Praying Mantis

Well I have been riding my KLR 650 since May and have put about 5000 miles on it myself. I bought it with 2350 on the odometer. Somewhere I read that in order to stay current you need to ride at least 4000 miles per year...so I am ok for this year.

It took me a while to feel comfortable on a bike after all these years. I was lucky a few times when I misjudged turns on the road. On one particular turn, it was a good thing there was grass alongside the road, because I was mowing the lawn for a bit.

The KLR has been awesome for me. I am 300 lbs and 6'4". I was 6'6" at one time in my life but have shrunk a bit with age. Anyway the KLR was my choice because it was big and the price was right. I also wanted to go off-road. I have found limitations with a KLR off-road. It is very heavy for an off-road bike. In really tough stuff where I come to a stop on single track because of fear, I sometimes have fallen over because even my long legs were dangling up in the air on a steep downhill that I straddled. I do better on uphill sections but have modified my riding so that I don't go single tracking with this bike. I wish the bucks were available for me to get a smaller, lighter bike for real off-road stuff...the problem is that at this age (60 years old) I am not sure that I am athlete enough to do most of what I took for granted when I was 18.

Riding back roads is the best with this bike. I have explored many neighborhoods and have found places that I didn't know existed within 20 miles of my home. When I see a dead end street I now follow it to the end to see if there is any dirt at the end of it. So far I have found two dirt roads that continue as town roads but are not on maps.

2nd Bike circa 1965

The CT90 was great for me in the woods, but left something to be desired on the superslab. 90 cc's just didn't equate to the power I needed "on road". A friend, Nick Irons, (if your out there Nick, I would love to chat with you again.) who I met while riding had something that I had never even heard of before. He had a Matchless 500SC single. Some astute bargaining, i.e. he wanted out and I wanted in, and the bike was mine. The bike had no lights and was set up for what was called "scrambles" racing. Basically dirt tracks over hill and dale. Sometimes a bit of a water crossing but mostly deep dirt with lots of ruts. The typical scramble was 5-10 laps around a 1/8 to 1/4 mile track. Anywhere from seven to ten riders in each heat, so the starts were something that was pretty important for track position. I raced on tracks in Emmaus, Pa. and Fishkill, NY. The bike was competitive, but I just didn't have the experience needed to be competitive myself. The other riders didn't have much to worry about with me. I had great fun, but collected no silver.

Back in the sixties however, it seemed like you could get away with more. I rode that dirt bike everywhere, and never once was stopped for lack of lights, horn, license plate etc. It had a single large trumpet type pipe that I still can hear...maybe it's the ringing in my ears still, but it was loud. There was a baffle that I could screw in to the trumpet to quiet things down a bit...but hey, I was 18 years old so the baffle wasn't on the pipe very often. The thing had a manual compression release on it. If you weren't careful it would break your leg if it fired before TDC. More than once I thought I was headed over the handlebars when it fired early. It was a real single cylinder "thumper", probably not reving more then 5000 RPM. It had low end torque like no other bike I have ever ridden.

That bike literally went to pieces. I had overtightened the valve lift rods, and during a race the entire cylinder broke in half just over the four hold down bolts and the top end smashed up into the gas tank and the engine locked up. I went over the handlebars and woke up the next day with very little memory of the event. Funny thing was that I had loaded the bike into the trailer and driven home myself. I guess I had some sort of concussion and never knew it. In those days Dr. Merckelbach came to the home for $7.00 but I couldn't afford that even if I knew I was hurt. By the way, my paycheck from the telephone company was $67.50 per week or $1.69 per hour.

My KLR

Why ride again

I did a lot of research. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to ride again. I had ridden before , but wasn't done with it when the responsibilities of parenting kicked in. I was involved in corporate America and placed some of my dreams on hold for the benefit of the "company". I married twice, moved seven times, owned four houses, had two children of my own, two step-daughters, and spent over five years in Holiday Inns during the course of my 33 year career in sales. I traded a lot of myself along the way, thinking, that was what I had to do in order to move up the ladder. What I found out is that the ladder stopped at 55 years old, because I was no longer "current". At the end I was hiring Master Degreed people to work for me, a high school graduate. Heck, I couldn't have hired myself to work for me, I just wasn't qualified.

I thank them now. I have a chance to do some things for myself now, and what I want to do is ride again. My first bike was a Honda CT90 which was new in 1965. I forget what I paid for it, but my brand new Volkswagen beetle cost me $1640 OTD. I loved that yellow bike and enjoyed swapping out the chain sections and sprocket so that I could ride it in the woods. Back then I belonged to a hunting club that owned about 250 acres of mountain in New York State. The land was surrounded by forest. The bike was light, I was strong, we went everywhere...everywhere. One memorable trip was across the ridge line of a good sized mountain. There were no trails, just the ridgeline, the mountain and a compass. I managed to ride, carry and push that bike through the forest and out to a state highway that was where it was supposed to be about fifteen miles away.

I lost track of that bike after my older brother bought it from me and I started my corporate moves.