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Her First Solo Ride Was On An Antique
My missus (I'll call her "Carol," because that is her name), who is a 55-year-old attorney known to her friends to be somewhat "proper," but not stuffy, took her first solo ride[s] on a motorcycle last weekend, February 21. Carol had remarked "how cute" the Triumph Tiger Cub looked, as I did some detailing work to get ready for the Eustis meet, and I knew that I had her!
Carol has ridden behind me fairly often during the 17 years that we have been married, including a few 100-mile-plus rides, Toy Runs, and so on, but she usually has not been the one to say: "Let's take the bike instead of the car." But the day as she stood next to the restored '59 Cubbie, it looked as if she was ready to expand her horizons.
"Do you want a riding lesson?" I asked casually.
"Sure," she said unhesitatingly, so I did not ask her twice.
I rolled the tiny Triumph out onto the front sidewalk and gave her some "Ground School" lessons about what lever and pedal does what(Carol is a former private pilot and competent sailing crewmember, who started driving in an old VW Beetle.) Then without starting the engine, we practiced mounting the bike, lifting the side stand, and balancing while stopped.
Next, still without the engine running, I pushed her down the sidewalk (and later the quiet side street) several times, watching her practice pulling in the clutch and applying the brakes at designated landmarks. (Yes a few of the old ladies on our block looked at us quizically; as I said, Carol has a reputation for being "proper" which has remained mostly unsullied by her liaison with me.) Carol's left foot found the brake pedal more often than mine did when I first got that bike, even though I had been riding for nearly forty years (as the '59 was my first right-foot shifter and it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks),
After showing me that she could stop the motorcycle without falling down, we moved to the engine-running portion of the lesson.
A few kicks and the Cubbie was purring like a kitten. I took the motorcycle around the block a few times to warm her up, then returned to our side street and let her get aboard again. Carol practiced opening the throttle while working the clutch in neutral for a moment. She found the throttle mechanism to be counter-intuitive: "Why do you have to pull it back [the twist grip] to go forward?"
Then came the moment[s] of truth. Off the center stand; pull in the clutch; gear shift pedal tapped down into first gear (Roy did that for her as the other duties had Carol's full attention). "Now give her some gas and let out the clutch. Slowly!" I counseled. She and the bike lurched ahead down the street, surging and weaving a bit, but moving in the right direction and not stalling! I watched as she neared the pre-determined braking point, about one long city block away. It looked like she got the clutch in okay and coasted to a stop without braking, but she came to a halt and kept her balance! Carol did it! She rode a motorcycle! Alone!
It took me a minute to walk down to where she had stopped. The engine had died (need to tweak that tickover speed screw). It took a few kicks and removing the plug to unflood the combustion chamber (with a little carb cleaning spray on the plug and into the cylinder for good measure), and the bike started again and ran better than any other 45-year-old machine in our neighborhood (it is, as you may have guessed, the only old machine in our "newer-is-better" neighborhood).
Now we are onto her second ride: back the long block to our house again. She made it again! No colliding with a tree; no dropping the bike when stopping; not even a popped-clutch stall!
I can almost forgive her for insulting the Cubbie when she stepped back and eyed the parked steed after that second ride was over: "Just like [so-and-so] said about old Triumphs; it drips oil down the kickstand."
Our son came home from a friend's house soon afterward, saw the Tiger Cub in the driveway, and asked if I had been riding. "No, your mom took it out herself," I told Michael. "Dad, get real," Michael chided me. "Mom didn't ride that Triumph!" he insisted. "Did she?" Later I heard him asking her to confirm my surprising news. Two trouble-free tenths of a mile and Carol is a solo rider! And an antique one (the bike, not the rider) at that.
Carol has ridden behind me fairly often during the 17 years that we have been married, including a few 100-mile-plus rides, Toy Runs, and so on, but she usually has not been the one to say: "Let's take the bike instead of the car." But the day as she stood next to the restored '59 Cubbie, it looked as if she was ready to expand her horizons.
"Do you want a riding lesson?" I asked casually.
"Sure," she said unhesitatingly, so I did not ask her twice.
I rolled the tiny Triumph out onto the front sidewalk and gave her some "Ground School" lessons about what lever and pedal does what(Carol is a former private pilot and competent sailing crewmember, who started driving in an old VW Beetle.) Then without starting the engine, we practiced mounting the bike, lifting the side stand, and balancing while stopped.
Next, still without the engine running, I pushed her down the sidewalk (and later the quiet side street) several times, watching her practice pulling in the clutch and applying the brakes at designated landmarks. (Yes a few of the old ladies on our block looked at us quizically; as I said, Carol has a reputation for being "proper" which has remained mostly unsullied by her liaison with me.) Carol's left foot found the brake pedal more often than mine did when I first got that bike, even though I had been riding for nearly forty years (as the '59 was my first right-foot shifter and it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks),
After showing me that she could stop the motorcycle without falling down, we moved to the engine-running portion of the lesson.
A few kicks and the Cubbie was purring like a kitten. I took the motorcycle around the block a few times to warm her up, then returned to our side street and let her get aboard again. Carol practiced opening the throttle while working the clutch in neutral for a moment. She found the throttle mechanism to be counter-intuitive: "Why do you have to pull it back [the twist grip] to go forward?"
Then came the moment[s] of truth. Off the center stand; pull in the clutch; gear shift pedal tapped down into first gear (Roy did that for her as the other duties had Carol's full attention). "Now give her some gas and let out the clutch. Slowly!" I counseled. She and the bike lurched ahead down the street, surging and weaving a bit, but moving in the right direction and not stalling! I watched as she neared the pre-determined braking point, about one long city block away. It looked like she got the clutch in okay and coasted to a stop without braking, but she came to a halt and kept her balance! Carol did it! She rode a motorcycle! Alone!
It took me a minute to walk down to where she had stopped. The engine had died (need to tweak that tickover speed screw). It took a few kicks and removing the plug to unflood the combustion chamber (with a little carb cleaning spray on the plug and into the cylinder for good measure), and the bike started again and ran better than any other 45-year-old machine in our neighborhood (it is, as you may have guessed, the only old machine in our "newer-is-better" neighborhood).
Now we are onto her second ride: back the long block to our house again. She made it again! No colliding with a tree; no dropping the bike when stopping; not even a popped-clutch stall!
I can almost forgive her for insulting the Cubbie when she stepped back and eyed the parked steed after that second ride was over: "Just like [so-and-so] said about old Triumphs; it drips oil down the kickstand."
Our son came home from a friend's house soon afterward, saw the Tiger Cub in the driveway, and asked if I had been riding. "No, your mom took it out herself," I told Michael. "Dad, get real," Michael chided me. "Mom didn't ride that Triumph!" he insisted. "Did she?" Later I heard him asking her to confirm my surprising news. Two trouble-free tenths of a mile and Carol is a solo rider! And an antique one (the bike, not the rider) at that.
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