I waited a long time to buy my first motorbike. I turned 13 in 1969 and remember it well – not so much for Woodstock – but for the Lunar missions, and the fact that my family moved from Edmonton to Scarborough. Throughout high school in the early 1970s, I watched the Honda revolution occur – the invasion of the CB-750. Although I never owned one, I have friends who still ride them.
High-school, college, job, get married, and have a daughter named Kate in 1984 – still no bike. My daughter Kate – the best thing that ever happened to me. We cottaged, snowmobiled, went on road trips, canoe trips – we just had a great time. And we still do. I could spend a long time talking about Kate, but this is about bikes.
Along came 1995. I wanted a bike, I was in a marriage crisis, and I thought that if my first wife and I both got motorbikes, it might help us build some bridges. My brother Scott called me with a line on a beat up old Honda Nighthawk 450 – so I bought it.
Off we went for a couple of years – she on her Harley Sportster, and me on the old Nighthawk. We had a few good rides together. But you know something? There is no magic “re-united by the love of biking” story here. We continued to drift apart. There is a long story about the complex nature of relationships between man and women, but even assuming I could tell it, I wont - this is about bikes.
Towards the end of the summer of 1999, I bought a 1996 Yamaha FJ1200ABS. What a great ride. That same fall, a young friend of mine was badly-badly hurt in a bike accident. Jordan, at least a part of Jordan, is still with us today, and I wish him and his parents the best. This is a story about bikes – and Jordan's accident is a sad part of the story.
Latter that fall, I decided to take the FJ to see my buddy Gord in Boston. Since my sister Cheryl lives in Jacksonville, Florida – I thought I would stop in to see her on the way to Boston. This was a great idea – it was my first long ride, and I truly fell in love with the experience of riding a motorbike. I was inexperienced about planning a long ride - for whatever reason, it seemed to me that I could take off for a 4500 km ride, and not take chain lube with me. When I got back to Toronto, the chain and sprockets were shot, and needed to be replaced. A much cheaper lesson about the cost of a mistake on the bike than the one Jordan learned. A much cheaper lesson than my buddy Gord learned about the effect of years of alcohol abuse – rest in peace Gord – hey – lets talk about bikes.
Yup – 1999 was a heck of a bike year. It was the evening, of Nov 17th, northbound on Bathurst, just after sunset – a lady in the solid stream of southbound traffic decided to turn left in front of me. My only option was full on the brakes, stand up on the pegs, watch the front end of the bike disintegrate into her front bumper, hit the hood, the windshield, black out for a 1/10th of a second, and come to on the southbound side of Bathurst thinking, “Damn, know I'm gonna get run over”. But, everyone stopped, along came the ambulance, the police, the fire department, off to the hospital, and you know what? I walked out the hospital that same evening, glad to be alive.
Fast forward – spring 2000 – separated from my first wife, living on my own and loving it. Nearly getting killed really makes it clear that you never know when it is going to be over, and decisions get easier. As the weather warmed, I knew I needed another bike. By May, I was the proud owner of a brand spanking new 2000 Honda VFR – the bike I still own and ride as often as I can. The rest of 2000 was great – tons of little rides all over Ontario, including a day on the track at Shannonville. I managed to get good enough that I actual found out I was still a real beginner with a lot of skill development to come.
Summer 2001 was my best bike season to date -I road to Vancouver where my honey Kim meet me for a few days of R&R, then she headed home, and I headed south down the coast into California, before zigg-zagging back across the content to Toronto. To this day, when I have 1000 KPH brain at bedtime, I can still “count sheep” by remembering a bunch of different sections of that trip in particular detail – mountains, rivers, corners, hills, prairies, oceans – the geography of a content. That is what I want to talk about – the bike journey. That is what it is about.
Since then, I have put a ton of kilometres on that bike – short rides, long rides, just running around town. I have fast friends that I occasionally ride with, who wait for me at the corners where we change roads. I have other friends I ride with, where I am one of the fast guys in the group – it is all relative. Mind you, none of us is fast in Ontario anymore – not worth the risk. Wow – a place where the punishment for speeding is likely a little more severe than what you might be able to get away with for a gun - Brrr. A few days on the track, and lots of days on the backroads, man do I love that bike.
But hark, what is this I see at www.feelv4.com? Honda has a new 7th generation VFR – in time for a spring 2010 roll out. Hmmm, could my 10 year love affair with a 5th generation model be nearing its end? The bike journey will tell.
Alex, “Sandy” Cameron
Etobicoke, November, 2009
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