevin (they all had bikes – well… a shared bike anyway), but I’d learn more about that later.
I told them how I’d come part way by trail and the rest on the pavement. Tim (the oldest of the brothers) then showed me where the trail let out behind their house at the top of a hill. “Follow that back and it will hit the trail you pulled off of and you can make it the rest of the way home 100% by trail.”
After visiting with them for a bit, I was anxious to ride some more and to continue to learn the bike and the trails. There would be plenty of time for adventures with the Kimsey boys. Just a few weeks later, one of the Kimsey boys took me to the “Mud Bowl” (a deep round pit of mud in a hole near one of the neighbors) and showed me how well a good dirt bike could climb out of near vertical walls. I had plenty more to learn (how to feather a clutch, how to pop a wheelie and maintain it, etc.), but it was coming and coming pretty quickly).
In order to leave, I got to work on the kick start process some more. It really wasn’t terribly hard to start, but took more effort than my little Honda 50 ever had. It was good for me to learn that process too. It was all part of mastering the ride. The bike roared to life again with that gust of oily smoke and the boys’ faces lit up. We all loved the sound of that two-stroke motor.
I waved good-bye and headed up the hill towards the mouth of the trail. The bike was very torquey and had no trouble getting up the hill and on into the trail. I was getting more comfortable with the clutch and the bike now and successfully worked through the trails to find my house. It was in these woods that I would run across a wolf (on his own without a pack) and in these woods where a mountain lion would roar at us from the darkness one night. On this day though, I was learning to ride a dirt bike with a clutch and gaining confidence in my ability to tackle things alone.
Each experience brought a new thrill and a new sensory blast of motorcycling joy. It was going to be a great year in Turtletown, Tennessee and the bike was going to be a big part of that success. Don’t you want to go get a new dirt bike right now?
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