Chapter
Four
Dirt
Bike – My First Set of Motorized Wheels
Around the time that I
turned twelve years old I came across a 125cc Honda Enduro dirt bike
at a garage sale. I managed to talk my parents into buying it for me
so I could ride with my brother. It was in excellent shape for a
bike from the early 80’s. It was a nice white color and ran great.
It just needed to be cleaned up a little bit. So after we brought
it home I took a little time and pressure washed the decals off and
did some minor detailing on the engine. At the time of getting the
bike I had only rode a dirt bike once and I crashed it. So it was
going to be an interesting experience learning to ride this one. I
had a friend who’s family owned an auto mechanics shop on the edge
of town and they had a significant amount of property that we could
ride on. My brother had his own Yamaha dirt bike that he rode, and
my friend rode an old moped. We would ride up and down this trail
behind the shop for hours. The trail led along the side of a corn
field and had an area toward the end that it widened out a bit where
we had room to turn around and ride back the other way. There would
be mud and dirt and dips and ruts along the trail that made it less
boring. One day after I got much better at riding, my brother tried
riding up next to me to race me down the trail and he somehow managed
to get stuck into a rut that sent him off the trail to the left and
into some trees. He came to an immediate stop in the middle of the V
of two trees that almost sent him flying over the handlebars.
Luckily he wasn’t hurt bad. A couple of bruises and twisted front
forks and bent handlebars is all he ended up with. He was still able
to ride back afterwards. After that day we were a little more
careful, but the problem was the farmer who owned the property that
we were riding on decided to sell the property to be developed. So I
was back to square one with trying to find a place to ride at. I
couldn’t ride it on the streets and didn’t have any property of
my own to ride on, so I thought about the bicycle/horse trail that
goes for miles in the country near my house. In the winter time it
turns into a snowmobile trail so I didn’t think it would hurt if I
rode on it with a dirt bike in the summer. I would ride my dirt bike
down the sidewalk at an idle speed to the entrance to the trail and
would ride up and down it for hours. It went all the way beyond the
next town over but I never went any further than the next town.
After being stopped by the town Police and told that they didn’t
care if I rode on the trail as long as I wasn’t bothering anyone.
They just didn’t want me riding it down the sidewalk to the
entrance to the trail. They wanted me to push it six blocks from my
house to the trail before I started riding it. It didn’t seem so
bad. So one day I was out riding the trail with a friend of mine
when we noticed an ambulance going down the interstate that ran
parallel to the trail. We continued following the ambulance down the
trail until we came across the car accident it was responding to on
the road. So we just sat and watched the scene for a while until
things started clearing out and then I drove the bike back into town.
It was a hot summer day and the breeze felt good out there riding
with the wind blowing through my hair. When I got off the bike at
the edge of town I noticed it was kind of warm from riding it all
day. So I pushed and pushed and pushed the heavy bike down the
sidewalk. Sometime along the way the bike got away from me a little
bit and was leaning at such a hard angle that it wanted to fall over
completely and I couldn’t lift it up on my own. So I stuck my leg
underneath it for more leverage but the muffler ended up laying flat
on the back of my bare right leg and the burning made me let the
handlebars go and grab the bike and fling it off of my leg. But it
wasn’t in time to stop it from burning half of the back of my leg.
It literally melted the skin right off of my leg and it was just
hanging there. I had my friend help me get the bike upright and we
pushed it to his house so I could put some ice on my leg. After I
realized the ice wasn’t going to help any at that point I started
the bike up and hopped on it and rode it home as fast as I possibly
could. That day when I parked it at home, it was the last time I
ended up riding it. I sold it not too long after. I still miss
riding my dirt bike even though I got hurt. It was a learning
experience for me.
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