The Stuff (Unfulfilled) Dreams are Made of.

This is what a 1966 BSA Lightning shouldn't look like. So beat I got it from a hardcore California biker for just fifty dollars about six years ago. While it has only continued to rot its decadence festers in my soul. It's beauty has tortured me as I am so enamored by its 650cc twin engine. It ranks just third in my engine-aesthetic behind a knuckle-head V-twin and Flathead V8. $3000 worth of new parts and a couple hundred man-hours of work later and maybe it could be a ride-able motorcycle again; with a little more maybe just maybe it could be the cafe racer I've always dreamed of having. The cafe racer I really wanted while throwing clubman bars on the 1978 Honda CB550 I loved dearly but I had to give up too when my life went to shit after college and even with two degrees I couldn't earn enough to keep up the insurance on it.

There's far too much resignation in my life these days...spent biking at night, broke and dispirited, wondering how in the folly of youth and in university I ever let myself dream it could be better than this; losing (slowly) my connection with the people, things and activities that I have loved.

Or my days spent trying to cobble together something useful from the mountains of accumulated trash that actually is my life now. And while I'd like to hope for better, something tells me one of these days I'll be pedaling a busted blue and red bmx bike down a Shreveport street still grumbling about my lot. Even then I probably won't be rid of my foolish dreams. I'll be on the look out for the smile of a pretty girl to melt my heart, solicited by the caricature of a bike rider I'll cut with my six foot frame on a 20" bike.

Life isn't always about bicycles.

Sometimes it's about getting your 30 year old motorcycle running again so you can gun-it and pray for death.

corroded old point.

new points.

lubricant.

After all that they just had to be re-gapped and it ran like a champ. Honda engines from the 70's are incredibly long lived. This one has been kicking ass since '78. I got it for free after it had rotted in neglect under a pecan tree for two years losing all its paint (hence the spray painted gas tank). I love it though it burdens me with perpetual need of  maintenance and fear of its decaying old carburetor boots and air box. I worry that soon one of the boots' many cracks will open up wide enough to let air flood in and run it lean to the point of scorching the rings of a cylinder; and it will die in my arms at interstate speed, screaming out in blue oil smoke pain before losing all power in a rapid deceleration death rattle.

 
Maybe I'll get lucky (for once) and that will be a few years off yet.