[Ducati] Confessions (part one)

[Ted & Vicki Brisbine]

Ron"Desmohead"Betts wrote:

"I was 15 and a half and had a Honda Super 90 with a cut off Blooey tube of 
an exhaust and a learners permit in my pocket. "

I'm sure a lot of us old farts started out on a Honda S90.  I did.  I first saw one at a home show in 1964 and I still have the brochure.  If you liked the Yamaha chapter I might as well post the whole thing.  As you might guess, it ends with a new Ducati.  Ted       The first installment is... 

The Garage

The thought crossed my mind, as thoughts sometimes do, that if I were rich I would round up a pristine example of every street-legal motorcycle I have ever owned. Wouldn't it be fun to just have them around as a monument to my lifelong passion for two-wheeled contrivances? I could turn my garage into a shrine. Ah, the garage. Wouldn't it be nice just to find my garage? Actually I can see the outside of it, but opening the door is like finding a portal to another dimension. You've seen the pictures of a small building with an open door through which you can see the inside of a vast palace. My garage is just like that, only opposite. The garage looks spacious but once inside, the intrepid adventurer finds no safe place to stand.

Then the thought crossed my mind, as thoughts are sometimes wont to do...I wouldn't actually have to be rich. What's this? Two thoughts coming so close together! This must mean something. This must be my DESTINY! I have only had six street-legal bikes and I still have four of them. I'm almost there. If only I could just clean out the garage. What's a measly six motorcycles when I once put the count at thirteen bikes in the garage and its environs? At least half of those belonged to my kids and of course they didn't all work. Maybe the kids could help me clean out the garage. Where are those kids when you need them? This whole garage conundrum is their fault anyway. (I delude myself.) How dare they leave a lot of useless stuff behind? When I'm dead, they'll just have to come and clean it out, just like I had to clean my old stuff out of my parent's garage when they died.

When it comes to a clean garage full of pristine motorcycles, I really am just dreaming. Besides, another challenge looms on the horizon. Even if I could locate the missing cycles. Even if I could perform some magical garage exorcism, I'd still have to get the two missing bikes past the German border guard. "Oh, hi Vicki. Nice day isn't it. What do you mean, 'What is that big lump under the tarp?' No, I don't think those look like handlebars. Do you?" Some risks are just not worth taking.

The sickness

Talk about a dream come true. The day I bought my first bike still dances through my memory like a sugarplum fairy. I've done exhaustive research on this and found no other kid in the entire history of kid-dom who wanted a bike more than I did. My poor teenage body was wracked with want. I used to ride my bicycle to the places where enviable young brats rode their Yamaha 80s and Honda 90s up and down over dirt mounds, leaving excruciatingly beautiful tracks with their knobby tires. I would stare longingly at those tire prints, trying to imagine the feeling of power as the tire digs into the dirt and the lucky rider is thrust forward with no effort or peddling. 

One memory that remains especially vivid is that of a midsummer evening in 1965 when my cousin Darrel, another life-long motohead, gave me a ride on his Bridgestone 90. He had bravely ridden the little ring-a-ding thing 100 miles from Othello to Wenatchee. If I close my eyes I can still savor that warm evening air as we crossed the bridge and I felt the exhilaration of being a teenager on the town, free from parental constraints, and drinking in the fresh, wide-open feeling that can only be had on a motorcycle. Suddenly all things were possible.

When even the most humble of bikes promised two-wheeled nirvana, the sight of young Terry (brat) Swystun riding his custom painted Honda 250 Scrambler, with its sonorous twin side-pipes, was just too much injustice to bear. Even when no one was around I could feel the presence of two-wheeled ghosts and hear the distant songs of internal combustion hanging in the air like the final notes of an Italian opera.

In the days when any vacant lot was fair game for some two-wheeled fun, one such hallowed riding spot was Skyline Drive. It had some great little hills and benches, with a spider web of bike trails. On this very spot, feared moto-knight Terry Wadkins was reputed to have jumped his Greeves over the head of an unsuspecting rider. So help me God, a Greeves! (Spoken with quavering voice) The very name of this savage beast sent shivers up the spine of any punk mounted on a Japanese trail tiddler. I was so desperate I would have settled for a Honda step-through Tail 90, which was almost a girl's bike! Anything that would have put a throttle twist-grip in my hand and leave behind a glorious legacy of tire tracks in the dirt.

The big roadblock here was another border guard who went by the innocuous sounding appellation of Mom. You've seen the movie A Christmas Story? No wonder I relate so well to Ralphie in his lust for that Red Rider air rifle, only to be told "you'll shoot your eye out". Ralphie was only nine when finally entrusted with a firearm - of sorts. I had spent years watching kids younger than myself, gleefully tearing around on tote-goats and trail bikes. At the ripe old age of sixteen I was in possession of a driver's license and an Oldsmobile, but still no motorcycle of any kind. I felt like I had been sentenced to life as a Benedictine monk. OK. I know what you're thinking. Bring out the violins.

Finally, after months of cunning, calculated, arm twisting I convinced the border guard that a "little" bike couldn't be anything but harmless. With a sigh of resignation mom finally uttered the blessed words "Oh, I guess it'd be alright". Hallelujah, Amen! The border cross-arm gate had suddenly swung upward . for me! I was a free man. I played it cool though, waiting until out of sight around the corner before doing the Toyota Jump (or whatever we might have called it back then) and throwing a fist into the air.

Next.  The Chrome Bullet