It was the spring of 1998 when my 16 year old self pushed my first bike out of my grandfathers barn. It had been sitting there for years and it showed. It was buried up to the front axle in the excavation of the many groundhog holes right surrounding it. The fenders and fork tubes were covered in rust the entire thing was a dingy shade of brown from years of dirt. The gas tank was full of rust abd reeked of varnish. To many the ’74 RD350 would have been scrap but to me it was a step forward. I was ready to move from the dirt and onto the street.
At that point I’d spent years of my life developing a love motorcycles. At the age of 7 it started with a Honda 70 three wheeler dad picked up cheap because the year before they were “outlawed”. From there I had a Kawasaki KD80 then on my 13th birthday I got a brand new XR200. None of those came close to that old Rd. It was my first real bike, it also had some inherent sentimental value as it was my dads first bike as well. I don’t want to forget to mention the tens of thousands of miles I’d logged on the back of my Grandpa Knowltons’ 87 FLT. Summer after summer my sister and I spend the days on the back of a pair of Tour Glides as dad and Knowlton rode all across Ohio.
Dad and I pushed the ragged RD down the hill, the back tire dragging the whole way. We hoisted it up into the back of his ’86 F250 and took it back to the house. After a quick scrub, some sand paper between the points, a can of carb cleaner, a few strategic blasts from the air compressor through the carb and some premix in an ear syringe the engine fired on the third kick. As the bike sat there running for the first time in at least a decade I was grinning from ear to ear as I blipped the throttle to keep it alive.
It was a surreal feeling, the smoke bellowing form the pitted chrome mufflers like a diesel train, the sound of a herd of rabid bumble bees hell bent on world domination echoing through the garage and the feeling of accomplishment from bringing that forgotten bike back to life are still clear in my mind. I think that’s the first time in my life I felt good about being me. I knew at that moment what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It’s funny how easily those moments are so easily pushed aside when we are young and forgotten as we grow older.
I rode it on my permit that summer. I didn’t ride nearly as much as I would have liked. I do still remember the few times I rode with my dad and Knowlton. Those are memories I visit often and will always try to hold on to. I don’t know if I actually remember the rides or just remember the feeling but it’s something I would love to do now and sadly the opportunity is gone. My Grandpa Knowlton has been gone for a few years now. Sadly he sold his 235000 mile Tour Glide he bought new in 1987 a decade before his passing. I will never forgive myself for missing out on all of the rides we could have taken together. Sitting here now I know those rides would have meant more to me now than almost anything. One of the biggest regrets I have is that I missed so many rides for things that were more important at the time but I can’t even remember now.
That winter I took it into school where I was studying auto body and gave it a nice 2 tone purple paint job. It wasn’t anything fancy, just better than the flat black spray paint I’d used to cover the pitting from the surface rust had wire wheeled off the tank.
I rode it again the summer of 98, just zipping around town but never far. Anyone who has ridden an RD will attest that after about 15 minutes your hands go numb and after about 30 minutes your questioning your life choices and praying for the tingling to stop. The RD, in my mind, is a fun way to run errands and blast a few curvy roads and not much for a long crouse down the highway.
When winter rolled back around it went back into the shop for another paint job, this time a terrible attempt at a custom paint job that was so embarrassing I took the bike directly to Mom and dads and locked it in the shed. There it sat in storage for about 5 years, then when I finished my house it was rolled into my shed, patiently awaiting its next identity.
In 2008 I wanted to ride again. My son was 3 years old and loved hanging out in the garage with me. He and I decided to embark on the bikes 4th rebirth under my ownership.
I had basic skills, dads crappy 110v harbor freight wire welder and access to extra cheap parts. The bike got completely torn down, the rear of the frame was chopped and a fiberglass cafe seat I picked up for a song was put on the freshly powder coated frame along with a set of DG expansion chambers, some rear sets I found on eBay for $20 and a set of shocks with gold external reservoirs. In an effort to make it a bit different I grafted a few inches for a spare gas tank to the rear of mine to give it a bit of a custom touch.
It was rattle canned satin black with silver stripes and 2 small bags in place of the side covers to hold my things during my commute. I rode it like that for a year before it cooked the regulator and it was again pushed back into the shed.
It came back out a year later and the flat black was sanded off and the bike was put back into red primer. I’d had the bike for over a decade at that point and it still wasn’t right and for the life of me I couldn’t get the bike right it was on its 5th repaint and I still wasn’t happy. So back into the shed it went.
I built other bikes in the next couple years. The R5 Rat Bike was my favorite, it wasn’t ever intended to be anything other than fun and it certainly was and still is. I still have it in storage and start it on occasion. The bike will eventually end up as a display piece in my shop. I also helped dad restore a couple Cushman scooters back to showroom condition. After that I got deep into old three wheelers. All while my RD languished in the shed.
During that time I had ended one marriage, started and had all but destroyed another, all the while slowly becoming someone that I just didn’t want to be. Its hard to hate yourself and not be exactly sure as to why. I was making good money, I was healthy, my family was healthy, and on the surface there was no reason to feel the sadness and loathing I carried within myself. Apparently you can only hold so much darkness inside of you. If you don’t find a way to let some light in it it’s amazing how quickly it will grow. It festers inside and eventually you will start to become it. The scary thing is that bigger the darkness grows the faster it grows, and before you know it it reaches a point that you just cant hold it in. Inevitably the darkness is going to overcome you. When it does the release of all the pain, hatred, anger and sadness can be likened an explosion that destroys not just you but everyone close to you as well. At least it did for me.
I held my darkness in for almost 2 years before It finally came out into a life shattering explosion. Its been close to a year ago now and I’m still only beginning to pick up the pieces of what my life was. The thing Ive found out from about blowing up my life is that when someone holds in so much for so long is that when the darkness comes out, all out it comes out. In my case it wasn’t just the stuff id been holding for the last couple years but things that I’d buried decades before.
It took me a few months to start to see things clearly after my fall. I spend a lot of time in prayer, reading, going to counseling and spent hours of day in self examination and I still do. Through all of that I was able to see that the my changing into person I had become started long before I I had ever imagined.
I know guys like us don’t like to share much. We tend to hold stuff in, suck it up and do what we have to to support our families. The problem with that is that when you keep giving, working and sacrificing yourself without putting good things in your life to replenish all you give, bad things will slowly fill that space. If I could have seen what all of the things I did to try to fill that space would ultimately turn me into I’d have dropped all of them in a second and never looked back.
I realize all of that seems a bit deep for a story about a building a motorcycle. The thing is that this bike is where it all started. I’s my first bike, my first project, the birth of my passion for building bikes and something I was never able to finish because it needed to be right. After thinking about it, (I know pondering one’s reluctance to work on a motorcycle is probably odd to most, but hey I’m an odd guy) I figure it was because the farther I got away from who I knew I should be and doing what I should be doing the desire to finish the bike disappeared proportionally. I honestly believe I didn’t want to taint something that I represented the birth of what I now see as the path I should have always been on with less anything than my best.
So here I sit, typing this with the RD on a stand in the garage sitting next to my Granddad’s 87 FLT, (Thats another story that no one probably wants to hear.) in the midst of its FINAL rebuild. I have a clear vision of what it will be, for the first time in a long time I’m doing something not for the finished result, but just for the joy of doing it. I am fortunate enough to have the time, the tools, skills and the desire to build this bike right. It’s now the right time finish the bike I started on 27 years ago. There are no reasons to cut corners, settle or rush. I’m building just for the sake of building, and in a way I’m going to be building something I should have long ago, the version of myself I want to be.
So follow along and let me know what you think.
