Motorcycling: How I got started

"You'll shoot your eye out, kid!"


We all remember this wonderful bit of encouragement from "A Christmas Story". Ralphie wants his Red Ryder BB gun and keeps running against a brick wall of perceived danger. It was a similar experience when, in October 2009, I declared that I wanted to learn to ride a motorcycle: "You'll crash! You'll be run over! It's a suicide machine! You'll be a road crayon!" went the loving words of family and friends. As luck would have it I even had a Ralphie moment where I low-sided my aunt's Honda Rebel in a turn at around 10MPH exactly a week before I was to take the MSF course (I have the best luck).


A familiar tale begins this journey. My dad rode a 1982 Honda Nighthawk 450 back in the day, a day when "Harleys were for looking at and Hondas were for riding" as he so often puts it. This bike met its end with my parents' marriage and was rarely spoken of until I decided on a whim to take up the sport. From then on we talked of his cross-country rides and the nuts and bolts of riding until December 2009 when he convinced my aunt to let me ride her Rebel. Being a balmy 35 degrees out we rode a few miles down to the church so I could practice shivering and doing figure-8's in the parking lot. Though I never got above second gear or 15MPH, I was hooked.

From then on I spent my free time researching bikes and blogs about bikes and bike gear and all that. My friends, happy to see that my four-wheeled obsession was subsiding, now had to deal with rants about how perplexing it is that my 1497cc Toyota is okay but an 883cc Harley-Davidson is considered a "girl's bike" (92cid and 54cid for you old-timers). My motorcycle license was acquired at the beginning of March and I signed up for the MSF course offered through the University. Before long I found myself in Hanceville again (where the orange Rebel lived) and proceeded to put my book-learning to the test on the county road in front of my aunt's house. A twisted ankle, gashed knee, dented fuel tank, and badly scuffed headlight and clutch lever later I learned that the rear brake is prone to locking. My dad decided we should celebrate my first accident with raw oysters and he fronted me the $800 I needed for parts to fix my aunt's bike.

Fast forward through the MSF course (22miles in a weekend on a Nighthawk 250 that killed every mosquito in Montevallo) and a summer of working and losing 40lbs....on September 30, 2010 I bought a brand-new 2009 Yamaha VStar 250. I was officially a motorcyclist. As of right now the bike has 2500 miles of commuting to Montevallo, running to Tuscaloosa and Northport, a trip to Judson College to rescue my copy of Firefly, trips to see my beautiful girlfriend, and acting a fool in the back yard. Future posts will explore the details of this adventure.

--JD