Sometimes I surprise myself...

PART ONE

Occasionally I surprise myself.

It's not often I come up with some small thing that looks to me like a potential truth.

In my early career being a youngster growing up in Edmonton/ Fort MacMurray, and... a youngster riding motorcycles, I would find something that maybe looked like there could be some truth. 

Many of you know that I was a DP kid growing up in the big smoke itself... Edmonton AB.

To say I spent much of my childhood, thought of  treated as the child of Displaced Persons parents would be a truth. I was  18  months of age when the COLD WAR caught fire in Budapest.  My father had spent 6 years in a hard labor camp under the Iron fist of them "Russkies" after the war as a dissident.

When Uncle 'JOE' signed his last death order, Mr. Khrushchev declared a general amnesty.

That sprung Dad.  A short while later on the same day and the same month I was born into a very unsettled environment.



Fast forward a bunch. I took to riding motorcycles at age 13. Back in the day, bikes and real biker's (The Rebels/Kings Crew etc) weren't very highly regarded by society in general.  At age 14 while I attended grade 8 at Wellington Junior High, Principal Mr. J.D.  Marles called me into the office. 

(This was the era of the Strap, Detention and the like.  It was never good to visit the inner domain. )

After "banning" my Honda S 90 from school property, with the report that "he wasn't going to have that kind of influence at his school" he administered the strap across both palms.  I don't remember how many but suffice to say, it was fairly regularly. There was NO defiance in my head.  I hated the strappings and avoided JD at every opportunity.  Kids today have it so good, I wouldn't wish my experiences with today's kids. Can you imagine, law breakers like our principal would have gone to jail!  That would be a switch. There was lots of prejudice to go round three times over back then.

I began riding my bike again and from what I remember the Boss left me alone for the most part, might have helped that I was a star athlete and clearly not a budding Hell's Angel!

I took up motorcycling as a means of bugging out when I was picked on due to my foreign accent and probably the garlic sauseges my Mom fed me. I rode to the Zoo which a long way from my home in the North West of the city.  Eventually that became nearby lakes and shortly after that to the Rockies, and in 1975 I rode my then year old BMW to Vancouver and across Canada, and let me tell you... it's a BIG ASS country!

I was 20!



No matter what was happening in my life or my family's, I could escape for an afternoon or a day or more when I got my first pup tent. Riding was freedom to me.  Freedom from the arguments in our home, the tension and sometimes the physical stuff.  In today's language we'd call that abuse.

I couldn't possibly imagine what my parents went through.  I came to terms to all that decades ago and as the father of two girls, I'd say... We did OKAY.

Bikes = Freedom

I don't know why people today ride bikes, everyone has a personal reason, maybe it's "cool" maybe thrifty, maybe joyous, too me it became my life.  Brought the National Motorcycle training Course to FM, then a new program and I was getting in on the ground floor so to speak.  They said it couldn't be done but then again they said the same thing about my moving across the country at 26 to open what turned out to be a terrifically successful life choice. 

No need getting into the details here anybody that knows me or is a regular reader of this blog may understand what motorcycling has been to me.  If I said a "life savor" you could take that to the bank. On second though buy bikes, forget those bastards known as the Banks!



EVEN today, I did some riding, in fact a full day of riding the MP3*  The other day was the Serow and got my groceries yesterday, on the SYM Citicom i 300. Started cool today but during the day saw the on board thermometer reach 22 C  (how bout that Ronnie!)

In essence I had two rides today, which now a days is great, My medically challenged pal and partner, Willy has to be hand fed and of course Coco, whom I rescued from my home in Glendale AZ.  Yeah... so the days of riding off somewhere on the spur of the moment will have to be shorter and more local.  Hey, such is life. 

Motorcycles equal Freedom.