How many miles?
August 31st, 2008I actually lost track so I don’t know.
I woke up at the spit of dawn again today. Drank my morning coffee, checked email and was off on the motorcycle to get the Sunday newspaper. That was a short 1/2 mile ride to the local gas station to pick it up. As I was putting my helmet back on, I saw this guy on a small bike that had to have been a mini bike it was so tiny. But who is out at 8am on a Sunday on a mini bike? I didn’t think much else of it as I was thinking of taking the long way home.
As soon as I turned to take said long way home, there was the little bike parked in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot, the owner just having taken off his gear was headed inside. I pulled in and said that I saw him go by and I was wondering what type of bike it was. The owner was quite nice and hung around for a few minutes answering my questions. Turns out the bike is a 1965 Honda 150, the first bike Honda imported to the States and precursor to my Shadow. The 150 did indeed stand for 150 cc and it was a twin. I thought it was just a kick start, but the owner pointed out the electric starter and actually started for me. And the bike purred like a kitten and yet when he twisted the throttle back it had a lot of growl for such a small bike. He said she was all original, and she looked great for her 43 years:
The owner stated that he had just taken it last week up to a classic Japanese bike meet and the little 150 did just fine cruising along at 50 mph, and when he had a long stretch of down hill open with no other cars he got it up to 60 mph. I can only imagine how that felt – I managed to get the ole Kawa 400 up to 70 going downhill with the throttle full open and that bike was screaming along. . .I can only imagine how that 150 felt like. Yoinks!
I continued on my journey, as it was a beautiful sunny morning and the four wheeling traffic was at a minimum. I made it down around Kingston and looked down – 19,998 miles! I pulled over in the mall and drove around the parking lot until I hit that 19,999 mark:
I continued my way around the mall parking lot and by the time I got around to the front, the bike hit 20K miles.
I headed back home, as my belly was starting to growl ~ I was going on one cup of coffee. When I got home, my ride was about 50 miles and over an hour long. Good times. I had toasted a bagel, made another cup of coffee and sat down to upload the pictures above when I heard a motorcycle outside my window. It totally freaked out the cat, who jumped on the top of sofa, looking at the open window with the mistrust of an animal who thinks something is about to come thru it: eyes narrowed and ears back.
Looking out the window, I saw my Dad on his bike. He wanted to know if I’d want to take a bike ride (ha!) to a town on the coast to go to a car show. Sure I said. He came in while I finished my bagel and I told him about hitting 20K on the bike. He smiled and said he just hit 9K on his. And I said, again! As his bike’s odometer has rolled over so many times you’d think he was a pimp.
When we got to where we were going, we parked the bikes in the shade and made our way in:
There were a lot of cool looking cars, and we walked around for quite a bit, only stopping to get a quick bite for lunch. The ride there and back was just as much fun as looking at the cars ~ the roads were little 2 lane roads, plenty of curves and some beautiful scenery, for a couple miles we drove by this ocean wall with the small of the ocean’s salt water tickling my nostrils and the view almost distracting me from riding the bike. And it was fun to be in the lead, with my Dad on his bike right in my small round mirror, and have a bunch of bikers pass us in the other direction, and we both give them “the wave.”
All in all, I prolly put over 100 miles on the bike today – and I wondered how the bike hit 20K when just last year (June 30th) the bike hit 10K. And tomorrow I’ll be going out again, early in the morning, for some early morning riding.
