By Mark Bowron

Little did my father know at the time, but he planted a seed in 1961 when he allowed me to buy my first motorcycle.

I was 11 years old, and I remember the day very well. When I got home from school one day in the late spring, my dad had just pulled into the driveway with a brand new 1961 blue Honda 50 Cub. It was stowed in the trunk of his big Buick sedan, and he needed the help of my older brothers to get it out.

I had already given him the cash out of my own savings. The price was $235, as I vaguely recall.

My father was never into motorcycles and, to the best of my recollection, never owned one. But he was not opposed to me or any of my brothers in the family having a two-wheeled, motor-powered vehicle.

This was the early 1960s. There was no discussion of helmets or safety or protective clothing.

“Boys will be boys. Get on the thing and learn how to ride it,” Dad said. To him it was a matter of practicality, though I knew his motivation was somewhat self-serving because of the added bonus that it allowed him to sleep in on Sunday mornings.

My first ride was one of exhilaration and freedom for me, expanding my radius of travel for several years before I could legally get my driver’s license.

I explored new subdivisions, visited girlfriends, discovered distant woods and construction sites and even found the back roads into town on my new freedom machine.

But I am getting ahead of myself. A year earlier, I inherited the neighborhood paper route from my older brother Scott. He had delivered the Cleveland Plain Dealer to the 220-plus neighbors in our subdivision on his 1955 Whizzer.

Despite the fact that he had outgrown the paper route and the Whizzer, he had never let me ride it. The Whizzer was temperamental and hard to start.

So I started at the bottom, delivering the papers on my Schwinn bicycle. Every day at 6 a.m., the truck would drop the bundles of papers at the end of our driveway, and I would load the canvas bags and head out on my route.

But when Sundays rolled around, each paper swelled to 2-3 inches thick, and I simply couldn’t carry all of the papers on my bike and finish the route before the deadline. So, I would wake my Dad around 6:15 a.m. and ask him to drive me.

Sunday was his day off, but he got up, and I would load all of the papers in the back seat of his car while he revived with a cup of coffee.

One day several months later, my Dad pointed out the full page ad in Life magazine and suggested the Honda. Really? I can get a new motorbike?!

But it came with conditions. I had to pay for it myself with earnings from my paper route. Its principal purpose was to deliver papers. I couldn’t take it out of the subdivision. And no more Sunday deliveries for him. No rain deliveries in the car, no snow deliveries in the car, no “I am too tired to ride my bike” deliveries in the car.

Delivering newspapers on the Honda opened a whole new world on two wheels. I delivered the newspapers in the rain. I put a knobby tire on the back and delivered papers in the snow, even before the snow plows made the rounds in the mornings. And all of it was done before I had to catch the school bus in the morning. It taught me responsibility, infused with adventure.

The canvas newspaper bags came off my bicycle and were neatly held in place under the dual seat that hinged at the back. No other modifications were necessary, but it wasn’t long before I started to figure out how to make my bike faster.

The very first thing that I did was remove the muffler baffle. It was only held in by one small metric bolt and slid right out. Today, people may say loud pipes save lives, but back then all they did was annoy the neighbors.

I learned how to wrench and maintain the bike on my own. I bought a Chilton’s manual and at one time or another, had almost every piece of the bike apart and spread out in coffee cans on the garage floor.

One time the Honda began to lose power, had no compression and was very hard to start. My dad suggested that I check the valves and piston rings. I pulled the spark plug, put my thumb over the hole and tried the electric starter—almost no compression. So I bought new valves and rings and simply re-seated the new valves into the head using some valve grinding compound and my dad’s drill. Very low tech, but the Honda was quite forgiving in that regard.

In thinking about the Honda 50, I mused about all of the different motorcycles in my life. It took more than a couple minutes to make a list of every motorcycle I have ever owned. And as I added each one to the list, it brought back a flood of memories, some more memorable than others.

Each purchase was preceded by the anticipation and expectation of the freedom and adventures found over the horizon, and not a single bike disappointed me. All of the bikes in my life served a purpose and provided distinctive memories for their place in time.

Life happens, and the motorcycles were there to provide the punctuation, whether to mark a beginning, an ending, an exclamation point, a question mark, or simply a period. I now realize that the story of all of these different motorcycles is also the story of my life.

I know my story is not unique for a man of my age, but it’s been nearly 60 years on this life-long journey and my personal love affair with motorized two wheels. It’s a journey that has no end.

I have ridden across Africa twice, the first time a few years ago with my good friend and AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famer, Dave Barr, a 3,000-mile tour around South Africa as a fundraising ride to benefit charities for the disabled. And I have ridden across the United States more times than I can remember, including once in the illegal and unsanctioned cross-country race from Barstow to Rockingham, N.C., called The Stampede. Rigid choppers only, no windshields, no hard saddlebags and no chase vehicles. The first one there won a Pabst Blue Ribbon and the quintessential coveted bowling trophy.

I am not a mile counter and I have never cared about the total miles ridden or 24-hour certificates. In my mind, it has always been more about quality than quantity.

It’s the memories and the experiences, the friendships and the camaraderie of the road that are important, and a motorcycle is simply the vehicle of choice to get there. Writing this about my Honda 50 Cub brought back a lot of memories.

I can still picture my dad standing in the driveway with his arms crossed as I tentatively took off down our lane. And I recall many of the mishaps, crashes, cuts, scrapes and bruises along with the way.

I also recall my dad’s sage advice, “Son, good judgment comes from experience, and well, experience? That comes from poor judgment.”

All I can say is, “Thank you Dad for the gift of a lifetime.”

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Mark Bowron is an AMA member from Rapid City, S.D.