Reconciling the imagined and actual Gold Wings of glittering memory
The last few years I haven’t ridden much. Bicycles yes, motorcycles no. Parenting, bills — you’ve either lived or have heard it. Last month I started a new job featuring a hybrid work schedule, though 80 miles away, and resumed my two-wheeled ways for the once-a-week jaunt on a previously undertaxed Suzuki V-Strom 650.
As a kid my parents affixed my grandfather’s old Honda onto blocks in the backyard. Did the engine seize? Did my grandfather suddenly decide his riding days were over? Back then I wasn’t yet a journalist and didn’t think to ask. The kids of Briar Ridge Lane suddenly had the coolest backyard sandbox toy to “rev” while envisioning our travels.
When I was a kid my dad sported a Honda V45 Magna — a product of the tariff on foreign motorcycles above 700cc designed to let Harley-Davidson compete in its homeland. Once in a while I’d ride on the back to baseball practice or some random errand, a duo of Eds (my dad is Edmund the third, and I’m the fourth) motoring past cornfields becoming cul-de-sacs begetting strip malls in burgeoning American suburbia.
At that age, I became aware that any task on two wheels instantly became an adventure rather than an errand. A “get to” not a “have to.” Before being tall enough to reach the passenger pegs I’d sit on the tank in front of my dad, grasping the inside of the handlebars to “help him steer” with my feet on the crash bars or highway pegs.
I recall visiting Fleet Farm for spray paint and carrying the helmet by the chin strap with the cans inside like a shopping basket. My memories, the relationship with my dad are strained. His health failed early and with aspects of dementia. Though that was one of the times I remember feeling a sense of unbridled pride at being my father’s child. That we were immersed in the peak velocity stimuli of shoulder-strike kamikaze dragonflies while dodging the errant gravel escaping massive diesel whizzing dump trucks while passing freshly-manured farm furrows. I hope he knew that, then.
One day I was in the driveway shooting baskets when I heard an engine revving at the end of our neighborhood. I looked toward the sound and saw a smiling, well-tanned, sunglasses wearing fella then rev up onto the rear wheel while passing me. Some kind of gold crotch rocket native to my 80s childhood. In amazement I dropped the basketball, my jaw, arms waggling limp at their sides as the ball bounced, rolled lazily toward the gutter while the redline wheelie passed and faded into the distance.
When my dad came home from work I told him of my stunning afternoon. “Dad! A guy did a wheelie right in front of me today!” My father grumbled. He’d been known to shake his shovel at a teen who used our sleepy street to wring out the pipe of his 2-stroke dirt bike. They’d moved here for schools and safety, not teenagers on rebellious sabbaticals from four subdivisions away.
“Dad he got up on one wheel the whole time he rode past. I was the only person who saw!” My dad asked what kind of bike it was. Oh, I knew. No question. “Dad, it was,” I offered with breathless reverence, “a Gold Wing.” My dad grimaced, worked to stifle a snicker. I’d probably heard the name on a commercial and it ensnared my captivation. “Yeah if he did a wheelie it wasn’t a Gold Wing,” said my father.
But I knew better, then. The bike was gold, it flew right past me. It could be no other than the sleek-named Gold Wing slicing through the air like a gilded raptor prowling for its prey. And it had won its quarry. My adoration. Regardless of the actual facts of naming conventions. “It was a Gold Wing, Dad. I know it was.” He shrugged his acceptance that this was a rare fight not worth pursuing.
Every once in a while I’ll ask a Honda Gold Wing rider if they can do a wheelie on that thing — just to see whether they’re the guy who rode through my childhood with his helmetless ’80s quaff shimmering blonde in the breeze. And when they make the same bewildered expression as my dad, it’s like saying hi to my old man. — Ed Makowski
“I could do that”
The September/October issue was wonderful. I was riding through Tuscany, marveling at Erv Kanemoto creating the triple flat tracker and, to close, remembering my many times at THE Mile! My first time at San Jose we watched from the stands BUT before the heats started we went to the fence at turn one. I remember seeing the guys come out of the pits and fly by to start some flying laps. Being a rider/racer myself I thought “I could do that.” Well then Springer and Parker came into Turn 1 at full tilt. OMG! To hear both their front and back tires howling in displeasure as they tossed the bikes sideways! Thanks for the rekindled memories! — Craig Williams/Lincoln City, Oregon
