A Young Man's Fancy

The weather is awful and while I'm here at work I'm dreaming of spring.  Right now the worst winter is almost over and we're entering a transition period, four to six weeks of cold near freezing rain. This is the season of mud where everything is damp, dirty and depressing.

Last year I did some voice work at the local radio station. One ad had the background sounds of birds and nature and the script went "it's almost spring and a young man's fancy turns to...MOTORCYCLES."  It is true, men might talk about women but they are really thinking about motorcycles.

Once the roads are free of ice it's time to get your machine ready and running. I have had  a couple of motorcycles but never was a serious rider. Soon to be free of dependent child it might be time to indulge those open road fantasies again. This time make a real commitment. Looking at the advertisements of motorcycles for sale I found this gem. It's a Simplex and it's the only motorcycle manufactured in the American Deep South, down in Louisiana.

The design is classic though it's totally impractical on today's roads. In the 1950's it boasted a fuel economy of 100 miles per gallon with the advanced feature of a belt driven automatic transmission, otherwise it looks like it was a pretty primal experience riding a Simplex. It was least amount motorcycle you can own without it becoming a moped. But it's not difficult to imagine puttering down a country road lined with Live Oaks draped in Spanish Moss on a Simplex.   

If money was no object I would shop for style and design and hire a good mechanic to keep it all working. There is something beautiful in the old, the odd and not quite successful.  When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 one importer immediately jumped at the opportunity to bring IMZ / Ural motorcycles into the United States. For less than $5,000 you could buy a 750cc motorcycle - a Russian copy of the BMW R71 with a sidecar. The downside was the all came in a crate, you had to pick it up at the docks in Philadelphia and assemble the bike yourself.

One person I knew second hand took up the challenge. Just about every major part had to machined, filed or finished so that they would fit properly.  As he said -"it had the quality of a Fiat built on a Monday morning by hung-over workers ready to go on strike".  Once the IMZ was running it prove to be solid and bullet proof; and it would not surprise me if it was still on back roads of South Jersey today. The IMZ / Ural was the standard motorcycle for the Soviet Red Army.

Big touring motorcycles with or without sidecars are excellent for the long road trip but I'm kind of interested something smaller, something that would force me to travel light. A side car would be too much temptation to collect a lot of extra stuff and bring it home.

Another small motorcycle that comes to mind is the old DKWs from Germany. In the 50's and 60's they made a 175cc model that was very popular on the international racing circuit. One of those odd childhood memories comes up, around 1968 a group of motorcyclists up in Finland try to promote winter motorcycle racing. The track was on a frozen lake and to maintain any traction the tries had two and a half inch spikes sticking out of them.  The DKWs dominated the track.

Supposedly only two races were held. The second one was recorded by ABC Wide World of Sports. What wasn't shown on TV was one the one of the racers falling off his bike and being run over another. Sadly the accident was fatal and that ended the sport.

The local Honda dealer has recently purchased a Royal Enfield franchise. These are small and mid-size motorcycles with a classic retro look and a promise that with the most up to date manufacture techniques these motorcycles will not have the problems that made other British bikes legendary for being temperamental.

I'm told with the new Enfields you only need one set of wrenches. One collector of BSAs talked about certain transitional years and models where you needed three or four sets of wrenches to do all the repair work. You would think that a wrench is just a wrench but in England it's a spanner and there they have British Standard sizes, Whitworth sizes, Metric and once and a while an American Standard comes in handy.

Well it's nice to dream.  And someday when I'm liberated from my parental obligations I hope to be cruising down an empty road on a motorcycle in search of adventure. All I have to do is get through another season of mud and see what happens next.