the Fever

Once upon a time, a boy met a girl in church. Boy was nice to girl and they wanted to have summer fun.

Girl says "Hey I know! Let's get a motorcycle!"
Boy says "Cool! Do you know how to ride one?"
Girls says "Duh, of course I don't. You're gonna show me!"
Boy says "Cool!"

Boy and girl traipse off to hinterlands and come back with piece o shite motorcycle. Vinyl torn off seat, barely working. But, boy is handy, fixes it up, puts on his rockin 70s Evel Kneivel helmet and teaches girl how to ride in church parking lot.

Conservative Baptists look on in displeasure. Girls and boys on motorcycles, certainly there is some evil there afoot.

Girl learns to ride, has fun and when the summer is over, the bike is stolen (like all two wheeled transport in Portland). Oh well. It only cost 200 bucks.

Girls brother says "Here you can have my bike! My wife won't let me ride it anymore!"
Girl says "Oh my, your bike is flippin huge. I can't ride it."
Brother says "Sure ya can! Just have some confidence!"
Girl says "I have no other way to get around. Promise we won't ever tell dad, k?"
Brother says "OK!"

And this is the story of how I ended up owning this bike. Minus the bags on the side.


750 cc's. A manageable monster, but still too large for this Marge. I sold it when I left the country. People really stereotype you when you ride a bike like this.

Still, it gave me the fever.

Now I find myself attempting to talk my husband into a cheap little crudbum of a bike, just for the fun of it. He looks at me sideways. Neither of us are sure about how serious I am.