Bryan's Blog

The stupid trailers for this movie are stuck in my head. So here goes.

Jumping into the hot tub time machine, suddenly I’m back in 1984 and living in San Jose, California
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“As long as you’re living under my roof, you’ll never ride a motorcycle.” So were the sentiments of my mom, bless her heart. Sometimes moms can be a little overprotective.

My two-wheeled experience so far had been stripping down my old Schwinn Stingray with a banana seat, re-painting it, swapping out the seat post for a BMX-style seat and changing out the high bars for straight bars so that I could go racing in the dried out pond in the apricot orchard across the street. I remember making crude ramps out of stacked bricks and plywood to see who could jump farther, me or the Archuleta boys next door. Wish I still had that bike in its original condition. The Stingrays are worth bank these days.

My first motorized two-wheeled experience was on a step-thru Puch scooter. Its eighth grade and my friends that live across the park had bought one. It’s an automatic with one gear and a top speed of maybe 20 mph but we don’t care. We flog that thing all over the park, throttle pinned, and try to jump on it. We eventually burn up its engine.

Back to 1984. I’m big pimping in a Silver Fiero with a sun-roof. I throw on low-profile BF Goodrich Comp TA tires and Enkie rims, which lowers my car. Throw on a black bra on the front and cruise that thing all over Santa Clara County and the hills that surround Silicon Valley. I had just graduated high school and my parents moved from San Jose to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, so I’m bouncing around living with friends and staying sometimes at my sister’s house. But I’m also no longer under my mother’s roof.

My buddy Paul Delarosa buys a Honda Ascot 500. I want to ride that thing so bad I trade him my Fiero one weekend. He gives me the basics – here’s the clutch, this is how you shift, here’s the brakes, now ride. My car was a stick so I at least had familiarity with manually shifting gears. It doesn’t take long for me to put it all together and I ride, ride, ride all weekend long. There’s nothing like it – the acceleration, the smells, sounds, and awareness of your surroundings, the proverbial freedom of the wind rushing through your hair. And back then I still have hair on my head, not simply on the back of it..

I remember my first wheelie. A total accident. My sister wants me to take her for a ride. I’m still a newb who’d never ridden two-up. We’re sitting at a stop sign, getting ready to take off. I pop the clutch and give it too much throttle. With her added weight on back, the front wheel lofts into the air, I’m holding on for dear life, she’s holding onto me as tight as she can, everything’s moving in slow motion as we barrel into the intersection and finally the front wheel comes back down. I look back and we’re both laughing our asses off. Love my sister.

Experienced my first brush with death on a motorcycle not long after that. In San Jose, where I-280 and Highway 101 come together, there is a spaghetti bowl of interchanges. The off-ramp connecting 280 to 101 banks over a hundred feet in the air. I’m traveling about 65 on my friend’s Ascot and have the bike leaned over as I enter the big sweeper. My sister is following me in the family’s big ’72 Thunderbird. Near the top of the interchange, there’s a freshly dead cat. I see it too late and run right over its head. My front tire loses contact with the road and the bike stands up. I’m heading straight for the retaining wall and a hundred foot plunge to my death waiting on the other side. I shift my weight and lean as hard as I can. Fortunately, the bike’s tires hold and I skirt the wall and pull it out. If I would have layed it down, my sister probably would have run over me. Close call.

A few years later, I would buy my very own first motorcycle – a red, white and blue 1986 Ninja 600. How was I to know where that would lead.