Bill Vossler: The joys of motorcycling

My first motorized vehicle was a used 150 Honda Motorcycle, which I bought in 1964 for $100. I was deliriously happy to have my own vehicle. The first day my brother Ron hopped on back, and we started tooling around town. On the road near the armory at the far end of town, I hit a patch of loose gravel. The motorcycle swayed and turned sideways, tossing us off. We slid and both suffered gravel burns but nothing more serious. Nevertheless, Ron would not remount, choosing to walk the ten blocks home. And he never rode on my motorcycle again.

Our family never left town, except for a couple of rare trips at night, after my stepdad finished his long workday. So I never knew what the landscape west of Wishek was like. Until getting my motorcycle.

For variety, I drove the thirty-three miles to Linton a couple of times. On the way, I marveled at the beauty of the hilly landscape, green and rich, including several flat-topped mesas, which I had never seen before.

Those treks convinced me that I needed a more powerful bike. Like a Honda 305. But it was too expensive, so I settled for a used Kawasaki 250 motorcycle. That was more like it!

I took it to college that fall, where a couple of us motored to a café early in the morning for breakfast. A great time.

If I wanted to go home, and no car was, I cranked up my motorcycle, stuffed newspapers inside my clothes on my chest and up my arms to ward off the cold, and drove the ninety miles to Wishek. The wind whistled past me and rattled the newspapers while cold air shooting by froze me. By the time I got to my destination, my entire body tingled.

That’s why I began trailing semis. If I got about a dozen feet behind a speeding semi, the wind was negligible. Plus the mass of the semi sucked me along. I never thought of the danger. Besides, I thought, I always wore a helmet.

That summer I explored the little towns around Valley City and drove on country roads. One time I zipped around a curve on a gravel road, and immediately ahead of me was a barbed-wire fence across the road. Only one thing to do: lay the machine on its side, hoping to create enough friction to stop. Didn’t work. Barbs on the lowest wire sliced my pants leg open — and my leg.

At the emergency room, they closed the six-inch wound with plastic stitches and gave me a tetanus shot.

A couple of years later I ended up in the hospital for non-motorcycle-related knee surgery. My roommate was a young guy in because of — you guessed it — a motorcycle accident. He was hurt badly. Seeing him suffer made me think about accidents. Could that happen to me?

A few weeks later driving on a two-lane road in Jamestown, the car ahead of me signaled right. I sped up to go around him on the left, just as he turned — not right, but left. I had to swing wide into the opposite lane and cram on the brakes so we didn’t collide. If another car had been in that lane, I probably wouldn’t be writing this today. Scared the heck out of me, and I thought more and more about getting hurt on my bike.

I could only control my actions. And motorcycles are not always easy to see, because of their size, but because it’s easy to speed with a motorcycle.

I loved riding motorcycle, the power, the breeze in my face, the sound, the acceleration, turning on a dime, the cheap gas — all the wonders the little machine offered.

But it was time. On the sad day when I finally sold my Kawasaki motorcycle, I cried. But I know it was the best and healthiest option for me to do.

— This is the opinion of Bill Vossler of Rockville, author of 18 books including his latest, "Days of Wonder: A Memoir of Growing Up." He can be reached at bvossler0@outlook.com.

This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: Bill Vossler: The joys of motorcycling